feed.rss

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<feed xml:lang="en-US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
  <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:/feed</id>
  <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com"/>
  <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/feed"/>
  <title>ROSETTA TYPE BLOG</title>
  <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00+02:00</updated>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2021/01/11/Ten-years-of-Rosetta</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2021/01/11/Ten-years-of-Rosetta"/>
    <title>Ten years of Rosetta</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;style&gt;
h4 {
  margin: 2em 0 17px 0;
}

.simpletable {
  width: 940px;
  border: 0;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 1em 0;
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: 1px solid black;
}
.simpletable td, .simpletable th {
  border: 0;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0.75em;
  text-align: left;
  vertical-align: top;
  font-size: 14px;
}
.simpletable th {
  margin: 0;
  font-weight: bold;
  background: #000;
  color: #fff;
}
.simpletable tr:nth-child(even) { 
    background-color: #eee; 
} 
&lt;/style&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It has been ten years since we launched the first Rosetta website on 11 January 2011 at 11:11 CET and started making it our business selling fonts for multiple scripts of the world. This anniversary prompted a reminiscence of our past efforts, so here’s a personal look back at what those ten years brought to our corner of the industry.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta_old-webite_big.png' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; This is how the original Rosetta website looked like. Snapshot from 30 June 2012. We were excited about the new possibilities of non-system webfonts. Reproduced here for readers’ amusement.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The motivation)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The market for digital fonts was quite different ten years ago and we did not have any certainty whether our new venture was going to pan out. We simply felt that more fonts for more scripts ought to be made, and that they should be made well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Every Czech designer understands the need for high-quality diacritics in fonts. They know first-hand that many of the hip and renowned Western foundries do a poor job when it comes to accents, and that a strong brand is not a guarantee of quality across the full range of languages they claim to support. We extrapolated from this experience and committed to quality in every script we would tackle.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The inspiration)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Obviously, we were not the first to focus on language and script support that goes beyond European languages. Besides vernacular foundries typically providing fonts for a single script, some were providing Cyrillic-Greek-Latin (LCG or pan-European or PE) or Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) support.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While we could not compare to the big players like Adobe, Morisawa, or Monotype,* there were a few smaller foundries that diversified towards multiple scripts. Some of them became an inspiration and indication of what could be achieved. Russian Paratype had been offering fonts for languages and scripts of the former Soviet republics for some time. Then there was the rigorous Canadian duo Tiro Typeworks, with whom I collaborated on two projects before Rosetta. Slovak-Dutch Typotheque had already tapped into designing for Arabic, Cyrillic, and Greek and their Peter Biľak had just founded the new Indian Type Foundry together with Satya Rajpurohit. London-based Dalton Maag started speed-growing from a relatively small studio into a mid-sized company while developing custom multi-script projects for global clients such as Nokia, Intel, and others.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The model)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of talent coming out of type design programmes in the past few years. Many of these designers have enthusiastically embraced working in various world scripts, including those unfamiliar to them when they started studying. I thought that a platform where such projects could be released without the pressures of vicious commercial deadlines would allow people to develop knowledge, expertise, and eventually confidence to design for scripts of their choosing rather than only those they were born into. At the same time, this could also help solve the apparent lack of quality fonts for typographically less-represented scripts by expanding relevant knowledge in the type design community. In turn, it would also benefit readers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The business model was similar to other font publishers. Our collaborators would work on their own time and we would pay them shares from future sales of their fonts through our e-shop. And importantly, the designers would retain ownership of their designs. We would help manage the design progress – by providing art direction, quality control, production, post-production, legal support, marketing, library maintenance, promotion, and customer service – to free our collaborators to focus on design.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This plan turned into Rosetta.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Every now and then we hear how multilingual communication is a novel thing, or that multi-cultural societies are the new challenge. We chose the name Rosetta, in reference to the famous Rosetta Stone, to remind people that multi-script documents have been with us for millennia. We’re just helping the newcomer, digital typography, play catch up.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I did not want to do this alone, so I teamed up with Veronika Burian and José Scaglione of Type Together because of their experience running a successful independent type foundry. And although this collaboration lasted only two years, their initial wisdom and guidance were a great help in the early days.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The ignorance)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Developing design knowledge about the visual system of a particular world script takes time. Familiarity or the ability to read the script give one only so much head start and by itself are not a guarantee of quality. We believe that with patience and commitment, one can learn to read or design for any script.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But how do we, as a foundry, guarantee quality in all the scripts we want to design for? We acknowledged our limits and worked with consultants such as Fiona Ross, Irene Vlachou, Maria Doreuli, or Meir Sadan (to name a few) in cases where the designer was less experienced in their project’s script. Beta testers and informal reviewers have been a great help too.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta_people2_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; People looking at pictures of things&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The job of a designer)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Working on a retail typeface takes months. It means choosing the harder way over a steady paid job, possibly working late nights and weekends to squeeze the passion project around a daily job that pays the bills. Developing a multi-script typeface takes even more time. The challenges of one script multiply when they meet those of the other script. When designing for a previously unfamiliar script, one also faces uncertainties every step of the way.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Type designers face all of these challenges with unclear prospects in an unpredictable market driven by fashion. Every single designer who has released with us deserves applause here for their skills and for their commitment. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Sadly, for every two projects that get released, there is one that doesn’t make it. There are moments when a foundry has to cut ties on projects that stop moving ahead, whatever the reason. But there are also times when we have to acknowledge our own limits; every now and then, I still have mild coding nightmares about the Burmese medial forms.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The start)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When we launched, there were two type families in our library: Skolar and Aisha. By the end of the year, there were five, and they were supporting five scripts. Each of these early releases tells a different story about multi-scriptuality.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I started Skolar during my MA at the University of Reading as a Latin-script typeface, but developed it anticipating stylistic requirements of other scripts, particularly Indian ones. In 2009, Skolar Latin was released with Type Together. By the time Rosetta published it in 2011, it supported Cyrillic and Greek, but the Indian scripts were to come year later.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In contrast to Skolar’s origin, Titus Nemeth’s Aisha started as a revival of a Maghrebi Arabic fount. The Latin was developed afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The next release was Nassim, also designed by Titus during his MA at Reading. It was also designed as Arabic first, and Latin second. Thanks to the BBC selecting it for their Arabic and Persian news services online, Nassim has been served to over 10 million readers monthly for the past ten years, and it helped improve the quality of Arabic web typography immensely. Note that when all this started, it was still the relatively early days of both webfonts and the BBC Online. We never counted, but Nassim must have been among the most used non-system webfonts at the time. Its illegal copies are now serving many users in Iran and they have been used by local news there to replicate the look of the BBC Persian website. Needless to say, we cannot easily/legally sell the fonts in Iran due to international embargoes, so Iranian users have had to get their hands on Nassim in other ways. It’s a good typeface, so can we really blame them?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Neacademia by Sergei Egorov ended up in our library by mere coincidence. I was asking Sergei, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology living in the USA, for high-resolution images of one of his mathematical experiments with Aldine italics. With his response, he dropped me a line humbly offering his pet project. Released slowly over the years, Neacademia has become one of the most comprehensive revivals of the Aldine types: the Latin is the true revival, while the added Cyrillic comes from an alternative universe where Aldus Manutius printed in Russian.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The last release of 2011 was Sutturah by Octavio Pardo. It shows the challenges achieving equal illegibility across scripts. Awesomely intricate, admired by many, used by few. Some projects are released because you simply have to get them out there, not because they pay off.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Looking back, the first year looks like one crazy release frenzy. Eventually, we had to slow down and make tough decisions between pace, multitude, and quality. And although behind each project there’s a lot to talk about, there is no space to indulge in a lengthy discussion of each. Here is a table at least.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;table class="simpletable"&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Release date&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type family&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Author(s)&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;Script(s)&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011–2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Aisha Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011–2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Aisha Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Skolar PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;David Březina&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek,, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Nassim Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Nassim Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011–2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Neacademia&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Sergei Egorov&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2011&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Sutturah&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Octavio Pardo&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Skolar Devanagari&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Vaibhav Singh&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Devanagari&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Skolar Gujarati&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;David Březina&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Gujarati&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arek Armenian&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Khajag Apelian&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Armenian&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2012&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arek Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Khajag Apelian&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2013&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Eskorte Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Elena Scheider&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2013&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Eskorte Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Elena Scheider&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2014–2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Skolar Sans PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;David Březina, Sláva Jevčinová, and Rafael Saraiva&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2015&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Clone Rounded PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Lasko Dzurovski&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Gitan Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Florian Runge&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Skolar Sans Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Yrsa &amp; Rasa&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Anna Giedryś and David Březina (open-source)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2016&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Eczar&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Vaibhav Singh (open-source)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Devanagari, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2017&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Avory PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Sláva Jevčinová&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2017&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Corsair PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Ksenya Samarskaya and associates&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2018&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Marlik&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Borna Izadpanah&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2018–2020&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Handjet (open-source)&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;David Březina&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2019&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Adapter PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;William Montrose, Sláva Jevčinová, David Březina&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2019&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Adelphi PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Nick Job&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2019&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Adapter Hebrew&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Sláva Jevčinová&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Hebrew&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2020&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Adapter Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Borna Izadpanah&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Arabic&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;2020&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Gridlite PE&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;David Březina&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Cyrillic, Greek, Latin&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The production)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The production job, i.e. making fonts actually work, has changed dramatically. Ten years ago, OpenType support for Indian and South-East Asian scripts was not mature in many applications. Adobe did not yet have any Indian fonts in their library, and their pre-Cloud Creative Suite came with less reliable support. The main font editor back then, FontLab 4, could only be tricked into supporting the right-to-left kerning required for Arabic. It was also unable to compile the more advanced OpenType feature code required for Indian scripts; one had to use other tools, such as MS VOLT or the latest Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO), which had just introduced this option. We chose AFDKO and thanks to people like Miguel Sousa and Paul Hunt, both working for Adobe, we developed our first custom production tools. Finally, we could compile fonts for Arabic and Indian scripts on a Mac! It took months to figure things out.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The new font editors (Glyphs and Robofont) were just around the corner. Over time, they have picked up a few tricks and they now support and often automate the OpenType features required. And thanks to Google Fonts, many of those feature layouts are now open-sourced and widely available as examples to follow. Things are being documented way better, too.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;However, the most significant change has been the development and adoption of HarfBuzz, an open-source rendering engine that supports a majority of the world scripts. Started by Behdad Esfahbod, HarfBuzz brought unprecedented script support to browsers and operating systems. The open-source world thus leapt ahead of proprietary solutions by Adobe and Microsoft. (The story of Apple’s solutions would take longer to unpack.)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All of this is to say that developing Arabic and Indian scripts in the past ten years has been exciting, but also difficult and ever-changing, and thankfully it is much easier now. The amount of support we needed to provide meant that it would not have been possible to start Rosetta in London or New York and maintain the same quality standards. The financial pressures would have been too high for a mostly retail-based venture. Luckily, living expenses in Czechia were low and allowed us the freedom of idealists.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta_people1_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; We organized two meetups over the years Rosetta Camp in South Moravia (2012, top left photo) and Rosetta Cruise in Croatia (2013, bottom right photo). Several colleagues from other foundries joined us for the latter.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The grand total)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is hard to say how many people work at Rosetta today. We do not function like a typical company for numerous reasons. At the core is me (management, type design) and Anna Giedryś (type design, marketing), with our part-time font engineer Johannes Neumeier. There are our frequent collaborators, often working on custom or in-house projects; the following worked on multiple projects with us in the past: Borna Izadpanah, Sláva Jevčinová, Ben Mitchell, William Montrose, Titus Nemeth, Florian Runge, and Vaibhav Singh. And there are further seven designers who released their fonts with us.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since launching, we’ve worked with 40–50 esteemed colleagues including collaborating designers, consultants, studio managers, font engineers, interns, and others. Thank you all for helping Rosetta to make it this far!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta/2021-Ten-years-of-Rosetta_people3_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Some of the people that contributed to the success of Rosetta over the years, in no particular order (top to bottom, left to right): Nick Job, Florian Runge, Lasko Dzurovski, Khajag Apelian, Fiona Ross, Mathieu Réguer, Ross Mills, Sláva Jevčinová, Johannes Neumeier, David Březina, Elena Schneider, Ben Mitchell, Maria Doreuli, Filip Dědic, William Montrose, Borna Izadpanah, Anna Giedryś, Titus Nemeth, Irene Vlachou, Kamil Kurzajewski, Sasikarn Vongin, Vaibhav Singh, Ksenya Samarskaya, Sergei Egorov, Octavio Pardo, Maxim Zhukov, Meir Sadan, and Viktoriya Grabowska-Gadomska.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Over the past ten years, we have released 28 type families supporting 8 scripts and over 440 languages in total. Three of the type families are open-sourced. And a few custom projects. Although the retail fonts differ in their degree of commercial success, nearly every release has been recognized by one or more design awards or featured in influential favourites lists. Not to mention all the love given by our amazing customers!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All these successes give only part of the picture, as we’ve also fallen short many times and in many ways. One shortcoming bothers me the most: we aimed to build knowledge, but we failed to share it. I was always “too busy”. Besides our open-source fonts, conference talks, and two TypeTalks conferences we organized, we only managed to publish a handful of blog posts about multi-script typography. In the past year, we have been working hard to change that. Last year, we managed to release the Universal Specimen which now allows everyone to test their own fonts in 333 languages of the world simultaneously. And we are almost ready to show you what else we’ve been working on. I can’t tell you what they are yet, but to build suspense I’ll leave you with a cliffhanger by sharing their names: Hyperglot and Design Regression.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In large part thanks to Johannes, we have also updated most of our library to include variable fonts and we will roll them out in the following months together with new PDF specimens. And if I find the time, there will also be limited-edition posters… and more fonts!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;(The new competition)&lt;/h4&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Today in the type design community, in addition to those already mentioned, we have amazing competition in Mota Italic, Black Foundry, Ek Type, Fontpad, Typotheque Arabic, Typeland, Bold Monday, Commercial Type, and the up-and-coming Universal Thirst, each with their own take on designing for multiple scripts. And there’s also many other exciting foundries focused on individual scripts. All this activity is thrilling but also enough to give even experienced practitioners some degree of stage fright! But whenever I panic and question whether we still have something to contribute, I try to remember that more fonts for more scripts ought to be made, and I believe that this is a task best tackled by many.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* Note that Google Fonts and their open-source efforts were yet to come and change the game of scripts dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited by Andrea Churchill Wong.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2021-01-11T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2020/04/28/14-tips-for-ruling-the-work-from-home-game</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2020/04/28/14-tips-for-ruling-the-work-from-home-game"/>
    <title>14 tips for ruling the work-from-home game</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular beliefs about productivity, it is ok to mix your work and personal lives. They are your lives, after all! Mixing things up can help you achieve unexpected efficiency and a deepened sense of fulfillment. Independent type designers are masters of this discipline. Here are some ground rules from the best. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Work a bit before breakfast. That will make the rest of the workday shorter.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Mornings are not for catching up on new episodes of the latest mystery thriller. Studies by Czech researchers show a 32% higher chance of binge watching if you turn Netflix on in the morning.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Work in pyjamas (or naked!) for as long as you can. It makes for better blood flow, which is good for all kinds of mental processes.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;If you are emphatically against pyjamas, invest in some comfortable loungewear. Whatever you do, say no to smart casual!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Avoid socks at all costs. Slippers are okay. The fluffier the better.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;There is definitely no need for a suit. Unless you are having a conference call with a client. In that case, it is sufficient to wear only the top bits – and shorts. Do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; stand up during a call. That’s why office chairs have wheels.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Be creative with your working places and positions. You can work virtually anywhere! Use your kitchen desk, use your sofa, sit on the floor, lie on the floor. It is better than any of the fancy startup offices and it is only yours. You can also work on a bed with the computer on the floor. Thoroughly tested.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Go out for lunch. Make the mid-day break longer. Enjoy the outside. It is ok to work outside too, btw. it is ok to work when you have just finished lunch and there is a small beer next to your laptop. Post a picture on social media to make the office workers’ lives miserable.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Work out when everyone else is working. The gym will still have some fresh air, and the swimming pool will be emptier and cleaner. Worst case, it might be packed with retired people, but they are usually easy to lunge past or swim around (though beware, some of them might present surprisingly fierce competition). Post all your achievements online. Collegial envy is the new love.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Complain about your commute. Why not!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Remember to go outside. But if you do not, it is ok too. Just play some music and it will do. Human contact is overrated.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;You probably do not want to work full eight hours. No one does.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Make use of the post-napping guilt. If you’re tired, take a nap. The guilt you feel afterwards will fuel your most productive hours yet, and you’ll catch up on lost working minutes in no time.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Make use of your bedtime. It is ideal for catching up on emails, tweets and the like. The trick is simple: if you read something upsetting, go to sleep! Immediately. No replies. Chances are, someone else will get upset instead of you. Or you will forget. Either way, you’ll have started a new day before it can get to you.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This article was written around midnight when everyone else was asleep. As a result there was more time for a slow breakfast with pancakes, forest fruits, and maple syrup, sprinkled with chia seeds for a healthy kick.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited by Andrea Churchill Wong.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2020-04-28T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2020/03/11/Adapter-World-programme</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2020/03/11/Adapter-World-programme"/>
    <title>Adapter™ World design programme</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Adapter™ World is a design programme involving an international team of designers and consultants who work with Rosetta type foundry to provide a modern, coherent, and reliable design for a wide range of the world’s languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/Adapter"&gt;Adapter&lt;/a&gt; follows a number of successful multi-script font releases including &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar™&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/Nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; and collaborations with global clients such as the &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/custom-fonts/BBC-Nassim"&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/custom-fonts/LG-WebOS"&gt;LG&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/custom-fonts/Yrsa-Rasa"&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;. Adapter already supports languages using Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Greek scripts. Adapter’s language skills keep on growing with the new Arabic script extension released today. This will amount to over 330 languages used by approximately 3.54 billion speakers* around the globe. Rosetta’s long-term goal is to extend Adapter to support languages of Africa, Georgia, Armenia, Thailand, as well as the many Indian languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_1_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_2_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Providing typefaces that are visually harmonized across diverse language contexts is no small feat as different languages and cultural environments pose many design challenges. For example, the aesthetics of the Latin script may not easily be translated to Arabic or Hebrew environments. This is a challenge that lies far beyond the abilities of an individual designer. Thus, Rosetta always works collaboratively, employing specialized consultants. The goal is to deliver fonts that are both visually pleasing and culturally valid. The quality of Adapter Cyrillic has already been recognized in the respected &lt;a href="https://moderncyrillic.org/en/"&gt;Modern Cyrillic 2019&lt;/a&gt; competition.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Adapter’s type system can be adjusted freely across three dimensions to modify weight, italic slant, and optical size between text and display variants. Adapter Text delivers a good reading experience even in low-resolution and small type sizes thanks to generous spacing, overall openness, and slightly squarish counters. Adapter Display is tightly spaced for a striking impact in headlines across a wider range of weight styles, from thin to black.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Utilizing the new OpenType Variable font technology, Rosetta managed to pack all of this potential into a single font with a tiny data footprint. Dramatically increased stylistic and linguistic options with little extra file size mean that websites and apps can easily provide fast service to a larger number of customers reading in a range of the world’s languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a class="solidButton red" style="font-weight:normal;font-size: 16px;" href="https://rosettatype.com/Adapter"&gt;
&lt;span class="ico page"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;See Adapter microsite&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="solidButton black" style="font-weight:normal;font-size: 16px;" href="https://rosettatypefoundry.cmail19.com/t/r-i-jhikiyz-l-i/"&gt;
&lt;span class="ico bag"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Get free trial fonts&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="solidButton black" style="font-weight:normal;font-size: 16px;" href="https://rosettatype.com/merchandise#merch-21"&gt;
&lt;span class="ico bag"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Order Adapter poster&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(*) This estimate is based on a sum of the native speakers of the languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;P.S. If you want to know more about the details of Adapter design, find us on &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/rosettatype"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/rosettatypefoundry/"&gt;Instagram&lt;/a&gt; where we have already posted numerous previews. You can also read our previous post about &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2019/05/21/The-making-of-Adapter"&gt;the making of Adapter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_3_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_4_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_5_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_6_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2020-Adapter-World-design-programme/Adapter-World-design-programme_7_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2020-03-11T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2019/05/21/The-making-of-Adapter</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2019/05/21/The-making-of-Adapter"/>
    <title>The making of Adapter</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;For many years now, we have felt a gap in our library. The missing piece was a simple, no-frills sans serif that would appeal to contemporary modernist and post-modernist aesthetics. A straightforward, universal typeface easy to use for a wide range of design genres. We set out to develop this missing piece about three years ago in a pub in London’s Bloomsbury and today we release it to the world hoping it will serve you well. Below are a few notes about our thoughts and the process.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_1_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Neutralizer&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As we were working on the concept, we realized we needed to decide on a language to describe our design direction. The typeface we had in mind could be categorized as a neo-grotesque, but such a classification merely describes appearance. We were more interested in describing the ideas and motivations behind the design and linking them with a particular style and utility.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At first, “neutral sans-serifs” seemed to be the term we were looking for. It often refers to typefaces that are supposed to show as little personality of their designers as possible. This is usually presented as a modernist attempt to focus on the function and the content of a message that is being typeset. However, neutrality in design in general is a questionable construct. And &lt;a href="https://2x4.org/ideas/2009/fuck-content/"&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://articles.c-a-s-t.com/lussu-file-2-wines-and-goblets-2ac327e8f416"&gt;have&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://practicaltypography.com/drowning-the-crystal-goblet.html"&gt;argued&lt;/a&gt; that before us. For better or worse, designers are always contributing to the message readers ultimately perceive. A choice of colour, font, illustration, or layout – they all have their meaning. In this way, typographers and typeface designers are always co-authors of the message. The presence of the designers’ opinions is inescapable and it would be pretentious to say and act otherwise. It would be a disservice to typeface design and its contribution to society if we subscribed to this notion of neutrality.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Universalizer&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Keith Tam, a colleague from the University of Reading, once told me that instead of “neutral”, he prefers the term “universal”. Although still somewhat vague, the term better indicates how it might be possible to pragmatically judge whether a typeface lives up to it. In my mind, a universal typeface is suited for as wide a range of messages as possible. And, importantly, it does not need to be voiceless! It just needs to be suitable.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Although a truly universal typeface in this sense is clearly an impossibility, the more pragmatic perspective helped orient our design direction. It also helped us realize that even though the neo-grotesques (Helvetica, Neue Hass Grotesque, Arial, and others) seem to form a single, coherent category of typefaces when judged by their appearance, they are frequently used in two very different ways.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Neo-grotesques are an unobtrusive, basic, or even default choice when used for continuous texts. Yet, they can also be selected intentionally to make a strong stylistic statement suggesting minimalism or unaesthetics when used in posters, magazines, or book covers. These differences become obvious when looking at post-modern design, from unrestrained art books to down-to-earth navigation systems.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typeface publishers sometimes claim to have achieved both good readability in small sizes and interesting appearance in big sizes, but the challenge is more complex. We found it is nearly impossible to have a single sans-serif font that satisfies both requirements equally well. Text sizes require stronger articulation of features which tends to look out of place in larger sizes. On the other hand, display sizes favour finer details and spatial economy which would inconvenience readers when used for continuous text. Not one, but two or more typefaces might be needed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Adapter!&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Thus, we set out to design two variants of the same sans-serif: Adapter Text and Adapter Display. To maintain the distinction between the two objectives, both functionally as well as stylistically, we thought of the two Adapters as being designed by two different designers. The Text designer was a typographer who focused on the ergonomics of reading, thus the rhythm and clarity of forms were his utmost concern. He would acknowledge the influence of production technology and shape the characters to comply with it. The Display designer, on the other hand, was a graphic designer or an architect with a sweet spot for smooth curves, symmetries, and alignments. She would not be eccentric, but would want to demonstrate her appreciation for form and introduce some statement details here and there while keeping an economy of expression.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_3_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adapter Text&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As a result, Adapter Text has more squarish, solid forms that don’t easily get distorted by the pixel grid or the raster of printers and presses. Apertures are open and junctions are pinched in order to better articulate these features. You might notice some ink traps in action, too. The vertical proportions are generous to allow for distinct ascenders and descenders and well-differentiated diacritical marks. The inter-letter spacing and kerning were set with a preference for even rhythm. Compare Adapter Text to Helvetica and Arial and you might think it’s a bit loose, but once you start reading you will notice how much more comfortable it is and how cramped Helvetica and Arial seem. The weights of Adapter Text range from Extralight to Extrabold, but not further, as weights beyond this range would simply look sub-par in text sizes. Thin would disappear. Black would be too dark and have uneven counters.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_2_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adapter Display&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_4_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adapter Text and Display&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Adapter Display has rounder and narrower forms. Unlike in the Text, most of the terminals are aligned horizontally, which turns the aperture shapes into cleanly defined cut-outs. The curves flow smoothly, the corners are sharp; the letters “a, y, R” and their relatives in Cyrillic and Greek speak for themselves. The overall appearance is more condensed and the vertical proportions are a tiny bit more compact too. The spacing strategy is different from that of the Text, too. The letters are closer together as the focus was on keeping the inter-letter spaces small and equal. The spaces within the letters (the counters) become bigger than the inter-letter spaces which results in a less even rhythm, but a greater economy. The weights stretch across a wider spectrum, from Thin to Black.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our goal was to design a no-nonsense type system that is easy to use, with the defaults just right. There is nothing you could do without: no ligatures, no small caps, and no old-style figures. A handful of alternates made it in for the sake of DIN 1450 compliance, which should make our wayfinding colleagues happy. This includes the seriffed “I”, the hooked “l”, and the slashed zero. Otherwise, Adapter’s only indulgence is a single-storey alternate of the letter “a”, which makes the typeface soft and fluffy, and an alternative “J” for better spacing in all-caps settings.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As with most of our fonts, with Adapter we provide wide-ranging and well-considered language support for over 160 languages using Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. And we have already started exploring similar ideas in the contexts of Arabic and Hebrew and their contemporary aesthetics. We hope to release equally interesting fonts for these scripts later this year.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_5_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_6_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_7_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_8_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adapter supports over 160 languages using Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h1&gt;Variable Adapter&lt;/h1&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It would be an opportunity missed if we thought about a universal system that adapts to all kinds of environments, and did not manage to make it into a variable font.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Variable fonts are useful in two major ways. First of all, they allow users to customize the font’s appearance using design parameters that are typically represented by axes or sliders. Each of these corresponds to a continuous change in the design. For example, instead of choosing from a pre-set collection of weights, in Adapter Display, a user can pick any weight on the scale from Thin to Black. If the predefined Semibold weight is too light for their design, they can simply move a slider and get a darker weight.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We did not stop at weight only. In fact, we packed all of the variants and styles into a single font! You can move seamlessly between the Text and Display, adjusting the design to a specific size or to your taste, or change the slant from upright to a 10-degree angle. The italic letters have the same width as the corresponding upright letters. This is super useful as the text will not reflow when you set a word in italics or when you decide to change the italic angle late in your design process.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The second advantage of variable fonts is their small file size. This is particularly useful on the web. The variable version of Adapter contains text and display variants, its full range of weights, and italics. And yet, the result is a single webfont with a lightweight 334 KB footprint that supports over 160 languages using the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. It shrinks to a dainty 230 KB when supporting only the Latin-script languages. When trying to cover the same stylistic and linguistic scope with single-style fonts, it would be 2400 KB (for the three scripts) or 1600 KB (for Latin). See the chart below.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_9_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2019-The-making-of-Adapter/The-making-of-Adapter_images_10_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adapter Variable provides the stylistic potential of Adapter Text and Display with a significantly smaller file size&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Adapter is the brainchild of William Montrose and David Březina. William created the shapes, and David developed the concept. William worked on the drawings with our frequent collaborator Sláva Jevčinová. Once he set up the basic Latin, Sláva took over, refined the shapes and expanded Adapter to its current scope. She also designed the Cyrillic and Greek with consultants Maria Doreuli and Irene Vlachou. Kerning was done by Jitka Janečková. Production by Johannes Neumeier and David. And finally, big thanks to Anna Giedryś for making Adapter presentable and to Andrea Churchill Wong for making all of the texts about Adapter clearer. All these people played a part in releasing Adapter into the world. We hope you will like it! Download the free trial fonts and take it for a spin.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a class="solidButton red" style="font-weight:normal;font-size: 16px;" href="https://rosettatype.com/Adapter"&gt;
&lt;span class="ico page"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;See Adapter microsite&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a class="solidButton black" style="font-weight:normal;font-size: 16px;" href="https://rosettatype.com/merchandise#merch-21"&gt;
&lt;span class="ico bag"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Order Adapter poster&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;P.S. If you want to know more about the details of Adapter design, find us on &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/rosettatype"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/rosettatypefoundry/"&gt;Instagram&lt;/a&gt; where we have already posted numerous sneak peeks.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2019-05-21T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2018/07/20/Rosetta-Loft</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2018/07/20/Rosetta-Loft"/>
    <title>Rosetta Loft</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We’ve moved into a shiny new workspace, and you’re invited to join us!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After a couple of years of nomadic, office-less life, we have decided to settle again. However, we didn’t want to set up a studio just for ourselves. We wanted a space we could share. A space where our collaborators and friends could visit us, and where we could work on projects together – but also a space into which we could invite type-friendly local designers and students to attend workshops and release parties.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, for the past two months Anna has been busy kitting out the new Rosetta Loft. It’s located in the centre of beautiful Brno, a city known for its modern architecture, biennial of graphic design, controversial statues, and too many cafés per capita. One third of the Loft is dedicated to the Rosetta HQ. Another third is for other designers: there is a small co-working space, and a couple of available offices. The remaining third is a common area for workshopping, hanging out, and of course having parties. We have two balconies with great views, a small typographic library, and way too many bathrooms.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_07.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Interested in joining us? We are currently renting desk and office space. If you’re looking for a new work environment, get in touch and come over for coffee or tea and a tour.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Even if you’re based elsewhere, we might have something for you. We are reserving desk space in our studio to offer free for up to one month to visiting designers we know personally. Come visit us to focus on a project or get a new perspective on your work. Send us an email to enquire about availability.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are already planning some events and a type design residency programme for recent graduates. Stay tuned to our social networks for more information.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For enquiries, contact Anna Giedryś at &lt;a href="mailto:anna@rosettatype.com"&gt;anna@rosettatype.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_01.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_06.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_02.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_04.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2018-Rosetta-Loft/Rosetta-Loft_08.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2018-07-20T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2017/05/22/Jaroslav-Benda</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2017/05/22/Jaroslav-Benda"/>
    <title>Jaroslav Benda: nouveau, cubiste, moderne</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To accompany our upcoming release, Avory by Sláva Jevčinová, we asked art historian Lucie Urbánková to write a brief introduction about Jaroslav Benda whose typographic work served as a starting point for the creation of the typeface. The internationally lesser known Czech designer-explorer was born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, lived through both World Wars, and embraced stylistic change with enthusiasm and vigour.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jaroslav Benda influenced numerous areas of the fine arts in the first half of the twentieth century. Showing impressive versatility, his work spans from monumental decorative works, mosaics, etched glass, typography, and posters, to precious metal objects. He is best known though for his book designs, book covers, lettering, and typeface design. His work with leading publishers contributed to the foundations of the modern Czech book style. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Benda’s graphics and book typography cover a broad range of expressions, often following prevailing art trends or demands of publishing houses. However, there are principles common to all of his work: a professional exactitude, connecting his understanding of an overall concept with interesting artistic and typographic solutions, and his original use of typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Book design and stylistic twists&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the first decade of the 20th century, Jaroslav Benda and several other artists stood at the beginning of a revival in the artistic quality of Czech books. He did not view books as a rarity or custom-made, stand-alone opuses. Rather, he relied on conventional printing presses and remained faithful to the original purpose of the book, which is to disseminate knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_01.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Jaroslav Benda’s early work, book covers designed between 1906 and 1909.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Aesthetically, the early work of Benda was strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement and the ideas of William Morris. This movement later led Benda to his art nouveau period. The indulgence in floral and geometric ornament so typical for this style, echoed even in his later, cubist designs, typically based on a geometrical arrangement of grid patterns and fractured lines.
