FontPen is a collaborative font editor in which multiple designers can work on the same font, live in the browser. Inspired in part by the immediacy of CodePen (for web development) and the real-time collaboration of Google Docs, its first goal is to make collaborative type design much easier in classrooms and workshops, where installing and configuring software can be a surprisingly large obstacle. During an online lesson, a workshop leader can watch students’ work develop, inspect individual glyphs, and jump in directly when help is needed.
The same model may also prove useful to professional designers: for quick experiments, for sharing unfinished ideas with colleagues, and for tackling design problems together without the usual exchange of files and versions.
The demo will show FontPen in action and invite feedback on both the software and the broader idea of collaborative font editing.
I’m a software developer specializing in font technology and CSS typography, with decades of experience working with type designers, type foundries, font distributors and font system engineers. I am known as an expert on variable fonts and hinting, and often give talks and workshops on these subjects to conferences and universities. My clients include Google, Microsoft, Adobe and numerous independent type foundries. I was a key member of the MyFonts team from its conception in 2000 until 2017. My Axis-Praxis website (2016) helps font makers test their fonts, and helps designers understand variable fonts in a page design environment. My open-source Samsa web app (2019) interactively visualizes the mechanics of variable fonts in innovative ways. FauxFoundry (2019), a joint project with Irene Vlachou, synthesizes matching Greek fonts for webfonts that lack Greek, using parametric variable fonts. I have an interest in cartography, and am researching “one-dimensional” route maps.
Laurence Penney