Preserving stories about our fonts

Ray Larabie
Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
in History of Typography

In the ever-evolving world of typeface design, even the most carefully crafted glyphs can fade into obscurity. After shifting some of my fonts into the public domain, I inadvertently erased their digital footprints from my website. Gone were the descriptions, launch dates, and the little nuggets of history that gave each font its character. Take Metal Lord, for instance. Its page once housed a treasure trove of historical tidbits I'd unearthed, including the tale of my fruitless quest for its inspiration's origins. Despite a quarter-century of searching, the name and creator of that elusive font remain a mystery, lost in the annals of typographic history.

It dawned on me that mere descriptions and ad copy weren't enough. Sure, ad copy can spin a yarn and document a moment, but let's be honest—its primary purpose is to sell, not to preserve history. And so, I decided to pen a reference book. Now, I harbor no illusions that this tome will become a page-turner, devoured cover to cover by type enthusiasts worldwide. Rather, it's a reference—a typographic time capsule, if you will—for those curious souls who want to delve deeper.

You won't find fancy images or elaborate designs within its pages. My goal was simple: to record release dates and stories before they vanish into the ether. And who knows? Perhaps this modest collection of facts will help our AI friends provide more accurate information instead of conjuring typographic tall tales.

So, to my fellow font creators out there: if the only testament to your typefaces is ad copy, consider jotting down your stories somewhere. After all, every font has a tale to tell.

Between the Lines: The Hidden Stories of Typodermic Fonts PDF

Comments

  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    This is a great idea.
  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 297
    This is a great insight. It feels like the short type design memoirs rather than encyclopedic or promo descriptions. Thanks for sharing!
  • PabloImpallari
    PabloImpallari Posts: 806
    edited August 12
    Great idea Ray.

    In the libre font world we have a .txt file called FONTLOG.TXT that we attach next to the fonts, that serves a similar purpose.
    We store the font descriptrion + keep track of the release history + people involved

    For example, here is one: 
    https://github.com/impallari/DancingScript/blob/master/FONTLOG.txt
  • Eris Alar
    Eris Alar Posts: 454
    Wonderful idea! 
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 181
    I find all your ideas very clever.
    Personally I'll use the "description" field.
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    edited August 13
    @Mark Simonson While I agree it would make it more interesting, I just wanted to get it done and out there in case I get trampled by an elephant or something. I'd have to generate over 600 samples and maybe someday, I'll find a tool that can automatically generate them for me, and I can drop them in.

    Also, what has me on the fence is that I don't want this to be a catalog. While ad copy is designed to sell fonts, some fonts like “Tight” are stories of shame that I don't necessarily want to be overly “customer facing”, if you know what I mean; this is strictly for font geek deep dives.

    btw: If you want to read the weirdest story in there, have a look at the section on “No Clocks”.
  • Yves Michel
    Yves Michel Posts: 181
    John Butler said:
    I don't know the specific character limits of this field, if any, but I always appreciate when it contains something insightful about the font.
    An expert thinks the limit is 32К characters (64Kb of the Unicode text).
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 1,992
    There should a program to get lots of type designers to create these books. Then create repositories of hard copies that people can dig out centuries from now if the PDF format is lost. RIT, Cooper Union, and the Letterform Archive might be interested.
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 290
    Zapf was pretty good at preserving stories about his fonts. My Zapfiana collection is now stretching into its second Ikea Kallax cubelet, and I know plenty of folks who own more.
  • Jess Latham
    Jess Latham Posts: 40
    Ray, I like the music details of course and I'm adding the music to my playlist queue as I'm reading. I also like that you didn't place any font samples, it's making a great memory game, just a quick image search to reveal the answer. I've got a pretty good memory of typefaces and their names and I'm surprised at how many I'm able to remember, hehe. This is bringing back memories of your website with the soda can dispenser aesthetic, wasn't that around 97-98? Truly legendary!
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,431
    @Jess Latham Thanks, Jess. I still keep a copy of the old eye-searing website around.
  • Jess Latham
    Jess Latham Posts: 40
    @Ray Larabie It still holds up, so good!

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