Busted

Friends, don’t let this happen to you: “Publisher in £80,000 font raid”

A publishing firm fell foul of the law by using unlicensed typefaces worth £80,000, according to licensing lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The publishing firm had claimed to be using just one font but in fact was found using 11,000.

There is, naturally, a maddening Slashdot discussion about this where all kinds of justifications for piracy are tossed around, but it think it comes down to a few key points for me (and I freely admit my personal bias when it comes to people doing the right thing and paying for software and typefaces):

  • That piracy is illegal, yo, even if you think the stuff should be free.
  • And if you’re making money using your pirated wares? Tsk, tsk — suck it up, and take the tax deduction as a consolation prize.
  • Your piracy is part of the reason software is so damn expensive, anyway, so quit making it harder for the rest of us to do the right thing.
  • Also, people are trying to earn their livelihood by making that stuff (and I will probably be one of them soon), in case your moral reasoning requires a human face to make you realize it’s theft.

Now, I know it’s hard. I was, in the days of my youth, an unspeakably shameless software and font pirate. But I found it to be very ethically murky territory after a while, not to mention the whole “illegal” thing. I now own valid licenses for the software I use, but it’s still challenging to restrict type usage to the ones I’ve actually paid for. (And that’s coming from someone who has spent a small fortune on properly licensed typefaces.) I pay for all the type I use for freelance projects (since if my business is making with them, then the foundry should get their fair share), and I’ve been weening myself off the illegal copies, slowly but surely.

It’s hard, because even though there are lots of free fonts out there, most of them are shockingly craptacular. Others are sketchy copies of other fonts, which is still bad form, even if the legality technically toes the line. (The short version: you can’t copyright type designs in the U.S., but individual fonts are software, which can be copyrighted.) There are some decent options out there, such as some of the ones found on here, but even with those the usage is often limited to stuff where you’re not making money off of someone else’s hard work.

So be a good sport and buy a typeface today. Someone, somewhere could probably use the royalty check.

The Art of Kissing

The Art of Kissing, Part 2This charming little booklet was published by the Haldeman-Julius Company of Girard, Kansas. The put out all sorts of teeny newsprint screeds like this, sadly undated. This particular edition is mostly sweet, occasionally tongue-in-cheek (pun intended, I confess), and occasionally exactly what you’d expect from something of a certain era…

It has nothing to do with this doozy of the same title, even though they share an equally sophisticated point of view on the subject matter.

 

Continue reading “The Art of Kissing”

The Original Boy Butter

Happy Boy Margarine

I don’t even know where to begin. Should I talk about the photo (wretched but intriguing, like a Stepford kid), the typography (strangely modernistic for a product with that down-to-earth feel), or the very notion that a package like this is supposed to entice someone to buy a cheap and greasy butter substitute? You be the judge. My mind is already reeling.

Modern Typography, Part I

I finished Kinross’ Modern Typography last week, but it will take a while (and probably a few subsequent readings of things in it) before I really digest all of it. It might be the most lucid examination of the whole notion of “Modernism” I’ve ever read, because it views it not as a stylistic period, but as a fundamental change in the way things were done that naturally influenced the end results. From this perspective, the whole history of movable type in the West is a result of modernism, and so the book examines the layers of causes and reactions and counter-reactions that are all a part of Modernism in some way or another.

Note to self: Pick up Natalia Ilyin’s Chasing the Perfect one of these days. She seems to have similar ideas about opening up the definition of Modernism and modernity.

Kinross, Robin, Modern Typography. London, Hyphen Press, 1992

Ugly-Ass Math

Although I’m open to serendipity (or pragmatism) when it comes to choosing a thesis topic for next year, I’m leaning very heavily in the direction of working out a type family with closely integrated Greeks and math characters.

It’s a topic that’s been particularly prominent in my thoughts for years, since my job has involved lots (lots!) of work integrating math and other technical notation into text for engineering books. My hands have been largely tied when it comes to making real improvements, since the publisher has been so resistant to substantive changes, but it’s given me lots of time to analyze the problems:

  • Bad typeface choices, especially considering the poor quality of printing used, the increasing distribution via PDF of the books, and the tendency for pages to get photocopied again and again. I’ve certainly spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what design qualities a typeface needs to function under these conditions.