The establishment of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna’s Workshops), Bauhaus in Germany, and a similar art group Artěl in Czechoslovakia brought up a gradual shift to modernism in Czechoslovakia and by extension in Benda’s work. He was a founding member of Artěl for which he also designed the logo and stationery.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_02.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Book cover for: Stanislav K. Neumann, Kniha lesů, vod a  strání, Básně 1907 – 1913, vyd. Spolek výtv. umělců Mánes, Praha 1914.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;His simple linear, sometimes ornamental work stood opposite to the book designs spearheaded by contemporary avant-garde artists, like &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_%C4%8Capek"&gt;Josef Čapek&lt;/a&gt;, who either used new means of expression (e.g., collage, montage) or designed individualised covers and bindings. In contrast, Benda’s work can appear conservative, repeating the same elements over and over again.
Yet, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, following another stylistic change, Benda created several book covers that were inspired by constructivist typography. He embraced alignment grids, asymmetrical composition, as well as dramatic diagonal arrangements. However, his book cover design work truly peaked in the 1940s and 1950s when he replaced conventional woodcut illustrations with distinctive, idiosyncratic lettering, calligraphy, and colour gradients.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_03.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; His distinctive lettering style was employed on various book covers throughout the years. The covers are from 1936 (left) and and 1946 (right).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Over the course of his career, Benda also focused on other branches of the applied arts that were closely related to the visual language of the newly-established Czechoslovakia. These included designs for stamps, banknotes, tapestries, cut glass. In the late 1930s, fascinated by the new opportunities, he also contributed to the very beginnings of Czech animated film.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_04.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Bank note for five Czech korunas, 1921. Originally planned as a bank note for the first Czechoslovak release with the date 15. 4. 1919, Tiskárna Česká grafická unie, Praha, circulation: 25. 9. 1922 – 31. 12. 1926.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Typeface design&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the 1930s, Benda attempted to develop his first, “typically Czech” typeface. He sent his drawings to the Monotype Corporation for casting, but the design never made it into production.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote1" name="reference1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; As Benda believed the drawings had been destroyed, he continued revising his own version until the 1960s. In 1962, at the age of 80, he and his daughter Jarka Tupá published Betu (Benda-Tupá), an evolutionary conclusion of the designs supplied to Monotype.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_05.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Typeface specimen from: Písmo a nápis [Typeface and lettering], Heintze &amp; Blanckertz, Berlín 1931.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Following is David Březina’s analysis of the version Benda sent to Monotype.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The typeface is a rather strange collage of unconventional elements and stroke treatments. It is hard not to be judgemental at first, but there is a lot to discover if one resists such temptation. The bars in ‘a, e, f, t’ are surprisingly dark; the stroke contrast seems unresolved and inconsistent; leaf-like terminals that reference art nouveau aesthetics contrast with sharp serifs in unexpected combinations. The diagonals in letters like ‘k, v, w, y’ are connected with a bar, a signature trick of many of Benda’s letterings. The individual letterforms further add to the the frenzied collection of shapes: the bowl of ‘a’ is angular, the ‘b’ is spurless, ‘l’ has a tail-like out-stroke similar to the one in ‘t’ instead of a typical bottom serif, ‘y’ has a vertical descender, the bottom of ‘z’ is lifted above baseline in order to engage in an impatient swashiness. The letter ‘s’ looks unfinished. It must be an awkward early attempt because the ‘§, &amp;amp;’ – much more challenging letterforms – are executed with confidence. Or were they possibly added by someone else? The figures, on the other hand, radically refuse any attempt at coherent treatment. A coherence-sensitive reader might prefer to look the other way.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2017-Jaroslav-Benda/Benda_06.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Unreleased seriffed typeface with diacritics and punctuation, Monotype Corporation, Surrey, 1935.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The diacritical marks are a remarkable representative of a blind evolutionary branch of accent design, yet they make for an interesting study. Benda clearly tries to establish a system that associates carons with acutes. This allows him to resolve the placement of caron on letters with ascenders such as ‘ď, ť’ where the vertical part of the caron merges with the ascender (today this is solved by adding a vertical stroke or a teardrop accent next to the ascender). Dot accents are merely flat rectangles which makes them a bit feeble. The inclusion of the Hungarian double acute and german umlaut (dieresis) is a statement of its own. Perhaps Benda, being born in the Austrian-Hungarian empire, could not not include them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Although this version of Benda’s typeface might cause a headache for many of today’s type designers, it also presents a wealth of striking ideas. Three beasts in one skin, each pulling in a different direction. We are bound to see more, new typefaces inspired by this work soon.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Benda’s book designs and typography can be viewed from two different angles. On one hand, there is a tendency to conform to ideals of a certain period, and along with that, publishers’ demands, on the other is his loyalty to usefulness and simplicity, and an emphasis on typography. In addition to his body of work, on which he actively worked up until his final years, there is also the sheer quantity of his professional texts and essays. Some of them were published as books during his lifetime, while others remain in archives. Either way, they remain an impressive account of his creative spirit.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This year marks the 135th anniversary of Jaroslav Benda’s birth, yet a complete study of his work is sorely missing. A monograph providing a concentrated overview of his life’s work in typography is currently in the making. The authors Lucie Urbánková and Petra Dočekalová will introduce the publication “Jaroslav Benda 1882–1970” at the exhibition of the same name, which will open on 6 June, 2017 at the UM gallery of the School of Applied Arts in Prague.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="#reference1" name="footnote1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. These drawings were considered lost, until recently recovered thanks to the help of Dan Rhatigan, type director at Monotype Inc. at that time.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2017-05-22T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/11/15/Skolar-Sans-Arabic</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/11/15/Skolar-Sans-Arabic"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans Arabic</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The design brief for &lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans#arabic"&gt;Skolar Sans Arabic&lt;/a&gt; sounded fairly straightforward. Extend an existing design, wherein a significant part of the conceptual work had been done. The whole family can be described as a system with ‘universal’ aspirations, made to look good on the web but ultimately serving a broad purpose. A sans-serif conceived for continuous reading, developed to cater for complex typography, as the name suggests. According to David Březina, who initiated the project, it was ‘nothing deep really’.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans#arabic" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Visit the Skolar Sans microsite »&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Arabic/Skolar-Sans-Arabic_preview.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;While one may differ about this assessment for the Skolar Sans family as released in 2014 – by most standards a typeface of exceptional complexity – translating its characteristics to an Arabic design proved to be challenging. Here, the notion of a sans-serif is everything but straightforward. In the Latin script, the sans-serif genre has been solidly established for more than a hundred years and had ample time for evolution, design movements, counter-movements and even plentiful revivals. In Arabic typography, however, sans-serifs are an utmost novelty, seriously pursued only since the last ten years. While the model of the Latin sans-serif towers above any Arabic attempts at the genre, and is bound to influence its inception, the definition of an Arabic sans-serif is a work in progress with open outcomes. Recently many Arabic typefaces conceived as companions or extensions to established Latin sans-serif designs have fallen into the so-called &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/05/24/Arabic-calligraphic-styles#kufi"&gt;Kufi&lt;/a&gt; strand, defined by geometric, strongly modular, and often static type forms. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To me, however, it is all but certain that the Kufi approach is suitable for typefaces that are used for continuous text, rather than headlines. A contemporary Arabic design might as well be based on a (typographic) Naskh structure, and for Skolar Sans with its explicit text orientation, it was my direction of choice. The fundamental nature of the decisions and design approaches that are only emerging for contemporary Arabic typeface design is also apparent in the terminology: in the absence of serifs a ‘sans’ companion makes little sense, and it is more useful to refer to such Arabic type as ‘low-contrast’ designs until a better term has been found.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Arabic/Skolar-Sans-Arabic_waterfall.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar Sans Arabic comprises of nine weights, ranging from Thin to Black.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It comes as no surprise then, that finding the right amount of typographic contrast was one of the first issues that I encountered in the development of Skolar Sans Arabic, and the answer didn’t provide itself immediately. Many of the most frequent and important Arabic letterforms – alif, lam, and bah, for example – could easily have a completely monolinear design because of their simple skeletons. Yet, some of the most frequent and character-defining Latin letters – think of n, e, and a – by their very nature require a significant amount of contrast. If the goal is to match the Arabic extension to the Latin model, should then the key letterforms be drawn with (unnecessarily) pronounced contrast? Or in other words, should contrast be consistent within a script or between multiple scripts? Or should individual type forms be allowed to diverge from general principles if it contributes to the overall appearance of words and sentences?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Arabic/Skolar-Sans-Arabic_blindspots.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The structure of certain letters diverges in darker weights. Note the blinded counters in Extrabold and Black.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the design of Skolar Sans Arabic I began with fairly geometric letterforms. Alif and lam, for example, were initially based on straight rectangles – following the simple stems of the Latin letters I and l – with minimal adjustments for the joining glyphs. My initial tests, however, weren’t convincing. The frequent pairing of alif and lam was too rigid in comparison to the joined horizontal letterforms, breaking the flow of the line.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the design of the diacritical dots required extensive testing and frequent revisions. Since it was going to be a companion to a sans-serif, I wondered if the traditional rhombic dot would be suitable and assumed that a different configuration would work better. As the dots in Skolar Sans are round, I began with rounded, but slightly more squat dots for the Arabic too. This seemed to work reasonably well, but neither David nor I were fully convinced. Because of the high frequency of Arabic diacritics, the round design felt somewhat too jovial. Every possible variation was considered, half-rounded, at different angles, rectangular. Even if a drawing was successful as a single dot, its repetition in double and triple dots was usually not. Especially if the angle was half-way between the conventional rhombic dot and the square, the nesting of the three dot combinations did not work well. After weeks of testing and revising, I resorted to a much more classical configuration. Seeing the effect of something more akin to the rhombic dot across the typeface, it became  clear that this was the way to go. Sometimes the simplest answer to a problem is correct after all.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Arabic/Skolar-Sans-Arabic_dots.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Three different approaches to designing diacritical dots, shown in a Persian sample text.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Many more questions and design challenges such as these made this a particularly exciting and interesting project to work on. In this process David was an ideal partner, as his confidence in my work never descended into uncritical reliance, asking pertinent questions and raising relevant observations. In all the design decisions that were eventually taken, the ultimate goal was always to arrive at an authentic, original and functional interpretation of Skolar’s design for the Arabic script, extending the reach of its voice to many more countries and languages.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the development of the Latin and pan-European versions &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/11/26/On-Skolar-Sans"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/02/02/Skolar-Sans-Pan-European"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-11-15T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/11/02/Adobe-Typekit-Marketplace</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/11/02/Adobe-Typekit-Marketplace"/>
    <title>Adobe Typekit Marketplace</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today, &lt;a href="https://typekit.com/marketplace"&gt;Adobe Typekit Marketplace&lt;/a&gt; has been announced as a next, logical step in the Typekit story. When Typekit started, it brought the software-as-service approach to fonts while tackling the technical challenges of webfonts at the same time. Licencing and managing fonts on the web had finally become user-friendly. It helped webfonts to become a thing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Once acquired by Adobe, it also developed into a font-hub for all their applications, for both web and desktop fonts. All fonts were pre-licenced by Adobe for the convenience of their users. While convenient, it naturally limited the selection.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Adobe-Typekit-Marketplace/Adobe-Typekit-Marketplace.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Most of Rosetta’s Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Armenian fonts are now available on Adobe Typekit Marketplace&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typekit Marketplace is removing these limitations by allowing users to licence fonts directly from type publishers (like Rosetta). All of this with transparent terms that are fairly standardised across the publishers. The fonts can be synced with desktop or mobile applications in the Adobe Creative Cloud. An unprecedented ease of use. The fonts designers want, built into the tools they use. Security and fair treatment for the type publishers. This could become a complete game-changer. An App Store for fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At Rosetta, we believe in independent fonts and independent foundries. We see Adobe’s efforts as complementary to this – rethinking what fonts could be, an essential part of typographic tools. Plugins of typographic style so to speak. These are exciting times for the type industry and we are happy to sit in the first row.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can find nearly all of our Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Armenian fonts on Typekit Marketplace today. Arabic and Indic fonts will come in the future.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-11-02T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/09/20/The-development-of-Neacademia</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/09/20/The-development-of-Neacademia"/>
    <title>The development of Neacademia</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;h3&gt;Another Aldine revival?&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/Neacademia"&gt;Neacademia&lt;/a&gt; is a typeface with a past. Like other fonts that are inspired by a historical model, it conveys a feeling from a bygone era and transports it into a modern format. Where it differs to many others however, is its approach to be historically sensitive, rather than historically accurate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/neacademia" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Visit the Neacademia microsite »&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The typeface that served as an example for the development of Neacademia is Francesco Griffo’s type, found in Aldus Manutius’ 1499 edition of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (further abbreviated as HP). Its lower case is a direct descendant of Griffo’s De Aetna typeface (commonly known as “Bembo”), but its capitals are significantly different. &lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Morison"&gt;Stanley Morison&lt;/a&gt; had a low opinion of them, because they are ascender-high (in reality they aren’t). He preferred the lower and darker De Aetna capitals. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_HP.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Detail of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The capitals of De Aetna were taken from a much older set of Greek capitals, and were only used in combination with the De Aetna lowercase for three years until a new set of HP capitals replaced them in Aldus Manutius print shop. Morison’s preference however stuck – Griffo revivals such as Morison’s own Monotype Bembo, John Downer’s Iowan Old Style, or Matthew Carter’s Yale all look back at De Aetna capitals, not their HP counterparts which seem to be closer to Griffo’s intentions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_DA.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; A close-up of De Aetna taken at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is where Neacademia and most other Aldines part ways – it deliberately draws its inspiration from Griffo’s post-Bembo typefaces; from the freshly invented italics used in 1501 octavo series, as well as from type used in Leoniceno’s De Epidemia of 1497 and books printed after 1502 by Gershom Soncino in Fano. Neacademia brings Griffo’s italics and italic capitals into its fold and harmonizes them with the romans, while staying true to the calligraphic style of Griffo’s Venetian contemporary, Giovannantonio Tagliente.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Lost &amp;amp; fount&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The admiration towards a historical typeface, however strong, is rarely in itself a good enough reason to make a revival of it. For such an idea to make sense, it should fit into a modern typographic environment, fill a need not currently served by any of the existing fonts, and express something that does not have a typographic expression yet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Neacademia’s historical sources are by no means original. The novelty lies in its approach to revivalism. At a time when mainstream typography shifts to digital media, it takes a step in the opposite direction, assisting the book-as-an-object community in its struggle to keep the art of making physical books alive. This relatively small group of retrogrades can hardly be considered a “market”, but they are very determined and capable of making things of exceptional beauty. In the not-so-recent past they had all tools of the trade at their disposal. Nowadays, hand-set type is disappearing at an alarming rate, with high-quality book paper and printing equipment following the same path. Thankfully, some losses are offset by technological advances; the arrival of relatively inexpensive photopolymer plates, which can be processed in small print shops, helped bring new life to letterpress printing. The process of typesetting can now be fully digital, and involve digital fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_photopolymer.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Neacademia on a photopolymer plate with the ink being applied.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Digital descendants of highly esteemed metal typefaces first made an appearance in the 1980s. The main concern of those involved in the process of digitization was first and foremost commercial. If you could make similar looking books to the ones deemed acceptable by readers at a much lower price, compromises in visual quality were justified. The original authors of the metal typefaces were mere spectators of that process, so simplifications of all sorts were commonplace. Shapes were copied over from letter to letter, curves got straightened up, inflections disappeared. There was also a feeling that metal fonts were crude results of inferior technology – with the new tools, everything can be cleaned up and harmonized. Little was thought of the fact that excessive harmonization (e.g. repetition of details) could hinder legibility, especially in combination with printing processes involving high-contrast inks, and bright, smooth paper. Only a handful of printing establishments entered the new era of photo- and then digital printing with a clear understanding of what made the books of the past such a pleasure to read.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_gasperau.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Neacademia in use: Someone somewhere by Dana Mills (designed by Andrew Steeves from Gaspereau Press) was awarded in the 32nd edition of The Alcuin Awards, Canada’s national competition for excellence in book design.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;A fantasy metal revival&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The point of Neacademia’s departure begins in 1998, when I first encountered ITC Founder’s Caslon by Justin Howes. Its appearance pointed to a whole new range of possibilities. Designing a digital type family with optical sizes had been possible since the days of Prof. Donald Knuth’s Metafont, but Howes’ Caslon demonstrated that it could be done in a way that is faithful to the punchcutter’s hand. The approach would produce enough variation on the page to give it a natural, man-made character. On the other hand, by that time, the “harmonization” movement was in full swing, every new font was “cleaner” than the previous one. When taken to the extreme, they looked as childish as a poem with perfect one-syllable rhymes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_itc-caslon.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; ITC Founder’s Caslon at different sizes.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since no punches or matrices had survived from the Renaissance, you had to imagine how they were made, and examine printed examples from that period carefully in order to produce a “fantasy metal revival”. Harvard college’s Haughton library hosts an extensive collection of Renaissance manuscripts for close inspection, Peter Burnhill’s Type Spaces could serve as an invaluable reference for printing methods of the time, and Giovanny Mardersteig’s &amp;amp; Charles Malin’s Griffo typeface, as well as Monotype Poliphilus provided some insight into what metal revivals may look like.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Hurry slowly&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The original plan for Neacademia envisaged six optical sizes, which later was adjusted to four, to keep the scope realistic and not to overtax the user. All styles should be suitably different, as required by the intended use, sticking to the basic set of roman capitals, small caps, lower case, italic capitals and lower case. A Cyrillic counterpart already saw the light of day, with a Greek version to follow eventually. In keeping with the initial idea of a “fantasy metal revival”, all optical sizes were designed separately, so they ended up looking quite different when magnified to the same size. The effect on the page is exactly opposite; when each typeface is set at, or close to its design size, they look more “the same” than if they had a common frame.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_optical.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Two different approaches to developing optical sizes in comparison – Neacademia (left) and Adobe Jenson (right).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea of making the glyphs look like they were traced from printed samples, with their wobbling contours and wart-like features, had been rejected. If the new typeface is designed to be used for letterpress printing, the physical processes of etching the photopolymer plate, inking it, and pressing a sheet of paper on it, would provide enough fine-grain variety to make any form of artificial irregularity unnecessary, as well as highly suspect from a philosophical standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Alternate shapes were however still considered an essential part of Neacademia’s character. Since each letter was created from scratch, there were no shared parts that were exactly identical, resulting in each letter having its own unique shape. Furthermore, the frequently-used letters, such as ‘e’ or ‘a’, also received several alternative variants which change depending on their surrounding context. This allows the letters to fit their context better, by creating ligature-like combinations, as well as reduce the need for kerning in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The actual styling of individual Neacademia variants exceed the needs of optical adjustment. The Small Text variant is simplified and rounded, with more effort spent on making shapes easily recognizable than on their detailing. The Text variant is closest to its historical typographical prototype, owing much to the punchcutter’s graver, as it worked its way through the steel, making short curves and leaving sharp details in tight corners. The Display variant is more “calligraphic”, clearly influenced by Tagliente’s hand and “constructed” initials of Luca Pacioli and his contemporaries, which, had Griffo to design a typeface to be used at 24 points and higher, would most likely serve as sources of inspiration. Unlike Text and Small Text that were ‘cut’, Display evokes a more “drawn” expression, imitating the effect of a variable-width pen on stems and curves. And finally, Subhead is a child of two worlds in that aspect, nestled between Display and Text, it takes cues from both approaches.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-development-of-Neacademia/Neacademia_styles.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; An overview of all styles of Neacademia.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Neacademia started out in 2009 as an investigation into the working methods of Francesco Griffo. Since then, I have been developing and releasing not more than one style per year. This is very much in the spirit with Aldus Manutius’ favourite saying: &amp;quot;Festina Lente&amp;quot; (hurry slowly). It allowed enough time for new ideas to find their way into the design to make the variants even more different than they would be if they had been all drawn at once.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-09-20T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/08/23/Introducing-the-new-licencing</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/08/23/Introducing-the-new-licencing"/>
    <title>Introducing our new pricing &amp; licencing</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Introducing-the-new-licencing/Introducing-the-new-licencing.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;A note on licencing fonts&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Licencing fonts is a two sided matter. Just like music, typefaces are an intellectual property – an immaterial commodity, that once created can be reproduced indefinitely and distributed at virtually no additional cost. What the customer is really paying for is the blood, sweat, and tears (and doughnuts) that went into its development.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For people licencing fonts, it is important that things go smoothly and the rules of the game are clear – no hidden costs, no constant monitoring of usage, in short: no legal squabbles. For designers, it is important that they will be compensated in relation to the extent their design is used. A foundry’s licencing structure and costs are the result of balancing these two interests.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With our new website two years ago, we have introduced (maybe as the first on the market?) bundled licences aimed towards our typical retail customers. Importantly, it made the licencing an integral part of the shopping experience. While well received, it also raised some questions. So a few months ago we went back to the drawing board to make it clearer, more compatible, simpler, and … more relaxed. Thanks to everyone who took part in our surveys and polls. You helped a lot.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;So what exactly changed?&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;We have eliminated the strange price tags that looked like charm pricing in some instances. We are not selling air fresheners after all.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;While individual fonts are slightly pricier, bundles are more heavily discounted, up to 40 % on selected families.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;No limits for PDF embedding or use in logos, no distinction between small- and large-scale projects. We were silly to do that.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;All of our licences (except Test licenses) now allow &lt;strong&gt;e-book embedding as a standard&lt;/strong&gt;. The distinction between printed and digital belongs to the 20th century. A book is a book is a book.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The Web licence is now web-only. You will need a Single or Studio licence if you want to use the fonts on desktop. It is significantly cheaper though. And! It is for an unlimited number of domains, and does not require any kind of tracking (we love and trust our customers). The only limitation is the total monthly pageviews.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;There is a new &lt;strong&gt;App licence&lt;/strong&gt;, finally! Intended for mobile and tablet apps. Up to three titles, unlimited extension packs and updates, any platform.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;There is a new &lt;strong&gt;Universal licence&lt;/strong&gt;. It covers installation of the fonts for up to 20 users, use on the web (the limit is 5 million pageviews/month), and in-app embedding for an unlimited number of apps.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;We discontinued the Publisher licence.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;If you previously purchased fonts from us:&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Studio and Freelancer licence owners will be transferred to the new, more generous Studio and Single licences respectively.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;If you purchased a Publisher licence you will continue to receive updates, and can use the fonts according to the old licence.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;If you purchased a Web licence your will continue to receive updates for the WOFF+EOT fonts, and can use the fonts according to the old licence. If you wish to switch to a combo of the new Single and Web licences instead, we can do that for you, for free. Just send us an email.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We hope that new and existing customers alike will appreciate the revised, and in our opinion, more transparent pricing and licencing.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-08-23T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/05/24/Arabic-calligraphic-styles</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/05/24/Arabic-calligraphic-styles"/>
    <title>A brief overview of the various Arabic calligraphic styles</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;There are many different calligraphic styles used for writing the Arabic script, styles that developed over the span of many years and in different regions. This article will explain the characteristics of the major styles and styles that were influential on future typographic developments, and give readers the ability to visually distinguish between them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The basic Arabic alphabet consists of 28 letters, and because these letters are all consonants, the alphabet is classified as an abjad. Abjads represent consonants, or consonants plus some vowels. However, Arabic is an impure Abjad; the long vowels are represented in the alphabet by the letters alif, yā and wāw (ا - ی - و), and the short vowels only exist in the form of diacritic marks that are usually absent from texts, as context largely helps to avoid the drawback of misreading a word.
Another important feature of the script is the lack of distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters. In both printed and written Arabic, words are constructed in a cursive style; this means that characters are written through the continuous movement of the pen, and dots are usually added in once a single word has been fully written. Additionally, the same letter can take on a different appearance, depending on where it appears in a given word. This is because in Arabic, letters have contextual forms, and can appear in initial, medial, final and isolated positions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_table.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The table shows how the rendering of characters is affected, depending on where they appear in a sequence. They can be divided into four groups; isolated, initial, medial and final forms. Most Arabic fonts rely on OpenType technology, since their shaping is contextual.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Other noteworthy features of the script include numerals being written from left to right despite words being written from right to left, the copious amount of dots used to characterize letters that share a basic form, and achieving justification by means of extending &lt;a name="kufi"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;certain letters (this is referred to as a kashida).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Kufi&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At first, localized variants of the Jazm script were used to record the Quran, and each of these scripts carried the name of the region they were created in – Makki from Mecca, Madani from Medina and Kufi, which ultimately became the general term used to describe this style, from Kufa &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote1" name="reference1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Features of Early Kufi include horizontal strokes that are either extremely elongated or very compact, the crescent shaped curve on the lower right side of the alif, and noticeably round characters that have extremely small counters. Towards the end of the seventh century, vowels were introduced into the text in the form of red dots placed above or below characters to show proper pronunciation &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote2" name="reference2"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_earlykufi.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Example of the Early Kufi style, used to write the Quran. Notice the small counters of characters such as feh and waw, the elongated kaf and the curved alif.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the tenth century, Persian calligraphers developed a new variation of Kufi called Eastern Kufi &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote3" name="reference3"&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. There are many noticeable similarities between this style and Early Kufi in the character shapes and geometric structure. However, when looking at Eastern Kufi and scripts such as Avestan and Pahlavi &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote4" name="reference4"&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, distinct influences of the national scripts can be observed. The contrast between the long ascenders and shorter slanted strokes, curved letterforms, strokes that are more slender than in Early Kufi, and the tendency to employ a slight slanting to the left when writing, are some of these characteristics. 
These features give the style an overall highly vertical and upright appearance, and a dynamic forward movement when reading. Eastern Kufi was used to transcribe the Quran for some time before it was replaced with the Naskh style, but continued to be used for decorative purposes such as chapter headings.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_easternkufi.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; (Above) The beginning of Vīdēvdād, a law book containing the rules for dealing with pollution and crime. It is one of the oldest existing Zoroastrian manuscripts, copied in 1323 in Nawsari, Gujarat, by the scribe Mihraban Kaykhusraw. The Avestan (Old Iranian) script is in red, and the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) is in black. (Below) 11th-Century Qur’an in Persin-style (Eastern) Kufic. When comparing the two, similarities in strokes and shapes can be seen in many places.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Around the same time as Eastern Kufi was being developed, its Western counterpart called the Maghribi Kufi was evolving. Maghribi (which translates to western) originated from the Western Islamic world of North Africa and South Spain, and was highly influential on the future scripts of North and West Africa, as well as Andalusia. Characteristics of this style includes descending strokes that have large bowls, sweeping curves that encircle the next few letters, flat vowel signs that are often added in with red ink, and the general use of uniform strokes with a toothpaste quality.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By the twelfth century, these three styles of Kufi were slowly replaced as the main style for transcribing the Quran and book calligraphy. Instead, they were used for ornamentation on objects such as coins, seals, pottery and on monuments, and many of the newer Kufi styles began to emphasize visual aesthetics over legibility.
