Monday 12 September 2011

Extensis Launches Free Web Fonts

Extensis Launches Free Web Fonts Photoshop Plugin

The new plugin makes it possible to choose from thousands of web-safe fonts when designing sites in Photoshop.

Extensis is a software developer known for its Universal Type Server for server-based font management, Suitcase for single-user font management and the Portfolio suite for digital asset management. Last year it launched the WebINK service, with the goal of providing designers with the ability to employ a wide variety of commercial-grade fonts on their sites without worrying about supported font formats or font licensing issues. It offers several ways for users to manage their webfont collections, from an online interface or through WebINK features integrated into Suitcase Fusion, Extensis' single-user font-management solution. Using a preview feature in Suitcase Fusion, any page can be previewed without changes to the website code, to show how it would look using WebINK fonts.

WebINK's W3C standards-compliant implementation of the @font-face tag is said to include support for a wide variety of web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome. Font formats such as TTF, EOT, WOFF and SVG are served to the appropriate browsers, allowing designers to focus on the design, rather than the technical details of making things work. The WebINK site makes available thousands of fonts, with full localization and French and German support. Users select the number of glyphs to include on a website — from the full font character set that supports a wide variety of languages, or if preferred, a subset of the font glyphs that includes only Western European or English characters. 


Font Generator

Sunday 4 September 2011

Confessions of a Type

Of all the truly calamitous afflictions of the modern world, typomania is one of the most alarming and least understood. It was first diagnosed by the German designer Erik Spiekermann as a condition peculiar to the font-obsessed, and it has one common symptom: an inability to walk past a sign (or pick up a book or a menu) without needing to identify the typeface. Sometimes font freaks find this task easy, and they move on; and sometimes their entire day is wrecked until they nail it.
This week saw a flare-up of fontroversies with the news that New York's street signs were getting a reprieve from a 2018 deadline requiring the replacement of their iconic all-capitals format with a combination of capitals and lowercase. There will now be a more relaxed approach, the change occurring merely when the signs wear out. But. the debate rages on: Are lowercase letters really safer in traffic (studies say they're easier to read at speed) than capitals?


Friday 2 September 2011

Fond Of Fonts? Check Out

Simon Garfield's Just My Type, published in England by the same people who brought us Eats, Shoots & Leaves, hopes to do for type fonts what Lynne Truss' surprise best-seller did for commas. For those of us who normally concentrate on the sense of words without paying much attention to the typeface in which they appear, it's at once an eye-opening and eye-straining read.


For typomaniacs, on the other hand, who can't rest until they've identified a font, Garfield's engaging history of letter design will be eye candy. Helvetica? Frutiger? Univers? Is the bowl on that g elongated, and how wide is that o? Their passion helped fuel the cult success of Gary Hustwit's film, Helvetica, about the font created in Switzerland in 1957 that has become the face of Bloomingdale's, Gap, BMW, Verizon, American Airlines and countless other corporate logos. When Ikea changed its typeface from Futura to Verdana, it provoked a "fontroversy."

Monday 29 August 2011

Harry Potter' Font Theft

In the past few weeks, a number of Hollywood companies were served with cease-and-desist letters over the use of fonts on merchandise, albums and other promotional items. Last week, one legal threat became a lawsuit. NBC Universal, whose Universal Studios unit has licensed some Potter rights in connection with its theme parks, was hit with a $1.5 million suit from a company that took exception to the type of font used on Harry Potter merchandise.

The lawsuit against NBC Universal was filed in New York District Court by P22 Type Foundry. According to the complaint, NBC Universal used Cezanne Regular type face font software to create Potter merchandise including a "Hedwig Pillow," a "Dementor Cap," and a "Hogwarts Stationery Set."

Representing P22 in the lawsuit is Frank Martinez, a lawyer based in Brooklyn who previously sued NBCU in 2009 for $2 million for fonts being used by its cable financial network, CNBC. Martinez has now picked up new clients with specialty fonts and has been aggressively seeking compensation from alleged infringers, including a famous band over a best-selling album.

The latest lawsuit against NBCU might signal further lawsuits to come. Are there legitimate claims here? Let's analyze.

Fonts can't be copyrighted. Code of Federal Regulations (Chapter 37) says as much: "The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained...typeface as typeface"



Friday 26 August 2011

Insider Offers Crossgrade Discounts on New FontAgent Pro Lion Release

 Insider Software today announced a cross-grade promotion for users of other Macintosh font management software, including Suitcase Fusion from Extensis. Users of competing products can purchase the new release from Insider of FontAgent Pro 4.2 for Mac at discounts of up to 40% off regular prices. The new version of FontAgent Pro includes auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe CS5.5, and 5.5.1., and provides compatibility with Mac OS X Lion.

Unrivaled Font Management and Support for Mac OS X Lion and Adobe Creative Suite 5.5

Built on Insider's unique FontSavant(TM) technology, FontAgent Pro always selects the right font for your Adobe documents - not just a close match or one that has the same name. FontAgent Pro offers performance that crushes the competition and has an array of features that are unmatched.

Robert Leeds, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Insider Software observed, "We have been receiving a flood of inquiries from designers who wish their font manager could do more and would like to move up to FontAgent Pro, but they feel trapped since they have already invested in a font manager. By offering them special pricing to switch to FontAgent Pro, we have made the decision a no-brainer."


font generator, font maker, font creator, online font generator, online font creator, create your own font, generate your own font, download fonts for free, how to make fonts


Thursday 25 August 2011

New Firefox update to address Lion bug


Mozilla has announced an update for its Firefox browser for the Mac platform to deal with a bug in Apple's impending Lion OS, Computer World has reported. According to Mozilla, Mac Operating System X 10.7 (Lion) contains a bug that causes Firefox 5 to crash when displaying websites that use downloadable fonts. "We alerted Apple to the problem before the discharge of 10.7 but they did not fix the problem before 10.7 went to final release," Christopher Blizzard, Mozilla's Web platform director, said on the company's blog. "We've changed the font APIs that we're using to newer versions which appear to fix the problem."

Font generator