Looking for Polish Typefaces

[dan_reynolds]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hi everyone, I'm on a type hunt!

As has been mentioned many times, a certain sensitivity is required when it comes to CE character sets. They are often just drawn wrong. I have heard many people say that, F. Storm's typefaces for instance, look their best when used to set Czech

[Diederik Corvers]

Dan,
I think I remember walking together with you to Martin Majoor's lecture in Prague where he spoke about his children as well as of his Nexus types... but it seems like you missed one of both parts of it (might have something to do with it being at 8.45 on sunday morning)

[hrant]

Majoor does a lot of things very well - but based on what he said in his interview with Bilak, I wouldn't look to him for multicultural sensitivity.

hhp

[dan_reynolds]

Sorry Diederik, it wasn't me that you walked to Martin's lecture with. I skipped out on Sunday's activities all together, as it was my girlfriend's birthday.

But thanks for the tip! I'll look into Nexus. I have always liked his earlier typefaces, and when I was at RISD, I used Scala for everything! (who didn't?)

[speter]

One of the most Polish of faces is Antiqua Poltawskiego, available digitally from Boguslaw Jackowski and the Polish TeX Users Group. See http://www.janusz.nowacki.strefa.pl/poltawski.html for more information.

[dan_reynolds]

Diederik, I don't think that Nexus is available for sale yet

Steve, I took a look at your link. That face looks wonderful. I pushed lots of buttons, but nothing happend, except that a link opened up with lots of fields and Polish text

[dan_reynolds]

burp! sorry

[speter]

Does Burp mean you got it to download?

You can also use the US CTAN mirror,
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/psfonts/polish/antp/?filename=fonts/psfonts/polish/antp/&action=/tools/filesearch&catstring=fonts/psfonts/polish/antp/

Or get them in TrueType: ftp://ftp.gust.org.pl/pub/TeX/GUST/contrib/fonts/replicas/antp-ttf.zip

And the GUST (Polish TeX Users Group) site has a page for fonts, but only in Polish: http://www.gust.org.pl/FONTY/

Time to polish your Polish.

[dan_reynolds]

>My Polish is totally unpolished. Time to head to Crakow

[dezcom]

Dan,
I have been working on a Sans for several months. I have had help with the CE stuff from Filip and a few tips from Adam Twordoch a while ago. You can see it inprogress at:
http://www.typophile.com/forums/messages/29/37378.html?1097110994
Let me know what you think.

ChrisL

[petra]

Hi Dan,

FF Nexus will be available from Mid-November, however no CE version yet.

Petra

[dan_reynolds]

Thanks for the answer! My project has a late November deadline, and I need to start setting type next week, so the time table won't allow for FF Nexus. But I'll keep my eye on it.

[dan_reynolds]

Are you asking me if I'd use your typeface? ;)

Do you have a bold, or any heavy weights?

[dezcom]

Dan,
>Are you asking me if I'd use your typeface? ;) <

Yes. and yes--There is a medium a bold and a black.
E-mail me a sample of the text you want set and some specs and I'll send you a pdf to look at.

Chris

[dezcom]

Dan,
>Are you asking me if I'd use your typeface? ;) <

Yes. and yes--There is a medium a bold and a black.
E-mail me a sample of the text you want set and some specs and I'll send you a pdf to look at.

Chris

[hrant]

> no CE version yet.

Hmmm. And this is a font inspired by the relationship between eastern and western Europe?

hhp

[dan_reynolds]

boooooo! Come on, Hrant

[hrant]

Boooo to opportunistic multiculturalism.
I understand what the normal protocol is, but you'd think for a font with this particular ideological genesis an exception would be made. What are eastern Europeans supposed to think of this, after reading all the glorious design rationalization?

hhp

[petra]

I think the best thing is to let Martin answer this himself. If he is not regular reader of this, he will be here on Saturday and my collegue will point it out to him.

I was actually not aware that he claims FF Nexus is inspired by the relationship of Eastern and Western culture though I know he spends half his time in Warsaw.

and actually, it is indeed more of a time problem for us (FontFont), as we do have release deadlines - we are a small company after all :-)

Petra

[hrant]

Thank you, Petra.

hhp

[dezcom]

Dan,
Check your email.

Chris

[Martin Majoor]

Hello gossip mongers, this is my first time to write a personal reaction on this typo site.