Today this style is still widely used in design and for decorative purposes. It is also commonly referred to as the source of inspiration when describing very low-contrast typefaces that have become ubiquitous in recent years in attempts to harmonize Latin and Arabic. However, a comparison of these styles and Kufi calligraphy shows great dissimilarities in the letterforms and their proportions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_maqribi.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Example page of the Quran written in the Maghribi Kufi style.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Naskh&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Early Naskh style originated in the cities of Mecca and Medina around the seventh century. However, it was truly refined in the early tenth century through the endeavors of Ibn Muqlah &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote5" name="reference5"&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, who transformed it into an elegant cursive script. Naskh quickly became the preferred calligraphic style for manuscripts and transcribing the Quran; a replacement that was doubtless due to features like high legibility and the fact that it is quick to write. To this day, it is the most commonly used style in the publication of the Quran.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_naskh.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Example of the Naskh style in a hand written Quran. The Fatihah panel is signed by a certain ‘Alireza’ and is dated 1241 AH (1825 AD). Balance is obtained by equal distribution of flat and circular forms.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The harmonious proportions of Naskh render it extremely legible. This combined with the way in which most characters rest on a visible connecting middle stroke has appointed it as the style most adaptable to the limitations presented by metal. Today, most newspapers, publications and periodicals are printed with typefaces based on Naskh, making it the most widely used style for setting text in Arabic.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_nassim.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Nassim Arabic is based on the Naskh style. Justification is achieved through swashes, rather than flat elongated kashidas that can be observed in most other Arabic typefaces.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Thuluth&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Arabic, the word Thuluth translates to ‘one third’. There are different theories as to what this is referring to, such as the observation that one-third of each letter slopes, or that it relates to the pen size that is used to write this particular style. The most acceptable reason is most probably that of Ibn Muqlah himself, who has been quoted to say that in Thuluth, one-third of the letters are straight, and two-thirds, round &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote6" name="reference6"&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.
Thuluth is closely linked with religion and often finds its application in the decoration of mosques and writing holy names. Notable features of this style are the inclusion of vowel signs and ornamental frills that are used to beautify the script, and a combination of sharp, hair-thin out-strokes that curve slightly upward in a small loop. The letters are usually large but very compact, high ascenders are written with a slight tilt towards the left, and round shapes predominate the texture.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_thuluth.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The Thuluth style being used in the tile work of Yeni Cami (the New Mosque) in Istanbul, Turkey.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Ruq’ah&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;An invention of the Ottoman Empire Government offices in Istanbul, Ruq’ah was created by combining elements from two styles; Ta’liq and Dīwanī. Many similarities such as diagonal word structures and connecting strokes that were devised to increase the speed of writing can be seen between Ruq’ah and that of its parent styles. The main feature however, is the exclusion of elongations, decorations, or the need to lift the pen off paper. These attributes made Ruq’ah fast to write and efficient for the use of government scribes &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote7" name="reference7"&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Other characteristics include clipped letters composed of short, straight lines and simple curves, as well as its even lines of text. Another important and distinct feature is the connecting of the diacritical dots to the final and isolated letters in the form of short strokes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Arabic-calligraphic-styles/acs_ruqah.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The Hayat al-Qiddis Mar Afram al-Surani (The Life of Saint Ephrem the Syrian), an anonymous text translated from Syriac into Arabic by Butrus Rizq al-Andari in Lebanon (The School of the Monastery of Mar Yuhanna Marun), dated 17 January, 1895. Written in clear Ruq’ah style, in purplish ink.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These are only a few of the many calligraphic styles used to write the Arabic script, and while it is easy to detect the unique features of each, other styles are not so easily distinguishable. Sometimes it is only through details, like the size of the alif that styles visually differentiate. Today, calligraphy is mainly practiced as an art form, and even when looking at the most widely employed styles, there is a noticeable decline in use from the early 19th century, when printing technology appointed Naskh as the most adaptable variant. However, the importance of studying these various calligraphic styles is in the fact that some, (most notably Naskh, Maghribi, Ruq’ah and Kufi) were imitated in the typographic reproduction of the Arabic script, and the success of these types was dependent on how close they could get to replicating handwritten manuscripts. Calligraphic traditions like the relationship between stroke width and counter size, or the fitting of letters and words still remain relevant to the design of typefaces used in printing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Footnotes &amp;amp; further reading:&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="#reference1" name="footnote1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. Safadi, Yasin Hamid, &lt;em&gt;Islamic calligraphy&lt;/em&gt;, 1979.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference2" name="footnote2"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;. By the eighth century, these developed into the familiar short black diagonal strokes that are commonly used today. Baker, Colin F, &lt;em&gt;Qur‘an manuscripts: Calligraphy, Illumination, Design&lt;/em&gt;, 2007.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference3" name="footnote3"&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;. Schimmel, Annemarie, &lt;em&gt;Calligraphy and Islamic culture&lt;/em&gt;, 1984.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference4" name="footnote4"&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;. The scripts were used in Iran before the country adopted the Arabic script.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference5" name="footnote5"&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;. Abbott, Nabia, &lt;em&gt;Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, Vol. I&lt;/em&gt;, 1972.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference6" name="footnote6"&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;. Yūsofī, Gholam Hoseyn, &lt;em&gt;“Calligraphy” Encyclopedia Iranica, Vol. IV&lt;/em&gt;, 1990. http:iranicaonline.org/articles/calligraphy (state as of 5. 3. 2016.)&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference7" name="footnote7"&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;. Vilhjálmsson, Gunnar, &lt;em&gt;“Ruq’ah – the new style” The Recorder, Issue 1&lt;/em&gt;, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-05-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/05/17/A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/05/17/A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2"/>
    <title>A work in progress – Nassim 2.0</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On May 17, 2006, I was in the process of defining Arabic mark positions for &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; in a roundabout process involving a dummy FontLab MultipleMaster file, custom export scripts and Microsoft’s beloved Visual OpenType Layout Tool – VOLT. I was a Master’s student at the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading and in the final third of the practical programme, adding finishing (or so I thought) touches to the regular design, and completing the family’s scope. Ten years on, Nassim has established itself as a key exponent of a new generation of Arabic typeface design, a feat I would not have dreamed of back in my student days. Today, I am excited to announce the release of an updated and improved version of the typeface, Nassim 2.0. The new version of Nassim is a major update, reflecting its use, technical changes and my learning.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2/Nassim_banner.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Extended language support, new features, a Medium weight, and a new Italic companion.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Even though Nassim won several prestigious awards, I was not eager to publish it immediately. As I studied Arabic in Syria in 2007, I pursued other projects and left the type to rest. Not only did it provide me with some distance, refreshing my critical eye, but also allowed my appreciation of Arabic type forms to mature further. In 2008 an opportunity arose to reconsider the design and concept of Nassim, as DecoType and WinSoft sought new designs for their jointly developed Tasmeem software. I had the interesting and sometimes challenging task to revise parts of the Arabic design to take advantage of DecoType’s Arabic Calligraphic Engine (ACE), an approach to Arabic type with fundamentally different concepts to those found in the OpenType world. For example, ligatures are unnecessary in ACE fonts, as the changing letterforms of different contexts are built dynamically from component parts – a more elegant and efficient approach to the typographic rendering of the Arabic script. Nassim was released with Tasmeem in the Middle Eastern version of Adobe InDesign extending the original design with numerous features and language support.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;By 2010, technological changes and an entirely new area of typography opened up with the advent of web fonts. Coincidentally, Nassim became a protagonist in its early days, as it was selected by the BBC World Service for its Arabic-script news websites. In the process of adapting it to the client’s specific requirements – technical for screen rendering and stylistic for culturally distinct audiences – Nassim evolved further. Drawing from the approach I had learnt in the collaboration with DecoType, I rendered ligatures as contextual alternates, to reduce the number of glyphs needed, and thus the size of the fonts. Working with the teams of the BBC’s language services – Arabic, Persian, Pashto and Urdu – provided insights into the various cultural typographic preferences, contributing to the continued improvements of the design. This tailoring to specific audiences worked so well, that it also resulted in a rampant pirating of the Persian BBC Nassim version for websites in Iran. The following year, the retail version of Nassim was released as an OpenType font with Rosetta Type Foundry. It was based on the fonts I had developed for the four BBC language services, incorporating their core, localised glyph sets.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2/Nassim_BBC.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Nassim in use for the BBC World Service.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the meantime I had begun my PhD research in Reading and embarked on other projects, leaving little time for further extensions of my retail type. But ideas for Nassim’s continuous development were aplenty, and just waiting for the right opportunity – which did not take long to present itself. In 2012 I became involved in the the Murty Classical Library project, published by Harvard University Press and designed by Rathna Ramanathan. My contribution consisted in consultation and design of the Arabic script typography of the series (in Persian, Sindhi and Urdu languages), and the typesetting of the first volumes. Rathna and Fiona Ross – consultant and designer of the Indian typefaces – suggested to include Nassim in our tests. Initially I was hesitant – I did not see the design as a particularly literary type – but agreed to see how it suited the overall concept and how it sat with the types for the Indian and Latin scripts. Against my preconceived idea, Nassim actually worked well in the approach to the design of the series typography. Rathna wanted the books to be accessible and not to have an academic air, so she favoured contemporary, low contrast typefaces. Having part of the series printed in India in unpredictable conditions also required a certain robustness. Eventually, we all agreed that Nassim worked best, when paired with the choice for the English texts – Henrik Kubel’s Antwerp.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2/Nassim_Murty.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Detail of Nassim in the Murty Classical Library of India series.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So here was the occasion to extend the typeface further – in terms of language support as well as in terms of typographic features. Swash characters were high on my list, since the books were going to be justified and I wanted to have a better means of justification than flat Kashidas. Not only do swashes look better and make the text more lively, they are also a more authentic tool than the typewriter-style elongation.
Another element that I wanted, were drawn Arabic superior figures. I had already designed superiors that matched DecoType’s Naskh in my work for Brill – a key feature for scholarly typography – but not for my own Nassim. The Murty series was going to keep the academic apparatus to a minimum, yet there were going to be footnotes, and they should look right. And when you have superiors, it makes of course sense to also provide Arabic script fractions. My guess is that probably neither feature is found in any other current Arabic typeface.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Among the more obvious additions were numerous contextual alternates (instead of ligatures), for a selection of letter combinations, as well as stylistic variants for a few specific letters. While most retail fonts provide their ligatures and other features only for Arabic (and sometimes Persian) language support, it was a concern for me to make sure that the same functionality was offered for all languages the fonts support, so they still ended up with a fair few glyphs. Among the more subtle, but technically challenging features are the so-called raised teeth glyphs, specialised typeforms that help to increase the distinctiveness of letters where the repetition of similar shapes can lead to ambiguity. Here, the correct letter patterns had to be identified, and then translated into OpenType code that would produce the right results. After a lengthy process of trial and error, I hope to have arrived at a satisfying implementation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2/Nassim_teeth.gif' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Raised teeth alternates increase the distinctiveness of letters and improve legibility.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Since 2014, a Nassim beta version that incorporates these improvements has been in use for the Murty Library for the first three volumes of the Persian epic Akbarnama, the history of Akbar. But when doing an update, it is hard to stop, and thus I kept adding elements and features to the family that went beyond the immediate needs of this series.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Whereas many of the above features are deeply rooted in Islamic manuscript culture, I also added some more unconventional ideas to the design. Drawing on my experiences with the setting of substantial quantities of text, I came to the conclusion, that ranging figures would be an excellent feature that Arabic typography could derive from the Latin script tradition. As the figures are of Indian origin, their proportions are not quite in sync with the letters of the Arabic abjad which use the vertical dimension very differently. As no figure descends below the baseline, and all but one have the full height of the Alif, they tend to look too big and are exceedingly prominent in a block of text. The Arabic figures that found their way into the Latin script remain – despite their far-reaching adaptation – difficult to blend in with the shape repertoire that derives from the Carolingian Minuscule and the Roman Capitals. But since numerals travelled wide and far and were adopted for these fundamentally different writing systems, it only seemed fitting to make the cultural influence go full-circle, and bring ranging figures to Arabic typography. After Aisha, Nassim is thus the second Arabic typeface to feature them, and I hope that more are going to follow.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On the level of language support, the typesetting for Harvard University Press called only for Sindhi (Urdu and Pashto had already been designed for the BBC), but I decided to extend the coverage to Maghrebi orthographies, Malay in the Jawi script, and Uyghur. In this glyphset enlargement, care was taken to enable all typographic features for all supported languages.
Although the Murty series did not employ Nassim for the English texts, this update provided the opportunity to revise also the Latin part of the family. Here, other typographic tools like small capitals with matching figures, the typical four figure sets, superiors, fractions and some other features were added. We finally used the occasion to release the Italic companion of Nassim. Although conceived as part of the original design, the Italics had never been published because of the focus on the Arabic. Now, the revised and updated design is in line with the upright fonts’ glyphset, bringing the family to a new level of completeness.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-A-work-in-progress-Nassim-v2/Nassim_italics.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The Italic allows Nassim to be employed for a wide range of applications.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Ten years of experience, research and use in a range of diverse applications have thus shaped and influenced the evolution of Nassim. Today, the family is better, more complete than ever, and available for licensing. Existing users have a heavily discounted upgrade option, that I would recommend wholeheartedly. Many thanks to all the users who have given their trust to Nassim for their inspiring work, I am looking forward to seeing more of it in the future.&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-05-17T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/04/26/Introducing-Gitan</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/04/26/Introducing-Gitan"/>
    <title>Introducing Gitan</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Gitan"&gt;Gitan&lt;/a&gt; is Florian Runge’s debut release – a flared sans serif, reminiscent of engraving and stone carving. Sturdy and informal, the design features a moderate contrast with distinct terminals.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea of a raw typeface was explored by Rudolf Koch and Berthold Wolpe, as early as the 1920s. Experiments with shapes that negotiate boundaries between the exactness of mechanical production and the imperfection of human condition led to the development of designs like Neuland and the ubiquitous Albertus. Nonetheless, they were limited to display typography, namely book jackets, and are not suitable for continuous reading.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gitan takes expressive forms derived from chiseling and engraving and places them comfortably on the crossroads of editorial and package design. A contemporary typeface with a wide range of applications, that doesn’t fall into the anachronistic traps, set by similar genres.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The genre-less-ness turned out to be the ultimate design challenge. Balancing functionality and expression leads to questions of categorization. Is it really a serif or a sans? Is it a display or text typeface? Strong features like the cuneiform head serif on characters like &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;m&lt;/em&gt;, or the deeply cut wedge terminals on &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt; give Gitan a sculptural appeal – a quality that is desired for all things display. A rhythmic pattern and a classic construction make it sparkle in text. You will have to decide, we clearly could not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gitan’s versatility is underpinned by a huge typographic repertoire. Apart from supporting over 120 languages, the fonts contain small caps, six sets of numerals, including case-sensitive figures, and a vast array of Open-Type features.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-The-Journey-Of-Sherpa-Sans/SherpaSans-previews_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-04-26T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/03/16/Yrsa-Rasa-released</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/03/16/Yrsa-Rasa-released"/>
    <title>Yrsa &amp; Rasa released</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Yrsa and Rasa are open-source type families published by &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com"&gt;Rosetta&lt;/a&gt; with generous financial support from Google. The fonts support over 92 languages in Latin script and 2 languages in Gujarati script. The family currently has 5 weights. They were designed and produced by Anna Giedryś and me and they are now released and ready for download.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I wrote two articles about the project development where we discussed what we &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/09/01/Introducing-Yrsa"&gt;meant by remixing&lt;/a&gt; and how we approached &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/01/20/Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin"&gt;harmonization of two different scripts&lt;/a&gt; such as Latin and Gujarati. Today, as we release the fonts out into the wild I will explain what we learned from this six-month-long exercise.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But first, we need to clarify who did what. Anna was the main draughtswoman. I was merely a supervisor, occasional stern critic, main revisionist of the Gujarati, and a coder. Briefly put, if there is anything to like, it is Anna’s. If there is anything wrong, it is mine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Introducing-Yrsa/Yrsa-corrections_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Design as redesign&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Is it useful to start from an existing design? We believed it would be faster to change Merriweather than draw a new design from scratch. And it was faster, but not as much as we expected. We wanted to change more than we had originally planned. As we worked, we found that the version of Merriweather we started from had some inconsistencies: stems with different thicknesses, serifs that were a bit different from each other in unexpected ways*, and some shapes that we simply would have done differently.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Some of these were deliberate design decisions to make the texture more lively. Others were differences of opinion. Some small, some large (we hereby disapprove of Merriweather’s sterling symbol). A lot of the corrections Anna felt needed to be done, were beyond what initially seemed like a straightforward restyling. In contrast, converting Skolar Gujarati to Rasa was much more effortless. Only the bold weight required more creativity, when harmonising with Yrsa’s contrast and weight (see our previous post for details). A matter of less different opinions?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Design as testing&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, and on a more positive note, Anna got to design with real texts in no time. When starting from scratch, type designers typically have a handful of letters which cannot provide real-life testing environment. Even a–z is insufficient, as capitals and punctuation are missing. This setup makes going from the big picture of typography and layout to the micro-level of type design really tricky. One might easily miss the intended niche for their fonts. Imagine digging a tunnel from both sides of a hill, but without navigation. Fortunately, in our case we had a complete set of characters to test and proportions we were fairly happy with. This allowed us to make critical judgements about what works and what does not, and make informed design decisions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Gujarati that applies even more. Seeing the whole, large character set and how it is set up provides a comfortable safety hammock.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Design as dialogue&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is enlightening to have a conversation among curves and forms with a fellow type designer and uncover their thoughts and misdemeanours in great detail. But it should be a dialogue, not just listening or parroting. There is a point where an opinion ought to be voiced and that can take some energy. We previously stated that every design is redesign, now we can safely say that with an opinion of one’s own, every redesign quickly turns into design.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Design as service&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now, take the fonts and make something nice with them! Every font remains incomplete until someone uses it. We both hope you will like to use them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yrsa &amp;amp; Rasa are released under the Open Font Licence and free to use. They are available from the &lt;a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Yrsa"&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Rasa"&gt;Fonts&lt;/a&gt; directory and &lt;a href="https://typekit.com/fonts/yrsa"&gt;Adobe Typekit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Their main purpose is continuous reading on the web (think Medium), British visual style (now with a decent looking sterling symbol), Gujarati visual style (several kinds of rupee symbols which change, depending on their appearance within Latin or Gujarati text), or printed matter (think books). Extra care was taken to make all the supported European languages shine – not just English, but also Polish, Dutch, Czech, Catalan, Slovenian, Romanian, and others. The are a few ligatures, capital German ß, and tabular figures for both Latin as well as Gujarati.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://github.rosettatype.com/yrsa-rasa/" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Download the fonts from Y &amp;amp; R microsite&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;FYI, we would love to add italics at some point, so if you want to stay in the loop for future extensions, &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/contact"&gt;subscribe to our newsletter&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href="http://github.com/rosettatype/yrsa-rasa"&gt;follow/star the repo on GitHub&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* I am not referring to classic type design tricks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Yrsa-Rasa-released/Yrsa-Rasa-previews_1_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Yrsa-Rasa-released/Yrsa-Rasa-previews_2_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-03-16T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/02/02/Skolar-Sans-Pan-European</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/02/02/Skolar-Sans-Pan-European"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans Pan-European</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;h3&gt;Expanding the design space&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Skolar Sans is Rosetta’s biggest type system so far, and as such, a good study in a design expansion. The family consists of 72 styles and addresses the needs of modern responsive design. It is able to adapt to a wide range of devices and formats, from the biggest desktop screen to the smallest printed booklet. Last year, Sláva Jevčinová and me started extending Skolar Sans to full pan-European standard so it would cover not just Latin but also Greek and Cyrillic scripts. After going from serif to sans, and to a great number of widths, weights, and styles, there was still room for another parameter – language.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Visit the Skolar Sans microsite »&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Design-parameters_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;A truly European project&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The advanced language support was commissioned by &lt;a href="http://www.rferl.mobi"&gt;Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty&lt;/a&gt; with the goal to carry their content through all of their newly developed websites (together with our Skolar PE and Merriweather by Eben Sorkin). The project, one of very few to support this many languages on the same CMS platform, was headed by Kim Conger, Design Director at RFE/RL and Karel Knop, who brought it to life in his role as the Senior Designer. The platform, &lt;a href="http://www.pangea-cms.com"&gt;Pangea&lt;/a&gt;, supports RFE/RL websites as well as Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting and Cuban Broadcasting. Every day, 95 responsive sites are accessed by 1.3 million users (on average) from 200 countries and territories. RFE/RL has launched the mobile and tablet versions (see &lt;a href="http://www.ozodi.mobi"&gt;Radio Ozodi&lt;/a&gt; in Tajik for example) and yesterday they started rolling out the desktop versions as well (see &lt;a href="http://www.evropaelire.org/"&gt;Radio Evropa e Lirë&lt;/a&gt; in Albanian for example).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Ozodi-web.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The plans to include more scripts in Skolar Sans existed before but sometimes it takes a pressing need and a visionary client to get things going. We were happy to work with Irene Vlachou and Maxim Zhukov on this project, assisting us with Greek and Cyrillic, respectively. The resulting linguistic scope, together with the number of styles, is largely unprecedented and we would not have achieved this quality without our consultants.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Although we constantly strive to release large multilingual projects, putting this much work and effort into a single product presents a challenge for a small business like us, as great risk comes with designing for an unpredictable market. The fact that additional language and script support is now increasingly requested by clients, might tell us something about the changing demands in delivering content today. Consequently, briefs like this allow us to do our work in the best possible environment.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Preview_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;The unwritten laws of language extension&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Extending Skolar Sans to include Cyrillic and Greek meant adding extra 1000 glyphs to each font. The Cyrillic supports many Slavic and Asian languages, but also comes equipped with language-sensitive character variants for Macedonian, Serbian, and Bulgarian. The Greek offers support for monotonic as well as polytonic orthography. Monotonic Greek is used in everyday communication and is the successor of polytonic Greek, which is necessary for academic publications and a variety of conservative texts. Altogether, the type system will effortlessly provide support for at least 140 languages. We also added 300 more glyphs that are used in linguistics and for various Latin transliterations of Asian scripts (e.g. Chinese, Indian languages including Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew). That brings Skolar Sans PE on a par with our popular text type family Skolar PE, which has only a slightly bigger glyph repertoire which we hope to match eventually.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Bulgarian-Serbian-Cyrillic_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparison of the default, International Cyrillic and Bulgarian letterforms in uprights (top, Bulgarian in Green) and default and Serbian/Macedonian forms in uprights and italics (bottom, Serbo-macedonian in Green)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;A multiverse design approach&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A type system is designed to function in a universal way, although in this case the design itself cannot follow a single recipe. Like with culture, what works for the Latin might not be the best solution for other scripts. The cursive Greek is a good example for that. Greek has a very fluid motion, and is not as rigid as Latin or Cyrillic. Hence, the distinction between upright and italic styles would not be as strong if they followed the same construction, so we decided to use more of the significantly different forms for the cursive Greek and introduce various shape subtleties to distinguish the two. That way, the cursive maintains similar degree of typographic versatility as Latin and Cyrillic, while following a different design approach.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Italics-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparison of Latin and Greek and their corresponding italics. Marked green are characters that change their construction beyond mere sloping.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Font size matters&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you care about your users’ experience, you care about your website performance. And with RFE/RL’s mission to broadcast to millions of users in so many countries with slow or censored internet this becomes even more of an issue. Keeping the loading speed high (and the size of the websites small) sets a strict limit on fonts. Rosetta’s designers were facing a double challenge: supporting a large number of languages in three different scripts that are bound to result in large fonts, while reducing the size of those fonts drastically, so that they can be used on the web. In short, we went from around 268KB fonts to 33–40KB subsetted webfonts, and it was not very easy. Elaborating on the nitty-gritty would require another article.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Skolar Sans in Numbers&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;171 396 glyphs, 3600+ hours of drawing and engineering, 2370–2391 glyphs per font, 143+ languages covered, 72 styles, 10 months development time, sanity lost and recovered: more than three times, all of that with Daft Punk’s Tron Legacy soundtrack on repeat with &lt;a href="https://soundcloud.com/bordelloaparigi/flemming-dalum-hot-girls-of"&gt;Stella Carnacina and Daniela Poggi&lt;/a&gt; to lift up the spirits on a particularly rainy English day.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Having been born in communist Czechoslovakia where RFE was one of the beacons of uncensored news, it has been real honour to contribute back to RFE/RL with our fonts. And now that they are widely available we hope they will serve our retail customers equally well.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Glyphs-and-languages_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Commits_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Skolar-Sans-Pan-European/Email-estimates_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2016-02-02T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/01/20/Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/01/20/Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin"/>
    <title>Harmonizing Rasa Gujarati and Yrsa Latin</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This is the second post in a series about our open-source project Yrsa/Rasa – a contemporary typeface for continuous text setting in Latin and Gujarati, for both web and print designed by Anna Giedryś and me. The project is subsidised by Google and you can follow the ongoing development on &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.github.io"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. You can also get in touch via &lt;a href="mailto:ask@rosettatype.com"&gt;email&lt;/a&gt; if you want to give the finished Latin part a test drive before all scripts are officially released in February.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let me elaborate on the naming first. Yrsa is used for Latin and any other European script, Rasa is for Gujarati and any other Indic script. The original reason for this change was a technical requirement of the Google Fonts system, but it is also quite nice that the Indic fonts get an Indic name while the Latin fonts keep the European moniker.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In this article, I would like to write a little bit about the challenges of peaceful coexistence between Latin and Gujarati in one typographic environment. What does it mean and can type designers control this kind of coexistence at all? I think not, certainly not to the full extent. But they can prepare tools, i.e., multi-script fonts, which would be convenient for typographers: easy-to-use fonts with predictable and practical defaults. In this regard, an &lt;em&gt;equal importance&lt;/em&gt; of each script in multi-script fonts is of essence. This allows typographers to control the relationship between the scripts well. They might, of course, eventually decide to emphasize one of the scripts depending on the content and genre they are designing for.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When it comes to a harmonization strategy, there is a scale that ranges from no changes at all to radical uniformity. “Harmony“, “uniformity”, and “matchmaking” are some of the words people would use to refer to various points on this spectrum. Rosetta is subscribed to the concept of &lt;em&gt;loose harmonization&lt;/em&gt; which crudely put means: make scripts look equally important, harmonize what you can, and don’t touch the rest. Of course the tricky bit is knowing what you can or cannot change. It takes experience with each script to recognize the areas that can share a similar treatment. It depends on a particular genre of documents one is designing for. To make it even more complex, there are also cultural differences to consider. Different shapes have different connotations in different environments. What looks modern in Latin, may look dated in Gujarati etc. The only recommendation for navigating through this minefield is intensive exposure to corresponding scripts and study of their history and technological developments. Alternatively, a knowledgeable consultant might be of help.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned in the &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/09/01/Introducing-Yrsa"&gt;previous post&lt;/a&gt; the Gujarati is based closely on Skolar Gujarati, so there is no point in explaining how we draw each and every character. They were drafted already when we started. We &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; had to make sure the Latin and Gujarati are equally important typographically and that both have a natural style that resonates well with the other.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin/Latin-Gujarati-proportion-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparison of potential Latin and Gujarati proportions in a font: the first line shows the Gujarati too small when aligned with the Latin x-height, the second line shows the Gujarati too big when aligned with the Latin cap-height, and the last line shows the proportions we used, with both scripts equally important.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Specifically, we had to make sure the relative scaling and weights of each script was right. Aligning the Gujarati to the proportional grid of the Latin or vice versa would clearly produce unequal sizing (see the figure above). One script appearing smaller than the other would be an issue of course. Therefore, their relative sizes have been based on comfortable reading experience and typical size expectations of each script.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin/Latin-Gujarati-weight-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparison of weight between the two scripts: the first line shows the Gujarati too light compared to the Latin, in the second line the Gujarati is too dark. The third line shows harmonized weight.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Similarly for the weight, an overly bold typeface will look more important. Once the size was set, Anna corrected the weight of the Gujarati to match with the Latin (see the figure above). At the same time, in order to bring the two styles closer together, she increased the contrast between thick and thin bits in the Gujarati (see number 5 in the last figure). It is important to note that the stress in Indic scripts goes in the opposite direction to that of Latin (see the figure below) and increasing contrast or boldening has to respect this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin/Latin-Gujarati-stress-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Stress axis in Latin is transitional with a variety of angles while Gujarati maintains the same angle.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yrsa Latin is a transitional design, so some letters have oblique and some have vertical stress. This is not very common in Gujarati which usually follows a fairly consistent oblique angle. Transitional contrast would be alien to this script, so we decided to stick with a solution typical to Gujarati. In the end, we are designing a typeface for continuous reading, not an experimental display type family.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Harmonizing-Rasa-Gujarati-and-Yrsa-Latin/Skolar-Gujarati-Rasa-Gujarati-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Smaller stylistic changes between Skolar Gujarati (top) and Rasa Gujarati (bottom)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After the important bits were out of the way, we could play with stylistic details. These might not matter much in small sizes on screen, but we wanted the fonts to look great even in print and in headlines.  Here are some of the smaller stylistic changes (see the figure above): the softer endings of Skolar were removed (1), the typical Gujarati foot (aka flick or vanaak) has changed (2) as well as the short in-strokes in ‘pa’ and ‘ma’, both are simpler and relate better to the other endings (3), and the knots are more triangular if ever so slightly (4).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To conclude, one needs to know very well how to shape a script to make it resonate with another. When done wrong, it creates something that looks harmonised to a Latin-script designer, but comes across as a clunky pastiche to Gujarati readers (and vice versa!). Let’s hope, we are on the right track.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2016-01-20T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2016/01/11/Rosetta-turns-five</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2016/01/11/Rosetta-turns-five"/>
