John Warnock, type designer?

dezcom · January 31, 2007

Thank goodness for that quick segway Si! Glad you turned the subject right back to typography :-) BTW, I am pickin' the Colts too!

Yes Nick--The always faithful, trusty, "I was misquoted" comes in handy for lots of folks, even big suits from software companies that sell type. The way spin doctors work, we will never know the real story. We here all know Robert Slimbach is 'the man' at Adobe no matter what the "actual" quote was from Shantanu.

ChrisL
(here is hoping we dodged that bullett, whew.)

Nick Shinn · January 31, 2007

Sorry, I forgot the smiley.

William Berkson · January 31, 2007

>forgot the smiley

Sorry, a few guys make me lose my sense of humor. Bush and Ahmadinejad are two of them.

So it's the Colts, eh?

Thomas Phinney · February 1, 2007

Ah, Chris, ye of little faith. I wouldn't have said it was a misquote unless I believed it and had good reason for doing so.

Here's the whole story:

When asked about his favorite font, Shantanu said that Warnock was an amazing series of fonts. When the reporter looked confused (didn't recognize the name), Shantanu asked if he was familiar with our founder John Warnock. In the fact-checking stage, we clarified that Shantanu's favorite font is Warnock Pro but did not get into its origins.

The reporter likely deduced from the name of the fonts, and then Shantanu's reference to John, that John created the fonts. This of course is not the case, and Shantanu didn't say so.

But given that it was a positive story, and a very logical misunderstanding (not a willful or sloppy mistake), Adobe PR didn't feel it was necessary to follow up with a request for correction.
However, they'll be sure to be more precise if the question arises again.

It's actually kind of cool that Shantanu is familiar with Warnock Pro - it's not one of our standard corporate typefaces (which are Myriad and Minion).

Cheers,

T

dezcom · February 2, 2007

Thomas, perhaps I would have been of "more faith" if you had given this explanation before instead of just saying "it was simply a misquote" and going no farther. The much too often used line, mostly by polititions in recent times, is "I was misquoted". This tends to make the populace a bit jaded when they hear it with nothing further to back it up. What I said was "we will never know the real story". I made that assumption based on the fact that you did not offer the real story in your previous post, you only said "it was simply a misquote".

ChrisL

Stephen Coles · February 2, 2007

To be fair, I don't think Thomas knew the full story until now.

Miss Tiffany · February 2, 2007

Adobe is quite literally [3] huginormous buildings in the middle of San Jose. I'm sure it took a little longer to find out what actually happened.

dezcom · February 2, 2007

Thomas must have known enough to be able to comfortably say, "I wouldn’t have said it was a misquote unless I believed it and had good reason for doing so."

At any rate, it is no big deal and not worthy of too much discussion.

ChrisL

Nick Shinn · February 2, 2007

Nice spin, TP :-)

BTW, I hope Gauge ("working title only" with good reason as it's so easy to transpose the a and u) turns out to be "Geschke".

Christopher Slye · February 3, 2007

Adobe is quite literally 2 huginormous buildings in the middle of San Jose.

Actually, it's three huginormous buildings. :-)

It started as one, then became two, and now three. BTW, is "huginormous" bigger than "ginormous"? And I actually think the buildings are merely "big".

dezcom · February 3, 2007

Kinda like the difference between Grande and Venti at Starbucks :-)

ChrisL

Dan Gayle · February 3, 2007

Doesn't the Seattle campus fit into the grand scheme of things?

Si_Daniels · February 3, 2007

As the instigator of the post, I should chip in my 2 cents.

I suspected a partial quote or misquote was to blame. And the fact that the font was referred to as ‘Warnock fonts’ and not ‘Warnock Pro’ suggested that the PR handlers were out of the room, or had less grasp of Adobe fonts than the boss.

Having said that, in 100 or 150 years, in type history books, Dr Warnock will likely be more closely associated with the Adobe originals library than the individual designers. In much the same way as Stanley Morrison is associated with the Monotype revivals. Sadly many in-house designers, even the best of them, will be at best a footnote.

But it’s not all doom-and-gloom. One of the things that makes the font biz special is that the individual designers are credited – every school kid knows who made Comic Sans, Verdana and Myriad, but what name do you associate with Mac OS X, Windows Vista, Photoshop CS3? Probably someone who contributed little if any code to the product.

Finally the conspiracy theories that have sprung up around Tom’s reply show why the PR folks often feel it’s better not to correct obvious errors.

Finally, finally, how about Adobe in Seattle - birthplace of PageMaker and InDesign and home to Tom Phinney - it may not be as huge-mungus, but it's still important.

Dan Gayle · February 3, 2007

Ha! Beat you to it.

Si_Daniels · February 3, 2007

Maybe we both hit 'post comment' at exactly the same time, and via some some random chance yours got posted first?

Thomas Phinney · February 4, 2007

The sad thing is, I actually found out a lot about the misquote within a couple of days - and then waited while I asked PR if it was okay to talk about it in public. sigh.

The thing about reporting is, unless the interview is taped, the reporter has to reconstruct the "quotes" based on their notes from the interview. So quotes are sometimes rather reporter-constructed, rather than literally what was said.

Cheers,

T

Dan Gayle · February 4, 2007

I hear ya on that one. Every time I've interviewed someone for an article I'm writing, and I don't have a mic, the quotes start to smear into each other. But a good reporter can get the jist of what's being communicated without introducing factual errors. A bad reporter will report whatever it is that they think they heard, regardless of what the person actually said.

dezcom · February 4, 2007

"birthplace of PageMaker and InDesign and home to Tom Phinney"

and site of TypeCon2007! (and a place some guy named Si now lives :-)

ChrisL

Christopher Slye · February 4, 2007

Doesn’t the Seattle campus fit into the grand scheme of things?

It does, but Tiffany was talking about San Jose... so Adobe is three huginormous buildings in the middle of San Jose, and some other ginormous buildings in other cities like San Francisco and Seattle.

Nick Shinn · February 4, 2007

"Here's the concept, Robert, just clean it up a bit."

Miss Tiffany · February 5, 2007

3 Buildings? Dear me, I only remember two. :^/ And yes, I mistakenly was only referring to San Jose. Mea culpa.

In regards to huginormous, I'm really short, so it doesn't take much to be huginormous. :^P

Norbert Florendo · February 5, 2007

...how about Adobe in Seattle - birthplace of PageMaker and InDesign...

Seattle, yes, but let's remember that it was at Paul Brainerd's Aldus Corp. where
Aldus PageMaker was created in 1985.

twardoch · February 6, 2007

“There are some Warnock fonts that are absolutely spectacular that we use within the company. John Warnock, as a founder of the company, did some amazing fonts.”

If you think about this a bit, it's not that illogical. If you think of Adobe as a foundry, and John Warnock as the foundry's founder ;) , then from that perspective Warnock sure deserves some credit for those typefaces having come to light, even just by providing the financial resources.

A.

Nick Shinn · February 6, 2007

Maybe Comic Sans should have been named Gates?

William Berkson · February 6, 2007

>Maybe Comic Sans should have been named Gates?

Hereby nominated to the Typophile hall of fame to take place along side Chris L's "Carsonogenic" and Hrant's "Helvomita" :)

John Warnock, type designer?

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