Yves Peters made public the other day on The FontFeed what many members of the FontStruct community already know – I have recently joined the FontStruct team to take care of user support, promotion of FontStruct on the web & in the real world and publication of content here on “Brick by Brick”.
Today I’m going to write a little bit about the past, present & future of FontStruct and the new plans for “Brick by Brick”, the FontStruct blog.
FontStruct so far
FontStruct was released on the 1st of April 2008. Since then: 167,144 users have registered, 167,305 FontStructions have been created, 7,371 FontStructions have been made public and 317,770 FontStructions have been downloaded.
We have also collected several success stories of FontStructions out in the world, from the use of FontStructions in a huge LED display at the TU Darmstadt to the recent appearance of Sessions in an article on Grain Edit, or the Communication Arts Interactive Annual we received (more about it on The FontFeed).
These are fantastic results for one year of hard work. But we want even more.
FontStruct as an educational resource
So far we have been blogging mainly about FontStruct itself: improvements to FontStructor, examples of FontStructions in use, messages to the FontStruct community etcetera. For the curious and/or mobile FontStructors we now even have a FontStruct channel on Twitter.
But we want you not only to be up-do-date, we want you to be inspired. For this reason, the FontStruct blog’s mission has been re-defined to cover all things related to modular alphabets. Among many possible topics we are specially interested in the use of FontStruct for education in type design.
FontStruct is great for education because it’s free, it’s simple and it’s a lot of fun. It can be used on any computer with a modern browser and Internet access, independently of platform and without installation of additional software. FontStruct stimulates sharing and collaboration, while respecting the creator’s right to decide about it. Users are presented with a set of flexible and familiar Creative Commons licenses to choose from. Peer-review, user votes and the sought after Top Picks complete the package that makes of FontStruct not just a tool, but an exciting environment for learning how to build fonts and design typefaces.
Here are some of the topics we are planning to blog about:
Modular classics
One of the best ways to learn about type design is by looking at samples of work done by masters. We want to select famous modular alphabets – think of Josef Albers’ Kombinationschrift, Wim Crouwel’s New Alphabet or classic bitmap fonts such as Susan Kare’s Chicago – and examine them closely. What are the ideas behind the designs? How were the forms constructed? With which modules, on a grid of how many units? In what kind of real-life projects were those letters used?
Modularity in type-design
Type design deals with patterns and repetition of shapes, so it’s natural that there is a lot of modularity in it. A typeface can contain many different types of glyph shapes: different alphabets with upper- and lowercase, numbers, accents, symbols. Each of these groups has its own development history and construction principles. For example, while the typical modulation of latin uppercase characters is based on basic geometric shapes (circle, square and triangle), the typical modulation of lowercase characters is based on more irregular/organic forms produced by the hand. The spacing of a typeface is also generally highly modulated to create a legible and pleasant rhythm for reading.
Each particular style of type – roman or italic, humanist or modern – has its own rules and patterns for standardization and simplification of letter forms. We can also find many examples of modularity when we think about the choice of type sizes, the organization of text and images on a page and the proportions of the page/canvas.
Tips & tricks
While FontStruct is extremely simple and easy-to-use, some of the type designs produced with it can be quite complex and sophisticated. In this section we plan to invite master FontStructors to talk about their tips & tricks to get the most out of FontStruct.
What would you like to read about?
These are just some of our ideas — there is a lot more to come. But we would also like to hear what you think. Is there a topic you would like to read about, and which is not included on our list? We look forward for your suggestions and comments.
Yves Peters has initiated a series of mini-interviews on The FontFeed called Focus on FontStructors. It puts members of our designers community in the spotlight, and introduces them and their FontStructions to a wider audience. The series was started this Sunday with a focus on Afrojet, real name John Skelton, author of many well-crafted and highly usable FontStructions.
It’s a pleasure to know the people and the ideas behind the modules. I look forward to the next post of the series!
(This article was originally published on FontShop’s “FontFeed” blog. Many thanks to MonoType for permission to reproduce this article here.)
On April 1st FontStruct – FontShop’s award winning free online platform for creating and sharing modular, grid-based fonts – quietly slipped into its second year. More than just a font building tool, it is also a thriving community of type and design enthusiasts which number at almost 150,000 confirmed registered users. As its creator Rob Meek recently commented on Brick By Brick: News about FontStruct
Thank you! FontStruct is just an empty shell without your work and that of all FontStructors.
Indeed, the numbers speak volumes – as I am writing this there are 27,684 active FontStruct sessions, and this already impressive number is only a portion of the grand total of 166,341 FontStructions, 7334 of which are public. But who are these FontStructors, these talented, dedicated tinkerers who patiently construct fonts, literally brick by brick? Well, what better way to find out than simply ask them? The coming weeks The FontFeed will be running a series of mini-interviews with FontStructors to introduce this bustling community to you. And hopefully to entice those of you who aren’t familiar with FontStruct yet to give it a go yourselves and dive into the wonderful world of brick-based modular type design.