    <title>Rosetta turns five</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;It is five years today since we started Rosetta and I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our supporters, the moral ones who encouraged us with their kind words and of course our loyal customers who have been buying every font we release. We do not take that for granted!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In these five years, we have been working with over 16 designers to produce their fonts for over ten different world scripts. Broken down by scripts, we released an impressive number of 21 type families for retail and there is more to come. Add some exciting custom work we have done, but cannot talk about, and two open-source projects which you can see on &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.github.io"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt;. That is not too bad at all.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;But it was never about churning out fonts. Although we refer to Rosetta as a publisher, we think of it as a platform. The notion is tied with a sense of design community and expanding knowledge. Our designers get extensive support in sometimes endless, and almost always painful, iterations that lead to a release of their typeface. And that typeface remains their property! The fonts are almost exclusively produced in-house and there are easier things than engineering complex Asian scripts. This way, slowly and carefully, an expertise has been developed, both ours and that of the associated designers. Thanks to that we can manage major custom projects together, and teach others. It is these largely unseen operations and explorations, expanding our knowledge base, what becomes the most rewarding in the end. And it is a great honour to see this recognized in the wider type community.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2016-Rosetta-turns-five/Rosetta-turns-five_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Some of the people of Rosetta (left to right, only those facing the camera): Anna Giedryś, Sláva Jevčinová, Vaibhav Singh, Titus Nemeth, David Březina&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href="https://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/201306.html"&gt;interview with Titus, Vaibhav, and me&lt;/a&gt; for MyFonts in 2013, Jan Middendorp asked us a very simple and obvious question:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Rosetta collection comprises fonts for Arabic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Gujarati and of course the Latin script. Is there a viable market for each of those scripts — at least enough to earn back costs — or are some of your choices purely idealistic?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The question took me by surprise. Oddly enough, I have never seriously thought of viability and markets. Business plan, what is that?! I just hoped it will work out somehow!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Of course, I had a very good idea of what we &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be doing. The idea of a digital foundry focused on more than Latin fonts was with me since I became interested in Indic scripts (Fiona Ross and Jo de Baerdemaeker shall be forever blamed for sparking that interest). We mused about it with friends – namely with Rob who runs the one-and-only &lt;a href="http://motaitalic.com"&gt;Mota Italic&lt;/a&gt; from India now and &lt;a href="http://www.typojo.com"&gt;Jo&lt;/a&gt; first-class researcher into Tibetan and Mongolian, and &lt;a href="http://uk.linkedin.com/in/fermello78/"&gt;Fernando&lt;/a&gt;, who works for FontSmith during the day, but is also an excellent designer of Tamil and Malayalam fonts. And I should not forget Veronika and José from &lt;a href="http://type-together.com"&gt;Type Together&lt;/a&gt; who helped starting the foundry and are now pursuing their own non-European fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea was to have a place where we could release our work in the highest standard we could achieve, where it would be well presented with as little skewed marketing as possible, where no idiotic managers would take advantage of our labour of love, and where informed people would hold the steering wheel. Or in other words, where producing new fonts for typographically underserved languages was not a checkbox to be ticked, a means to a higher stock value, or a cheesy charitable mission, but a solid work and passion in the first place. No objection to making money along the way, of course.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To what extent we managed to do that is up to others to judge. Back in 2013, in the interview, I replied to Jan honestly. I simply did not know what else to say:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our choices are always idealistic. And sometimes it does feel we arrived too early for a party, but that’s part of the game, isn’t it?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And Jan &lt;a href="https://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/201306.html"&gt;generously concluded&lt;/a&gt; the whole interview and my systematic naivety in particular.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, looking at it now, when we have much better idea of what we want and where we are going, I think I cannot do better than just stick with the answer. In the next five years we hope to learn a bit more, share a bit more, and keep arriving early for world-script parties.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please, do let us know if you have any suggestions as of what party that should be and what music shall be played.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2016-01-11T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/11/25/Holiday-giveaway</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/11/25/Holiday-giveaway"/>
    <title>Holiday giveaway</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;At Rosetta we are not exclusively subscribed to just one spiritual concept, but as the festive season is approaching we would like to continue our tradition and share some of our nicely designed material gifts with you.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Holiday-giveaway/Holiday-giveaway.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We will give away &lt;strong&gt;two pieces of merchandise of your choice&lt;/strong&gt; with every standard font license purchased before December 25th. You can keep them both or share them with a loved one, and if they live far away, just let us know and we’ll arrange separate shipments. Once you make the order, we will be in touch via email to settle the details.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;btw. you can win a set of Nassim and Huronia posters, one of the last copies of the Specimen of text typefaces, and our sketchbook specimen every week if you share this promo on Twitter, Facebook or from our newly launched Instagram page. Just click one of the buttons below. Make sure that you use the hashtag &lt;strong&gt;#rsttgoodies&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;div class="socialMediaLinks"&gt;
&lt;a href="https://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Frosettatype.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F11%2F25%2FHoliday-giveaway&amp;text=Happy%20typographic%20holidays!%20Get%20free%20merchandise%20with%20any%20font%20order%20from%20%40rosettatype%0A%20%23rsttgoodies" class="twitter button"&gt;Share on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;   
&lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Frosettatype.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F11%2F25%2FHoliday-giveaway" class="facebook button"&gt;Share on Facebook&lt;/a&gt;   
&lt;a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/-ga_IAwiZA/?taken-by=rosettatypefoundry" class="button"&gt;Share on Instagram&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;br&gt;
&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Rules&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The competion starts on Wednesday, November 25th and ends Friday, December 25th 2015. Eligible to enter is everyone who is a person (I’m looking at you twitter bots). Shares on the above mentioned platforms enter the competition, winners will be picked and notified each Wednesday and the last week on Friday.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Holiday-giveaway/Holiday-giveaway_merchandise.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-11-25T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/10/07/Clone-Rounded</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/10/07/Clone-Rounded"/>
    <title>Clone Rounded</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Clone is a type family by Lasko Dzurovski from Macedonia. The lovechild of cyber-culture and genetic font modification takes inspiration from coding, technology and architecture. A quasi-monospaced typeface that gives a nod to the quirkiness of engineered fonts without sacrificing a natural reading experience. Biomechanical future meets CAD blueprints. The first generation of Clone has rounded forms, the next one is already in the making. Stay tuned.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Clone is currently offered in two versions: Clone Latin and Clone PE. &lt;strong&gt;Discounted presale of Clone PE&lt;/strong&gt; supports Latin and Cyrillic only, with the Greek coming soon as a free update. All fonts include a healthy dose of typographic extras!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/Clone" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Visit the Clone microsite »&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Clone-Rounded/Clone_previews_1_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Clone-Rounded/Clone_previews_2_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-10-07T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/09/01/Introducing-Yrsa</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/09/01/Introducing-Yrsa"/>
    <title>Introducing Yrsa</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Yrsa is an open-source/libre project we have just started with generous financial support from Google Fonts. The typeface is going to support some 92+2 languages in Latin and Gujarati scripts and will be freely available from the Google Fonts directory, once it is ready. Design and production are done in-house at Rosetta, by Anna Giedryś and me (David Březina).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Introducing-Yrsa/Yrsa-corrections_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What makes Yrsa different is the design approach. It is a deliberate experiment in remixing existing typefaces to produce a new one. As such, we find it fascinating and… honest.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Let me explain what I mean by that. It is not uncommon in our profession to use previous typefaces as a starting point for something new. Stanley Morison took Monotype’s Plantin as the basis for Times New Roman (1986), Gerard Unger speaks openly of reusing drawings of his former designs, and I suspect there are many others. And it does make sense. Type design is a time consuming activity and there is no need to reinvent the wheel over and over again. However, using someone else’s outlines is not a concept that appeals to everyone. Besides legal issues, personal integrity and the strive for originality seem to be the most common concerns. But maybe it is not all black and white.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Gerrit Noordzij (1991) points out that “writing is a convention. […] unconventional writing is no writing at all.” This also applies to fonts. In order to decode a message set in a particular typeface, the letters need to resemble the ones we already know, either from handwriting or from existing typefaces. In this sense every typeface is a revival. It cannot not be. Every type designer knows that, most have probably encountered it, yet very few seem to acknowledge that in their work. Would it affect anyone’s personal integrity if the sources of inspiration were more discernible? Is it possible to do that at all? Would such a typeface be perceived as less original by the customers? Would it reduce the sales? I do not know. What I know is that the design process is too often portrayed as if it was plucked out of thin air. It was not.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, this is not a manifesto for plagiarism. A truly creative person will always find their own voice, sufficiently distanced from everyone else&amp;#39;s. It is a matter of common decency to not benefit from other people&amp;#39;s work without their consent. Regardless if this is permitted by law or if it is an improvement of the corresponding work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In his excellent article, Jan Michl elaborates on this issue and suggests that we should try to &lt;a href="http://janmichl.com/eng.redesign.html"&gt;see design as redesign&lt;/a&gt;. I could not agree more. Yrsa is an opportunity to play with that idea in practise. It is a redesign of contemporary typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Latin part of Yrsa will be based on &lt;a href="http://sorkintype.com/fonts.html#mw"&gt;Merriweather&lt;/a&gt; by Eben Sorkin. It has been released under &lt;a href="http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&amp;amp;id=OFL"&gt;SIL Open Font License&lt;/a&gt; which allows us to modify and release the design under a new name. The Gujarati will be based on my own &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar#gujarati"&gt;Skolar Gujarati&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Introducing-Yrsa/Merriweather-Yrsa-comparison_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The illustration shows Merriweather (top) compared to an initial sketch of Yrsa (bottom). The ascenders will be taller (1), the serifs will be bracketed (2 &amp;amp; 5), the head serifs will be less dominant while the outstroke in the ‘u’ (and consequently in the ‘a’) will become more prominent (2). We will also make the terminal in the ‘r’ a bit stronger (4) and simplify the ‘j’ (3). And finally, the counters will be more squarish with a bit ‘less dynamic’ modulation (6).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our hope is that we will not step on anyone’s toes, i.e. into the uncomfortably immediate vicinity of other designs, while redesigning from Merriweather. We are aware of typefaces with a similar spirit (e.g. Milo Serif or Guardian Egyptian) and are making sure we keep a respectful distance. This is less of a problem with Gujarati where the stylistic space is much less populated.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Wish us luck. That is it for now. You can find the project on &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.github.io"&gt;GitHub&lt;/a&gt; already.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We intend to write a little series to document the progress. In the next article, we will present the Gujarati sketches together with some considerations regarding the harmonization of both scripts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Michl, Jan. 2002. On Seeing Design as Redesign : An Exploration of a Neglected Problem in Design Education. &lt;a href="http://janmichl.com/eng.redesign.html"&gt;http://janmichl.com/eng.redesign.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Noordzij, Gerrit. 1991. “The Shape of the Stroke.” In Raster Imaging and Digital Typography II, edited by Jacques André and Robert A Morris, 34–37. Cambridge University Press.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Tracy, Walter. 1986. Letters of Credit : A View of Type Design. Boston: D.R. Godine.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-09-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/05/05/Nepal-earthquake-response</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/05/05/Nepal-earthquake-response"/>
    <title>Nepal earthquake response</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Following the recent earthquake, customers licensing fonts from Rosetta Type Foundry in the next four weeks will be helping towards relief efforts in Nepal. Until 31 May, Rosetta will be donating 35 % of the income* from our retail e-shop to the Red Cross to help relief programmes in the aftermath of the disaster.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The earthquake caused widespread devastation in many districts of Nepal and neighbouring areas of India and China. The Red Cross is searching for survivors, providing first aid, and running blood banks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* Excluding VAT.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Nepal-earthquake-response/Nepal-earthquake-response_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-05-05T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/03/23/Neacademia-Subhead-released</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/03/23/Neacademia-Subhead-released"/>
    <title>Neacademia Subhead released</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;2015 marks the 500th anniversary of Aldus Manutius’ death. To celebrate “the birth of reading as we know it” * and without further ado, we proudly introduce &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Neacademia"&gt;Neacademia Subhead&lt;/a&gt; by Sergei Egorov. Subhead, the third member of the great system of Aldine type revivals, hits the sweet spot in situations where Display is too much and Text is too little. For documents that speak Russian, Latin, Kazakh, English, or any other of the 139 languages supported. We hope Mr Manutius would approve of Sergei’s work, and we strongly believe you should!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The final piece in this magnum opus, Neacademia Small Text will be released eventually. You know, for special occasions where Text is just a little too much. It may take another year or so. “Hurry slowly” (“Festina lente”) was Manutius’ motto which he adopted from a Roman coin. And we have adopted it from him.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* That’s how &lt;a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/arts/design/a-grolier-club-tribute-to-the-printer-aldus-manutius.html"&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; called it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Neacademia-Subhead-released/Neacademia-Subhead-released_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-03-23T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2015/02/16/Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2015/02/16/Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design"/>
    <title>Considerations in multilingual type design</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This paper was originally presented as “Challenges in multilingual type design” at the ATypI conference in Amsterdam 2013 and it is a continuation of an article with the same title published in Codex magazine no. 2. The English and some arguments were kindly edited by Vaibhav Singh.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Type design is a discipline that adapts writing systems to typographic technologies. Therefore, its objectives are not only the re-styling of existing forms, but also the optimization of these forms for output and their use in visual communication. This essay will discuss several case studies in different writing systems (scripts, a shorter term, is used hereafter to signify the same). The point is to illustrate the current challenges connected with typographic improvements in scripts. These improvements have tended to fall in two broad categories: first, adapting the script to a new situation presented by technology, and second, the expansion of its linguistic and expressive repertoire. Yet there is an important meta-consideration. Multi-script typography challenges us by juxtaposing scripts with different visual characters, and cultural and historical contexts. Scripts that have developed in different environments require different typographic solutions. The thesis put forward here is that it takes a very different mindset to become a multi-script designer – a mindset which allows sufficient considerations for – and understanding of – the challenges mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Note that several of the case studies presented here include projects I have been personally involved in. This is not in any way to imply the solutions they present are the only correct ones. They simply allow me to speak about them with greater insight than if I were to comment on someone else’s work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Knowledge acquirement and critical discourse&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One should be aware of several aspects which influence our understanding of writing systems. First, it is a matter of acquiring and constructing a knowledge base. Some scripts are very well documented (Latin, Cyrillic, and to some extent Greek) in their local languages as well as internationally. But often typographically underserved scripts – that is scripts with a minimal availability of quality typefaces – have fairly limited publicly accessible sources of knowledge and, consequently, an underdeveloped critical discourse about typographic matters. This raises the question: how do we inform our decisions when engaging with these scripts as type designers or typographers? How do we find the relevant material and how do we evaluate it?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Reading is a process when we use eyes for hearing.&lt;br&gt;
— David Abram on the effect of synaesthesia, The Spell of the Sensuous &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote1" name="reference1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In such situations it is also very difficult to find relevant consultants – people who are informed and typographically well versed in a particular script, and only secondarily, fluent in corresponding languages. This is, in my opinion, best explained by loosely quoting David Abram on the effect of synaesthesia: reading is a process when we use eyes for hearing &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote1" name="reference1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. That is something completely different from designing, which is when we use our eyes for seeing. The reading experience cannot substitute the design experience. Picking a consultant should be an extremely cautious process similar to choosing working tools. Experience and expertise should be decisive factors, not an orientalist bias or visibility and frequency of online posts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another consideration when it comes to consultancy is how much one can rely on it. Consultancy could be a complete solution during the process of design of a script semi-familiar to the designer (such as Cyrillic for Latin designers), but the more unfamiliar and complex the script happens to be, the more preliminary research and understanding is needed. Otherwise, there is a danger of creating a pastiche or erroneous and inappropriate interpretation of a script even with the help of a consultant.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“To some extent, we deliberately [went with a contemporary design for Pure] because we feel that – and this sounds very imperialistic now,” he says with a small laugh, aware of the difficult territory he’s entering, “it’s time that some of these cultures were dragged screaming and kicking into the 21st century.”&lt;br&gt;
— Bruno Maag on creating Nokia’s Pure, Digital Arts &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote2" name="reference2"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another issue connected with knowledge acquirement is the effect of misleading marketing and nationalistic propaganda. Marketing, which often overstates facts by means of simplistic superlatives or biased claims, can end up becoming a point of reference when reliable information or critical discourse is missing. Furthermore, international agencies often assume and perpetuate the occidental bias, i.e. ascribing little value to local tradition or practice.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“I fail to understand why type design is still considered ‘white man’s burden’: to uplift and civilise others. Even when there are capable people in those languages, the decision makers prefer people who do not speak, write, read or understand the language to those who do. […] Type colonialism?”&lt;br&gt;
— Hashim Padiyath Mohemmadali comment on Typophile &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote3" name="reference3"&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Nationalists, on the other hand, often make sweeping statements against anything that comes from abroad. This seems to be a common trend in countries which have suffered from the imperialistic domination of other countries in the past. Sadly, this political concern is often used by vernacular producers to achieve their business goals, but on the other hand, severe anti-nationalism can obscure clear and objective views on any issue. Filtering bias from relevant opinion can become a daunting – but necessary – task in such environments.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With these points in mind we can discuss several case studies that provide examples of various design-related, technical, as well as intellectual challenges.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Extending the typographic repertoire&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Emphasis.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Academic texts often heavily rely on use of italics and all-caps setting&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typographic translations of documents from one writing system to another, or more precisely from one language to another, may constitute a challenge when the text relies on the use of styles natural to one script, but not to another. To name a few: all-cap setting or small caps are not transferable to unicameral scripts, and italics may be hard to represent in scripts which are naturally oblique. Introducing such ‘missing’ styles may help to solve some of the translation issues and extend stylistic repertoires of vernacular typography, but the validity and appropriateness of these styles in different scripts raises many more questions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Latin-styles.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Mixed-cap and all-cap setting, small caps, and italics styles may be hard to represent in some scripts&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Armenian-print.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; And example of Armenian print from late 17th century. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote4" name="reference4"&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To name a specific case, Armenian script is very often written (even in the typographic environment) at an angle and the slant of the letters does not bear much significance for its readers. Therefore, if one were to design a complementary style with a role similar to italics in Latin, the slanted or oblique styles would not perform very well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Arek_1.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Arek by Khajag Apelian.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Arek_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Arek by Khajag Apelian.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The type family Arek &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote5" name="reference5"&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; designed by Khajag Apelian is the first type system that incorporates upright as well as cursive styles of the script in one typographically coherent whole. This is not to say that this type family has an invented italic or that it is the first digitized italic. It certainly is not. But it is a well-considered type family that includes a complementary style that is balanced with the main style in terms of proportions and typographic color. Apelian used Gerrit Noordzij’s definition of cursive writing as an uninterrupted (returning) construction in order to create a mental concept for the whole family while supporting this concept with research on historical manuscripts containing examples of both formal and informal writing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Noordzij_letter-construction.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Gerrit Noordzij’s diagram with comparison of interrupted (left) and uninterrupted, cursive writing. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote6" name="reference6"&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Thanks to its different construction, the cursive creates a different rhythm and texture‚ which is what is desired. The illustrations show that this additional style is not used for in-sentence emphasis. Instead, it is used to create aesthetic effects in headlines and pull quotes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Yerevan-magazine_big.jpg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Use of Arek in the Yerevan magazine &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote7" name="reference7"&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For other scripts, such as Arabic for example, the difference between formal and informal (or fast) writing might not be so apparent and thus creating an italic becomes more of a challenge. And eventually, validity of radical script borrowings is yet another matter.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Technological challenges&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;New type technologies not only bring advancements, they also bring constrains. Historically these have been physical constraints, as in metal type, currently these are constraints of font formats and encodings. Each writing system has to respond to the requirements of the technologies. For some, this is straightforward, for others it is a challenging task. This may relate to the simple fact that a certain technology was not developed with considerations for a particular script in the first place, but it may also be due to the complexity of the said script. This is a known and much-discussed issue in Arabic script, but it relates even to the way the diacritical marks in Latin, for instance, are treated and encoded by Unicode.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari_1.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; A small portion of the sheer amount of possible syllables in the Devanagari script&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Basic consonants in Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Akhand-Degree-systems.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Degree (left) and Akhand system for typesetting Devanagari &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote8" name="reference8"&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For Indic scripts, this has been an issue from the very beginning of their typographic use and several systems have been adopted, historically, to achieve acceptable results. Each system had to deal with a basic problem natural to the syllabic script: how to represent thousands of syllables with as small a glyph set as possible. Unlike Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (also CJK) writing systems, the Indian scripts took the path of phonetic decomposition following the logic of their script grammar. Sub-syllabic elements, such as half forms, were introduced to the glyph set and compound syllables and sometimes even basic consonants have been composed with them. In addition, syllabic and mark clusters have been introduced to resolve more complex shapes and collisions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari_3.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Combining consonants to build compound syllables (conjuncts) in Devanagari: syllables ‘mbhva’ and ‘bhra’ (top to bottom)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari_4.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Combining consonants with marks/matras in Devanagari
Syllables ‘ke’, ‘ki’, ‘kān’ (top to bottom)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Today, although some of the scripts are already using standards such as OpenType and Unicode, their adaptations to the technologies remain somewhat underdeveloped and often mimic solutions devised for older technologies. For example, many Indic fonts developed around the turn of the last century have included enormous character sets to cover all possible and sometimes even impossible combinations of syllables and marks. Thanks to OpenType and its automatic mark placement this is not necessary anymore.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari-mark-positioning_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Devanagari mark positioning in various metal typesetting environments (top to bottom: hand-setting, Monotype, Linotype)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A case in point is the bindu and candrabindu mark positioning in Devanagari. These marks should ideally be optically centered above some characters and right aligned above others, following long-established scribal and day-to-day writing practices. In metal composition this was difficult to achieve thus most of the marks were right aligned above the last vertical stem. With the introduction of OpenType Devanagari layout, i.e. the standard way to program OpenType features to make the complex script work on computers, it became possible to reintroduce this positioning to contemporary fonts, most of which, however, continue to follow the legacy of older models, complete with their limitations and unquestioned process-decisions. This was brought to my notice by Vaibhav Singh during our collaboration on Skolar Devanagari &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote9" name="reference9"&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and we questioned and researched many design-decisions in the typographical adaptation of Devanagari before implementing them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari-mark-positioning_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Positioning of bindu (top) and candrabindu (bottom) that follows metal typesetting practises&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari-mark-positioning_3.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Positioning of bindu (top) and candrabindu (bottom) in Skolar Devanagari follows established writing practices&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Devanagari-Gujarati-comparison.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Mark for vocalic R (rukar) joining the base character
in Devanagari (top) and Gujarati (bottom)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another case – the Gujarati script does not feature a headline like Devanagari, but features the so-called foot (also known as flick or vanaak). This feature causes some vowel marks, which would join easily in Devanagari, to require a special treatment in Gujarati. Namely, the mark for vocalic R (also called rukar) which can theoretically attach to any syllable. In writing, the foot should not be present when the vowel mark attaches to the character. (Note: positioning of vocalic R does not constitute a major problem on rounded characters.) In contemporary fonts this is often disregarded as it would seemingly require having all characters with two versions of the foot, with and without the vocalic R (see Gujarati MT by Monotype). Another solution, Saguna Gujarati &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote10" name="reference10"&gt;10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; released by the Indian Type Foundry &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote11" name="reference11"&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and designed by Jonny Pinhorn, features a complete removal of the foot. It places the mark below the stem disconnected even though the removed foot would allow for perfect connection to the stem.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Gujarati-MT-and-Saguna-Gujarati.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; MT by Monotype (left) and Saguna Gujarati by Jonny Pinhorn –Indian Type Foundry (right)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When the correct shaping of vocalic R was clarified to me by Ami Shah and Kalapi Gajjar, a different solution was implemented in Skolar Gujarati &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote12" name="reference12"&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and recently in Adobe Gujarati. When the vocalic R is attached to a syllable, the syllable is decomposed to half form and vertical stem in order to allow simpler alteration of the stem to take the mark. This very simple procedure creates the correct shape, but requires the creation of a half form for every character with a vertical stem. Nevertheless, this is not a problem since most of these half forms need to be designed anyway as they are used for building compound syllables.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Skolar-Gujarati_1.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Mark for vocalic R (rukar) joining the base character
in Gujarati, worse (left) and better (right) solution&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Skolar-Gujarati_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Technical solution in order to achieve better joining of the vocalic R (rukar) while maintaining minimal character set&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This solution is a rethinking of existing models which builds on the fact that the basic building units in Indian syllabic writing systems are not the consonants, but sub-syllabic elements, such as the half forms. Notably, none of these solutions would be possible without a more comprehensive understanding of the writing system as well as the possibilities of new technologies.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Issues of harmonization&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When designing a multi-script type family, one of the main considerations is the harmonisation of the writing systems. What does that exactly entail? The goal should be to provide equal means of conveying textual information, on the level of content as well as style. Usually, the intention is that the scripts within one type system should appear equally important on the page &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote13" name="reference13"&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; which implies balancing basic parameters such as visual height and overall weight. Furthermore, a sense of stylistic equality is often expected. But what does that exactly entail? One might assume that similar design features, such as contrast, modulation, or terminals, would lead to a perfect harmony. Not necessarily. The shapes might look allied, but the message they convey may be very different in each script. Or in other words form connotations are not always culturally transferable. For example serifs are a design concept inherent only to certain scripts and in others they create a grotesque appearance. Does the notion of modernity contained in Helvetica transfer to Helvetica Arabic if we directly transfer the style or does it tell a slightly different story? &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This leads to yet another contrast between marketing and good design because it becomes questionable whether large type families with very consistent styling are actually consistent in terms of the message they send and also in terms of quality. One should not automatically assume that non-Latin members of an excellent Latin type family are equally excellent or fit for the same job.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The following case studies illustrate some specific considerations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When designing a Gujarati complement to a Latin sans type family one can face an interesting example of an uncritical terminology-loan. The foot inherent to most Gujarati characters is often misinterpreted as a serif although it has different origins, shapes, and conventions. Thus it may seem pertinent to design such a complement to the Latin sans without the foot. That is, to design a ‘Gujarati sans’. But unlike the serif, the foot is not a stylistic element and while it can be omitted at times, it plays its vital role in text typefaces. Thus such a complementary Gujarati design may look different for text typefaces and display typefaces. Furthermore, a general point can be made for the use of transferable attributes such as ‘modulation’, ‘low contrast’, or ‘text typeface’ instead of using script-centric terms such as ‘serif’ or ‘ascender’, for example.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Gujarati-foot.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Foot (flick) is an inherent part of Gujarati letterforms&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Gujarati-sans.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; An early version of Skolar Sans Gujarati (top) – this Gujarati typeface would not be ideal for text because of the missing foot. Nirmala UI Gujarati (bottom) preserves the foot.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another case is the use of visual compensations. North Indian scripts, such as Gujarati or Devanagari, feature a reversed contrast compared to Latin thus creating a new visual context to visual compensations common in type design. This effect is present even in monolinear designs. In Latin when two strokes meet or cross, the area is visually corrected not to look too dark. This is done by thinning the strokes. Let’s compare Latin letter ‘q’ and Devanagari syllable ‘ya’ which may show some similarities on the skeletal level and in the treatment of bowls. In ‘ya’ the stroke joining the vertical stem should be only modestly compensated compared to the corresponding part in the Latin ‘q’. If the Latin correction measure is transferred directly, the Devanagari character will have an unbalanced stress distribution. The general point here may be that even compensation techniques should be reevaluated when different contexts are recognized.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Visual-compensations_1.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Comparison of stress axes in Latin and Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Visual-compensations_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Letters ‘q’ from Segoe and ‘va’ from Nirmala UI Devanagari. The left ‘va’ has been modified to show unbalanced stress distirbution, the original on the right is correct.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During the design of Adobe Gujarati we have created a design concept which transferred the Adobe Devanagari stylistics to Gujarati, where possible. However, it was pointed out by Fiona Ross that the stroke reversals (or flaring terminals) present in Adobe Devanagari, while common in Devanagari script, look unusual in Gujarati. These stroke reversals have been introduced to the design in order to bring more weight to the terminals and to counter the staccato-like effects of straight verticals and horizontals in earlier types and many existing fonts &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote14" name="reference14"&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. Although we thought that the theoretical concept we had would possibly work and provide greater stylistic consistency among the families, we also had to admit that the Gujarati with a similar treatment would look strange. As a matter of fact, my research did show a few Gujarati typefaces with such a treatment but it was always in the context of a decorative type, a very different genre than what we were aiming for. The goal was to design a text typeface with a similar level of conventionality and thus we had to use slightly different styling to achieve that. The theoretical, highly consistent model derived from abstract type design concepts was overruled by a model derived from a cultural consensus. In the end Gujarati is not just Devanagari without the headline, it possess different letterforms, but also a different calligraphic tradition.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Adobe-Gujarati_1.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adobe Devanagari and an early version Adobe Gujarati&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Gujarati-No3368.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Gujarati No. 3368 by Modular InfoTech&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Adobe-Gujarati_2.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Similar skeleton, but different cultural consensus and writing manner (the point marks the place where the pen gets reversed to produce different kind of stroke)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2015-Considerations-in-multilingual-type-design/Adobe-Gujarati_3.svg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Adobe Devanagari and Adobe Gujarati, final version&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying [...] one can’t believe impossible things.”&lt;br&gt;
