Univers, Linotype Univers and Univers Next

[hrant]

If you have to lean an Italic that much to make it stand out enough, you're really not dealing with a text face to begin with which makes an Italic having to stand out moot! Not to mention ugly (which is anathema to a display face). To me a 16 degree slant smells like a rotting Louis XVI outfit.

PPL:
http://bielerpressxi.blogspot.com/2008/05/photopolymer-platemaking-servi...
http://order.nagraph.com/media/products/negandplate.jpg

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

Original instruments, anyone?

[hrant]

But the original ears are long deaf.

hhp

[Celeste]

Sorry, guys — I’m sure it’s hilarious, but as a foreigner I didn’t get that one.

[hrant]

I'm not sure I did either - I'm just... playing along. :-)

hhp

[quadibloc]

@Celeste:
I won't comment on whatever the joke may have been intended to be, but the context is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvNQLJ1_HQ0

While those who listened to Baroque music when it was new are long dead, however, I still have the same eyes I used to read with before they had laser printers.

[Té Rowan]

Si... si... sixteen-degree slope?!? That's so far into OTT (Over-The-Top), I can't come up with a joke about it!

For non-googlers' information, Lorella and Roderigo were trawlers from Hull, England. Both heeled over and sank 'with man and mouse' due to overicing and wind in January 1955.

[Chris Dean]

Just ask Adrian. Done.

[Bert Vanderveen]

The original design of Univers was done within the limitations of the requirements of photographic typesetting AND lead, in other words: a combination of two specs (esp in the field of units per em). The new version is free of this limitation and thus superior.

And on another note: when the original creator (Frutiger) considers the later version better, it IS better. (And if you think he’s wrong, draw your own.)

[hrant]

You guys have heard about aging, right?

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

I’ve updated several of my earlier digital typefaces to OpenType, after over a decade.
It’s always hard to get back in the zone.
In some cases, I think the new version is better than the old.
In others, not really.
As we often say in matters of type, it depends…
Anyway, it doesn’t matter what the designer thinks, our taste and opinions are not the same as those of type users, even when we like the same thing, which can be for quite different reasons.

[Iain Farnsworth]

-hrant
Do you think that when Linotype and Frutiger redrew Univers in '97 (for Linotype Univers), they didn't do as good a job as they could have done? (possibly due to Frutigers age?)

-Nick
I think that authenticity is an important consideration when dealing with type, especially when we're dealing with typefaces that have made the transition from hot metal, etc. to digital. When I buy fonts, I'd like to think I'm getting what the type designer intended, rather than a compromise solution. I concede though that this could reach the level of pedantry, and that it's perfectly possible that an historically inaccurate reversion could be as beautiful. I dare say I prefer Bach on modern instruments.

[Nick Shinn]

For his violin work, you will probably end up listening to a centuries-old Stradivarius, if you’re listening to a top contemporary performer.

[hrant]

Iain, I can't pretend to having paid nearly enough attention to be able to discern the relative merits of the various cuts of Univers (and I suspect Frutiger was still pretty much entirely cognizant in 1997). I've most been making general observations here (except for my specific opinion about Italic slant).

I'd like to think I'm getting what the type designer intended, rather than a compromise solution.

Well, that's nice. Really. But do note that type designers compromise "internally" as well. And quite often a type designer can greatly refine his work thanks to guidance from a font house.

hhp

[dberlowgone]

And there were limits on kerning that limited italic angle.

No one, is, or was, trying to do anything but their best.

[hrant]

But from what I understand the original metal was 16 degrees, no?

hhp

[Chris Dean]

@Bert Vanderveen: “…when the original creator (Frutiger) considers the later version better, it IS better.”

Source please?

[Celeste]

— Chris
A valuable source for Adrian Frutiger’s opinions about his own typefaces (in their past and current versions) is this book http://www.amazon.com/Adrian-Frutiger-Typefaces-Complete-Works/dp/3764385812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349333810&sr=8-1&keywords=Frutiger (everything you ever wanted to know about Frutiger’s typographic designs, including the bits you never cared about). But maybe Bert knows about other sources.

