Whitman Display Italic looks good on screen!

[dezcom]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

I never thought an italic face would work well on screen but this recent featured face Whitman sings sweetly, to me.

ChrisL

[William Berkson]

Sure does! But then I am a member of the Whitman fan club :)

[jupiterboy]

HintMasterFlash

[dezcom]

Looks like Kent did some great work on all the other weights and styles, too! I love the bold condensed.

ChrisL

[pattyfab]

Very nice.

[hrant]

It's a beautiful italic.

But what size on screen are we talking about?
Can we see it at like 12 and 16 ppem?

hhp

[nina]

Well it looks pretty maltreated in the lil' box on the right hand side (where it says 'Featured Face'). It's lovely in the titles, though.

[will powers]

Why does Whitman Display Italic have that wretched apostrophe in the header to the Zeno thread?

powers

[William Berkson]

I think that using the straight apostrophe is a result of the limitations of Flash. IIRC it also doesn't do kerning and has other limitations.

[kentlew]

> But what size on screen are we talking about?
> Can we see it at like 12 and 16 ppem?

Ahh, give the poor little font a break, Hrant. It's Display Light Italic, after all -- "Display" as in headlines (maybe 48 pt or larger), not as in monitor.

;-)

-- K.

[BlueStreak]

Moderno still stands out as the best fit for the design of this website, to my subjective and bloodshot eyes, but Whitman Display Italic looks like a beautiful fit too.

Very nice. I'd love a chance to see how Whitman Display Condensed would look/work here.

[hrant]

Kent, I was being nice to Chris, not unnice to the font.

"If you just want to say something nice, don't say anything at all."

hhp

[dezcom]

I was referring to the size used up in the thread title--not to 12/16pt text sizes on screen. Kent's italic is a gentle slope and typically angles near vertical but not exactly, tend to get stair-steppy in low resolution. Whitman seems to overcome this problem quite nicely.

ChrisL

[xtianhoff]

Apparently the theory of "crisp finish" which Dwiggins preached about transfers nicely to screen. Not to diminish Kent's achievement as simply formulaic (and someone else's formula at that). Instead, I see it that he achieved the aspirations of a important type pioneer.

[hrant]

But is this specific to italics?

hhp

[xtianhoff]

That's a pretty good question, presuming I understand what you're asking. I'd have to review the Dwiggin's letters, by which I mean correspondence. I think his call for "crisp finish" would apply to roman or ital equally. You'd like it, Hrant. It could be seen as move from chirography towards the "machine age" as it was then seen.

[hrant]

I actually know about it, and am indeed a big fan. And considering that Kent is a big WAD fan, I'm sure the influence is there.

> It could be seen as move from chirography towards
> the “machine age” as it was then seen.

Indeed; towards a separation of the two edges of the black. The paradox is that Dwiggins was majorly chirographic! Maybe he didn't realize the true nature of what he had discovered. He did have incredible instincts though.

hhp

[xtianhoff]

I did assume and erudite fellow such as yourself would be at the least acquainted with it.

I think you do WAD a bit of disservice by referring to his instincts, though. He thought everything through and was endlessly experimental. He ended up places through thought.

More to our original point, he was involved in every level of the production and wanted to know about the process and the technology. What I'm getting at is that while his roots (and, perhaps, his instincts) were chirographic his experiments and interest in the production process probably led him away from purely chirographic forms.

[xtianhoff]

...and we're now hijacking a thread that's really about how good Whitman Display Italic looks on screen. Ooops.

[hrant]

I have trouble reconciling WAD's amazing results with some almost as amazing -if few and far between- bits of what I can only call ignorance. One that stands out for me is his belief that extenders play no role in readability whatsoever, that they just make text look pretty or something! I mean, sheesh. The only way I can perform this reconciliation is by highly valuating his instincts; that he knew what needed to be done even without realizing the logic.

hhp

[billtroop]

>The only way I can perform this reconciliation is by highly valuating his instincts; that he knew what needed to be done even without realizing the logic.

I imagine it was Griffith who saved Dwiggins from himself, n'est-ce-pas? Griffith was the boss, after all.

[xtianhoff]

I would suggest that this is the flip side of the coin of how experimental he was. Not every experiment yields fruit, or at least the fruit we expect. That's how I reconcile it or, more properly, explain it. He explored some hypotheses and found them incorrect.

In the case you cite, he wondered if Uncial forms would be more "natural" for the reading of English, thinking that the Latin forms would be better suited for, well, Latin presumably, and I guess the romance languages.. So he experimented to see if Winchester Uncial would yield revolutionary results in legibility in setting English. It didn't and he said so, but Winchester without the uncial forms is actually a really charming face and he did some great work in Hingham with it. I don't think the digital versions really do it justice.

Truly, Hrant, WAD was a kindred soul to you. He worried about and was involved in every step of type production; he took careful consideration of legibility AND readability; he wasn't afraid to explore radical ideas (including the abandonment of many chirographic forms).

[As an aside, weren't uncial forms originally Roman anyway and brought to the British Isles during the Roman occupation? They may have then hit an artistic peak as Insular majascule etc,... but it seems like WAD was really off base on that one.]

[xtianhoff]

Griffith was boss and more, absolutely. But, still, one gets the feeling that WAD pursued his whims if he felt strongly enough about them with Griffith struggling to pull him back onto more commercial projects. Here I'm thinking of the Charter experiment and, again, the WInchester Uncial (and non-uncial).

[hrant]

I just wish I had his talent though!

BTW, I've long thought that uncials would work great as caps for the conventional lc (because the classical caps -as august as they are- are really so foreign to the more important lc). But maybe it's not so bad having two styles in one alphabet (at least when it comes to text). Well, three styles if you count numerals! :-/

hhp

[xtianhoff]

That talent was towering.