Supersized em square

Nick Shinn
Nick Shinn Posts: 2,306
in Type Design Technique & Theory

I came across this magnificent specimen recently—Sharp Type’s Carta Nueva by My-Lan Thuong, 4096 units to the em—and wondered which other typefaces have ventured into such expansive territory. 

Comments

  • Piotr Grochowski
    Piotr Grochowski Posts: 91
    The em is a fundamental scale so this actually means the unit is ¹/₄₀₉₆ em.
  • Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian
    Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian Posts: 2,044
    edited December 2020
    Yet another place capitalization matters...  :-)
    an em: the unit.
    the Em: the number of units composing the height.
    (Although usage certainly varies.)
  • Chris Lozos
    Chris Lozos Posts: 1,460
    I use 4000 for hairline fonts
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,306
    The linked AIGA article described it thus: “4096 units per em scale”.
    I spose I should have written “4096 units to the em-square”?

    But anyway—other “big em-square” fonts?
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 3,090
    Piotr Grochowski said:
    The em is a fundamental scale so this actually means the unit is ¹/₄₀₉₆ em.
    u = 1/4096 * m
      is mathematically synonymous with
    u = m/4096
      and
    4096 * u = m

  • Piotr Grochowski
    Piotr Grochowski Posts: 91
    Thomas Phinney said:
    Piotr Grochowski said:
    The em is a fundamental scale so this actually means the unit is ¹/₄₀₉₆ em.
    u = 1/4096 * m
      is mathematically synonymous with
    u = m/4096
      and
    4096 * u = m

    But the em remains constant given the same point size. So this is outline definition precision.
  • Erwin Denissen
    Erwin Denissen Posts: 315
    Nick Shinn said:
    The linked AIGA article described it thus: “4096 units per em scale”.
    I spose I should have written “4096 units to the em-square”?

    But anyway—other “big em-square” fonts?
    Gimlet X-Ray has 5000 units per em.



  • Igor Petrovic
    Igor Petrovic Posts: 334
    What is the main disadvantage of high UPM (let's say above 2000)? I guess font size, but maybe some other things like compatibility with some text processing apps, problems on the web, etc.? 

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