Berlow's Prelude font

[dberlowgone]

bowerbird: dissent is great, parameterized dissent is best.

Cheers!

[eliason]

I think with the increased use of randomized-character passwords ambiguity has become more of a problem. (On the software registration window do I enter "plK0jl7IQ33" or "plKOj17lQ33")

[dtw]

Quite. I must say that whenever I have to email corrections to our typesetters, the moment any of the changes involves l/I/1, I select the entire email and change it to Georgia.

(If anyone knows how to make Outlook 2003 do rich-text emails in Georgia by default instead of Arial I'd be grateful to learn it!)
________________________________________________
Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster's stopped working.

[Si_Daniels]

>If anyone knows how to make Outlook 2003 do rich-text emails in Georgia by default instead of Arial I’d be grateful to learn it!

Maybe.. tools / options / mail format / fonts

[dtw]

Duh. Thanks for that si; should've worked that out for myself. Sorry for drifting off-topic there folks

[dberlowgone]

Stands for drifting topic widget? ;)

Cheers!

[bowerbird]

> bowerbird: dissent is great, parameterized dissent is best.

well david, i thought the parameter was clear here:
when two letters look highly similar, it's confusing.

-bowerbird

[Dan B.]

Probably not relevant to regular usage, but I'll submit an example in Romanian when I and l (similarly designed) create problems in reading religious texts. It's customary, globally I believe, to capitalize all pronouns that refer to God in such documents. This can confuse the reader in that he/she cannot easily distinguish between I (a pronoun referring to God in this case) and l (a pronoun referring to a human).

My sample uses Myriad.

EDIT: Then again, I have to admit I dislike Verdana's I...

[dberlowgone]

>when two letters look highly similar, it’s confusing.

Yes, I am aware of that effect. Yet... 90% of all sans share a lack of the features of which we speak, and... they've lasted in the market for sometimes a century. Is something else happening too?

Cheers!

[John Hudson]

...they’ve lasted in the market for sometimes a century. Is something else happening too

A few new things are happening. One is contracted text messaging, in which letters and also numerals are being used in novel ways, such that individual letter differentiation becomes more critical than in word recognition supported by familiarity and context. Another is the proliferation on non-linguistic informational text such as URLs, file names, etc. -- including critical information such as indicators on flight control monitors -- , requiring quick identification of individual letters rather than normal reading.

I don't think there is an a priori problem with styles of lettering that make less differentiation between forms than other styles of lettering. Just choose the style that is appropriate to the functional requirements of the typography.

[bowerbird]

david said:
> Is something else happening too?

yes. the people who design and run things are out-of-touch,
and fail to listen when the dissent bubbles up from the trenches,
so we groundlings must muddle through the mess they've made,
and make to this very day because "we've always done it that way".

for instance, here's what ed colligan, the head of palm, said in 2006,
when he was asked to comment on the upcoming debut of the iphone:
> “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out
> how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just
> figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

that seems unbelieveably pigheaded and naive in retrospect, not?

oh well, at least unlike the financial shitheads, you font-makers
are not extracting massive tons of money out of the economy, or
-- once your house of cards has fallen apart -- insisting that you
need to continue receiving your obscenely-huge year-end bonuses.

so, as "experts" go, you're relatively benign... ;+)

-bowerbird

p.s. of course, when global-warming chickens come home to roost,
that's gonna make the recent financial collapse look like peanuts...

[joeclark]

Smartphone usage is generally one of rushed reading (boss’s top-posted E-mail), rarely longer reading (E-book), very often precise text duplication (passwords, a living hell on my iTouch).

Hence an intelligent system might use straight or tailled els in different circumstances, or at different point sizes.

Eventually somebody is going to mention that, like Segoe by Microsoft, Prelude is merely a clone of Avenir. I mean “mention” as in “level an accusation.”

—
Joe Clark
http://joeclark.org/

[dberlowgone]

I was prepared to turn this job down when the VP of engineering sent me an email. He responded that this was not going to be like Windows or the Mac. I was skeptical, so I ticked off a list of capabilities that I felt were required in any model modern device, desktops included, to make me (users) happy. (I ticked off exactly the same list here sometime ago to dead silence). This client though, he said "We can do that... all of it!" The Pre is typographically for real: it uses TT, it scales according to code, it's got a sweet rendering, OT is supported and feature acceptance expanding, 180 dpi!, integer metrics, font fidelity and open.

I hear what's being asked of the some-serif, and will endeavor to please, thank you.

Read on! Hug a Tree!

Cheers!

[Bert Vanderveen]

@Joe: Today’s iPhone OS 3.0 software release solves at least one of your beefs: copy/(cut)/paste has been implemented at last.

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

[Si_Daniels]

>He responded that this was not going to be like Windows or the Mac.

That's exactly what struck me when I first saw the interface (before knowing David and Tom were involved) when looking at videos and static shots like these was that with good interface design, and a high-res display, the need for font tricks like cap I, and ClearType is diminished. Not sure the Pre is there yet, but seems to be headed in the right direction.

PS. What surprised me was lack of sub-pixel positioning in the browser. But that could be a webkit / perf trade-off.

[k.l.]

OT is supported and feature acceptance expanding

Could you say more about this? (Or perhaps a link to further information?)

[Nick Shinn]

Eventually somebody is going to mention that, like Segoe by Microsoft, Prelude is merely a clone of Avenir.

And then someone else will mention that Avenir is merely a clone of Nobel.

[Nick Shinn]

David, thanks for trailblazing the market (again).
How long before Pre users can install any font they want?

[joeclark]

But Nobel wasn’t what they were cloning. When your daughter dresses up like Jessica Simpson, she isn’t cloning Eve.

—
Joe Clark
http://joeclark.org/

[Si_Daniels]

That Starling looks awful familiar, but I can't quite place it. Give me enough times and I'm sure it will come to me. ;-)

[William Berkson]

Actually the Starling 'ultra', now the featured face, has old style stress, like the regular, whereas Times Bold has 'modern' vertical stress. Of course Mike Parker says its the original, and Times the copy. I wonder what all the differences are...

[Nick Shinn]

...like Segoe by Microsoft, Prelude is merely a clone of Avenir.

Let's see if Adrian Frutiger returns his SOTA award.

[Si_Daniels]

If he does then David can send him his.

[William Berkson]

Segoe was found to be too much like Frutiger--not like Avenir--by the EU.

Do Avenir and Frutiger look alike to you, Joe? :)

[Si_Daniels]

>Do Avenir and Frutiger look alike to you, Joe? :)

I've seen the secret Linotype roadmap - next year they ship Frutenir - then year after next it's Frutenir Next.