News
Písmo s Respektem
This article is available only in Czech.
Nedávno vyšel v Respektu č. 47 (21.–27. listopad 2011) článek Lucie Kavanové nazvaný Písmo s charakterem. Typografové, grafičtí designeři a především písmaři by měli nejspíš jásat, že se písmo a jeho tvorba dostává do širšího povědomí, že je „trendy“. Člověk věci znalý však musí povzdechnout nad špatně odvedenou novinářskou prací. Není přece žádný důvod, aby byl obecně napsaný článek také nepřesný a zavádějící.
Slides from some lectures online
Placed on my Speaker Deck, there are slides for some of the lectures I gave in the past months either on conferences or during workshops. To date there is my WebExpo lecture “Type is the most important thing on the Web” (Czech only), lecture about “Rosetta Type Foundry” (Czech and English), and most recently added lecture “On Typeface Design” (Czech and English) for students starting with type design. Hopefully, you will find this little Christmas gift useful.
8 Faces interview
The interview magazine 8 Faces has asked me a few questions about the recently published print (see Design work), 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.
Thank you Elliot!
Recent Rosetta releases
Rosetta Type Foundry released Sutturah, a new font by Octavio Pardo on which production I collaborated. It is an exciting new typeface which breaks out from all specifications. You can get this super-fat script with blackletter influences with 25 % discount (that is € 29) during the Bloody Xmas period.
Skolar has been updated to version 2.5. This version includes extended language support (over 132 languages using Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts), kerning improvements and in the PE version, a great amount of Latin transliterations. You can now transliterate Sanskrit, Pali, contemporary Indian languages, Arabic, Chinese (Pinyin), and many more. In fact, transliterations for over 30 different languages are supported. Ah. and capital form of German ß is also included. All in lowercase, uppercase, as well as small caps. More details on the Rosetta web
TypeWorks workshops at FaVU in Brno
TypeWorks is a name of a “brand” I started to accompany TypeTalks activities on a more practical level. This time, in cooperation with the Fine Arts Academy in Brno (FaVU), we are organizing a series of three three-day type design workshops. Well, basically I am just a guest lecturer there.
The workshops are intended for students of visual communication (ca. 10 participants), but the public (3–5 participants) can also attend. First workshop deals with the basics, second is focused on developing and extending students’ typefaces, and the last one is about creating diacritics and experiments with world-scripts support.
The first workshop on 14–16 October was completely packed, but there still may be places on the upcoming two workshops on 4–6 November and 9–11 December. You can get more information on typeworks.org in Czech (foreigners are also welcome, though). Also, if you are interested in related public lectures, follow @TypeTalks on Twitter. Some of the lectures for students may be open to public.
Two autumnal lectures in Bratislava and Prague
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 nine invited speakers. Being one of the invited speakers, I will lecture about the approaches type designers take in order to create consistent typefaces. All lectures should be in English.
On 3 November at 18:00, I will give yet another lecture (or more of a semi-conducted discussion) in TRANZITDISPLAY gallery in Prague. I will talk about Rosetta Type Foundry, our work, about the process of setting up the foundry, and our motivation. It will be in Czech language and it is the first part of a lecture series titled “Setting up typefoundries”. More information on typo.cz
The entry is free to both events.
Lecture at WebExpo Prague 2011 conference
This September, I will be giving a lecture at WebExpo (enjoy their psychedelic web!). I have never attended this conference so far, so I am quite excited. Apparently it is the biggest event of its kind (that is the web kind) in Central Europe. Here is what I plan to tell the web designers in my lecture called Type is the most important thing on the Web.
Review Maiola—experience the czechness
I have just added the first of in-depth type reviews I originally wrote for Typo magazine to the new Writings section. The plan is to republish all of the reviews here, ideally one review in one or two months.
Typeface Maiola by Veronika Burian was originally released through FontFont typefoundry, received prestigious TDC award, and it counts among the most successful digital typefaces of past years. The typeface is particularly important for Czech typography, as it stylistically follows the local historic sources and develops them into a contemporary and useful work. This review was originally published in Typo magazine 33 in 2008.
Busy June: Nassim, poster, TypeTalks, and Neacademia
It was a very long June this year. Allow me to report in four points here:
1. At Rosetta, we finally produced and released Nassim by Titus Nemeth. One of the best Latin+Arabic typefaces out there imho. Currently, it is one of the most-read webfonts in the world as the BBC Arabic and BBC Persian use it for their content which, I believe, has more than 50 million readers each month! You can read about it here. And you can order it as well. And if you are not interested in Arabic, get the Latin only. It is okey with us.
