Typeshop / Quick Brown Fox / B&P

[oneweioranother]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Recently I’ve noticed on MyFonts that some typefaces are ‘published’ by both Typeshop and Softmaker, i.e. TS Nashville (note the design owner is ‘Quick Brown Fox’) and Nashville Serial.

I did some research and read on a thread here the story about Sean Cavanaugh’s SoftMaker. And whilst doing more research I found this on another thread

“Typeshop Collection”, which, as it seems, is the former Quick Brown Fox “Serials Typecollection”, which is the former Brendel & Pabst “Serial Type Collection”.

So what's the story with TypeShop, are they both reselling old URW typefaces? And if ‘Serials Typecollection’ is from TypeShop, why is SoftMaker using the ‘Serial’ suffix? And who are Brendel & Pabst and Typeshop (the description on myfonts didn't explain what I would like to know)?!

[oneweioranother]

no-one knows???

[Richard Fink]

Incest is taboo, foo'.

[Té Rowan]

Have you checked Luc Devroye's pages?

[Uli]

For more details read the documents here

http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/brendel.pdf

and here

http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/fontsite.pdf

and here

http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/megafont.pdf

and also the other documents here

http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers

[Uli]

The Megafont CD with the Nashville and 10,000 other fonts retails at 19.99 €

http://www.ixsoft.de/cgi-bin/web_store.cgi?ref=Products/de/SMMF0100CD.html

The Nashville fonts alone are sold for $29.99 by the Myfonts outfit:

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/softmaker/nashville-serial/

I wonder who is so dumb as to buy fonts at the Myfonts outfit.

Myfonts says that Nashville fonts are "Design date: 2010".

Who is so dumb as to believe this lie?

[Arno Enslin]

@ Richard

Incest is taboo, foo'.

The Swiss Federal Council plans to legalize it (as long as it is consensual). (I think, that would be progressive in a positive way.)

[oneweioranother]

That Brendel document looks interesting, unfortunately I don't read German... On Luc Devroye's pages I found about 3 lines on Typeshop/Softmaker which gets its source information from Uli Stiehl anyway which I find a little suspect anyway having read Sean Cavanaugh's side of the story on TypeShop, I find the accusations of piracy doubtful.

[Uli]

> I find the accusations of piracy doubtful

It depends on how you define "piracy" in this madhouse font forging industry.

As is proved by old catalogs, the Serials stuff was made ("designed") decades ago.

Myfonts claiming that "Glasgow", "Nashville" etc. were "designed" in "2010", will have to explain to font buying madmen that these ripped-off (sorry, "designed") fonts labeled "Design date: 2010" by Myfonts are contained in catalogs printed decades ago.

http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/Nashville.jpg

> (note the design owner is ‘Quick Brown Fox’)

This outfit did not exist at the time when the old catalogs were printed. Hence QBF could not be the "design owner".

[Té Rowan]

@oneweioranother - It looks to me that Uli is accusing everyone and their dog of forgery or piracy, so one can't claim unfairness there. Of course, he could accuse me of either, since my current hobby project involves taking a Rundfunk mutt (either Fund or FundRunk, I forgot which) and rebuilding it into the kind of Rundfunk I think it should be.

[Uli]

Here is another old font book:

http://www.sanskritweb.net/temporary/Nashville2.jpg

Although this book containing "Nashville" was published 20 years ago in 1990 by F. Bruckmann publishers in Munich, the Myfonts outfit claims "Design date: 2010" in order to deceive its dimwitted customers.

[Richard Fink]

@arno

LOL
Ok, incest is best. (But of course I jest.)

rich

[Uli]

In December 2010, I purchased second-hand a highly interesting voluminous large-sized 530-page thread-sewn catalog of the former German photocomposition company "TypoBach" published more than 30 years ago.

This huge font catalog also includes hundreds of "Serials" photocomposition fonts of many trademarked fonts, depicted as "backmatter" on pages 331 through 502 of this huge catalog, e.g.

- "Helvetica Serial 1" through "Helvetica Serial 13",
- "Optima Serial 1" through "Optima Serial 9", etc.

On page 329 of this catalog, Typobach claims that these "Serials" are the "Exclusiv-Schriften" of the TypoBach company.

From the technical point of view, these "exclusive fonts" are photographically modified versions of original fonts produced by other font companies.

It seems that the ripoff companies Brendel & Pabst, Elsner & Flake, etc. grapped these Serials fonts, renamed them and sold them as their own "original" fonts to which they claimed authorship.

[Albert Jan Pool]

Walter Brendel (1933-1992) was the founder of Brendel Informatik, Brendel & Pabst and the Typeshop group of phototypesetting houses. He also co-founded the European Typeface Corporation (ETC) which was connected with Typo Bach, another group of phototypesetting houses. Together with Peter Karow, Brendel worked on the initial version of Ikarus and developed the phototypesetting machine Unitype for which he created a large range of typeface families. Most of these were based on existing typeface designs, which had typically been made fit for creating a range of 7 weights from extra light to extra bold by interpolation and have been marketed as ‘Serials’ for some years. Currently, the Type Shop / Serials typeface library is maintained by Elsner+Flake.

More information on the history of these companies and typefaces:
http://www.fonts4ever.com/portrait_library.php?language=en&id=3

Type Shop typeface library at Elsner+Flake
http://www.fonts4ever.com/foundry_detail.php?f_shops_id=3&f_fonts_belegu...

and at MyFonts
http://www.myfonts.com/search/typeshop/

Serial Type Collection ‘compatibility’ list / typeface analogue / ‘similar to’ document by Elsner+Flake
http://www.fonts4ever.com/download/entdecken/Serial_Compatibility_List.pdf

also have a look into this thread for a similar case
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/86344-forwarding

[oneweioranother]

Thanks Albert, I noticed this was brought up recently due to the Times Modern mystery