Dave Crossland attended the first Libre Graphics Meeting in 2006, and became fascinated with the potential of libre licensing to improve design. Since then, he has worked to liberate typography, mainly as a program manager for Google Fonts. He also regularly contributes to the Crafting Type, Font Bakery, and Runebender projects.
One of the early milestones within the Harfbuzz project’s Boring Expansion Spec is the specification of an “avar v2” table, which defines how axes can be composed from other axes. This takes Font Bureau’s Parametric Axes system and Underware’s HOI (Higher Order Interpolation for Variable Fonts) to the next level; Crossland and Penney will demonstrate… Continue reading Mom, You Sure Can Rehydrate a Pizza
In the last 20 years, the number of new typefaces has grown exponentially, especially in writing systems with less activity in the twentieth century. One current in this torrent of cultural expression are the contributions of typefaces to the commons; from both student-hobbyists and the world’s largest tech companies, using licenses like the SIL Open… Continue reading Q&A Session: Contributing to the Commons: What, Why, and How?
The Noto project is the most ambitious font project of all time, aiming to continually support 100 percent of all Unicode characters each year with fully functional fonts. Today, Noto offers fonts for 146 scripts and over 800 languages, and is opening the door to reading and writing for minority language speakers. During the last… Continue reading Noto Fonts: Preserving Endangered Languages
The Font Bureau was commissioned by Google Fonts in 2016 with the purpose of showcasing what the new variable font technology could do with two new fonts: Decovar Alpha and Amstelvar Alpha. While the former showed how more than a dozen axes of stylistic variations can be used (and abused) for display typography, the latter… Continue reading Amstelvar and Roboto Flex: Unprecedented Flexibility in Text Typography
Learn what Font Bakery is for, how it is used at Google Fonts, and how it can help you save time and publish high-quality fonts. Quality Assurance of fonts is a constant requirement for type designers, foundries, and distributors. Everyone has their own workflows to ensure their fonts are in good condition, but often these… Continue reading Font Bakery
Bété Type Design is research by Adam Yeo that aims to promote the Bété script through design and graphic design projects by addressing how to apply it in modern graphic design directions. This project aims mainly to provide designers with a methodological and theoretical basis for integrating the Bété script into modern graphic design. The… Continue reading Amstelvar and Roboto Flex: Unprecedented Flexibility in Text Typography
Working on truly advanced and inclusive typography could not begin until variation technology was implemented five years ago. With the introduction of variable fonts, significant gains were made, from compression and animation to smoother weight, width, and optical size transitions. Many interesting font products have been introduced since the launch of variable fonts, but few… Continue reading Calibrating Type