  • If you’re going to use a typeface for math, you need glyphs that will be completely legible at very small sizes, sometimes below the proportions used for normal superiors and inferiors. This would also apply to the Greeks and symbols.

  • Greek fonts present all kinds of problems. Even when you get a Greek font that works well enough on its own, the Latinization of the design tends to make it difficult to distinguish some of the individual characters (Α, Β, Κ, et al.) from the normal Latin ones around them. This happens a lot in math, where Greek characters are used in the midst of a dizzying array of other glyphs. The reader is often expected to distinguish Greeks either from their context, the slight design discrepancies between the Greek typeface and the regular text face (since they rarely match), or the use of artificial obliquing applied to the Greek characters. A total disaster.

  • Math fonts are a total mess. Since they’re always designed separately from text fonts, they don’t integrate in any way when it comes to proportions, stroke widths, overall color, etc. Plus, I have yet to encounter a family of math fonts that supports the full set of Unicode positions for math and technical characters. When they do, they often include a number of poorly documented alternate characters. (I’ve spent a lot of time lately mapping the characters in old PostScript math fonts to their Unicode positions. It’s awful.)

So, there are a few key elements that lend themselves to a meaty solution: a Latin face that’s clear and robust enough to withstand low quality display and reproduction, a really full assortment of glyphs to be used at small sizes, Greeks that are designed to be easily distinguished from the Latins instead of designed to match, and a full set of Unicode-ready math and technical symbols designed to integrate with the basic text.

I know: sounds like a huge undertaking, right? Maybe I can save it for a PhD instead.

The need for someone to do this well is really clear, though, if you look at what’s out there. The available options are an unsatisfying assortment of incomplete character sets and poor design. A consortium of publishers is working on the STIX Project, whose goal is to build a set of fonts that will include the full Unicode character sets for Latin, Greek, math, and symbols, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to release OpenType versions. Also, judging from the existing work from the company designing the fonts, the quality of the type design is still going to be problematic. Although I’m all for the work the STIX Project is doing (“preparation of a comprehensive set of fonts that serve the scientific and engineering community in the process from manuscript creation through final publication”), I cringe at the thought of their low-quality, free fonts being the only option out there (“the STIX fonts will be made available, under royalty-free license, to anyone, including publishers, software developers, scientists, students, and the general public”), since they will really result in even lower standards for technical publishing.

Lovin’ Rockets

For a while now I’ve been tracking down digital versions of the songs that used to be in my collection of mix tapes. I haven’t had a working tape deck in years, so when I moved out of the Swanktuary a few years ago I decided to finally get rid of all the cassettes that had been taking up space. That collection included plenty of records that I’d already replaced on CD (and plenty I was happy to forget about altogether), but it also included an incredible collection of about 120 mix tapes that I had made between 1983 and 1999 or so. Most of those were 120-minute tapes, and they charted the development of my musical tastes during an era when my interests kept expanding in new directions. I taped from the radio, from my own albums, from other tapes, from friends’ collections — anywhere I could grab stuff that tickled my fancy. Some of those tapes were carefully cultivated mixes with segues that oozed with meaning, some were just randomly ordered. Most were fucking awesome.

I knew that a lot of incredible music would be lost to me forever when I ditched the tapes, but I keep kicking myself for not at least hanging on to all the labels I’d made, just so I’d have a record of what the collection contained. Not only would I be able to have some lists of what to hunt down now, but I’d also have some very tangible reminders of different parts of my life.

As I try to rebuild that library now, I find patterns emerging that I never would have guessed if I hadn’t been pulling all those old mix-tape tracks together in one place. For instance, tonight it just dawned on me that for a brief period (I’d guess around 1987 or so) I was really into Love and Rockets. Who knew? I certainly wouldn’t think to mention them in a list of my favorite bands, but as I go through their catalogue now, I find that I know most of the songs, and had a fair amount of them scattered throughout my mix tapes. Other bands who I really loved — Devo, New Order, the B-52’s — rarely made it onto the mix tapes because I would just listen to entire albums of theirs instead, and there was little need to introduce friends to their music via carefully chosen tracks on a mix.

It’s also amazing to think of how much mental energy (and cash) I once put into music fandom. That’s waned as other obsessions have consumed me over the years, and various periods of spending freeze derailed my ability to acquire new albums. My collection now is incredibly random, spanning many genres, many time periods, and the waxing and waning of many interests. My digital library has something to delight and horrify almost anyone, including myself.