>Hmmm. And this is a font inspired by the relationship between eastern and western Europe?<

Who said Nexus was inspired by the relationship between eastern and western Europe? I didn't. It is the biggest nonsense I have heard about my type designs. And then to think that I don't even like accents. The fact that I live in two countries (Holland and Poland) has not anything to do with this.

The truth about Nexus is that it is based on Seria. However the proportions within the typeface are 'normalized', that is to say that the x-height isn't that small as Seria, the ascenders and descenders are not that long as Seria, and there is a slanted italic instead of an upright italic. Besides the for me obvious combination of seriffed font and sans seriffed font, I augmented a third version, a slab serif that I called Nexus Mix (the word 'slab' is such a stupid name, it reminds me of a slab of bread with a slab of dutch cheese).

Nexus is much more easy to use than Seria (Seria works fine for people who understand typography, it is not a font that you can automatically set in 10 to 12 point). And the third member, Nexus Mix, gives a lot of extra possibilities for complex or scientific typography.

During ATypI Prague 2004 I handed out a mini typespecimen of the Nexus family, explaining about it's idea. The text was as follows:



Between 1988 and 1994 Martin Majoor designed Scala and Scala Sans. The idea behind Scala was to design a seriffed, humanistic typeface from which a sans serif version would be derived. Majoor called it: Two typefaces, one form principal, and it would become the basis of his type design philosophy.

Scala is a large family, and in the more than ten years of its existance especially the combination of a seriffed version and a sans seriffed version has proven to be highly succesfull in corporate design, in book design and in newspaper design. Now, 10 years later, Majoor has changed his idea of Two typefaces, one form principal into Three typefaces, one form principal, with a new family of typefaces as a result.

FF Nexus

[hrant]

Thanks for the reply.

I do clearly remember reading something about one of your type designs being a result of your living in/between two societies. I guess it wasn't Nexus, although both its name and my memory maintain at least a small doubt in me. It seems you're not the source of the confusion, but have you perhaps noted somebody who recently interviewed you or something make that "ideological" claim? I might have to backtrack my steps to get to the bottom of this... unless other Typophiles who have read about Nexus (or the other "mystery" font) can help out.

As for the bit about "not liking accents", let me just play nice and say that we [probably] have very different ideas about how different languages/scripts should relate. It's OK, I have that problem with many people. :-) However please know that I base this not on "rumors", but on what I've read of/by you.

hhp

[hrant]

Doing some searching, I ran into this:
"I really don't care about accents."
From: http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/atypi04.html
Is this simply bad reporting?

hhp

[twardoch]

Dan,

using Poltawski in large size is what I would consider a rather experimental approach. I think Poltawski is a naiive and actually rather bad typeface which is not at all suitable for most of typesetting -- except some very particular texts with special flair.

I would actually go for typefaces that simply have well-designed Polish diacritics. Unfortunately, most of the Polish characters in fonts from large libraries are mediocre, bad or awful: Elsner+Flake, FontFont, Linotype, ParaType, URW++. I mean, that's nice that they make the effort -- other companies don't care about adding CE characters at all.

The noble exceptions are few: the OpenType TT "Helvetica Linotype" font is overall a well-researched design.

The Polish diacritics in FF Seria that Martin Majoor had made are actually pretty damn good, maybe even excellent! I think he said something of not caring about accents, but I think he just wasn't serious, just making fung. Or maybe, he meant that he doesn't especially "care for accents" but still gets them right.

Many of Adobe's OpenType "Pro" typefaces have reasonably done Polish diacritics (Myriad Pro, Minion Pro, Jenson Pro). Jovica Veljovic's designs (Sava, Silentium) are particularly good, the diacritics in Brioso Pro are also excellent.

Tiro Typeworks' recent fonts also have well-done diacritics but they aren't really currently available for retail sale. Gentium by Victor Gaultney, FF Maiola by Vik Burian, most of the OpenType typefaces by Andreas Seidel, Bliss by Jeremy Tankard -- all of them have reliable, good quality.

Most recent fonts from some selected smaller foundries have generally good Polish diacritics: House Industries, Thirstype, Lucas Fonts, Munch Fonts, Porchez, Typotheque. Storm's Polish diacritics are mostly OK, although some are not.

My personal favourites include: Helvetica Linotype (but, well, I designed the Polish letters so I'm biased ;) ), Valetta by John Hudson (unreleased), Fenway by Matthew Carter (available from C&C I think), Zapfino Extra LT Pro.

Regards,
Adam Twardoch