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,“ said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”&lt;br&gt;
— Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href="#footnote15" name="reference15"&gt;15&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;At the great risk of sounding overly preachy, this conclusion is an attempt to propose the attitude multi-script designers (that is type designers, typographers, as well as graphic designers) should try to put in practise.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Intellectual humility is extremely important. Practise it in order to open space for further development. Acknowledge not-knowing and mistakes. At least to yourself. It is alright to &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; suspend judgment on matters one does not &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; understand.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Be aware of the influences technology could have had on a script historically and influences it may have on it today. There may be possibilities to rethink compromises of the past.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Get feedback and pick your consultants carefully. Make sure you listen to people who have sound experience with type design and a fair insight into the historical development of the script. &lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sensitivity to cultures and contexts is a prerequisite for good multi-script designers. Do not overdo it with harmonization. Particularly, one should never take for granted that what works in one script will be applicable and equally effective in another.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Try to imagine the impossible at least twice a day. It is a way to look beyond our own almost hardwired preconceptions and assumptions.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="#reference1" name="footnote1"&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. David Abram, &lt;em&gt;The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World&lt;/em&gt;, Vintage, 1997.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference2" name="footnote2"&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;. Neil Bennett, “Interview: Dalton Maag’s Bruno Maag on creating Nokia&amp;#39;s Pure – a typeface for the whole world” in &lt;em&gt;Digital Arts&lt;/em&gt;, 25 April 2012. http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/typography/interview-dalton-maags-bruno-maag-on-creating-nokias-pure-typeface-for-whole-world/ (state as of 5. 12. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference3" name="footnote3"&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;. Hashim Padiyath Mohemmadali’s comment in a discussion thread “Nirmala Malayalam, another mindless type design” at &lt;em&gt;Typophile&lt;/em&gt;. http://typophile.com/node/105005 (state as of 18. 11. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference4" name="footnote4"&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;. Movses Khorenatsi, Patmutiun Hayots, Amsterdam, 1695. From: Lane, John A. The diaspora of Armenian printing, 2012.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference5" name="footnote5"&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;. Arek by Khajag Apelian, published by Rosetta Type Foundry in 2012. http://rosettatype.com/Arek (state as of 5. 12. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference5" name="footnote5"&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;. Gerrit Noordzij, &lt;em&gt;The Stroke: Theory of Writing&lt;/em&gt;, Hyphen Press, 2006.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference7" name="footnote7"&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Yerevan magazine&lt;/em&gt;, Yerevan, 2011.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference8" name="footnote8"&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;. The illustration is from: &lt;em&gt;Naik BS. Typography of Devanagari. Bombay: Government printing and stationery, 1971.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference9" name="footnote9"&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;. Skolar Devanagari by Vaibhav Singh and David Březina, published by Rosetta Type Foundry in 2012. http://rosettatype.com/Skolar%20Devanagari (state as of 5. 12. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference10" name="footnote10"&gt;10&lt;/a&gt;. Saguna Gujarati by Jonny Pinhorn, published by Indian Type Foundry in 2012. http://www.indiantypefoundry.com/fonts/indian-type-foundry/saguna-gujarati/ (state as of 5. 12. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference11" name="footnote11"&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;. Not to be confused with unrelated India Type Foundry established in 1932 in Ahmedabad, India.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference12" name="footnote12"&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;. Skolar Gujarati by David Březina, published by Rosetta Type Foundry in 2012. http://rosettatype.com/Skolar (state as of 15. 2. 2015).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference13" name="footnote13"&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;. Please note: that the roles in typographic environment may be different than the defaults aimed at in a type family with more scripts. For example one script &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; look more important than the other for the sake of better distinction (if the scripts are too similar) or navigation (e.g. in vocabularies).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference14" name="footnote14"&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;. Adobe Devanagari type family description, &lt;em&gt;Adobe.com&lt;/em&gt;. http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&amp;amp;event=displayFontPackage&amp;amp;code=1940 (state as of 18. 11. 2013).&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="#reference15" name="footnote15"&gt;15&lt;/a&gt;. Lewis Caroll, &lt;em&gt;Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There&lt;/em&gt;, Macmillan, 1871. As quoted in Alan Macfarlane, &lt;em&gt;Japan Through the Looking Glass&lt;/em&gt;, Profile Books, 2009.  &lt;/p&gt;</content>
    <updated>2015-02-16T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2014/11/26/On-Skolar-Sans</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/11/26/On-Skolar-Sans"/>
    <title>On Skolar Sans</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt; is an extensive type family for the age of responsive design. The whole type system consists of 72 fonts, uprights and italics in four subtly graded width variants and nine weights.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans" class="button" style="margin: 2em 0;"&gt;
&lt;span class="innerText"&gt;Visit the Skolar Sans microsite »&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Very early on in the development of &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar&lt;/a&gt; (originally conceived as a typeface for academic publishing), I knew it would need a sans serif counterpart in order to truly cover the needs of scholarly publications. It took several years to get to it and several more to finish. Along the way it has become the largest project Rosetta has tackled so far. It is important to note that it is a collaborative effort between Sláva Jevčinová (Slovakia) and myself. Also Rafael Saraiva (Brazil) helped a lot during his internship with Rosetta.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/academic-publishing.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Two of many scenarios where sans typefaces generally work better than serifs in academic publishing&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Skeletons and other costume ideas&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is easy to say: “let’s design a sans to match the serif!”, but what does it actually mean? Let me try to answer that, at least theoretically. Clearly, one cannot simply chop off the serifs and hope that the outcome would be a decent sans. Sans serifs form a type genre of their own right! Type designers often use the idea of a shared skeleton to illustrate the translation from one to another. The skeleton is supposed to ensure that resulting typefaces are allied. In other words: the bones are the same but the muscles are different. This is a very compelling direction that we followed ourselves to a certain extent, but it has at least two issues.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/chop-off-technique.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Chop-off technique as employed in the sans making&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/skeleton-technique.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skeleton technique as employed in the sans making&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Firstly, the skeleton does not give any indication about the style, contrast, or modulation (in fact it is abstracting exactly that). It makes sure the construction is similar, but how does one make sure the sans and the serif are coordinated stylistically despite belonging to two different genres? Secondly, it is the notion of harmonisation that is odd. What is the goal? Is it a sans mimicking the serif to ‘look as much as it as possible’ or perhaps something more?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Making progress&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our answer to the first issue lies in recognising the fact that serif and sans serif typefaces express themselves in different ways. Seriffed typefaces have terminals (actual serifs included) and/or a pronounced contrast between thick and thin strokes. Sans serifs, on the other hand, have limited options as they, obviously, do not have the actual serifs’ terminals and the contrast between thick and thin strokes is often reduced to a minimum. Simply put, less material to play with. Their power, however, lies in the sheer palette of styles and relationships between them. Thanks to their simplified letterforms, sans serifs can span from very thin to very bold, from narrow to wide. It is in this progression where the styling of conventional monolinear sans serifs has extensive possibilities. In the way the proportions and contrast mature from a showy thin style to a humble regular and unfold from there to the shouting heavy weights.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/italics-comparison_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The light and regular styles have different styling between the sans and the serif&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In order to design a versatile sans, we had to tone down the styling. It simply would look too jolly and eccentric if we repeated everything that happens in Skolar’s seriffed contours. A bit of that was brought back in the way the weight progresses towards the bold styles. You can clearly see Skolar’s fingerprints there, yet they are much more subtle in the regular styles. The italics are perhaps even more explicit. The bold styles sport the broken contours of Skolar’s italics, while this feature does not come into play in the regular styles where it would have been distracting. Admittedly, this was not an easy task, and we had to redraw the typeface repeatedly to get it right. And just between us, it is not a good idea to change your mind when you are designing 72 fonts at once! The result is modest where appropriate and stylish where possible.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/italics-comparison_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The bold styles show the relationship between the sans and the serif clearly&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;A companion with a mind of its own&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We did not want to design a lookalike sans for the serif, a clone. Instead of having a combo which &lt;strong&gt;looks&lt;/strong&gt; great together we wanted a team that &lt;strong&gt;plays&lt;/strong&gt; well together in order to solve design challenges. Therefore we aimed to design Skolar Sans as an independent companion to complement the serif in situations which are better served by a sans. Therefore whenever we had to decide if to follow Skolar’s path or have a well-working sans, we opted for the latter. The ultimate goal was to create a sans / serif type system that would work well in complex book typography and would be versatile enough for editorial and corporate environments. Three areas where Skolar is typically employed nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;72 fonts, was that really necessary?&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Perhaps we just got carried away, but let me elaborate a little. There are four different width variants: Compressed, Condensed, Normal, and Extended. The Normal variant was designed to fit the serif. However, it is noticeably narrower, which brings a change of rhythm that helps to distinguish between the sans and the serif in continuous text. But what if someone wants something a little wider than that? This is where the Extended variant derives its raison d’être. At first we designed it much wider, but it seemed pretty useless (I am still waiting for someone to show me why wide styles are actually useful). So the current Extended is just a tiny bit wider than Normal and will work best in logo design or on screen in small sizes. The Compressed and Condensed variants come in handy for narrow paragraphs, captions, and anywhere where the economic department has a stronger voice than the copywriters. But if no one finds them useful we promise to delete them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/all-styles.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; All 72 styles of the Skolar Sans type family&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Arrows &amp;amp;c.&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here is a confession, we do love arrows, so the sans had to include them. And to Sláva it seemed, that the Compressed variant should have them compressed and the Extended should have them extended. That makes for a pretty wide selection of arrows. And they are easy to combine.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And needless to say, there are alternative forms, ligatures, small caps, multiple figure styles, fractions, superiors, inferiors, case-sensitive punctuation, and whatnot. Simply everything you might need to fine tune your text setting.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/arrows_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/arrows_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Following Skolar’s example the sans includes combinable arrows for each of the 72 styles&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Here they are&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To conclude and to leave our dear reader with a nice analogy, think of &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt; as a companion rather than a descendant. Not like &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Grayson"&gt;Dick Grayson&lt;/a&gt; to Bruce Wayne but maybe John Watson to Sherlock Holmes. A versatile partner who can accommodate for an opinionated compadre, but does more than just follow his footsteps. Equally peculiar but nonetheless a gentleman. We hope you will use their services in the years to come.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Magnifying glass sold separately.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;See the Skolar Sans microsite for more details.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Introductory discount &amp;amp; free fonts&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We offer &lt;strong&gt;an introductory 30 % discount&lt;/strong&gt; on all the fonts or bundles until 9 December. &lt;strong&gt;Furthermore Regular and Italic fonts are offered for free&lt;/strong&gt; (within the limits of our licence).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Thanks&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Big thanks to Florian Runge, Anna Giedryś, and William Montrose for their help with the visuals, photo editing, and copy editing, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Skolar-Sans/SkolarSans_preview_big.svg' title='' width='940'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-11-26T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2014/07/01/Rethinking-type-experience</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/07/01/Rethinking-type-experience"/>
    <title>Rethinking type experience</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today we have finally released our new website (its &lt;strong&gt;beta&lt;/strong&gt; to be precise). It has been in the works for over a year and rather than a simple redesign it is a complete repositioning of the foundry. I discussed the basic reasons for this rethinking at the &lt;a href="http://smashingconf.com/2013/speakers/david-brzezina"&gt;Smashing Conference in Freiburg&lt;/a&gt; last year, where I tried to define the challenges related to ‘type experience’. Admittedly a buzzword, type experience advocates a holistic approach to type. It deals with a) how typefaces are designed and engineered, b) how they are presented, c) how they are selected, purchased, and licenced, and d) how they are used. All these are surprisingly tightly intertwined and, in fact, we had to address most of them when working on the new website. Here is just a small selection of these considerations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Presentation&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The presentation of typefaces is tricky business. Type families are complex beasts which include many characters, features, and styles, yet their beauty and sophistication often lies in details. Should one present full character sets and list numerous styles or pick selected words? Highlight details or illustrate the texture at paragraph level? Explain all OpenType features or use simplified icons instead? Is there any significant difference between online and printed presentation today?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We had to address these questions and incorporate the thinking behind them in a unified web experience. On the one hand, conventional foundry sites (our old one included) present type by an extremely limited means of slides and carousels or stripes with font samples, but emphasise a strong foundry identity and a clear shopping environment. On the other hand, the recent boom of impressive micro-sites makes use of all the options the contemporary web has to offer in order to show typefaces at their best, to create equivalents of – or alternatives to – PDF or printed specimens. But in a way these sites become ephemeral, as ephemeral as fliers compared to books.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Rethinking-type-experience/Conventional-sites-micro-sites.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Conventional sites vs. micro-sites&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our final solution is a hybrid of sorts – a set of micro-sites with similar structure and shared visual style. The introductory header sets the mood. Large specimens show the visual effect. Typeface descriptions, testimonials, and awards furnish the narrative for an expansive type experience. Style- and script-tables show the structure of the family. Highlights and OpenType features provide further insights for type geeks. The web performance section provides screenshots of our webfonts, so everyone can judge their looks on various platforms before making a purchase. And finally, we have incorporated detailed credits in order to appreciate the work of everyone involved in font production (it rarely ever is a singular person).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All samples are in vectors, so in theory, you could print the page and keep it for reference. In practice, they will look great on retina displays too. The web is responsive, so you can use it on you favourite gadgets too.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Rethinking-type-experience/Arek-micro-site.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Type family micro-site&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Shopping &amp;amp; licencing&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our clients usually buy fonts from a single family, thus we could simplify the shopping process dramatically by removing the process of registration (and remembering passwords!) and eradicating the shopping cart altogether. Thanks to that, we do not collect more data than absolutely necessary. We keep track of the purchased fonts though, in order to provide you with free updates automatically*. In fact, the whole website is built around this idea.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, we got rid of PayPal with their dubious business practices and impossible support (more on that on &lt;a href="http://www.elliotjaystocks.com/blog/good-riddance-paypal/?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;amp;utm_medium=tumblr"&gt;Elliot Jay Stocks’s blog&lt;/a&gt;). As a bonus, all prices are now excluding VAT – more friendly to our overseas customers!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The biggest change by far is the introduction of our new compartmentalised licencing system. Instead of having the customers face a multitude of options and parameters – such as number of computers, page views, font formats etc. – we have decided to provide set options for freelancers, studios, publishers, and web designers. And for those who require more, or different configurations, we provide custom licences and a more personal approach. We also provide cheap, time-limited test licence for all our fonts. The licence agreement is (for the most part) written in plain language with each licence type clearly defined by what can and what cannot be done with the fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* We plan to enrol all existing customers in this service.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Experience&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In order to do all of this, we had to come up with a new production environment for the fonts and webfonts. As I already mentioned in &lt;a href="/blog/2014/04/10/Rosetta-webfont-library"&gt;another article&lt;/a&gt;, we reworked our font library completely to make sure everything clicks.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It would be tiring to enumerate all the changes and decisions we have made – and I sense I have already gone too far – just give the website a couple of minutes and explore on your own (and please do let us know if you notice any problems). But specifically, you should not miss the Fonts-in-use and Merchandise pages. I had absolutely no idea they would look so great when we put them together!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And there is more to come. We should have an online tester incorporated in the near future, and provide PDFs with character sets for every weight. This is just a first step, really.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We hope you will enjoy the new Rosetta and find the changes, some of which are unprecedented among type foundries, useful. It is often said that the type design industry is rather stiff and conservative. We tried to change that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We owe much to &lt;a href="http://proofreason.com"&gt;Proof &amp;amp; Reason&lt;/a&gt; web agency and their team which worked really hard to make all of this possible. The design was done in collaboration with an external designer, the talented &lt;a href="http://jakubsodomka.com"&gt;Jakub Sodomka&lt;/a&gt; based on the concept by me and &lt;a href="http://ancymonic.com"&gt;Anna Giedryś&lt;/a&gt;. All photos and illustrations are by Anna Giedryś. The online specimens (Preview section of the family pages) were designed by &lt;a href="http://florianrunge.com"&gt;Florian Runge&lt;/a&gt;. All texts have been carefully (and patiently!) edited by Vaibhav Singh. And our gratitude extends to everyone else who helped along the way, namely our type designers who beta-tested the site thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2014/04/10/Rosetta-webfont-library</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/04/10/Rosetta-webfont-library"/>
    <title>Rosetta webfont library</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have finally rolled out our new webfont library. This is the last step towards full commitment to providing cross-platform fonts. A bit of trivia: along the way we needed to completely rework our post-production workflow, so we could produce high-quality webfonts for all the scripts we already support on desktop (namely the complex ones such as Arabic and Indian scripts). You can imagine building new fonts for all the styles and scripts and bug-tracking each! Some of the processes we are using would not be possible for a relatively small vendor like us a year ago and we owe much gratitude to various parties who helped us to figure things out, namely Behdad Esfahbod (Google), Frank Greißhammer (Adobe), Karsten Lücke (KLTF), Georg Seifert (Glyphs), Miguel Sousa (Adobe), Adam Twardoch (FontLab), and Tomáš Znamenáček.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This change required updates to pretty much all the fonts we have. Mostly minor technical details, but in case of &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Eskorte"&gt;Eskorte&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Aisha"&gt;Aisha&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar&lt;/a&gt;, these changes have been accompanied by more significant updates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And of course, proper webfonts should be optimised for screen, i.e. ready for low resolution, as we cannot expect everyone to have high-res screens, today or tomorrow. Our goal is to have all desktop text fonts work well as text fonts on the web, which has not been the case with many other webfonts. In order to do so, we have paid extra attention to hinting and other “screen matters” and manually hinted the fonts where appropriate and financially possible.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Rosetta-webfont-library/Rosetta-webfont-library.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Self-hosting webfonts&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Last year, we conducted a small survey about webfonts (thanks to Smashing Magazine, Fontdeck, and Elliot Jay Stocks for spreading the word). This indicated an interesting fact that although webfont services are heavily promoted, many users prefer to have full control over their website appearance by having the fonts uploaded on their server (this is called self-hosting). We sympathise with the idea of a free and independent internet (in many ways it is similar to the idea of independent type foundries), so we decided to provide our fonts for self-hosting at very reasonable rates. This means a lot of work when it comes to technical support, but we think independence and long-term sustainability is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Screenshots&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We now provide screenshots for all the fonts and various platforms (we had to develop a tool to automate this). This should make the process of picking the right webfont much easier.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We hope to introduce all our new fonts as webfonts immediately upon their release and gradually increase their quality while keeping the screen-improvement updates always free.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2014/04/08/Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/04/08/Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha"/>
    <title>Note on the new edition of Aisha</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Innovation in type design can take a few different routes. It may follow formal experimentation, or result from a variation on existing themes. Often innovation is necessitated by external constraints, typically in the form of changing media, or the obsolescence of the tools, either for type-making or for composition. As I have traced in my recently completed PhD thesis, in Arabic type design historically the latter has been a dominant force. Innovation resulted from the circumstances in which Arabic type was created and from those of its use, frequently imposing constraints which prescribed design decisions. It follows that this kind of innovation, although novel, did not necessarily embody ideal solutions, but merely represented the best possible compromise within the existing (and often severe) limitations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;More recently, innovation in Arabic type design is largely found on the other end of the spectrum, that is mainly in formal search for novelty. Here, the results have been mixed, reflecting the skill and taste of their creators (and one should neither forget that in equal measure the appraisals of the designs echo the knowledge of the beholders). But as this kind of formal innovation is more about style than function, arguably, these plays on form steer clear of a thorough critique; for who would dare to venture judgements on aesthetics in this post-postmodern age in which every view is considered equally relevant and expertise is lightly sidelined in favour of the number of ‘likes’ any one utterance might attract?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yet, there is ample room and need for innovation of a different kind in Arabic type design. Innovation that starts at the other end, that starts with the usability and usefulness of design solutions. The number of unresolved issues of applied Arabic typography – that is to say the use of type rather than its design – are readily apparent to the practitioner (of which unfortunately there aren’t enough). From the open question of the sensibility of matching Arabic to Latin designs, to the more pressing lack of a concept for a canonised typeface family to express different text hierarchies, there is plenty of work to be done. Without a doubt, it will take time, and lasting innovation will be piecemeal, require iteration and validation in practice. So rather than a universal system which will answer all the questions, I would expect gradual, small improvements.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In line with this thinking, it seemed like an opportune moment to do more than just fiddle with the technicalities ‘under the hood’ when I updated &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Aisha"&gt;Aisha&lt;/a&gt; to conform to the increasingly picky type engines (many thanks to David Březina and Adobe’s Miguel Sousa for their help in the process). Here, I wanted to put forward an idea I had been playing with for some time, but never found the occasion to implement.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As is widely known, the numerals of the Latin script derive from the Arabic script numerals, which in turn originated in Indian mathematics. More than a thousand years ago they were adopted by Arabic scholars, and subsequently (with a few hundred years of delay) the system was introduced in Europe. Here, their shapes changed and adapted to those of the Latin script, giving birth to the so called Western-Arabic numerals which became the most widely used numerals in the world. As a consequence of their adaptation in Europe, they also underwent the countless transformations of type-forms emerging from the evolution of Western typography. From among these, the useful distinction between lining and ranging numerals arose. However, Arabic script numerals, just like Arabic type in general, did not follow the same path. Undoubtedly as a result of the shorter and less-varied history of Arabic printing types, in the current typographical palette only lining numerals exist. This struck me as unfortunate, for Arabic has no capitals (and thus no real need for lining numerals at all), and its letterforms feature many more descending elements than the Latin script, making the ascending, uniformly aligned numerals stand out excessively. Where ranging numerals should be the default, there is not even the option of choosing them. This, I felt, was an area worthy of functional innovation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I therefore set out to develop ranging numerals, a typographic tool that to my knowledge has never been offered for Arabic. Aisha is thus the first Arabic typeface which features an optional set of ranging numerals, designed to blend more neatly into a block of text. I tried a few different arrangements to best reflect the respective numeral shapes, and arrived at a setup which is inspired by its Latin-script equivalent, yet not a direct copy. Clearly, their arrangement is a novel proposal, and it may be questioned, revised, and possibly improved upon. In principle, however, I am confident that there is a genuine need and room for this new numeral set, and I hope that the proposed solution will be seen as a useful and usable innovation, contributing to better Arabic typography.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha/Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Arabic lining figures, Persian lining figures, Arabic ranging figures, Persian ranging figures&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha/Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Tabular figures corresponding to the proportional figures in the previous figure&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For this new edition of Aisha, I have also included something which could be called a historical innovation. In manuscript practice sequences of so-called ‘teeth’ characters were disambiguated by varying their respective heights. This avoids the unwieldy and illegible effect of such letter combinations, which in some typefaces attain the look of a garden fence. As Thomas Milo has been pointing out for a long time, these disambiguating patterns have nothing to do with beauty or ornament, but are more comparable to a reading aid. There is a common-sense explanation for this feature of Arabic script too: if the structure of the letters, rather than the diacritic configuration, instantaneously indicates their semantic value, reading should be easier. As is regularly pointed out in the Latin script context, in type one should try to maximise the difference between distinct letters without compromising the consistency and integrity of the whole: a realisation that has long been addressed in Arabic manuscript practice. Unfortunately, though, this principle has only been implemented in a handful of Arabic typefaces. Surprisingly, many designs even homogenise the structure and proportion of most letters, a design choice which strikes me as ill-informed if one is to facilitate reading. Homogeneity, however, has never been a characteristic of Aisha, and I am pleased to further build on its strengths by including this ingenious and time-tested innovation of Arabic manuscript practice.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha/Note-on-the-new-edition-of-Aisha_3.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Sequences of so-called ‘teeth’ characters are disambiguated.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2014/02/12/On-Typography-papers-9</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2014/02/12/On-Typography-papers-9"/>
    <title>On Typography papers 9</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typography Papers&lt;/strong&gt; is the series of ‘continuing-but-not-annual’ publications which began in 1995 at the Department of Typography &amp;amp; Graphic Communication, University of Reading, as a place for serious writing on typography and related matters. It was conceived by Paul Stiff, who also edited most of the past issues. The ninth number, the latest to be issued, has been edited by Eric Kindel and Paul Luna.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Though it is easier to classify it as a ‘journal’, &lt;em&gt;Typography Papers&lt;/em&gt; has resisted falling into a typical publication framework and is probably best described, in the words of Paul Stiff, as a series of book-length volumes, with an emphasis on typographic research. Issued when available material allows, the publication continues to remain enviably free of the pressures of periodicity, also allowing treatments of appropriate length for the topics and issues it addresses. The ‘Typography’ of the title has tended to throw reviewers off a little – the publication has rarely confined its content to any conventional or limiting definition of typography. The range of research and interests in its issues has remained consistent with the founding vision that Paul Stiff outlined:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;We use the word ‘typography’ in a much broader and more generous sense than is suggested by its primary use in much of Europe: not just ‘printing’, but rather ‘designing language for reading’. […] We are edgily curious about the boundaries between typography and other practices and subjects.*&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Number 9 (which is dedicated to his memory) continues in this tradition encompassing inscriptions, stencilling, type-founding, readability-legibility dispute, illustration in dictionaries, and hot-metal composition for Arabic. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="https://hyphenpress.co.uk/products/books/978-0-907259-48-0"&gt;Typography Papers 9&lt;/a&gt; has been published by Hyphen Press, London.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* From a text by Paul Stiff published on the Hyphen Press website under the title &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="https://hyphenpress.co.uk/journal/article/typopapers_kinneir"&gt;Kinneir, Reading, ‘Typography papers’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.  The text appeared in Italian translation in &lt;a href="http://www.aiap.it/progettografico.php"&gt;*Progetto grafico&lt;/a&gt;, no. 4/5, 2005.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Contents&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Gerard Unger: &lt;em&gt;Romanesque capitals in inscriptions&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Eric Kindel: &lt;em&gt;A reconstruction of stencilling based on the description by Gilles Filleau des Billettes (with two appendices by Fred Smeijers)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Eric Kindel (ed.): &lt;em&gt;The description of stencilling by Gilles Filleau des Billettes: transcription and translation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;James Mosley: &lt;em&gt;A note on Gilles Filleau des Billettes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Maurice Göldner: &lt;em&gt;The Brüder Butter typefoundry&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;William Berkson &amp;amp; Peter Enneson: &lt;em&gt;Readability: discovery and disputation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Paul Luna: &lt;em&gt;Picture this: how illustrations define dictionaries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Titus Nemeth: &lt;em&gt;Simplified Arabic: a new form of Arabic type for hot-metal composition&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/2014-On-Typography-papers-9/On-Typography-papers-9_6.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Typography Papers 9&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2013/10/01/Neacademia-Display-released</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2013/10/01/Neacademia-Display-released"/>
    <title>Neacademia Display released</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Neacademia"&gt;Neacademia&lt;/a&gt; is an extremely well-researched revival from Sergei Egorov. As every typographic novice knows, it used to take years to finish a set of metal founts. Being a faithful revival project, Neacademia is in no rush for completion either, maturing like a good wine along the way. Yet, today, two years and two months after the release of the Text sorts, we give you Neacademia Display.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, Sergei would not think it genuine to simply tweak the Text version to make it perform better in headlines. Neacademia Display is another revival in its own right. A revival which maintains a visual link to its calligraphic roots rather than to the typographic ones (unlike the Text version). And it includes the wide typographic repertoire you have learnt to expect from the Text fonts, that is, support for pan-European Latin and extended Cyrillic, small caps, contextual alternates to refine spacing, stylistic alternates, ligatures, various figure styles, and of course ornaments!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, with this update we have gone to great lengths to get Neacademia’s remastered fonts perform better on screen. Also, &lt;strong&gt;all fonts now include Latin and Cyrillic&lt;/strong&gt; (with same price tag!).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Following Rosetta’s policy of free updates, drop us a line if you wish to receive the remastered fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_4.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_5.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-Display-released/Neacademia-Display-released_6.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2013/09/21/Introducing-TEST-fonts</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2013/09/21/Introducing-TEST-fonts"/>
