Group contact at Adobe?

AbrahamLee

Greetings, everyone! It's been a little while since I was active on the forum for numerous reasons, but I have a need/question that I need to ask to someone in the group that currently works at Adobe. I feel like I used to know who I could contact, but it's been long enough that I've forgotten and I'm sure you all can help me get to the right person much faster than me trying to figure it out by going through the forum archives. TIA!

Thomas Phinney

It would be helpful if you specified for what purpose the contact is?
There are a lot of people who deal with type at Adobe, in a variety of roles.
I know a bunch of them (though fewer than I used to, thanks to recent key personnel departures), but I don’t know which one to put you in contact with. Regarding joining Adobe Fonts? Font production standards? Problem with your font in (some Adobe product)?

AbrahamLee

Thanks, Thomas. Great suggestion. My question is about modernizing an existing, but very old font that Adobe owns. Who would be the appropriate contact for that?

MrEchs

I'm not sure who the right person at Adobe is for that type of question, these days. You might have better luck posting your question here. If you'd rather not post publicly you could send me an email and I'll try to help you out. mjr@bizlet.org

Thomas Phinney

I don’t know either, and Mr Echs knows the current folks there better than I would!

DanRhatigan

Are you hoping that Adobe will update one of the older Adobe Originals? (That, unfortunately, is unlikely, but may depend on which family you have in mind.) If you are interested in doing (or commissioning) the modifications for your own use, the folks at Type Network can talk with you about licensing. 

AbrahamLee

The purpose of my inquiry is not really for myself, but for the music notation community. For the last number 10 years or so, I have been involved in creating music notation fonts for the different notation applications. In that time, a music-specific encoding is rapidly growing in acceptance among music apps, not only for creating sheet music, called the Standard Music Font Layout (or SMuFL, see smufl.org for details if you're interested). The aim, as with any standard, was to get notation apps away from using their own custom encodings and make notation fonts more cross-app accessible. The number of music fonts is very small in comparison to text fonts, so it has been a pleasure for me to add some solid contenders to the mix as well as support numerous internationally renowned music publishers in bringing their own in-house custom fonts up to modern standards.

Adobe created and owns the very first professionally done music font, called Sonata. However, Sonata, as a notation font, is completely unusable in its current state. In my dealings with music engravers (i.e., the people who create sheet music) is that they would love to use Sonata! This would require someone to bring Sonata to the modern age by re-encoding and possibly expanding it ala SMuFL. I have significant experience creating fonts and re-encoding fonts for this standard, but out of respect and under legal considerations, I never felt right to do this work behind Adobe's back nor without its permission.

Therein lies the root of my inquiry. I want to ask for permission to do this so that Sonata can be used by modern applications. There isn't a huge market for music fonts, so I'm not sure it's worth Adobe's effort to figure out what's needed to do it, which is why I'm offering my services.

Christopher Slye

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that request, but admittedly it’s been quite a while. You’re not alone, though. I agree that finding a qualified third party to do that work has the best chance of succeeding, since I can’t imagine Adobe doing that work itself — although I would never rule it out, because the type team there does care. It’s just unlikely to ever be a priority among everything they want to spend their time on.

Adobe can’t make much money on Sonata now. It would be cool if they could just open source it. (To be clear, they probably won’t, but it would be cool.)

Dave Crossland

I'd be happy to discuss how to make it happen if Adobe folks are interested

John Nolan

FWIW, Sonata is "licensed for modification", according to this page. (See Font permissions...additional rights...permission table.)

Christopher Slye

John Nolan said:

FWIW, Sonata is "licensed for modification", according to this page. (See Font permissions...additional rights...permission table.)

Note that that page is now misleading since Adobe no longer directly licenses its own fonts outside of the Adobe Fonts service (which doesn’t allow modification). It’s the license you get from the reseller than dictates modification permissions.

Fontspring’s desktop EULA for Adobe Originals (which is written and maintained by Adobe) does allow for modifications and references the table on that Adobe web page (see Section 2.6.5). Modified fonts can’t be distributed to anyone outside of the original license, though. In other words, you can modify Sonata if you license it from Fontspring, but nobody else can use your modified font.

John Nolan

Yes, I should have mentioned that. Thanks, Christopher. 

I see that Type Network also offers Adobe Originals, and, according to this page, even offers a modification service. Perhaps something could be worked out through them.

John Nolan

"worked out with them"...Ah, Christopher, I see you wrote that page!

Christopher Slye

Haha, yes. I am no longer with TN, but I’ll say that it’s unknown whether Adobe would agree to let TN or anyone modify Sonata for resale. They would easily allow TN to do it for a customer, much like when a customer does it on their own. In theory, if it was done once, TN would then have the font and could license it to anyone who purchases their own license (if Adobe approved).

John Nolan

Yes, that's what I was thinking...if Graham can communicate what's needed to TN, then  perhaps TN could provide the re-encoded Sonata to end users at a reasonable cost.

Jens Kutilek

Heretic opinion: Maybe Sonata is requested only because of its "legendary" status and not based on actual merit? I had a quick look and it seems its drawing quality is not up to current standards, certainly not better than what's available under OFL in SMuFL fonts, like Bravura and Leland.



What's so special about Sonata, maybe I'm missing something?

Thomas Phinney

I certainly see some… less than ideal things in these glyphs. They do seem a bit glitchy!

John Hudson

I worked on revisions to a custom font for music software some years ago, and I think a big problem with the whole genre of music fonts is slavish conformity to the conventions of engraved sheet music inherited from the 19th Century, even as those conventions degraded over time.

Christopher Chapman

@AbrahamLee I am an appropriate contact at Adobe. I'll DM you.

AbrahamLee

Thanks everyone for your comments! Yes, the font has some artifacts that should be addressed. It is "legendary" and very old, which makes it of interest, and if it could be modernized and properly encoded to be compliant with the latest SMuFL version, I think that would be enough to breathe a bit of new life back into it.

@John Hudson, I completely agree with your viewpoint. I've also seen and taken some part in some very modern experiments where a type designer tried to apply modern typographic design principles with varied results. As I have created music fonts over the years, the greatest challenge for me was trying to determine a "theme" so to speak for the symbology. There are some glyphs where you can apply common structure, but the symbols are generally different enough that it's difficult to nail down the style, much less determine how to apply it to the smattering of shapes. It's not an easy task, at least for me, though I think I found a way to harmonize the family of glyphs pretty well within each font.

John Hudson

I think even if one were to begin with a single style of 18th or 19th Century lettering and typography, and to apply it consistently, that would be an improvement over the common mix of Fournier-inspired French neo-classical and later, higher contrast romantic types that pervades sheet music.

Paul van der Laan

(replied to wrong thread)

AbrahamLee

@John Hudson, I would love to see a more professional take on music font design. There's not a huge market for it, but it could be a fun/challenging effort. It's true, musical symbols have quite the variety of style in most cases.

Here are a couple of examples I had the chance to collaborate on, one in the style of Akzidenz Grotesk and the other akin to Bodoni. They are both very interesting to me. I love the Bodoni style's calligraphic presence, but both are questionably harder to read than a typical music font style, such as those used in Finale, Dorico, etc. The utility of music fonts is paramount as they are more like an instruction manual and need to be easily discernable.

Anyway, enjoy! These were fun to work on.

John Hudson

What software produced that musical output? Have you used Lilypond?

AbrahamLee

Yes, Lilypond is my preferred music engraving software and what I used for these. I had to develop custom processing code in order to properly use the Bodoni-style font since the noteheads are not symmetric like normal notes.