Adam Twardoch A lifetime of type design tools, formats and projects
The history of outline font editors spans some 40+ years, or the total of this speaker’s life. Ikarus, Pika, Fontographer, RoboFog, Type Art, FontStudio, TypeDesigner, FontLab, RoboFab, FontMaster, RoboFont, Glyphs, FontCreator – since the inception of outline-based font creation, type designers have employed a flurry of computer applications that have aided them in the development of type. Many typeface projects have outlived their digital environments, and have traveled from system to system, and from app to app. The designers have migrated along too, or have passed the projects into younger hands and tools. Character sets and families grew, yet for the most part, a digital font has kept its basic form inherited from the metal: it’s a set of boxes that are filled with Bézier curves and are set next to each other with the help of “kerning.” The tool makers came, went, or continued to reinvent. So the font editors added new workflow methods, inherited some ideas from their predecessors, but dropped or forgot other concepts. In this talk, we will revisit some old and new type creation apps running on operating systems extinct and alive, including some of your favorites.