    <title>Introducing TEST fonts</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;It has been a long tradition for foundries to produce type specimens. Printed specimens worked as a means of evaluating metal founts, a commodity otherwise very heavy and hard to test. Digital fonts have been previewed by means of printed specimens and online by means of PDF specimens, various slideshow carousels and online testers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;However, all these solutions are cumbersome replacements for a proper test-drive which should be taken before making a substantial investment, that is, buying a license and adopting a certain typeface for a project.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Introducing-TEST-fonts/Introducing-test-fonts_Eskorte_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Eskorte TEST fonts&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Recognising this, some foundries (often quietly) provided short-term temporary testing licenses, usually based on a signed agreement. This solution creates unnecessary legal burden on both sides – that is why a few years back, software vendors and larger type foundries introduced plugins for common DTP software. Unfortunately, these plugins are often cumbersome and by definition tied to specific applications. A more developed alternative to this seems to be font renting services by Monotype (SkyFonts) and Adobe (Typekit Desktop Font Syncing). These seem to provide much better service, but again, remain tied to specific applications which need to be installed for the fonts to work and, together with the plugins, sideline fonts from smaller, independent foundries. It seems that all these solutions are great tools to test fonts, but they also show a significant distrust of the users – and an obsessive need for control.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are an independent foundry and we wish to stay in direct contact with our users. And we have one advantage over the larger companies – we know and we trust our users! That is why we have decided to take a rather bold step (at least it may seem like one) and offer some of our fonts for testing purposes for a small fee. We call them &lt;strong&gt;TEST fonts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As of today, you can download &lt;strong&gt;Eskorte Latin&lt;/strong&gt; TEST fonts for 6 EUR each. That is roughly 8 dollars and about one-tenth of the usual price. The fonts are fully functional OpenType fonts stripped off all typographic extras and and can only be used for evaluation purposes and to create mockups.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Introducing-TEST-fonts/Introducing-test-fonts_Eskorte_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We hope you will like this option and we will be able to slowly extend this offer from individual families to all of Rosetta’s fonts. You do not have to just look anymore, you can go and try the fonts in your design, in an application of your liking.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For up to three months after you have purchased the TEST fonts we will discount their value when you upgrade to a proper desktop license, so you do not have to pay anything extra.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; these conditions are now deprecated, please refer to the description in the &lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/help"&gt;Help&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://rosettatype.com/licence"&gt;Licence&lt;/a&gt; sections on this web.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2013/06/06/Skolar-version-3</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2013/06/06/Skolar-version-3"/>
    <title>Skolar version 3.0</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Today we release &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar version 3.0&lt;/a&gt;. It brings support for Vietnamese in all weights (both Latin Pro and PE), improved composition for polytonic Greek and extended Latin, new monetary symbols, and, for typographic aficionados, the long-missing primes!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Skolar-in-version-3/Skolar-in-version-3_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar version 3.0&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The Vietnamese was developed by David Březina and Ben Mitchell with consultancy from Vietnamese type specialist Pham Đam Ca, and it was kindly supported by the monks from the Sutta Central (http://suttacentral.net) project. While seemingly simple, as it only contains accented Latin letters, Vietnamese is relatively difficult to design well. It combines accents which change base characters with marks which denote tonality. These often stack atop each other and need to create a harmonious whole on both the ‘accent’ as well as the ‘tonal’ levels. This is something we learned thanks to Đam Ca and hopefully we implemented it well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This update is free for all customers no matter where they initially bought the Skolar fonts. If you wish to update, email us with a copy of your receipt.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These changes only apply to Skolar Latin Pro (or only Skolar) and Skolar PE. Versions Basic, Cyrillic, and Greek are not updated.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Please note that the layout of your texts may change and there may be minor reflows if you use this version instead of any previous version. We suggest backing up the old fonts before you reinstall with the new ones.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Skolar-in-version-3/Skolar-in-version-3_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar version 3.0&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Changelog&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;added support for Vietnamese (over 150 accented glyphs)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;added primes (minute, second)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;lining figures are now default&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;added new currency symbols: Turkish lira symbol, Indian rupee symbol and Vietnamese dong symbol&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;larger bullets&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;added Wheel of Dharma (Dharmacakra) symbol&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;improved support for Catalan punt volant&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;greatly improved composition and decomposition rules for extended Latin and polytonic Greek [PE only]&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;improved mark positioning for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic (esp. accent combinations with ogonek letters) [PE only]&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;added support for ij with acute [PE only]&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;changed approach to font naming in pre-OpenType applications&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;optimised dcroat and hbar in Bold weights&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;other minor bug-fixes and improvements&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;specimen updated with user manual for Skolar’s combinable arrows&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2013/05/10/The-Perils-of-Harmonization</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2013/05/10/The-Perils-of-Harmonization"/>
    <title>The perils of harmonization</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This text was originally published in Rosetta Type Specimen No. 1.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is one thing particularly notable about our typefaces, and that is that they are designed with several writing systems (scripts) in mind. In other words, they are attempts to harmonise different scripts in typographic terms. However, a careful reader should stop and wonder what does it exactly mean to match scripts and why would one want to do that in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;With the advent of global communication, all kinds of multilingual documents are becoming more and more common. Multilingual typography is most noticeable in dictionaries, linguistic publications, various product manuals, websites, and way-finding applications. In some countries, owing to linguistic diversity, it is omnipresent.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The use of various scripts in one multilingual document presents a brand new set of conditions and constraints for typographers. Designing text material involving two or more scripts means balancing sometimes extremely different writing systems in one coherent meta‐system. The result has to solve not only problems of each script individually, but those arising from their interaction as well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Notably, perfect equality may not always be the goal. Depending on the purpose of a publication, scripts may be required to act in different roles. In a dictionary, one script is usually dominant and the other subordinate. In a general academic text with multi‐script quotations, an equal relationship is usually intended.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Methods of dealing with multiple scripts on one page can be diverse as well. Scripts can be separated, either on the level of pages, paragraphs, or lines. The most challenging approach is setting varying scripts on one line.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Typographic balance involves mainly these closely related parameters: size, colour (weight), and proportion. The size is usually decided based on the intended importance of corresponding text while the proportion is related to convention and legibility of a particular script. When using different typefaces for each script, it is often a problem that when the proportion and size are set properly, it is hard to get an even overall colour. This is one of the objectives of multi-script typefaces, to allow for an even colour together with the appropriate default sizing and proportions respectful to the readability and to the natural character of the scripts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A multi-script typeface should ideally unite the scripts stylistically as well, yet this cannot be forced. Scripts which developed in different environments require different typographic solutions. Stylistic features have to be applied with great sensitivity. Overdoing the matching and misinformed attempts at innovation can cause more harm to readability than merely getting the mutual typographic balance wrong. One should never take for granted that what works in one script will be applicable and equally effective in another.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In order to achieve an ideal harmony, scripts have to be balanced aesthetically, but also with cultural sensitivity. The ability to choose a proper typeface for a certain purpose requires understanding the history of the script’s development and the culture associated with the script. And this knowledge cannot be simply generalised.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Rosetta is trying to provide graphic designers and typographers with carefully selected typefaces which consider these perils of harmonisation and deal with them in a thoughtful manner. Only such typefaces will make multi-script typography easier and improve the reading experience.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2013/02/05/What-is-multiscript-typography</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2013/02/05/What-is-multiscript-typography"/>
    <title>What is multi-script typography all about</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;In 2012 Jenny Stuttard, a Graphic Design student at Liverpool John Moores University, contacted David Březina with a few questions about how we create harmony between different writing systems, and how we determine its success. She also wanted to know to what extent Latin typography had influenced non-Latin type design.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;—
&lt;strong&gt;How different is designing a multi-script typeface compared to one that’s only designed to carry an individual writing system?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Indeed it is very different. There are several reasons why it is more difficult to design a multi-script typeface. First and most obviously, the more writing systems you are working on, the more drawings are to be done. Second, it’s very likely that some of those scripts are not as familiar to you as the others. That means you need to do research first, and pay extra attention along the way. Making the scripts work together is extra work. I usually say it is about 2.63× more work than a one-script typeface, but it can be even more, depending on the writing systems involved. Latin-Arabic typeface is certainly more complicated than Latin-Cyrillic.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Multi-script typography is about making strangers cohabit the same visual environment without any unpleasant incidents. It challenges us by juxtaposing scripts with visual characteristics, and cultural and historical contexts, that may be very different. Scripts that developed in different environments require different typographic solutions. If you are designing a multi-script type family from scratch, you can plan from the start for a solution that works for all the different scripts, a set of design parameters which when applied do not infringe on the readability of either of the scripts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can of course add a new script to an existing type family, but this can be more difficult: if you stick too much to the design parameters of the existing script, the new script can end up looking entirely unconventional or even unreadable. That means you may not be able to make it as closely related as you want. In that situation, in my opinion, it is better to aim for less stylistic harmony and better readability of each individual script and balance only the general typographic attributes such as weight or appearing height. Of course, there are different levels to that.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about when adding a new script to a family, such as the Devanagari addition to Skolar. Was that a different type of process to the initial designing of the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic Skolar?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Skolar (Latin) was designed with Indian scripts in mind from the beginning. Therefore the method for designing Devanagari and Gujarati was quite similar to the Greek. The main difference was establishing the relative proportions between Latin and the Indian scripts. With Cyrillic and Greek this is already well established, but with Indian scripts there are no fixed conventions. Another thing is the stress or pen angle in most north Indian scripts has a different orientation than in Latin. This made designing them a bit more challenging since you need to switch to a slightly different mode while drawing. Furthermore, unlike European alphabets, Indic scripts need complex OpenType features for the fonts to display properly. And lastly, working on Devanagari was a collaboration with Vaibhav Singh; collaborating requires time to manage the division of work, maintaining efficient communication.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/What-is-multiscript-typography/What-is-multiscript-typography_4.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar Devanagari is a collaboration between David Březina and Vaibhav Singh. This extension to David’s Skolar supports over 33 Indic languages.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When bringing 2+ scripts together, should the focus be on trying to make them work together and matching them visually (within reason) or should the focus be on keeping them distinguishable and letting them function individually? How important do you think the idea of visual harmonisation is to bilingual and multi-script design?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There are different approaches and different answers to these questions depending on who you ask. And every new typeface is an attempt to answer the question within the constraints of a particular project. As I said, for me readability goes before harmonisation. Yet it very much depends on the intended use, the type of publication it would be used for. Naturally, the scripts should be distinguishable and sometimes you even want them to stand out. But that is perhaps the job of a typographer, not a type designer.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As there’s so much variation in different writing systems, both in the way they look and function, can we ever really make them ‘match’? Maybe it’s not so much about ‘matching’ but more about visually complementing, balancing, and making them work on an equal level.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I think you have just answered your question. ‘Matching’ is an odd word for me to use in this context because perhaps we are not trying to match the scripts, rather we are matching some design parameters. Balancing the importance of the scripts within one typographic environment is closer to my understanding of what multi-script typography is about.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What methods can we employ to balance scripts, and is it about creating some kind of harmony between them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Separate what is essential to the script and what is just styling. That is best done by studying both current and historical materials, and a lot of them. There might not be a clear line, though. Recognise which design parameters (e.g. weight, size, contrast, stress, modulation) can be shared across the scripts involved and which are inherently tied to the script’s convention, and readability for that matter. You can utilise the shared characteristics to achieve a harmonious whole.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/What-is-multiscript-typography/What-is-multiscript-typography_3.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Nassim type family by Titus Nemeth was designed with Arabic and Latin in mind from the beginning.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At the start of my research I was approaching it with the idea that I would be searching for this definite set of ‘golden rules’ to follow, when really maybe it doesn’t quite work like that. What I did find highlighted most often was to stay true to each script, and from there each situation is different and requires its own ‘rules’ for that brief. Would you agree with this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In your experiences have you found a set of rules that are generally applicable, or that you tend to come back to when working on a project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Assume as little as possible. Particularly, do not assume that if something works for one script, it will work for another.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Intellectual humility is extremely important. Acknowledge not-knowing. At least to yourself.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Be aware of influences technology could have had on a script.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Get feedback. Pick your consultants carefully. Make sure you listen to people who have sound experience in type design and some kind of insight in the historical development of the script.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Be sensitive and gentle. Do not overdo it with the harmonisation.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While completely morphing and stretching characters of one system to resemble another is never really going to look that good or function very well, how much room is there to play with the design when combining scripts? Perhaps these designs would belong more to experimental typography and not really within commercial design, but are there ever situations where borrowing quite heavily from one script is ok?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There is a great risk it would end up being a pastiche. If that is what you want, then yeah why not. And it could be an interesting concept. Balkan Sans by Nikola Djurek and Marija Juza is a good case study.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/What-is-multiscript-typography/What-is-multiscript-typography_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Balkan Sans by Nikola Djurek and Marija Juza.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think it’s fair to say a large number of non-Latin designs are coming into existence as counterparts for pre-existing Latin typefaces and in multi-script families as opposed to standalone designs for that script?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;No, I do not think that is correct. There is a multitude of mono-script typefaces. Thorough research would be needed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In fact, the whole idea of multi-script type design (balancing different scripts within one type family) is rather novel. Not the idea of multilingual communication of course.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think there’s the chance that the growing number of situations that require multilingual design may lead to alterations of certain scripts?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is hard to tell. There have been several kinds of alterations in the past. I’ve noticed some common patterns: a) the influence of technology: some technologies are friendlier to one script then to another, b) the ignorance of a designer: designers making uninformed or misinformed decisions, c) the arrogance of a designer: the belief that one has the right to alter the conventions of a script. The last one is particularly interesting. You see, convention (and readability of a script) is a result of a collective history. Under what circumstances does an individual have the right to alter it and to what extent? And where do you draw a line between experiments and imperatives?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Those would be mostly negative alterations, but there are maybe some good ones where, for example, options in one script inspire implementation of similar options in another script in order to provide a wider typographic repertoire.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Like languages, no writing system is an island and there will be influences among them for sure. The question is whether these alterations are done for the benefit of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/What-is-multiscript-typography/What-is-multiscript-typography_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Type system Arek by Khajag Apelian extends the typographic repertoire of Armenian script with matching italic and multiple weights.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you think it’s fair to say that if this was to happen, then it would more likely be the result of designers (inappropriately) making these alterations in an attempt to match differing scripts, rather than a necessary evolution of the script?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It would depend on the case, the designers and their motivations. Good designers are aware of the matchmaking issues and can deal with them sensitively.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There’s also the influence of technology conceived for a different script. It seems that most of the world scripts have their roots in handwriting and calligraphy. Any typographic technology is a means to speed-up production and reproduction. So far, each new technology has brought improvements in this respect, but it has also imposed limitations on some of the scripts. For example, metal typesetting, with its decomposition into separate metal pieces, is not ideal for Arabic, where joining is the essence of the script. The same applies to Devanagari. The subsequent technologies (photo typesetting, digital typography) brought many improvements and thus eliminated lots of the downsides, but some still remain. Many think that OpenType is the ultimate solution. Unfortunately, it too has some drawbacks. For example, Nastaliq (a particular style of Arabic) is still quite a challenge to reproduce in OpenType*. And there are more examples.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* I am not exactly sure how good WinSoft’s Tasmeem typesetting system holds up in this regard. My impression is that it is doing better since it was designed with Arabic script in mind.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/10/15/Rosetta-camp-2012</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/10/15/Rosetta-camp-2012"/>
    <title>Rosetta camp 2012</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Type design has become a virtualised, one-man/woman profession. Besides the many benefits (such as working in pyjamas all day) it can also make type-people feel detached, losing touch with the wider context of their work. At Rosetta we do not subscribe to that and so we took deliberate action to remedy such potential apathy.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Some of the Rosetta designers watching the coordinator on a children’s swing and enjoying the romantic architecture of South Moravia.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unlike some other independent foundries, Rosetta does not have one or two central designers. It functions as a cooperative hub which makes it particularly effective when it comes to designing for non-Latin scripts. One or two people pretending they know everything about everything would not be any good in such an environment. A larger circle of designers, consultants, and friends who have fun working together is much more useful. We value our designers and enjoy collaborating with them. In order to further foster this basic setup we came up with the concept of Rosetta Camp, a yearly gathering of designers releasing their work with Rosetta.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The first Rosetta camp took place near our headquarters in Brno (Czech Republic) this September. From the beginning, the intention was to provide 50/50 lifestyle conditions, that is 50% socialising and 50% work. We believe that only in such an environment can the human brain operate at its best and come up with groundbreaking ideas on just about everything. But mainly, we focussed on strategic planning, finishing and presenting our new merchandise, sessions about Arabic and Multiple-Master production, show-and-tell on Czech type history, and type design art-direction and mutual feedback sessions. The socialising half does not need to be detailed here, but rest assured that all major beverage providers were carefully assessed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The city of Brno&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_6.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Sessions on Czech typography and type design&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_7.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; David and Vaibhav talking about girls&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides our new Arabic poster and multi-script pencil we have also introduced an ideal libation for type collaboration — a complementary beer to Skolar type family (read &lt;a href="/blog/2012/10/15/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer"&gt;more about its making here&lt;/a&gt;), hand-made and lovingly supervised by the author of Skolar himself. This release is an attempt to break off the generally rather stiff approach to type families. As far as we know, Skolar is now the first type family extending not only beyond writing systems, but also beyond type. Unfortunately for the readers, this to-be-merchandise was all entirely consumed during the camp.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Next year, we hope to connect the Rosetta Camp with the &lt;a href="http://typetalks.org"&gt;TypeTalks&lt;/a&gt; mini-conference in Brno and allow more public participation (e.g. in workshops). Let us know if you would like to join us.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_7.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar Regulager&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_8.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Romantic goodbye from the Rosetta crew&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-camp-2012/Rosetta-camp-2012_9.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; UFO bonus&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/10/15/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/10/15/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer"/>
    <title>The making of Skolar Beer</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;For ages, designers have been extremely conservative in planning their type families. The biggest moves have been the introduction of the bold weight in the 19th century, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers as a precursor of Multiple-Master technology and interpolation techniques, mega-families encompassing multiple styles (e.g. serif, sans, slab), multi-script type families supporting vast amounts of languages, low-resolution fonts for screens, and whole type-systems effectively addressing issues in particular fields (e.g. newspaper design). Yet all of these, dare we say, utterly fail to cross the boundaries of the subject. They tend to focus only on type and solving typographic minutiae without maintaining wider context.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;From the beginning, Skolar has been a type family that chose to cross boundaries – first of languages, then writing systems, and now it has been complemented, after Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, and Gujarati, with a beer! Providing typographers with an unprecedented tool fostering their expressive repertoire.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_11.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Challenges of harmonization&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The key issue in “designing a complement” for an existing typeface is to figure out the fundamental principles defining the character of the said typeface and then translating these principles to a new environment. Be it new script or completely different craft, the principles are the same. Well, there is the unfortunate issue that drinks do not have as solid a form as letters. For that reason, a more innate connection between type and beer had to be found and implemented. One could call it an author-centred harmonisation approach. Crudely put, the idea is that the same mind will naturally come up with a related product.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This complementary beer has been hand-made and lovingly supervised by the author himself. Moreover it has been home-made to allow the environment to seep in, the very same environment which shaped the author’s thoughts when designing the original typeface. The fermentation started at 21:15 on 3 September 2012 and ended at 08:57 on 10 September. Not surprisingly, and similar to the typeface design, it took ages! The beer is hop-less (no pun intended, seriously), the classic kind of beer and similar to the typeface it acquired a twist through the author’s intentions and admittedly some mis-intentions as well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_6.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Proportions&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Great care has been given to decisions on proportions. The goal was to make an 11-degree beer, i.e. beer with medium strength. However, after the initial tasting (and it goes without saying that no sugar has been added to increase the amount of alcohol in the beer) it seems more like a 12-degree beer. When perceived through the typographer’s optics, this is a clear parallel to the type which actually looks like a 12 point size when set in 11 points. It’s all in the proportions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer/The-making-of-Skolar-Beer_10.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Is this just the beginning?&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This non-filtered and 100% organic beer is just a prototype; an attempt to break off the generally stiff approach to type families. It is a semi-sweet, subtly-bitter beer with a yeast-y aftertaste and as it best fits with the Regular weight, we call it &lt;strong&gt;Skolar Regulager&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately for the readers, this to-be-merchandise was all entirely consumed during the Rosetta Camp. But there is hope.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Potentially, this is just the beginning of a larger mega-beer-family spanning from Light (pale beer) to Extrabold (dark beer) with non-alcoholic equivalents to the sans. In beer-brewing there is no concept of italics and we refuse to produce those kitschy perfumed beers and radlers (we are in serious beer business here!). However, here’s a thought: these could be ciders.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/06/26/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/06/26/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari"/>
    <title>The development of Skolar Devanagari</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Text typefaces are essential for serious typography. Yet there is an absence of such typefaces in most Indian scripts. And when it comes to typefaces that work well in multi-script environments, the scarcity is even more pronounced.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar#Devanagari"&gt;Skolar’s new complement&lt;/a&gt; aims to fill this gap for Devanagari – one of the major scripts of India. The foremost consideration was to create a design suited to Devanagari and its particularities, and not to uncritically borrow formal principles from one writing system to another. The objective was to create a versatile type family that would work smoothly for complex typographic purposes and yet remain distinctive and energetic in larger sizes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The typeface was designed and engineered by two professional type designers, Vaibhav Singh and David Březina, both of whom have experience with designing for Indian writing systems. Importantly, they undertook substantial research in the historical developments and current situation of the Devanagari and Gujarati letterforms. Both have previously written dissertations on these subjects during their postgraduate studies.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The original brief for Skolar was adhered to, and the Devanagari complement also provides extensive support for scholarly and multi-lingual publications, covering a wide range of possibilities – complex Sanskrit can be set with it as readily as regional languages; contemporary mixed-language messages as harmoniously as academic treatises.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Skolar Devanagari also attempts to provide alternative solutions to the legacy of metal-type and its shortcomings. Limitations arising from the physical nature of metal-type made many compromised typographic practices prevalent. These are still carried on in digital fonts today although they are not relevant given the advanced OpenType capabilities. Skolar Devanagari presents a reevaluated attempt at a more well-considered solution with contextual substitutions and appropriate mark positioning.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Mark positioning in various metal typesetting environments (top to bottom: handsetting, Monotype, Linotype).&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_4.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; The logic of Anusvara placement in Skolar Devanagari: if the letter has ‘width’, i.e. has two strokes touching the headline, then the Anusvara is optically centred over the width of the letter.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The typeface provides an extensive range of conjuncts and adopts a rational approach to letter-combinations. It covers almost all meaningful bi-consonantal conjuncts and frequent tri-consonantal and quadri-consonantal conjuncts with a view to provide for the unexpected or novel combinations often encountered in scholarly texts as well as in day-to-day transliterated words.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_5.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Conjuncts in Skolar Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All in all, the typeface has been optimised for more than 1500 basic syllables, which are either precomposed or built from half forms. These basic syllables can be further modified by means of matras (aka vowel marks) and other marks (reph, rakar, anusvara, nukta, candrabindu, …). All of the meaningful combinations are designed and engineered to avoid ungainly collisions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari/The-development-of-Skolar-Devanagari_6.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; And more conjuncts in Skolar Devanagari&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Production&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The complex engineering work is an integral part of the design for most of the Indic scripts. Skolar Devanagari fonts were developed in the &lt;a href="http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype/afdko.html"&gt;Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO)&lt;/a&gt; instead of the more commonly used &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/typography/volt.mspx"&gt;MS VOLT&lt;/a&gt; workflow. Skolar Devanagari is apparently the first Devanagari font built this way. Thanks to custom macros for syllabic analysis in &lt;a href="http://www.fontlab.com/"&gt;FontLab&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://glyphsapp.com/"&gt;Glyphs&lt;/a&gt; the sheer amount of syllables and mark combinations could be tackled precisely. Using the new tools streamlined the whole process and allowed for rapid prototyping, systematic issue-tracking and prompt updates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Acknowledgements&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The authors would like to express their gratitude to Fiona Ross who taught both of them and commented on the design in the early stages, to Adobe Type team (namely Paul Hunt and Miguel Sousa) who provided impeccable support during the production in AFDKO, to Georg Seifert for help with some of the custom macros, and to Rosetta’s intern Ami Shah for careful testing of the beta fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/05/10/Indian-newspapers</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/05/10/Indian-newspapers"/>
    <title>Indian newspapers</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The group of people behind &lt;a href="http://aksharaya.org/"&gt;Aksharaya&lt;/a&gt; organised an amazing collection of Indian newspapers. This was exhibited during this year’s &lt;a href="http://typoday.in/"&gt;Typography day&lt;/a&gt; at IIT Bombay.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;According to the office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India, the total number of registered newspapers, as on 31 March 2011, was 82,222 (yes, over eighty two thousands). That is newspapers in various vernacular languages and English. Here are just a couple of pictures from the exhibition, for your viewing pleasure.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Photos by Anna Giedryś.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Indian-newspapers/Indian-newspapers_6.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/04/02/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/04/02/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press"/>
    <title>Baroda lecture and the press</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Last Tuesday (27 March) David Březina gave the last lecture of the “Rosetta Indian tour” in the city of Vadodara (aka Baroda). Baroda is the fourth largest city in Gujarat and one of its main cultural centres. The public lecture was focused on explaining type design as a profession, its objectives, and its challenges in the area of Indian writing systems with a focus on Gujarati. David also presented the recently unveiled extensions of &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar for Devanagari and Gujarati&lt;/a&gt;. This cooperation between David and Vaibhav Singh is aimed at enhancing complex typography in newspapers, magazines, and academic publications. The audience was great and the discussion afterwards was inspiring, to say the least.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;There was even a press conference connected with the lecture. Three major newspapers reported about our pursuits: &lt;a href="http://www.divyabhaskar.co.in/"&gt;Divya Bhaskar&lt;/a&gt; (in Gujarati), &lt;a href="http://www.gujaratsamachar.com/"&gt;Gujarat Samachar&lt;/a&gt; (in Gujarati), and &lt;a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/This-Czech-is-a-Gujarati-type/articleshow/12435467.cms"&gt;Times of India&lt;/a&gt; (in English). You can see the articles below. They are not entirely flawless, but illustrate the importance of new fonts for Indian scripts quite well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our deepest gratitude to Kalapi Gajjar Bordawekar and his family for inviting us. The lecture was sponsored and endorsed by the Association of British Scholars.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press/Baroda-lecture-and-the-press_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/03/14/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/03/14/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference"/>
    <title>Lectures at NID and Typoday conference</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On 28 February, David Březina gave two lectures at &lt;a href="http://www.nid.edu/"&gt;NID&lt;/a&gt; students. A general introduction &lt;strong&gt;On typeface design&lt;/strong&gt; (see the &lt;a href="http://speakerdeck.com/u/mrbrezina/p/on-typeface-design"&gt;slides here&lt;/a&gt;) and a presentation of some of Rosetta’s innovative designs, including some unreleased pieces. NID is the design education hub of India. Started in the 1960s it has a long tradition of collaborating internationally, with designers such as Charles and Ray Eames and Adrian Frutiger. It has produced many talented and influential Indian designers. Big thanks to Tarun Deep Girdher, Rupesh Vyaz, and Suresh Immanuel for inviting us and hosting us so generously!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In Bombay, or more precisely in Powai, Industrial Design Centre at IIT organised the fifth edition of the [Typography Day conference](http://www.typoday.in (or Typoday). As a matter of fact, it was three typographic days long (1–3 March). The first one was devoted to student workshops, the other two consisted of academic lectures from teachers such as Ken Botnick and Rathna Ramanathan, professionals such as Paul Hunt (Adobe) and Ted Harrison (FontLab), but also from IDC students and recent graduates.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;David’s paper &lt;strong&gt;Challenges in multilingual typography&lt;/strong&gt; addressed the objectives of designing multilingual type families where designers face challenges on the crossroads of linguistics, typography, and computer science. Type design is not only about drawing nice letter-shapes, but it also deals with their optimisation for output, that is, typographic layout, and special requirements for the target media and technology. Some of the main challenges lie in extending the typographic repertoire of one script (i.e. writing system) with tools similar to those of another, e.g. designing a type system with complementary cursive style for Armenian, see &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Arek"&gt;Arek&lt;/a&gt;. Other challenges lie in adapting the scripts to a typographic system or to the limitations of certain kind of media (e.g. issues connected with supporting Arabic typefaces on the web, see &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/webfonts"&gt;our Arabic webfonts&lt;/a&gt;. At the end David also revealed Rosetta’s upcoming type family for Devanagari and Gujarati which was designed to allow for more complex typography in the respective scripts. We will post more about it soon.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference/Lectures-at-NID-and-Typoday-conference_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/02/17/Lectures-at-Ishan-Khosla</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/02/17/Lectures-at-Ishan-Khosla"/>
