Posts from Rob Meek (meek)
I’m delighted to announce that FontShop has generously agreed to sponsor FontStruct for a further two years starting today.
Everyone knows that FontShop are leaders in the business of selling fonts. They launched FontStruct in April 2008 in order to promote their brand and raise their international profile, but behind the marketing strategies and business goals was a natural enthusiasm and love for the project itself. A company founded by typographers and designers rather than “suits”, FontShop is defined and set apart from its competitors by their passion for everything typographic and creative. FontStruct is just one expression of this.
318,000 confirmed registrations and 328,000 font designs later, FontStruct has proved itself the perfect playground for novice typographers, educators and modular-type fanatics alike. It simply would not exist without the faith, vision and financial support of its backers. So, on behalf of the FontStruct community,
… and thanks again
Alongside the new sponsorship deal, FontShop have agreed to transfer legal ownership of FontStruct to me, also starting today.
Very little should change for you, the users of FontStruct, but the “terms of use” and the “privacy policy” have been updated to reflect the new ownership. There will be other changes of course (some additional advertising will probably be appearing on the site for example) but please rest assured, I am committed to maintaining FontStruct as a free service for building, sharing and downloading modular, grid-based fonts.
Have a FontStructive day!
(“Thank you” typed using T: ariapenciroman by kix, H: RM Tubeway chrome by p2pnut, A: Scaffoldini by funk_king, N: RM Scrapheap FS 1.0 by p2pnut, K: cranestruct by funk_king, Y: Nuts Bolts and Wrenches by raiu, O: cedar by kekeh, U: Masheensmith by vertigokid)
The results are in for the second FontStruct competition “Handmade”. It was a thrilling three weeks with some quite extraordinary FontStructing and offline handiwork appearing on the site. I hope all participants and everyone else had as much fun as I did. The standard of entries was extremely high, making the task of judging an extremely difficult. The judges came up with a very broad and diverse range of favorites, but once the votes had been added together, some clear winners emerged. Continue reading…
The Handmade competition is now closed for entries.
Thank you, thank you everyone for taking part, and for all your incredible work. I’m truly amazed at the quality and range of entries this time around. I’ve enjoyed watching all the entries appearing over the past three weeks and I sense that enjoyment has been shared by many of you. The winners will be announced in a blog post on the 18th of October. In fact there are plenty of entries which deserve a blog post to themselves.
Important: Don’t forget to “heart” your favorites over the next week for the people’s choice award. This favorite voting will stop at 11pm PST on October 15th.
You can view all the entries in the gallery or you can follow this link and use the “Next” and “Previous” links at the top of each page to marvel at each entry in detail, one after the other.
The last competition was a huge success. Today, by popular request, we’re launching a new one with the theme “Handmade”. And yes, there are prizes.
Continue reading…
New Bricks
First things first. We’ve added four new bricks. With the new possibilities offered by FontStruct 2.0, some quarter ring shapes (the so-called “macaroni” bricks) make sense and have been requested by several users in contact mails and comment threads like this one, so here they are. Enjoy!
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We’re always delighted to hear about FontStructions which leave their digital nest to be inscribed on the world of concrete things: FontStructions you can see in the street or on the printed page, FontStructions you can touch … or even taste. Long-time friend of FontStruct Gustavo Ferreira tipped us off to this delicious-looking plate of glyphs:
Continue reading…
Today we made some changes to the “FontMortar”. The FontMortar is the part of FontStruct which actually generates the font files which you can download and use on your desktop.
It’s just better
As far as possible FontStruct tries to hide the dry, technical side of font design from you, the designer. If you just want to have fun with shapes, build your font and download it, then FontStruct was made for you and you can leave this post now, happy in the knowledge that we’re continuing to improve the quality of those downloads.
Continue reading…
Dear FontStructors,
Apart from a few minor problems, things seem to have gone well with the update to FontStruct 2.0. Thanks to everyone who has made us aware of the various glitches that did occur. Looking in the gallery we’re already seeing some fantastic creations taking advantage of the new possibilities.
Today we updated the site again with a few bug fixes, and one powerful enhancement to the composite bricks feature. Let’s talk about the enhancement first. Continue reading…
Dear FontStructors old and new,
Today, FontShop and the FontStruct team are proud to present one of the most significant updates to our site since the service launched. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get straight to the new features.
New Feature: Brick Stacking
Some brave souls have been “stacking” (placing multiple bricks on a single grid square) for a long time. The long lost FontStructor “williaum” AKA will.i.ૐ first discovered a bug that made this esoteric technique possible, and pioneered its use.
Continue reading…
My, how you’ve grown!
On April 1st 2008, FontShop launched a free, online platform for building modular fonts called FontStruct. Over the intervening two years a community of over 270,000 typographic bricklayers has come together to create, share, download and discuss almost 260,000 modular type designs. Thanks to all of you for participating in this fantastic project so far.
Coming Soon
We want FontStruct to continue improving by adding new features and creative possibilities, and we’re currently preparing a significant update to the FontStructor font editor. We hope to release this update at some point this month.
Continue reading…