John Skelton (afrojet)
John Skelton is better known as Afrojet on FontStruct. Originally from Saint Paul, Minnesota, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. After going to Lewis & Clark College in Portland he did post-graduate work for two years in Mexico and Guatemala studying Mayan hieroglyphics. The image below shows a series of Mayan hieroglyph sketches he made that tell the story of his ancestry. Translated it says:
On July 7, 1942 A.D. When the Seventh Lord of the Night ruled, it was seven days after the moon was born. On that day Lady Skelton (John’s mother), touched the earth and then she crowned herself The Divine Lady of The Lineages.
31 Years, 5 Month and 5 Days after she was born, on May 13, 1973 A.D. One Katun had passed, and the Seventh Lord of the Night ruled, where the moon was 24 days old. On that day Lord John Skelton materialized through divinity.
Mayan hieroglyph sketches by John Skelton
John Skelton has been a freelance graphic designer/web designer for the last eight years. His only formal type education consists of exactly one class he took from – in John’s words – the incredibly talented Bill Moran. John blogged steadily for years, but after his son was born two and a half years ago he found it much easier to communicate in short bursts of 140 characters or less. Recently he’s taken to posting larger typeface samples on the Behance Network (although he admits it feels a bit like cheating on FontStruct when he does that ;). And for those who like eye candy John has a very nice Typography set on his Flickr account.
John first discovered FontStruct shortly after its public release in April 2008, “from either the FontShop e-newsletter or the old FontShop blog.”
Do you have any prior experience with type design?
Prior to working in FontStruct, I had never released a font for public consumption. I’ve done projects for clients that involved customized type or hand-lettering but nothing to the point of fleshing out an entire font. I think one of the reasons that I gravitated to FontStruct was that it provided a fast and fun outlet for non-client driven work. I’ve always been a fan of modular typefaces, and with FontStruct I was able to quickly build out some ideas that had long floated around in my head but were never executed upon.
Playtime by Afrojet
When looking at your FontStructions it’s easy to see you perfectly grasp the modular concept of the tool. Where does your love for modular typefaces come from? And what unique advantages does grid-based type design offer you as a designer?
Good question. I think my appreciation for modular type is a fairly natural extension of a childhood spent playing Atari, an adolescence spent listening to too many synthesizer bands, and establishing my footing in graphic design at the same time pixel fonts were so popular. I think it was inevitable that by the time I started looking more closely at type I would be easily seduced by things like Wim Crouwel’s ‘New Alphabet’.
For me the advantage of grid-based type design is that it becomes fairly easy to visualize an entire alphabet once you’ve established the grid parameters and designed a couple key characters. I work better with a set of limitations. Within Fontstruct, that’s meant smaller grids and fewer bricks.
Hydroplane by Afrojet
You always Share your Fontstructions for others to Clone. How does it feel to relinquish control over your creations?
Incredible. There are far too many things over the course of a day that I attempt to control. It’s much more fun to free the font and see where it will go. Another reason I like working with fewer bricks on a smaller grid is that it makes it easier for others to remix the shapes or swap bricks.
Sessions by Afrojet
Screen print on canvas of the Sessions Gropius image.
Your Josef Albers inspired FontStruction Sessions was recently picked up by Grain Edit, and many of your designs seem quite popular. Ever thought of branching out into “true” type design, or trying to make some money licensing your designs?
I have. I think FontStruct is a gateway drug to “true” type design. It can be an amazing educational tool. I feel like I’ve learned so much about all facets of type design from both the software and the community in the past year alone. In order to take things to the next level though, I need to become more fluent with “true” font software in addition to learning how to license my designs. Recently, I’ve used FontLab to flush out the Sessions font to include an uppercase, accented characters, and full Latin support. I’d like to add some stylistic sets to it as well. My goal would be to release it as a commercial OpenType font.
Screen print of a new Fontstruction in the works called Gaga.
Gig poster for the band Juniper Tar, designed by Brian Kriederman from Milwaukee, a friend of John Skelton’s, using his font Jettison Stencil.
Logo design on Tshirt for Crossville Home School Chess Team, designed by Drawing on the Promises (dotp – graphic designer Frank McClung and artist Miriam McClung) using Afrojet’s Sawhorse for the text and Sawhorse Braumarks for the illustrative parts.
This wraps up the first one of our mini-interviews. Stay tuned for more Focus on FontStructors.
Header image: Men of Complex Mystery and Smart Hand Gestures © John Skelton, edited & manipulated by Yves Peters
We did some maintenance work on the servers today.
During the first year of FontStructing, as the bricks piled up, our servers buckled a few times under the load. This sometimes happened without warning and for days at a time, and caused some understandable annoyance. We’re doing a lot of work at the moment to try and avoid this in the future. A large part of this work is now complete.
What’s changed? Hopefully nothing noticeable ;-) but let us know if you spot any glitches.
Download Problems
Many of you will have noticed problems with downloading more complex FontStructions recently. We’re aware of this and it is next on our list of things to work on.