    <title>Lectures at Ishan Khosla</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On 8 February, David Březina was invited to Ishan Khosla Design Studio at Haus Khas village in New Delhi to talk about type design and Rosetta’s projects. The evening comprised two lectures: the first showing some released as well as some unreleased projects with a commentary on various obstacles in designing typefaces for various scripts, the second titled &lt;strong&gt;Specifying type consistency&lt;/strong&gt;* discussed approaches designers take in order to design readable and visually balanced typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The atmosphere in Ishan’s beautiful studio was friendly and intimate and the lectures turned into a discussion about issues related to design and the actual use of Indian scripts today.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If you do not know Ishan Khosla’s studio yet, remember to have a look at their work. It is highly collaborative (mainly with craftsmen around the country) and seeks an Indian expression within contemporary graphic design, yet speaks to a wider audience. Thank you for having us, Ishan!&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;BTW. Ishan even had posters prepared for the lecture and had them posted! There is a great collection of these posters on Facebook and one example is shown below. Also more pictures from the evening on IK Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is the first of a short series of talks and studio visits around India. In Delhi we also visited W+K and met with Turmeric Design and Kimya Gandhi. There will be one more session in Ahmedabad at NID on 27–28 February. And in Mumbai (1–5 March) we plan to visit several studios and present a lecture called &lt;strong&gt;Challenges in multilingual typography&lt;/strong&gt; at the Typography Day conference 2012.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla/Lectures-at-Ishan Khosla_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/01/22/Our-first-year</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/01/22/Our-first-year"/>
    <title>Our first year</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Last year in January we started Rosetta Type Foundry with the hope of improving support for some of the world scripts and to release high-quality multi-script typefaces. It seems appropriate to look back after this first and busy year, sum it up, and perhaps hint at what is coming next.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Besides the two TypeTogether multi-script typefaces (Maiola and Skolar) initially included in our library, we managed to release four retail families and one custom. One should be aware of the fact that multi-script type families take considerably more time to finish. It takes a lot of patience and I have the utmost respect for our designers for producing such refined work. Thanks to them, our font library already supports five scripts — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Armenian — and in all 141 languages directly and about 30 through transliterations.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Our-first-year/Our-first-year_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Aisha by Titus Nemeth&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Most of our released typefaces received awards from established international type competitions with specialist jury in world scripts. Those competitions include ATypI’s Letter.2, TDC2, Granshan, Modern Cyrillic, …&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Our-first-year/Our-first-year_2.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Nassim by Titus Nemeth&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our first release was an informal design for Latin and Arabic called &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Aisha"&gt;Aisha&lt;/a&gt;. It was designed by Titus Nemeth and released in January.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Later on, in June, Titus added his bestseller &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; adapted for OpenType technology (it was previously released for Tasmeem technology by WinSoft). Not only did this typeface collect numerous awards, it also became very popular among Arabic designers for its… well … beauty and high quality of execution. For the same reasons BBC chose it for its redesigned news portal. Versions of Nassim tailored for specific language-needs and optimised for the web are now served on BBC Arabic, BBC Persian, and BBC Urdu to around 7 million unique visitors each month.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Our-first-year/Our-first-year_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Neacademia by Sergei Egorov&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In June, the first two weights of the type-system &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Neacademia"&gt;Neacademia&lt;/a&gt; by Sergei Egorov were released. Neacademia is a remarkable revival of Aldine types – not only in the way it looks, but also in the way it operates, from contextual alternates used instead of kerning to smart, asymmetrical spacing of capitals. We are preparing its update which will include small-caps as well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Our-first-year/Our-first-year_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Arek by Khajag Apelian&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;During the summer months, Khajag Apelian adapted his fresh Armenian type family &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Arek"&gt;Arek&lt;/a&gt; for use in the &lt;a href=""&gt;Yerevan Magazine&lt;/a&gt;. We are thankful to the designers of the magazine for providing this opportunity and also for their feedback. Arek will be released for Armenian and Latin this year. At the moment, its Armenian part is only available for beta testing and custom licensing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Our-first-year/Our-first-year_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Sutturah by Octavio Pardo&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;November has seen our most recent release, the striking fat script type &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Sutturah"&gt;Sutturah&lt;/a&gt; by Octavio Pardo. So far only Latin is available, but my hope is that, as I write, Octavio is finalising the design of the Cyrillic version, to be released soon.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Most recently, Skolar was updated to support various transliterations schemes (most importantly for Arabic, Chinese/Pinyin, Sanskrit, and contemporary Indian languages, but there are many more options) and it now includes the capital form of German ß.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We have signed up with two distributors (MyFonts and FontShop). Rosetta also made two language-specific sales which became quite popular, so one could expect them to happen again this year. Besides socialising through common channels (&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/rosettatype"&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://facebook.com/rosettatype"&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;), we have given several lectures about our work in UK, Iceland, USA, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Rosetta also became one of the sponsors of &lt;a href="http://typetalks.org/"&gt;TypeTalks 2&lt;/a&gt; conference (not to be mistaken with the recent TYPO talks which developed from TYPO Berlin).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Perhaps we should clarify why we always talk about multi-script typefaces. We do not like the term non-Latin: typographic systems should be designed to serve all writing systems, not just one, right? We like to use the term ‘world scripts’ instead. Yet, it is not all that we do. We not only design for individual world scripts, but for several at the same time! And we work hard to make them work together smoothly. It means that users do not need two different fonts and rescale them to look equal, risking the eventual appearance. It means that besides the weight, the styling is often very similar. It means that they do not run into encoding problems when they use words in the other script. It means that writing in multiple scripts is as easy as it gets. And while all these efforts seem too specific, they have been instantly understood by our customers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;What is next?&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In 2012 we will finally start offering our webfonts via &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt;, and for self-hosting on custom basis. It is particularly important for Arabic web-typography which was so far bound to use ugly system fonts. Yes, you will be able to licence Nassim, and yes it works in most of the current browsers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Rosetta will be presenting at &lt;a href="http://typoday.in"&gt;Typography day in Mumbai&lt;/a&gt; (1–3 March) and in connection, we have decided to do a little “Indian tour” through Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, and Goa. Yes it is a tourist trip, but we also hope to visit a few studios and individual graphic designers in the region in order to promote our work and lecture about type design and typography in general. Let us know if you would like to meet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;TypeTogether will release more weights for one of the typefaces mentioned above. And we will add two new writing systems to our library, and at least one new Arabic plus Latin type family. Stay tuned!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2012/01/01/Neacademia-version-2</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2012/01/01/Neacademia-version-2"/>
    <title>Neacademia version 2</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Neacademia-version-2/Neacademia2_banner.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Neacademia version 2&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This updates includes:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;many minor adjustments to Cyrillic lettershapes in order to further improve readability.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;small caps for both Latin and Cyrillic in the upright (roman) version.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;small cap figures!&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;some more alternate glyphs (Cyrillic alternate ф (ef) in italic is accessible via stylistic set 1).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;bug fixes and improvements to kerning and contextual alternates.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Please note that text originally set in some older version can reflow when reset in the updated version. Therefore, we recommend keeping backup copies of the old versions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;See the updated specimen to get a better idea of what has been changed.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our thanks to Florian Hardwig and Maxim Zhukov for their insightful comments.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2011/11/01/Skolar-version-2-5</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2011/11/01/Skolar-version-2-5"/>
    <title>Skolar version 2.5</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Skolar fonts in our library have been updated to the most recent version (2.5). This version includes extended language support and kerning, and in the PE version a vast amount of Latin transliteration support.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;strong&gt;free update&lt;/strong&gt; for all customers who bought Skolar from Rosetta. Please, send us an email if you are interested.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Skolar-in-version-2-5/Skolar-in-version-2-5.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; Skolar version 2.5&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Details&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skolar Latin Pro&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Skolar PE&lt;/strong&gt; now include the capital form of German ß. The small-cap version is also included.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skolar Cyrillic&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Skolar PE&lt;/strong&gt; now also supports Bashkir, Chuvash, Ossetic, and Komi. That makes for more than 41 languages altogether.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Skolar PE now has better and more consistent linguistic extension. It supports more than 30 languages via various standardised Latin transliterations (aka romanizations). Namely &lt;strong&gt;Arabic, Chinese (Pinyin), contemporary Indian languages, Pali, and Sanskrit&lt;/strong&gt; are supported in all weights and italics in lowercase, uppercase, even in small caps! See the complete list below. Some of these transliterations make use of the automatic accent/mark positioning (in PE version only) so users can key base characters followed by the combining marks, and the font will combine them properly (see the bottom of page 10 of the &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/downloadFile.php?file=resources/font_pdfs/Skolar_specimen.pdf"&gt;PDF specimen&lt;/a&gt; for examples). Please note that this OpenType® feature is supported in InDesign CS3 and higher, Flash Player 10, MS Word 2012, Mellel 2.2–2.7, and XeTeX.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;All Skolar fonts now include improved kerning, particularly kerning of punctuation (period, apostrophe, …). Note that for this reason the text originally set in some older version can reflow when reset in the updated version. Therefore, we recommend keeping backup copies of the old versions.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; All Rosetta fonts supporting Latin standard character set now officially support over 90 languages. Frankly, this is not due to the increased number of glyphs, but thanks to better language research conducted recently in order to provide precise information about our fonts. Similarly, fonts with extended Cyrillic support (that is Neacademia and Skolar) now support more than 41 languages (Neacademia 44 in fact). See the backs of the PDF specimens for precise listings.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Skolar now supports over &lt;strong&gt;162 languages&lt;/strong&gt; (90 in Latin, 41 in Cyrillic, Greek, and ca. 30 via transliterations) &lt;strong&gt;and includes more than 2600 glyphs&lt;/strong&gt; in each weight.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;Transliterations supported in Skolar PE&lt;/h3&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Arabic (DMG, ISO 233, ISO/R 233, UN, EI), Amharic, Burmese, Greek, Chinese (Pinyin), Contemporary Indian languages (Hunterian transliteration, National Library at Kolkata, UN), Japanese (Modified Hepburn, Kunrei), Kazakh, Khmer, Korean (McCune Reischauer, National standard), Kyrgyz, Laotian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Nepali, Pali (Rhys Davids system), Russian, Sanskrit (IAST), Tajik, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, …&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Unless stated otherwise, the transliterations are based on UN and/or nationally approved systems.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2011/05/18/Rosetta-UK-tour</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2011/05/18/Rosetta-UK-tour"/>
    <title>Rosetta UK tour</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;At Rosetta we like to share our knowledge through teaching. We keep giving lectures or leading workshops in our home countries as well as abroad. Besides that, it is always exciting to get surprising questions from students and see their own way of thinking about typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago, David did a little Rosetta tour de United Kingdom while visiting &lt;a href="http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/"&gt;Central Saint Martins College of Art &amp;amp; Design&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href="http://www.reading.ac.uk/typography/"&gt;Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-UK-tour/Rosetta-UK-tour_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The one-day visit was completely devoted to &lt;a href="http://www.typefacedesign.org/"&gt;MA Typeface design&lt;/a&gt; students. The presentation of Rosetta Type Foundry concepts and some of our works (released as well as unreleased typefaces) continued with several notes on how to draw perfect Bézier curves and concluded with a type-crit session focussed on diacritics.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Big thanks to both schools for having us and introducing us to their wonderful students. The Rosetta team hopes to do similar workshops on a regular basis. Let us know if you are interested.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Rosetta-UK-tour/Rosetta-UK-tour_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2011/04/02/BBC-Arabic</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2011/04/02/BBC-Arabic"/>
    <title>Nassim on BBC Arabic</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Following the redesign of the mother-page of the BBC News, BBC Arabic and BBC Persian launched their redesigned websites. These are probably the first, and certainly the biggest websites yet to use webfonts – Arabic webfonts that is. The BBC uses custom versions of Nassim by Titus Nemeth. The typeface was painstakingly optimised for screen and for the web with the help of Thomas Grace (hinting) and Tim Ahrens (webfonts production).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;“The challenge in this endeavour was to come up with a solution that, on the one hand corresponded well with the BBC Arabic site, and on the other didn’t loose the distinct character that made Nassim win multiple design prizes,” says Titus about the customisation process on his blog. “In close collaboration with the designers and editors of the BBC World Service I revised a number of features and letters to accommodate the style and specificities deemed most appropriate for the Arabic language website. The resulting BBC Nassim stays true to the qualities of the original design, whilst toning down some idiosyncrasies and giving it a generally more ‘Arabic’ look.”&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The typeface was further redesigned for the BBC Persian (the last three images). Titus redrew Nassim to give the website a distinctly Iranian look, while maintaining coherence with the BBC-brand visual language. On this project, he worked in close collaboration with the Persian language service, and supported his decisions with historical research. For a more detailed account of the Persian customisation see also &lt;a href="http://www.tntypography.com/blog/?p=341"&gt;Nemeth’s blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;You can also read a &lt;a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2011/05/world_service_user_experience.html"&gt;post on BBC Internet blog&lt;/a&gt; by Kutlu Çanlıoğlu, Senior Creative Director of UX&amp;amp;D at BBC Future Media.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Arabic_1.png' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Arabic website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Arabic_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Arabic website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Arabic_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Arabic website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Persian_4.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Persian website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Persian_5.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Persian website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/BBC-Arabic/BBC-Persian_6.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;div class='imageDescription'&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Figure:&lt;/strong&gt; BBC Persian website&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:BlogPost//2011/01/10/On-Non-Latin-Typefaces-book</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog/2011/01/10/On-Non-Latin-Typefaces-book"/>
    <title>On Non-Latin Typefaces</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;In 2007 a two-day conference about non-Latin typefaces was held at the Department of Typography &amp;amp; Graphics Communication, University of Reading. The accompanying exhibition was the first of its kind showing items from both institutions and some private collections. It included historical type specimens, technical drawings, sketches, photographs, all relating to non-Latin typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;A 64-pages booklet about this exhibition, including essays by James Mosley and Fiona Ross, is available at the &lt;a href="http://stbridelibrary.bigcartel.com/product/non-latin-typefaces"&gt;St Bride’s eShop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Non-latin-typefaces/Non-latin-typefaces_1.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Non-latin-typefaces/Non-latin-typefaces_2.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;div class='image'&gt;&lt;img src='/blog/assets/Non-latin-typefaces/Non-latin-typefaces_3.jpg' title='' width='610'&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2016/09/01/Skolar-Sans-v2-3</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2016-09-01-skolar-sans-2-3-vietnamese-yoruba"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans 2.3 Vietnamese &amp; Yoruba</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Good news! We just released Skolar Sans version 2.3. The main addition is the support for Vietnamese and Yoruba in all weights and styles. The new addition was done by Sláva Jevčinová and David Březina with consultancy from Vietnamese type specialist Pham Đam Ca.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Designing for Vietnamese has its pitfalls, since it combines accents, which change base characters with marks which denote tonality. These often stack atop each other and need to create a harmonious whole on both the ‘accent’ as well as the ‘tonal’ levels.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We also updated the vertical metrics, and fixed minor bugs in the polytonic Greek, and the automatic mark positioning of the PE version. Apart from the Gothic letters, the character set of Skolar Sans PE is now nearly identical with Skolar Sans PE.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The update is free for existing customers of Skolar Sans and Skolar Sans PE, and the additional language support for Vietnamese and Yoruba is included in both. Keep in mind that the layout could reflow, and make a backup of your old fonts before replacing them with the new ones.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2016-09-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2016/07/12/Sherpa-Sans-Is-Now-Gitan</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2016-07-12-sherpa-sans-is-now-gitan"/>
    <title>Sherpa Sans is now Gitan</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Due to a dispute about the naming of one of our typefaces, Sherpa Sans, we were forced to rename the project. This included re-engineering of all fonts for all available formats, change the web &amp;amp; PDF specimens, edit all relevant texts, update existing customers with the new version, redesign parts of our printed promotional material, and issue of this statement. But what was most painful, was parting with a name that matched the project so well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Despite our efforts to resolve the issue with Jo de Baerdemaeker, who asked us to change the name and stop all promotional efforts, he went on to submit a trademark registration. This is, it must be stated, for an unpublished design, with non-existing visual references of the font. Should the registration go through, it could potentially prevent us from promoting and distributing our typeface. We would rather design and have a good night sleep then fight foolish legal battles.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Finding a new name was tough. The name we have eventually chosen is Gitan. We and the author are very happy with it and hope it conveys the idea behind the design as well as its predecessor.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2016-07-12T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/12/01/Lecture-in-Paris</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-12-01-lecture-in-paris"/>
    <title>Lecture in Paris</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David Březina gave a lecture about our most recent projects at an event called &lt;em&gt;Du monde entier au cœur du monde&lt;/em&gt; organized by &lt;a href="http://www.campusfonderiedelimage.org/mediatheque/colloque-typo-fontes-et-caracteres-dans-tous-leurs-etats-du-monde-entier-au-coeur-du"&gt;Campus Fonderie de l’Image à Bagnolet&lt;/a&gt; in Paris. Small, but really nice event, audience, and colleagues presenting. You can see some &lt;a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/campusfonderiedelimage/sets/72157662134031945"&gt;photos on flickr&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you for having us!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-12-01T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/10/22/Octavio-at-DesignFest</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-10-22-octavio-at-designfest-2015"/>
    <title>Octavio at DesignFest 2015</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Octavio Pardo presented about his design work at the ninth &lt;a href="http://www.design-fest.com"&gt;DesignFest&lt;/a&gt; in Guadalajara (Mexico) to an audience of over 1400 attendees. Here is a picture of &lt;a href="https://twitter.com/malenybravo/status/657964159867326464"&gt;him, larger than life Sutturah letters, and an excessive amount of smileys&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-10-22T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/10/09/Khajag-presented-in-Byblos</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-10-09-khajag-presented-in-byblos"/>
    <title>Khajag presented in Byblos</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Khajag Apelian presented about his typeface &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Arek"&gt;Arek&lt;/a&gt; during a conference organized by the Lebanese American University in Byblos (Lebanon). Arek was also presented at the accompanying exhibition at the Byblos Cultural Center.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-10-09T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/09/30/Sponsoring-Ampersand</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-09-30-ampersand-conference-is-the-best"/>
    <title>Ampersand conference is the best</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;After too-long break, one of our &lt;a href="http://2015.ampersandconf.com"&gt;favourite conferences&lt;/a&gt; is coming back to Brighton (UK) this November. Professionally organised, with respected and only high-quality speakers, it presents content that is interesting to both the Letter people as well as the Web people. And we are extra excited since we are sponsoring this year—which also means that you can expect some &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/merchandise#merch-10"&gt;free goodies&lt;/a&gt; lying around. And of course, we will be attending, come and say hello.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-09-30T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/09/24/Lecture-in-Switzerland</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-09-24-lecture-in-switzerland"/>
    <title>Lecture in Switzerland</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David Březina have been invited to present at &lt;a href="http://www.typoclub.ch/site/de/105davidbezina.php"&gt;TypEast&lt;/a&gt; series of lectures in Bern (CH). In the lecture titled ’Letters of Rosetta: from Brno to Bern’, he will talk about his and Rosetta projects that come from the Eastern Europe, published (Skolar Sans) as well as upcoming (Yrsa, Clone). The lecture will take place on 22 October at 18:00 (more info on the web).&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-09-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/06/12/Sponsoring-Granshan</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-06-12-we-are-sponsoring-granshan"/>
    <title>We are sponsoring Granshan</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We will be sponsoring Granshan conference this year. The focus of the conference seems to resonate well with our long-term pursuits. Coincidentally, a few of our associates will be presenting as well: Ben Mitchell on Thai and Latinisation, Titus Nemeth on issues with harmonisation, and Vaibhav Singh on the need for more research-based design for world scripts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-06-12T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/06/08/Skolar-Sans-v1-5</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-06-08-skolar-sans-updated-to-version-1-5"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans updated to version 1.5</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt; version 1.500 is out and includes numerous improvements some of which are detailed below. We had to rescale the small caps in order to make them work well in Cyrillic*. Apologies for any troubles this may cause. At the same time, we have finally added small caps to italics. The kerning and spacing have been greatly improved as well as the OpenType features (namely the language support). And we have added WOFF2 to the provided webfonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This is a free update for all existing customers including those with the free licences. There should be an email in your mailbox by now. As always, remember to keep a backup copy of the old fonts.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are constantly improving our fonts. If you think they misbehave, do let us know and we will try to fix them for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;* Yes, we have been developing Skolar Sans PE!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-06-08T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/05/26/Skolar-Sans-ED-Awards</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-05-26-skolar-sans-received-silver-from-european-design-awards"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans received Silver from European Design Awards</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt; by David Březina and Sláva Jevčinová received Silver at the &lt;a href="http://www.europeandesign.org"&gt;European Design Awards&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, none of us could make it to Istanbul for the ceremony, so here is our virtual, nonetheless genuine, thank you!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-05-26T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/05/19/Eskorte-German-Design-Award</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-05-19-eskorte-nominated-for-the-german-design-award"/>
    <title>Eskorte nominated for the German Design Award</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Our type family &lt;a href="/Eskorte"&gt;Eskorte&lt;/a&gt; by Elena Schneider has been nominated for the &lt;a href="https://www.german-design-council.de/nc/en/design-awards/german-design-award/2015.html"&gt;German Design Award&lt;/a&gt;. Thank you for the honour!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-05-19T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/05/12/Sketches-on-of-type</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-05-12-sketches-on-of-type"/>
    <title>Sketches on/of type</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Our new merchandise ‘Sketches on/of type’ is a dos-à-dos sketchbook/primer with ten short texts on typographic refinements everyone should know about. Designed by our friend and famous Czech typophile &lt;a href="http://www.book-design.eu/index.html"&gt;Martin Pecina&lt;/a&gt;, it is &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/merchandise#merch-10"&gt;available for order in our e-shop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-05-12T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2015/03/20/Skolar-Sans-on-Typographica</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2015-03-20-skolar-sans-on-typographica"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans on Typographica</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Typographica’s selection &lt;a href="http://typographica.org"&gt;Our Favourite Typefaces&lt;/a&gt; has become an annual online festival of remarkable type from previous years. So it is a great pleasure to find a review of our &lt;a href="https://www.rosettatype.com/SkolarSans"&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href="http://ministryoftype.co.uk/"&gt;Aegir Hallmundur&lt;/a&gt; included in the 2014 edition.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;“Skolar Sans is the hugely impressive — and huge, at seventy-two fonts — new companion to Rosetta’s Skolar.”&lt;br&gt;
— Aegir Hallmundur on &lt;a href="http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/skolar-sans/"&gt;Typographica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2015-03-20T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/12/17/The-Hindu-Business-Line</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-12-17-the-hindu-business-line"/>
    <title>The Hindu Business Line</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The Hindu Business Line featured an article &lt;a href="http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/features/blink/know/type-of-things-to-come/article6595043.ece"&gt;Type of things to come&lt;/a&gt; by Sibi Arasu about the state of type design for Indian languages. Rosetta’s and Vaibhav Singh’s work are indeed included together with other suppliers of Indic fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-12-17T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/11/21/Skolar-Sans-release-reception</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-11-21-skolar-sans-release-reception"/>
    <title>Skolar Sans Release Reception</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On Wednesday, 26 November 2015, at 5:30 pm we will hold a reception at the Department of Typography &amp;amp; Graphic Communication, University of Reading, to introduce our largest project so far – &lt;strong&gt;Skolar Sans&lt;/strong&gt;. It has been in development for a long time (several years in fact), so anyone who would like to help introduce Skolar’s new colleague to the typographic world is very welcome. David Březina will give a short presentation about the process. There will be wine and all attendees will receive a significant discount on the fonts. Please do RSVP via Facebook (&lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1592489580982451/"&gt;the event page&lt;/a&gt;), Twitter, or email, we look forward to seeing you there!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-11-21T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/10/24/Skolar-Lights-and-v3-2</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-10-24-skolar-pe-lights-and-version-3-2"/>
    <title>Skolar PE Lights and version 3.2</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Skolar PE has been updated to include Light and Light Italic, thanks to our “permanent intern” Anna Giedryś (so far Cyrillic, Greek, and linguistic extensions were not available in Light styles). Furthermore, in all the Skolar PE styles, we have added a couple of new characters (hwair, wynn, glottal stop, barred-G, K with caron, and candrabindu mark) useful for Gothic, Skolt Sami, and transliterations. In addition, this update includes improved mark placement on Cyrillic vowels.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-10-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/10/24/Font-updates</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-10-24-font-updates"/>
    <title>Font updates</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have been sending font updates for all our fonts in the past few days in order to provide all licensors with the most recent versions of our fonts. For some the new fonts may include only minor bug fixes, but if you purchased the fonts long time ago, you may see more dramatic changes and reflows (particularly Eskorte Arabic and Latin in version 1.3 which was remastered earlier this year). That is why it is always a good idea to backup the previous versions before updating. All updates are free to existing customers. Furthermore, customers who shopped on our old web will receive Studio licence versions which includes both OTF and TTF fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-10-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/09/15/Interview-in-2plus3D-magazine</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-09-15-interview-in-2-3d-magazine"/>
    <title>Interview in 2+3D magazine</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Major Polish design magazine &lt;a href="http://www.2plus3d.pl/kwartalnik/52"&gt;2+3D&lt;/a&gt; published a discussion between Czech book designer Martin Pecina and our own David Březina about non-Latin type design, e-books, design conferences, and other important topics.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-09-15T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/09/08/Meet-Czech-Design</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-09-08-lecture-during-meet-czech-design"/>
    <title>Lecture during Meet Czech Design</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On 10 September, David Březina will introduce Rosetta at a series of events &lt;a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/440370339435601/"&gt;Meet Czech Design&lt;/a&gt; organized by Moravian Gallery.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-09-08T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/07/29/Article-on-Quartz</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-07-29-article-on-quartz"/>
    <title>Article on Quartz</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Quartz interviewed David Březina about Rosetta and his views on global typography for an article &lt;a href="http://qz.com/237851/what-fonts-tell-us-about-the-global-economics-of-the-internet/"&gt;What fonts tell us about the global economics of the internet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-29T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/03/02/Arek-on-Typekit</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-03-02-arek-on-typekit"/>
    <title>Arek on Typekit</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Arek by Khajag Apelian is the next typeface, after Skolar, which we have made available for web-use through the popular &lt;a href="http://typekit.com/fonts/arek"&gt;Typekit&lt;/a&gt; service by Adobe. Note that we also offer Arek as a webfont via &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/webfonts"&gt;our self-hosting offer&lt;/a&gt; and via the &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/foundry/rosetta"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt; service.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/03/01/Typographica-favourites-2013</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-03-01-typographica-favourites-2013"/>
    <title>Typographica favourites 2013</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Typographica’s favourites have grown into a respected selection of the past year’s typefaces. So it was with a great pleasure that this year we found three of our typefaces selected by the reviewing designers. The selected ones are Arek, Eskorte, and Huronia.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2014/02/01/Eskorte-among-the-best-contemporary-typefaces</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2014-02-01-eskorte-among-the-best-contemporary-typefaces"/>
    <title>Eskorte among the best contemporary typefaces</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Slanted magazine compiled a selection of the best typefaces published in 2012 and 2013. We were pleased to find that &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Eskorte"&gt;Eskorte&lt;/a&gt; by Elena Schneider is there in the good company of Underware, Grilli Type, Jonathan Barnbrook &amp;amp; Julián Moncada, Font Bureau, and others. You can find these typefaces in a booklet distributed with the &lt;a href="http://www.slanted.de/shop/slanted-22-art-type"&gt;#22 issue of the Slanted magazine called Art Type&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/12/02/Huronia-posters-published</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-12-02-huronia-posters-published"/>
    <title>Huronia posters published</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;With his typeface &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Huronia"&gt;Huronia&lt;/a&gt; Ross Mills takes up the challenge of supporting all native languages of the Americas, with the hope of helping with the preservation of the endangered ones. In order to promote the typeface and its good cause, we decided to design a set of three posters which present native American stories in Cherokee, Nuuchahnulth, and Inuktitut, as well as in English. Anna Giedryś –  the designer of these posters – created beautiful illustrations to accompany each of these stories. Get the posters in &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/merchandise"&gt;our merchandise section&lt;/a&gt;. Let us know via email if it is a Christmas gift, we can arrange for express shipping.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/12/01/Arek-in-FSI-Best-Type-2013</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-12-01-arek-in-fsi-best-type-2013"/>
    <title>Arek in FSI Best Type 2013</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Arek is ‘best foreign feature’ in &lt;a href="http://www.fontshop.com/blog/newsletters/dec2013b/?utm_source=Newsletter20131218&amp;amp;utm_medium=email&amp;amp;utm_term=em&amp;amp;utm_campaign=BestOf2013"&gt;FontShop’s Best Type 2013&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/10/01/Three-winners-at-Granshan</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-10-01-three-winners-at-granshan"/>
    <title>Three winners at Granshan</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://granshan.org"&gt;Granshan&lt;/a&gt; is one of the most prestigious international competitions for type design, focussing on non-Latin scripts. We were proud to find that this year &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Eskorte"&gt;Eskorte Arabic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Elena Schneider has won the first prize in the category of Arabic text typefaces, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar Gujarati&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by David Březina has won the second prize in the Indic text typefaces category, and best of all, &lt;strong&gt;Serendip Sinhala&lt;/strong&gt; by Rafael Saraiva, which is scheduled for a Rosetta release (it includes a brilliant Latin component btw), has won the first prize in the Indic category and also received the grand prize from Granshan! We are deeply honoured and humbled with this appreciation of our work.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/07/02/MyFonts-interview</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-07-02-myfonts-interview"/>
