{"id":13,"date":"2008-04-22T01:17:22","date_gmt":"2008-04-22T08:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fontstruct.fontshop.com\/news\/2008\/04\/22\/the-first-three-weeks\/"},"modified":"2013-06-01T16:16:31","modified_gmt":"2013-06-01T23:16:31","slug":"the-first-three-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/2008\/04\/22\/the-first-three-weeks\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Three Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/uploads\/2008\/04\/21-days_04.gif\" alt=\"21-days_04.gif\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 8px; margin-left: -4px\" \/>On April 1, after months of planning, designing, production, and testing \u2014 not to mention endless mulling over <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/2008\/03\/31\/new-feature-creative-commons-licensing\/\">licensing<\/a> schemes \u2014 we took a deep breath and lifted the gates, opening FontStruct to the general public. To give the servers a gentle test, we decided not to announce the site right away. We leaked the news to a few close friends and went back to our regular FontShop duties.<\/p>\n<p>A few days later, I turned to our intern <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontwerk.com\/ueber\/\">Ivo<\/a>, who sits next to me, and whispered what was then an unbelievable figure: \u201c1,500!\u201d. That was how many FontStruct users had registered by the end of the first week.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top: 25px\">First FontStructions<\/h2>\n<p>More impressive than the size of the crowd was the quality and variety of their creations. Within hours, FontStructors were designing modular typefaces that pushed beyond typical pixelations.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul type=\"circle\">\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">Gareth Finucane used triangle bricks to create depth for his <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/139\">xtrude<\/a>,<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">Zara Evens crafted an elegant <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/123\">inline face<\/a> that works equally well at display and pixel sizes,<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">Nate Cox built a faithful <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/muni_1\">replica<\/a> of the quirky electronic displays found on board San Francisco\u2019s MUNI trains,<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">FontShopper Ivan Bettger was stealing a few minutes between type research and support calls to fashion a convincing <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/175\">blackletter<\/a>,<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom: 10px\">and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fontshop.com\/fonts\/foundry\/mark_simonson\/\">Mark Simonson<\/a> dug up his 30-year-old graph paper alphabets and brought the sketches to life as <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/boxy_1\">Boxy 1<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/boxy_2\">2<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top: 25px\">FontStruct At 21<\/h2>\n<p>FontStruct is now 21 days old and the enthusiasm of its users continues to exceed our expectations. Here are our baby\u2019s vital stats as of today:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul type=\"circle\">\n<li><strong>21,620<\/strong> registered users<\/li>\n<li><strong>23,323<\/strong> FontStructions (716 public)<\/li>\n<li><strong>367,921<\/strong> glyphs<\/li>\n<li><strong>29,991<\/strong> FontStruction downloads<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Though April hasn\u2019t passed and we have yet to lift the obligatory \u201cbeta\u201d label, FontStructing techniques have already evolved significantly. The perfect case-in-point is Wolfgang Krimmel\u2019s recently completed <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/12472\">Texture<\/a>, a fraktur that appears to defy the modular tool that created it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/stewf\/2433707146\/\" title=\"Texture, a FontStruction by Wolfgang Krimmel, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3035\/2433707146_ec7826139f_o.gif\" alt=\"Texture, a FontStruction by Wolfgang Krimmel\" height=\"289\" width=\"470\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The implied stroke of a pen is captured so well it\u2019s hard to believe that it was built, brick by brick, with sections of triangles, rectangles, and circles on a grid. A closer look within the editor reveals the genesis of Texture:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/stewf\/2432891921\/\" title=\"The making of Texture by Stewf, on Flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2368\/2432891921_919bc365c7_o.png\" alt=\"The making of Texture\" height=\"300\" width=\"470\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"margin-top: 25px\">Onward to Week Four<\/h2>\n<p>Of course, this is only the beginning. We continue to refine the site and FontStructor daily. Thank you to all for your feedback and suggestions. We can\u2019t fulfill every wish (sorry pro\u2019s, class-based kerning is a long way off) but we read every email and some of your excellent ideas are already in production. You might have noticed that half- and quarter-sized rectangles magically appeared in your Brick palette this week.<\/p>\n<p><small>Fonts used in opening image: <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/squaresans\">SquareSans<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.com\/fontstructions\/show\/texture_1\">Texture<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fontstruct.fontshop.com\/news\/uploads\/2008\/04\/21-days-trans_041.gif\" alt=\"21 Days Old\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 8px; margin-left: -4px\" \/>FontStruct is just 21 days old and the enthusiasm of its users is already exceeding our expectations. Here\u2019s a peek at our vital stats from the first few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fontstruct.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}