The working files for a typeface project are the most crucial asset a designer has—these notes, sketches, trials, overlaps, and extra glyphs, etc., make it possible to pick up a project and quickly extend or modify a design years after its initial release.
Roughly seventeen years ago, the Unified Font Object (UFO) format and associated tools (roboTools) were developed by Just van Rossum, Erik van Blokland, and Tal Leming to preserve these working files during an industry transition from Fontographer (and roboFog) to FontLab. As a by-product of this software-independent interchange format, a commons of tools made for and by working designers has developed.
In this presentation, Ben Kiel will briefly look at the project’s origins, explore what issues it solves, highlight what problems remain unsolved, look at the project’s blind spots, and discuss how a commons benefits the typeface design community at large.