    <title>MyFonts interview</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;MyFonts interviewed Titus Nemeth, Vaibhav Singh, and David Březina and presented several of Rosetta’s typefaces in their &lt;a href="http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/cc/201306.html"&gt;Creative Characters issue #71&lt;/a&gt;. Read about their studies, behind the scenes at Rosetta, development of several of our fonts, and more.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/07/01/Rosetta-at-ATypI-this-year</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-07-01-rosetta-at-atypi-this-year"/>
    <title>Rosetta at ATypI this year!</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David Březina will be presenting at the &lt;a href="http://www.atypi.org/past-conferences/atypi-amsterdam-2013"&gt;ATypI conference in Amsterdam&lt;/a&gt; this year to discuss the challenges at the crossroads of linguistics, typography, and computer science. The thesis is that multilingual type design is not only the drawing of nice lettershapes, it also deals with their optimisation for output, that is, with typographic layout, and the demands of target media. Some of the challenges lie in extending the typographic repertoire of one script (i.e. writing system) with tools similar to those of another. Other challenges lie in adapting the scripts to a typographic system or to the limitations of certain kinds of media, be it laser printing or rasterized screens.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/06/01/Rosetta-at-Smashing-Conference</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-06-01-rosetta-at-smashing-conference"/>
    <title>Rosetta at Smashing Conference</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David Březina was invited to speak at the &lt;a href="http://smashingconf.com"&gt;Smashing Conference&lt;/a&gt; in Freiburg (Germany) in September. He will talk about the mechanics behind developing larger type families such as the ever-growing Skolar type system and discuss approaches to making type families functional, easy to use, and cross-platform… and how to stay sane while doing that. But furthermore he will unveil quite a bit from Rosetta’s behind-the-scenes work, show how we are rethinking the way we present and license typefaces to their users, and our journey to finding a better way of dealing with (web)fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/05/04/Specimen-with-8Faces-6</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-05-04-specimen-with-8-faces"/>
    <title>Specimen with 8 Faces</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We love the 8 Faces magazine. The latest issue contains interviews with Simon Walker, Dan Rhatigan, Seb Lester, Nina Stössinger, Grant Hutchinson, Mike Kus, and Eric Olson and Nicole Dotin of Process Type. In addition there are essays from Christopher Murphy, Leo Koppelkamm, and Typekit’s Tim Brown, and an introduction by Craig Mod. In addition to that, each printed copy ships with &lt;a href="http://specimen.rosettatype.com"&gt;Rosetta Type Specimen No. 1&lt;/a&gt; bundled in! You should be ordering now. It gets sold out very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/05/03/Book-using-Huronia-awarded</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-05-03-book-using-huronia-awarded"/>
    <title>Book using Huronia awarded</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The book ‘Love and the Mess we’re in’ by Stephen Marche which was published by Gaspereau Press won the highest honour for book design in Canada, taking first place in the fiction category of the 2013 Alcuin Design Awards. It uses our typeface &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Huronia"&gt;Huronia&lt;/a&gt; by the Canadian designer Ross Mills. As the publisher says: “… incredibly versatile and robust, Huronia carried this book through its many twists and turns, page after page”. Read more on the Gaspereau Press’ blog. In case you do not know them, in our humble opinion GP is one of the finest publishers you can find – solid craftsmanship!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/05/02/Rosetta-organises-TypeTalks-3</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-05-02-rosetta-organises-typetalks-3"/>
    <title>Rosetta organises TypeTalks 3</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Rosetta Type Foundry has become the main organiser of the TypeTalks symposium. With its third edition, the &lt;a href="http://typetalks.org"&gt;TypeTalks&lt;/a&gt; symposium is coming back to its hometown: Brno, Czech Republic. You can expect a great atmosphere, a small event with friendly colleagues, and speakers who have something to say. A day full of proper lectures will be preceded by an ultra-democratic evening of extra-short presentations (aka &lt;a href="http://typetalks.org"&gt;TypeShorts&lt;/a&gt;™). The lineup and workshops will be revealed soon! The conference is international. A great majority of the speakers present in English.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/05/01/Typecache-picks-Arek-for-2012</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-05-01-typecache-picks-arek-for-2012"/>
    <title>Typecache picks Arek for 2012</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Who else but Typecache, website which seems to notice and collect every release on the web, should do &lt;a href="http://typecache.com/best2012/index_best.php"&gt;a best of list&lt;/a&gt;. We are really proud that Arek was selected in the list for 2012 and it is in great company too.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/04/01/Webfonts-offer-updated</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-04-01-webfonts-offer-updated"/>
    <title>Webfonts offer updated</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have updated our webfont deals. You can use our fonts via &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/foundry/rosetta"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="https://typekit.com/foundries/rosetta"&gt;Typekit&lt;/a&gt; (Skolar only) and now via &lt;a href="http://app.webink.com/foundry/rosetta"&gt;WebINK&lt;/a&gt; or through self-hosting (new pricing). See the dedicated &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/webfonts"&gt;webfonts page&lt;/a&gt; for information on screen performance and availability of individual fonts. Note: we are providing our Arabic fonts only via Fontdeck and through self-hosting.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/03/03/Reading-Exhibition-at-TypoDay</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-03-03-reading-exhibition-at-typoday"/>
    <title>Reading exhibition at TypoDay</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Material from the Non-Latin Type Collection of the University of Reading is on display at &lt;a href="http://typoday.in"&gt;TypoDay 2013&lt;/a&gt;. The exhibition, originally organised for ATypI Hong Kong, has now travelled to IIT Guwahati, the first time that drawings and documents from the Collection have been exhibited comprehensively in India. Co-curated by Fiona Ross and Vaibhav Singh, the display focuses on the various Indian scripts for which design- and production-related artefacts are preserved in the Collection. See also the &lt;a href="http://stbridelibrary.bigcartel.com/product/non-latin-scripts-from-metal-to-digital-type"&gt;remarkable book&lt;/a&gt; published to accompany the Hong Kong exhibition.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/03/02/Skolar-Rosetta</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-03-02-skolar-rosetta"/>
    <title>Skolar → Rosetta</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar&lt;/a&gt;, designed by David Březina, will be moving home from TypeTogether to Rosetta from 1 April 2013. Having all of Skolar’s scripts available in one place will consolidate Rosetta’s library and simplify licensing of the family. As the family expands, we hope it will also enable the flagship typeface to explore new territories. Some distributors (MyFonts, FontShop) have already made the transfer and others will follow in due course.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Rosetta is committed to providing continuous updates and support to all customers, no matter where they bought their previous versions. &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/about"&gt;Let us know&lt;/a&gt; if you have any questions or simply &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/about"&gt;stay in touch&lt;/a&gt; to receive our news.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/03/01/Huronia-release</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-03-01-huronia-release"/>
    <title>Huronia release</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have released &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Huronia"&gt;Huronia&lt;/a&gt;, a new type family by &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/about&amp;amp;dsg=Mills"&gt;Ross Mills&lt;/a&gt;. It is a text face with flavour, suitable for extended reading. Huronia comprises fully-equipped Latin Pro (that is, it includes expert features: small caps, various figure sets, superiors, fractions) and Inuktitut syllabics. But these are just the first steps in a march towards supporting all of the native American languages in one type family. Read more about this handsome typeface on its dedicated page and in its PDF specimen.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/02/04/Sutturah-in-Communication-Arts</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-02-04-sutturah-in-communication-arts"/>
    <title>Sutturah in Communication Arts</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Sutturah got another award! It is among the &lt;a href="http://www.commarts.com/annuals/2013-Typography/winners"&gt;Communication Arts Typographic Annual winners&lt;/a&gt;. Nice collection from ads to type btw.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/02/03/Article-in-Smashing-Magazine</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-02-03-article-in-smashing-magazine"/>
    <title>Article in Smashing magazine</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Smashing magazine published David’s article &lt;a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/02/12/a-critical-approach-to-typefaces"&gt;A Critical Approach to Typefaces&lt;/a&gt;. If you’ve ever wondered how to get oriented with all the marketing noise around typefaces, this introduction to critical reading about design might help.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/02/02/Eskorte-release</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-02-02-eskorte-release"/>
    <title>Eskorte release</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have released &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Eskorte"&gt;Eskorte&lt;/a&gt;, a new type family by &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/about&amp;amp;dsg=Schneider"&gt;Elena Scheider&lt;/a&gt;. This ‘fresh and awesome design’, as one of our consultants called it, lends itself equally well to German, Arabic, Czech, Farsi, Urdu, and many other languages. Eskorte is a hardworking type family with an uncomplicated, regular appearance that conveys a crisp, businesslike tone. We have gathered all the information &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Eskorte"&gt;on its page&lt;/a&gt; where you can also find the PDF specimen. And finally, we would like to express our thanks to &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/about&amp;amp;dsg=Nemeth"&gt;Titus Nemeth&lt;/a&gt; for consulting, &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/about&amp;amp;dsg=Apelian"&gt;Khajag Apelian&lt;/a&gt; for proofreading and testing, and to Georg Seifert and his &lt;a href="http://www.glyphsapp.com"&gt;Glyphs application&lt;/a&gt; for help with production of the fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2013/02/01/On-webfonts-in-Prague</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2013-02-01-on-webfonts-in-prague"/>
    <title>On webfonts in Prague</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On 25 February, David Březina will talk about ‘Type on the web’ for the &lt;a href="http://unie-grafickeho-designu.cz"&gt;Czech Union of Graphic Design&lt;/a&gt;. The lecture will take place at Prague Hub and will be in Czech language. It is open to the public, a small fee applies. Details are available on the &lt;a href="http://unie-grafickeho-designu.cz/seminar/davidbrezina"&gt;Union web&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/12/01/Rosetta-partners-with-UGD</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-12-01-rosetta-partners-with-ugd"/>
    <title>Rosetta partners with UGD</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We have become an official partner of the &lt;a href="http://unie-grafickeho-designu.cz/partneri"&gt;Czech Union of Graphic Design&lt;/a&gt; and offer 20 % discount to its members.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/11/02/Three-workshops-in-Ukraine</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-11-02-three-workshops-in-ukraine"/>
    <title>Three workshops in Ukraine</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Octavio Pardo will be giving three workshops in Ukraine together with David Crossland and Alexei Vanyashin. The workshops are addressed to both students and professionals interested in learning the basics of typeface design. There will be two workshops in Kiev and one in Lviv. Schedule and pricing available at &lt;a href="http://craftingtype.com"&gt;www.craftingtype.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/11/01/Typo-49</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-11-01-typo"/>
    <title>TYPO</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The current issue of the typographic magazine Typo is completely devoted to India and contains relevant articles from renowned designers, a widely published Indologist, and type designers both from India and abroad. Among others, David Březina discusses some of the difficulties behind designing typefaces for Indian scripts. You can buy this issue of Typo in our &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/merchandise"&gt;e-shop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/10/03/Article-in-Codex</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-10-03-article-in-codex"/>
    <title>Article in Codex</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;A new issue of the typographic journal Codex has been published on impressive 180 pages. All carefully edited. It also includes an article by David Březina about some of the contemporary challenges in the multi-script typography (in Cyrillic, Armenian, Arabic, and Indian scripts). It also presents some of our typefaces and to some extent even describes our vision. See &lt;a href="http://www.codexmag.com"&gt;codexmag.com&lt;/a&gt; for more information and ordering. Highly recommended!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/10/02/Tashkeel-workshop</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-10-02-tashkeel-workshop"/>
    <title>Tashkeel workshop</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Tashkeel is hosting a workshop on Arabic type design organized by Khatt foundation. The workshop will consist of a series of five sessions covering the complex process of Arabic typeface design, from the creative inception phase, to drawing the letterforms, to learning font editing tools and producing a digital Arabic font. Khajag Apelian will team up with Pascal Zoghbi to lead the 4th part of the workshop series. Read more at &lt;a href="http://www.khtt.net/page/35324/en"&gt;www.khtt.net&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/10/01/Burian-and-Scaglione-bid-adieu-to-Rosetta</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-10-01-burian-and-scaglione-bid-adieu-to-rosetta"/>
    <title>Burian and Scaglione bid adieu to Rosetta</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as Charles Dickens put it. From 1 October 2012, Veronika Burian and José Scaglione have ceased to be partners at Rosetta Type Foundry. They have taken this step to strengthen their focus on the improvement of the TypeTogether retail library and tailored-fonts service. We wish them best of luck and extend our thanks for their generous help with the start-up of Rosetta Type Foundry. Rosetta will continue with its established team of talented designers, with David Březina as its director. It will carry on with its efforts in providing high-quality fonts for a variety of the world’s writing systems.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/07/02/Granshan-2012</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-07-02-granshan-2012"/>
    <title>Granshan 2012</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://granshan.org"&gt;Granshan&lt;/a&gt;, the 5th International Type Design Competition for non-Latin typefaces awarded two of our typefaces: &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar Devanagari&lt;/a&gt; (1st, Indic) and &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Sutturah"&gt;Sutturah&lt;/a&gt; (2nd, Display). We are honoured!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/07/01/Innovation-series</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-07-01-innovation-series"/>
    <title>Innovation series</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Web &lt;a href="http://www.innovation-series.com/2012/06/06/font-face-attribute-future-of-user-experience"&gt;Innovation Series&lt;/a&gt; published an article about the problems of the Farsi typography on the web and the solutions we have provided for Voice of America. Some flattering testimonials from the design team included. Very happy to have happy customers.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This font development is similar to the birth of Arial or Helvetica in English. “The results were stunning,” added Bahmani. (…) Bahmani tested NASSIM against the TAHOMA font and concluded that “the results demonstrated a 5x increase in reading speed.” (…) The new Persian VOA site (as shown in the graphic above) “was extremely well received and many users commented on how much better the site looks and how much more readable the text appears; there are no spacing, no kerning, and no proportion flaws,” added Bahmani.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;These webfonts are available from &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/foundry/rosetta"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt; (low-cost solution) and from &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/webfonts"&gt;our custom service&lt;/a&gt; (better quality, higher price).&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/06/02/Feature-in-PAGE</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-06-02-feature-in-page"/>
    <title>Feature in PAGE</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;German magazine &lt;a href="http://www.page-online.de/heft/einzelheft/2012/6"&gt;PAGE&lt;/a&gt; published an article on Czech and Slovak type designers and included an interview with David.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/06/01/Skolar-Devanagari-release</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-06-01-skolar-devanagari-release"/>
    <title>Skolar Devanagari release</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar Devanagari&lt;/a&gt;, the latest addition to the Skolar family, is the result of a collaboration between David Březina and Vaibhav Singh. It has been designed as a companion to the Latin keeping the nuances and characteristics of the Devanagari script foremost while providing a complementary design for multi-script typography.  It is the first in a series of Indian typefaces we plan to release in the next 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/06/Workshops-in-UK</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-06-workshops-in-uk"/>
    <title>Workshops in UK</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;In April David Březina gave two workshops on two prestigious design schools. One at the Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London) and another at MA Typeface Design (University of Reading). At CSM David presented about the fundamental principles in type design in a lecture titled Specifying type consistency. The workshop in Reading was a bit more experimental as it focused on concepts for originality in type design. Read more at &lt;a href="http://davi.cz/News.html"&gt;David’s website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/05/TypeShorts-2012</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-05-typeshorts-2012"/>
    <title>TypeShorts 2012</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are an official partner of TypeShorts in Brno this year. TypeShorts is an evening full of type presentations in a relaxed atmosphere of a café/bar. David Březina will represent Rosetta there.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/04/Radio-Prague-interview</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-04-radio-prague-interview"/>
    <title>Radio Prague interview</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Radio Prague interviewed David about teaching type design and designing for world scripts. &lt;a href="http://www.radio.cz/en/section/panorama/award-winning-czech-typographer-takes-on-gujarati"&gt;The interview&lt;/a&gt; is in English.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/03/maajoun-movie</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-03-maajoun-movie"/>
    <title>maajoun movie</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;maajoun is a Beirut-based visual communications and type design studio that was founded in 2010 by Lara Balaa and Khajag Apelian. The latter you might know as a designer of our Arek Armenian and its upcoming Latin companion. This is a &lt;a href="http://vimeo.com/37740998"&gt;little movie about the studio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/02/Voice-of-America</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-02-voice-of-america"/>
    <title>Voice of America</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Nassim is becoming the number one font for Arabic and Persian news around the world. We are proud to announce that the renowned &lt;a href="http://ir.voanews.com"&gt;Persian news-portal Voice of America&lt;/a&gt; has selected Nassim as the main font in their new design. The most important reasons for its adoption are its superior readability in long texts on screen and the genuine Arabic/Persian look. In the words of VOA designers: “you have no idea what you have done for the improvement of the Arabic/Persian web experience”. Well, it is an absolute pleasure to be of help.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/05/01/TDC-for-Sutturah</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-05-01-tdc-for-sutturah"/>
    <title>TDC for Sutturah</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are delighted to find out that Sutturah by Octavio Pardo is among the &lt;a href="http://tdc.org/competitionwriteup/tdc-communication-design-winners-2012"&gt;TDC Communication Design Winners 2012&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/04/01/Czech-TV-interview</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-04-01-czech-tv-interview"/>
    <title>Czech TV interview</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;On Friday 6 April, Czech news TV (ČT24) interviewed David Březina about his work with Gujarati. The interview is in Czech, starts on 53:11 and you can &lt;a href="http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/10101491767-studio-ct24/212411058060406"&gt;find it here&lt;/a&gt;. Also main Czech newsportal &lt;a href="http://zpravy.ihned.cz/svet-asie-a-pacifik/c1-55221150-cech-vytvari-novou-podobu-indickeho-pisma-ma-zprehlednit-cetbu-gudzaratstiny"&gt;iHNed reported on our new typefaces&lt;/a&gt; for Gujarati.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/03/02/Webfonts</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-03-02-webfonts"/>
    <title>Webfonts</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are proud to announce that Rosetta fonts are now available to use as webfonts in two different flavours: webfont service and self-hosting. This is particularly important for Arabic web typography given the lack of high quality Arabic webfonts. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ol&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the convenience of those small businesses and startup sites looking to have high quality fonts for a limited budget we have partnered up with the webfont service bureau &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/foundry/rosetta"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt;. Their solution requires no special coding skills, and they offer a very fast and reliable &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/about/speed"&gt;infrastructure&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For larger companies that deal with several million pageviews per month, and have more demanding needs in terms of bandwidth and infrastructure we also offer our webfonts specially customised for self hosting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ol&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Learn more about these &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/webfonts"&gt;on our webfonts page&lt;/a&gt; or simply contact us.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/03/01/Times-of-India</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-03-01-times-of-india"/>
    <title>Times of India</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The major Indian newspaper in English profiled David and his work with Gujarati and other Indian scripts. &lt;a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/This-Czech-is-a-Gujarati-type/articleshow/12435467.cms"&gt;Read more on the news portal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/02/02/TypoDay-2012</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-02-02-typoday-2012"/>
    <title>TypoDay 2012</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David will give a lecture called Challenges in multilingual type design on &lt;a href="http://typoday.in/2012"&gt;Typography Day 2012&lt;/a&gt; in Mumbai. This Indian typographic conference is organised by the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) with support from India Design Association (InDeAs) and Aksharaya.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/02/01/Rosetta-India-tour</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-02-01-rosetta-india-tour"/>
    <title>Rosetta India tour</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;While travelling and researching around West India we plan to give several lectures and visit local design studios in order to promote our work and learn more about Indian graphic design. In Delhi we have already visited &lt;a href="http://www.wk.com"&gt;W+K&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://mayekprojects.com"&gt;Mayek projects&lt;/a&gt; and met with &lt;a href="http://turmericdesign.com"&gt;Turmeric design&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://kimyagandhi.wordpress.com"&gt;Kimya Gandhi&lt;/a&gt;. We plan to repeat the same in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Let us know if you want to meet.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/01/04/Skolar-in-Smashing-Magazine</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-01-04-skolar-in-smashing-magazine"/>
    <title>Skolar in Smashing Magazine</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Our popular typefaces &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Skolar"&gt;Skolar&lt;/a&gt; by David Březina, has been extensively used in the recent redesign of &lt;a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com"&gt;Smashing Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, by web designer Elliot Jay Stocks. The webfont is served by Fontdeck. The four core styles of Skolar have been manually hinted facilitating optimal legibility on screen.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/01/03/Die-besten-fonts-2011</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-01-03-die-besten-fonts-2011"/>
    <title>Die besten fonts 2011</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Typefacts published their &lt;a href="http://typefacts.com/news/die-besten-fonts-2011"&gt;list of the best&lt;/a&gt; typefaces from the last year and selected our &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Aisha"&gt;Aisha&lt;/a&gt; as one of the top fonts of the past season. We are proud! The rest of the list is not bad either. :) (In German)&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/01/02/Joining-FontShop</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-01-02-joining-fontshop"/>
    <title>Joining FontShop</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Our foundry decided to join one of the biggest font distributors in the world. We are pleased to be in such good company. You can &lt;a href="http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/foundry/rosetta_type_foundry"&gt;find our fonts here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2012/01/01/Typographicas-best-of-2011</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2012-01-01-typographica-s-best-of-2011"/>
    <title>Typographica’s Best of 2011</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Typographica is coming back to their reviews of past-year typeface designs. While there are several competitions and best-of lists, Typographica is certainly one of the best for it truly reviews them, with well-known invited type people. So readers get not only a list, but a meaningful and unbiased selection.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are very proud to find that three of our typefaces have been selected. &lt;a href="http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; was reviewed by Thierry Blancpain of Grilli Type, &lt;a href="http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/neacademia"&gt;Neacademia&lt;/a&gt; by Florian Hardwig, and &lt;a href="http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/sutturah"&gt;Sutturah&lt;/a&gt;, the typeface with taste for loose women, was supremely sketched by Nicole Dotin of Process Type Foundry fame.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/11/02/Rosetta-at-MyFonts</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-11-02-rosetta-at-myfonts"/>
    <title>Rosetta at MyFonts</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;You can now buy our fonts Aisha, Nassim, Neacademia from &lt;a href="http://www.myfonts.com"&gt;MyFont&lt;/a&gt; – the world’s largest collection of fonts.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/11/01/Interview-in-8-Faces</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-11-01-interview-in-8-faces"/>
    <title>Interview in 8 Faces</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The interview magazine &lt;a href="http://8faces.com"&gt;8 Faces&lt;/a&gt; has asked David a few questions about the recently published print, type design for world scripts, and founding and running Rosetta Type Foundry. If you want a copy of the magazine you might need to hurry. Usually, it is sold out very quickly and the issue #4 we are talking about has been published just now.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/10/04/Rosetta-has-two-Letter.2-winners</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-10-04-rosetta-has-two-letter-2-winners"/>
    <title>Rosetta has two Letter.2 winners</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are excited that two of our typefaces, &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Arek"&gt;Arek&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; are among the winners of the international type design competition &lt;a href="http://letter2.org"&gt;Letter.2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/10/03/BBC-Urdu-redesign</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-10-03-bbc-urdu-redesign"/>
    <title>BBC Urdu redesign</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/"&gt;BCC Urdu website&lt;/a&gt; has been redesigned and went live this morning. The website uses yet another tailored version of the award-winning &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Nassim"&gt;Nassim&lt;/a&gt; type family, this time for Urdu. Titus Nemeth and Kutlu Çanlıoğlu from BBC will speak about the redesign today at TYPO London conference. You can watch it on &lt;a href="http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/20/typo-london-graphic-conference-livestream"&gt;livestream&lt;/a&gt; from the conference provided by Guardian.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Read more about &lt;a href=""&gt;Nassim on BBC web portal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/10/02/Lecture-at-TypoTopo</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-10-02-lecture-at-typotopo"/>
    <title>Lecture at TypoTopo</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;TypoTopo is a week-long type design workshop for students of visual communication from Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, and Poland. As a part of this workshop, on 27 October in Bratislava (SK) there will be a series of talks from &lt;a href="http://multitalent.in/en/freedom/poster/aktivity/typotopo/program"&gt;nine invited speakers&lt;/a&gt;. Being one of the invited speakers, David will lecture about the approaches type designers take in order to create consistent typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/10/01/Rosetta-in-TRANZITDISPLAY</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-10-01-rosetta-in-tranzitdisplay"/>
    <title>Rosetta in TRANZITDISPLAY</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Rosetta’s own David Březina will give a lecture about our work in world scripts and the process of setting up the foundry. It will take place in TRANZITDISPLAY gallery in Prague. The lecture will be in Czech and it is the first part of a series titled “Setting up typefoundries”. You can find more information on &lt;a href="http://www.typo.cz/typo-prednasky-novy-vzdelavaci-cyklus/"&gt;www.typo.cz&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/09/01/Titus-to-speak-at-TypoLondon</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-09-01-titus-to-speak-at-typo-london"/>
    <title>Titus to speak at Typo London</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Titus Nemeth is going to talk at Typo London this year about the BBC Nassim customisation project he did with us.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/08/01/Lecture-at-WebExpo-2011</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-08-01-lecture-at-webexpo-2011"/>
    <title>Lecture at WebExpo 2011</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This September, David will lecture at &lt;a href="http://webexpo.cz/praha2011"&gt;WebExpo Prague 2011&lt;/a&gt;, the biggest web conference in Central Europe. The lecture called “Type is the most important thing on the Web” presents type design with focus on its technological aspects. You can read the &lt;a href="http://davi.cz/News/2011_Webexpo-lecture.html"&gt;abstract here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/07/02/Get-free-World-scripts-poster</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-07-02-get-free-world-scripts-poster"/>
    <title>Get free World-scripts poster</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Now you can get the lovely orange-pink World scripts poster for free. Simply order any font from Rosetta e-shop until 5 October. See our &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/merchandise"&gt;merchandise page&lt;/a&gt; for more details.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/07/01/TypeWorks-workshops</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-07-01-typeworks-workshops"/>
    <title>TypeWorks workshops</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David will lead typeface design workshops at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Technological University (VUT) in Brno. These three consecutive workshops are open to students from VUT as well as to participants from the public. They will span over the course of the autumn term. The last workshop will deal with multi-script typeface design. More info at &lt;a href="http://typeworks.org"&gt;http://typeworks.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/06/02/Rosetta-on-TypeTalks</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-06-02-rosetta-on-typetalks"/>
    <title>Rosetta on TypeTalks</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Rosetta’s work will be presented during the TypeShorts evening at TypeTalks next weekend in Poznań. We will also present some unreleased works. Come and say hi!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/06/01/Nassim-in-DA-Mitteilungen</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-06-01-nassim-featured-in-da-mitteilungen"/>
    <title>Nassim featured in DA Mitteilungen</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Quarterly of the Austrian design association featured a 3-page article about BBC Nassim.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/06/01/Neacademia-release</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-06-01-neacademia-release"/>
    <title>Neacademia release</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;It was a long and busy June here, but finally it is ready, at least part of it. We give you the OpenType revival &lt;a href="http://www.rosettatype.com/Neacademia"&gt;Neacademia&lt;/a&gt;, a typeface so old, it’s new!&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/05/01/Font-interview</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-05-01-font-interview"/>
    <title>Font interview</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Czech magazine for graphic designers &lt;a href="http://www.font.cz"&gt;Font&lt;/a&gt; interviewed David about Rosetta type foundry, his work with world scripts, designing fonts for web, and organizing activities such as the TypeTalks symposium. The interview is only in Czech and you can find it in &lt;a href="http://www.font.cz/font-116-2-2011-tema-sperky.html"&gt;Font issue 126&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/04/04/New-Skolar-Web-release</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-04-04-new-skolar-web-release"/>
    <title>New Skolar Web release</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are happy to present Skolar Web, the successful type family by David Březina manually hinted by Ross Mills. Manual hinting of a font dramatically improves its appearance on computer screens and allows for a superior performance in the web environment. The process fixes alignment problems, improves spacing and generates better consistency between lettershapes. The fonts support extended Latin as well as Cyrillic and are now available from &lt;a href="http://fontdeck.com/typefaces"&gt;Fontdeck&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href="http://blog.typekit.com/2011/03/16/skolar-web-hinted-for-better-screen-rendering"&gt;Typekit&lt;/a&gt;, and soon from &lt;a href="http://www.webink.com"&gt;WebInk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/04/03/David-interviewed-by-muni</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-04-03-david-interviewed-by-muni-cz"/>
    <title>David interviewed by muni.cz</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The Masaryk university newspaper muni.cz interviewed David about type design and his studies. You can read the interview in the &lt;a href="http://www.online.muni.cz/images/stories/pdfmuni/muni_brezen_2011.pdf"&gt;PDF on page 7&lt;/a&gt; (Czech-only).&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/04/02/TypeTalks2</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-04-02-typetalks2"/>
    <title>TypeTalks2</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;We are an official partner of the TypeTalks2 conference. The mini-conference which revolves around type and typography will take place in Poznań (Poland) on 18–19 June. See more information on &lt;a href="http://typetalks.org"&gt;typetalks.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/04/01/Nassim-sets-news-in-Persian</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-04-01-nassim-sets-news-in-persian"/>
    <title>Nassim sets news in Persian</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;The BBC Persian website follows its Arabic sister site in choosing Nassim to deliver its news. Titus Nemeth redraw Nassim to give the website a distinctly Iranian look, whilst maintaining the coherence with the BBC brand visual language. He worked in close collaboration with the Persian language service, and supported his decisions with historical research. See the screenshots in an updated &lt;a href=""&gt;Type in use article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/02/01/Aisha-in-Creative-Review</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-02-01-aisha-featured-in-creative-review"/>
    <title>Aisha featured in Creative Review</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Our typeface &lt;a href="http://rosettatype.com/Aisha"&gt;Aisha&lt;/a&gt; by Titus Nemeth is featured in &lt;a href="http://creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2011/january/cr-feb-11-issue"&gt;Creative Review February 11 issue: Type Annual&lt;/a&gt;. Type Annual is a competition-like selection of recently published typefaces juried by a body of renowned designers.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2011/01/01/Nassim-on-BBC-Arabic</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2011-01-01-nassim-on-bbc-arabic"/>
    <title>Nassim on BBC Arabic</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;Following the redesign of the mother-page of the BBC News, the BBC Arabic launched their new website. It is probably one of the first, and certainly the biggest site yet to use webfonts – Arabic webfonts that is. It uses a custom version of our upcoming Nassim by Titus Nemeth. The typeface was painstakingly optimised for screen and for web. &lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2010/12/01/Two-lectures-in-Cieszyn</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2010-12-01-two-lectures-in-cieszyn"/>
    <title>Two lectures in Cieszyn</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David gave two lectures in Cieszyn (Poland).The first was called “On Skolar”, and the other talk focused on the process of designing typefaces. The lectures were presented to the students of the Sign and typography studio from the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>tag:old.rosettatype.com,2005:NewsPost//2010/09/01/Two-talks-for-TeX-users</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://old.rosettatype.com/blog#newsDetailSection-2010-09-01-two-talks-for-tex-users"/>
    <title>Two talks for TeX users</title>
    <content type="html">&lt;p&gt;David gave two lectures; one on issues in multi-script typography and the second one on Skolar and type design for academic publications on the 4th International ConTeXt Meeting and 3rd TeXperience Conference. The events took place in Czech Republic, 13–19 September, one followed by the other.&lt;/p&gt;
</content>
    <updated>2014-07-24T00:00:00Z</updated>
    <author>
      <name>David Březina</name>
    </author>
  </entry>
</feed>