“Rarely pure never simple” poster released by 8 faces
8 faces magazine will be releasing limited edition of eight A3 (297mm x 420mm) artwork prints. I have designed the print #1 using my typeface Skolar. The poster is a logical next step from the promotional poster designed for TypeTogether. Where the TypeTogether poster is about “Skolar only”, this new poster is about “typeface design fundamentals in general”. Check photos at 8 faces to get better idea. The first batch sold out in less than twelve hours!
The work from Rosetta at TypeShorts evening
On Saturday, I will be talking about Rosetta work at TypeShorts evening which is part of the TypeTalks conference I have been co-organizing. My 321 seconds will be about Rosetta’s released as well as unreleased typefaces and maybe a little bit about the ideas behind. See you there.
Cyrillic celebrations with Rosetta type foundry
I thought you might want to know that Rosetta type foundry celebrates Cyrillic alphabet day and offers a 30 % discount on all Cyrillic and Pan-European fonts.
For the next few days we offer a 30 % discount on all our Cyrillic and Pan-European fonts. Use the code 457c59a7 during the checkout process. The offer ends on 29 May 2011, at 17:29 CET.
Rosetta tour de United Kingdom
At Rosetta we like to share our knowledge through teaching. We keep on 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.
Few weeks ago, I did a little Rosetta tour de United Kingdom while visiting Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, the Alma Mater of all three Rosetta partners.
Scripts and FontLab macros on GitHub
GitHub is a well-known among programmers, but perhaps it still needs some introduction to the design community. It is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. In simpler terms, GitHub is a place where I can share the software I wrote and you can download it easily from there. Most of it for free. And you can also keep an eye on the development or help me.
Most of the stuff under my GitHub profile will probably relate to FontLab and font development somehow. I already moved the free stuff from the former Tools section on this web.
Interview for Font magazine
Czech magazine for graphic designers Font interviewed me about Rosetta type foundry, my work in multi-script typography, designing fonts for web, and organizing activities such as TypeTalks symposium. The interview is only in Czech and you can find it in the Font issue 126.
New web every third year
The web needed an update for quite some time. I would very much like to call it a realign, even though I changed pretty much everything. :) Some of the more important changes: 1. all texts with one little exception are set in the new Skolar Web served by Typekit even though I would prefer Fontdeck as their webfonts seem smaller, 2. I added some graphic design content (recent as well as older) and straightened up the navigation. Technically speaking the web is a static HTML5 “blog” built with the awesome webgen, blogging extension by Matteo Collina and LessCSS. The content source is saved in simple MarkDown files. I will be improving the bugs and adding more content constantly. Responsive layout for all the gadgets with funny names and tiny screens is coming too.
TypeTalks2 Poznań announced
The second edition of TypeTalks low-cost mini-conference has been announced and the registration is now open. This year we are organizing the event together with Anna Giedryś, the University of Arts in Poznań, and Foundation of the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań. Find more information and register on TypeTalks web.
The two-days symposium will take place this year in Poznań (Poland) on 18–19 June 2011. The theme of our conferences is type and typography. That is not going to change any time soon. This year we aim to accentuate the social aspect of the symposium. In the end, the word symposium refers to drinking party or convivial discussions held in ancient Greece. The two days will include exhibitions, an evening full of short type presentations (aka TypeShorts), party, and of course a day full of excellent lectures.
Redesign of muni.cz and an interview
Muni.cz is a monthly newspaper published by the Masaryk University, the second largest university in the Czech Republic. Petr Hrnčíř, responsible for the redesign of the newspaper, chose three of TypeTogether typefaces, Adelle, Skolar and LFT Etica. The typeface Adelle was chosen as a unique and distinctive slab serif, which is an excellent addition to the text typeface Skolar, which is easily readable, new and interesting.
The newspaper also interviewed David, a graduate of the Masaryk University, in its March issue 2011. Read the full article in PDF on page 7 (in Czech).
The new Skolar Web released
The new Skolar Web has been manually hinted for optimal web performance on all platforms. As well looking great on Mac OS X, it renders beautifully on Windows 7, XP and Vista. Besides the so-called MS Core fonts, this level of quality is still very rare among webfonts. Regular, bold, italic, and bold italic were hinted by Ross Mills of Tiro Typeworks, an experienced designer who is also behind several important fonts for Microsoft. Last but not least, Skolar Web supports pan-European Latin as well as Cyrillic. The fonts are now available from Fontdeck, Typekit, and soon from WebInk. We hope this will be a welcome update for the designers as well as the readers.
Rosetta Type Foundry announced
Rosetta is a new independent foundry, created by David Březina, José Scaglione and Veronika Burian, with a strong focus on multi-script typography. It is a response to the increasing interest and need, within the global market, for multi-script typefaces that are both technically and aesthetically of highest standard. Rosetta is committed to promote research and knowledge in that area and to support excellence in world script type design.