Prom Trauma!

WYSIWYG: Prom Trauma

We’ve been kinda pokey about getting out all the details (let’s just say your favorite all-blogger reading series is run by people whose lives are generally busy and stressful), but next Tuesday night is the long-anticipated Prom Trauma edition of the WYSIWYG Talent Show. Shame! Nostalgia! Hilarity! Fashion! All this can be yours for 7 lousy bucks, this upcoming Tuesday, May 23, at the Bowery Poetry Club (doors at 7:30, show at 8:00).

With performances by:

Come! Wear a corsage! Find out if any of us put out after the dance!

(P.S.: That’s me in the picture up there, obviously. I’ll share my one prom story next week.)

Teen Dentist 2

My adored Teen Dentist has abandoned me. It’s nothing I take personally. After all, we both knew he’d be graduating in early May and passing me on to another student. Now he’s off to work in some hospital somewhere, and I never even got to see the animated music video he produced for the dental school talent show! Oh, the hearbreak…

Even in his absence he’s taking good care of me, though. He told me he was going to find me the best student he could because — as I learned last night from my replacement teen dentist (henceforth known as Teen Dentist 2) — I was the “best patient he’d ever had.” Even though TD2 is already way overbooked, Teen Dentist strongly urged him to make room for me in his schedule instead of passing me onto one of the sophomores, apparently the sad fate of most people whose student dentists graduate. (Sophomores! My god, I’m glad I dodged that bullet. I’ll take every year of experience I can get out of my student dentist, thanks.) I can only imagine what the parade of freaks must be like at that clinic, because at the end of last night’s visit Teen Dentist 2 seemed amazed and delighted by me, and swore that Teen Dentist was right about me being a fantastic patient. Maybe it’s just because I’m chipper and don’t complain, or maybe the student dentists like you to have enough curiosity to get them talking about what they’re doing. Whatever it is, I’ve got it. Apparently, I also got some fantastic work out of Teen Dentist: TD2 was awfully impressed by what he saw.

I don’t know much about TD2 yet, other than he’s Asian, from Alaska, plans on settling in Seattle after graduation, gets teased for having really girly handwriting (frankly, I like a medical professional with legible handwritign like that), and he knows a little about comic books. He’s not all dorky and dreamy like Teen Dentist, but he’s a good kid, and I’m glad I that I’ve been left in good hands.

Tin Anniversary

Moving Day, 1996

While sorting yet another batch of old photos this weekend, I realized that I’ve been back in New York for about ten years. Ten years! No wonder I’m dying for a change of pace. Ten years in a place like this is time enough for plenty of ups and downs, but I’m ready to take a break from such a wide spectrum of experience. Although I can say New York itself is more responsible for the ups than the downs, I’ve had enough massive downs during these last ten years that I just want to go someplace more low-key and bury my head in the sand (or rather, in a pile of nerdy typography books) for a while.

Yes, I’ll miss good pizza and Coney Island and WYSIWYG and corner delis and this city’s particular blend of people, and all the possibilities for enlightenment and adventure that brought me back here in the first place. However, I won’t miss subway rush-hour hostility or the crowds along 34th Street or endless commuting or throngs of wannabe “Sex and the City” girls screeching around the East Village or another generic “luxury” apartment building replacing something I loved. I’ll miss a lot of specific people, but I’ve become so isolated through depression-fueled negligence that I miss those people already.

When I left Boston after living there for almost eight years, I felt like I had pretty much finished it. Here, I still don’t feel like I’ve even scratched the surface, which is exactly the kind of endless promise that brought me back in the first place. Living here is damn hard, though, and frankly I need a rest.

When my pal Mark and I snagged that massive loft in Bushwick ten years ago, we were young and full of enthusiasm. The ridiculous misadventures we had living there were only the first of many absurdities that make for good stories but a wearisome way of life. (I keep forgetting that those were the pre-blog years — most of you don’t even know the full wackiness of Junky Alfredo or Texas Trevor or the Crackhouse Stake-Out or the weekly thrift store binges!) Just as Mark has been pulled back to New York over and over again through the years, I’m sure I’ll never escape the event horizon of this place. I don’t think I want to. But it’ll be interesting to try.