— Nick

Anyway, it doesn’t matter what the designer thinks, our taste and opinions are not the same as those of type users, even when we like the same thing, which can be for quite different reasons.

My point exactly : as a contemporary graphic designer, with a graphic design culture
(i. e. made of graphic design artefacts designed with specific versions of specific typefaces), I still think the “old” digital version of Univers has its own merits, on account of the valuable work done with it during the past 25 years by a number of estimable graphic designers (another example ? Pierre Mendell’s unforgettable posters for the Bayerische Staatsoper).

— Hrant
Univers was originally designed for the Lumitype phototypesetting system (which Deberny & Peignot had financed), which could easily accomodate the 16° slope. Things got tricky when the rights were sold to other foundries or manufacturers of typesetting equipment with different technical limits : the slope was changed to 12° to make Univers available on Linotype’s Linofilm machine, for instance.

[Chris Dean]

@Celeste: My question was to burt. I am asking for his primary source, something published with a proper citation and reference, to support his claim “when the original creator (Frutiger) considers the later version better, it IS better.”

Without a proper reference, the quote is purely anecdotal.

[dberlowgone]

"But from what I understand the original metal was 16 degrees, no?"

But type technology is not like the grade school pictures of the ascent from ape to man.

[Celeste]

— Chris
Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part — some things are just way too subtle for me and my crappy English.

— Bert

The original design of Univers was done within the limitations of the requirements of photographic typesetting AND lead, in other words: a combination of two specs (esp in the field of units per em). The new version is free of this limitation and thus superior.

I’m afraid I have to disagree with you on this one : if the technical limitations you’re referring to have informed the original design in a significant way, getting rid of them cannot lead to a better design (only to a different one) — think Sabon, for example.

[Bert Vanderveen]

@Celeste: Limitations like having the same widths for a glyph in roman and italic (due to Linotype system requirements), viz this info re good old Helvetica vs the Neue Haas Grotesk digitization by FontBureau (halfway down page): http://www.fontbureau.com/NHG/history/
BTW: The original digital Sabon was terrible.

@Chris: I have to change my evaluation: AF was talking about the 1994 edition by Linotype, called Linotype Univers — he remarks upon that in the book Celeste mentions (page 102-103, English-language edition): “The new Linotype Univers is, on the whole, better than most other version […].” *
In contemporary marketing material for the launch of the Next version it is stated that its design is based on the original drawings by AF, as on the Linotype website: http://www.linotype.com/1813-15545/whyanewunivers.html : “By following Frutiger’s original designs, the humanist character of the sanserif Univers now comes through more distinctly.”

(* In the same part of the book AF states that the best Univers remains the hot metal cast by Deberny & Peignot (p. 97).)

[hrant]

the best Univers remains the hot metal cast by Deberny & Peignot

If that's true it means Linotype sucks at making digital fonts. Luckily for -virtually- everybody it can't be true (beyond the need for cloying nostalgia).

hhp

[Iain Farnsworth]

Sadly, I fear that one of the chief determining factors in deciding which digital Univers to use would be the price. Both Linotype Univers and Univers Next are over twice the price of the 'old' Univers.
If you wanted to use more than a few weights, this could become quite expensive. Especially if you're a poor designer, with barely a pot to p*** in.

Like me.

There's always Christmas and birthdays, I suppose.

[Celeste]

— Bert
The limitations introduced by duplexed Linotype matrices were indeed integral parts of the design program for numerous historically important 20th-century typefaces (all the newspaper faces designed under Chauncey H. Griffith, or Dwiggins’ Electra) — remove these limitations and what you have is another typeface (which you’re free to find more beautiful, but not better from a design point of view).

The original digital Sabon followed very closely the version designed by Jan Tschichold to conform to both Linotype and Monotype technical limitations — and that was, in my opinion, a perfectly valid choice when it comes to the integrity of this landmark of type design history.

— Iain
Don’t try to ask digital typefaces for Christmas or birthday gifts — people will look at you funny. I know it, I’ve tried it once — “What do you mean, you’d like FF Legato as a present for your 35th birthday ?” (yelled my mother in disbelief).