August 20, 2012
Since the release of Source Sans Pro we have received an enormous amount of feedback which, in addition to congratulating us on the project, has made us aware of a number of issues that affected this font family. I’m pleased to say that we have revised the fonts and that the updated files have been posted on Open@Adobe at SourceForge. Here’s the list of changes:
- Improved sidebearings of some glyphs, improved kerning classes, improved some kern pairs.
- Fixed metrics issues with upright letter D and composites.
- Added glyphs and OpenType feature support for Jarai language.
- Added ‘ordfeminine’ glyph to ‘ss02′ feature.
- Changed glyph name ‘schwa.supss’ to ‘uni0259.sups’.
- Changed weightClass value of the ExtraLight fonts from 250 to 200.
- Changed OS/2.usWinAscent and OS/2.usWinDescent values to be the same across all fonts.
- Changed hhea.Ascender and hhea.Descender values as a result of the OS/2usWin changes.
- Changed OS/2 table version number from 4 to 3.
- Harmonized the copyright strings.
Also today, in response to the many requests we got, I’m happy to announce that Source Sans Pro is now hosted on GitHub as well. We expect this repository to become the place where we engage with the community and do the continuous development, whereas SourceForge will remain the location where we post each stable revision of the family.
We had heard about GitHub before, but we weren’t aware how popular it was. The team had little experience using it or working with the tools available for interacting with the repositories. Fortunately, we were able to enlist the help of Paul Picazo, a colleague from the EchoSign team, who gave us a two-hour crash course which got us most of the way up-to-speed with the tools and processes. Thanks a lot Paul!
Finally, for the many of you who expressed interest in the monowidth version of the Source Sans design, all I can say for now is that its development is moving along quite well and that we’ll have more news in the near future.
August 2, 2012
Adobe’s legacy in type technology
Adobe has come a long way since its early days in which the specification for the PostScript Type 1 font format was a closely-guarded trade secret leading up to the “font wars.” Since this specification was begrudgingly published in 1990, Adobe has been more proactive in publicly releasing tools for developing and producing high-quality type. Subsequently, Adobe collaborated with Microsoft on the OpenType standard, which was later made an open standard for type technology as the Open Font Format: a free, publicly available standard (ISO/IEC 14496-22:2009). In connection with this, Adobe has shared its tool set for building OpenType fonts as the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO). Although these tools are not open source, they can be used freely and have been downloaded by thousands of users. Additionally, tools such as FontLab Studio and FontMaster make use of AFDKO code for building fonts. I believe that the world of type design and typography has benefited greatly from Adobe’s contributions in the arena of type technology. In adding to this legacy, I am proud to announce that today marks another milestone as Adobe makes yet another type resource freely available by releasing the Source Sans Pro family as our first-ever open source type family.
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It’s an exciting day for Adobe Type! Today, we’re releasing two new Adobe Original families for both print and web, Source™ Sans Pro and Leander Script™ Pro. Plus, we have a new set of web fonts available from our partners at Typekit and WebINK.
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May 15, 2012
‘Myriad’ in Arabic and Hebrew scripts
The ever-popular Myriad type family now has new Arabic and Hebrew members! These have recently been added as part of a suite-wide effort to provide better support for languages of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). These new typefaces were designed and developed by the Adobe type team in San Jose and have already be recognized for their excellence as one of the winners of the Letter.2 competition conducted by the Association Typographique Internationale. A core set of styles from these type families is bundled with Adobe Creative Suite 6 applications. This core set includes four basic styles: Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic. However, the type styles bundled with CS6 include only a small subset of the new Myriad Arabic and Myriad Hebrew type systems that were created to provide a wider range typographic options for designers. To preview and purchase additional styles or the full families, see our pages for Myriad Arabic and Myriad Hebrew. In the future, these pages will include glyph complement showings for the fonts, likewise full digital specimens with text showings are still forthcoming.
May 7, 2012
I know some of you are wondering what’s up with fonts for CS6. The font set shipping with CS6 closely resembles the set that shipped with CS5. However, the following new families will ship with CS6.
• Adobe Devanagari (4 fonts)
• Adobe Naskh (1 font)
• Myriad Arabic (4 fonts)
• Myriad Hebrew (4 fonts)
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April 18, 2012
The new version of Adobe Reader (10.1.3) released last week includes new functionality that allows users to sign documents electronically. This new capability leverages three fonts that we designed and developed in record time. They emulate the real handwriting of some of our team members and are intended to serve as a proxy to anyone’s signature.
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March 2, 2012
Today marks Robert Slimbach’s 25th anniversary with Adobe. Robert joined Adobe’s Type staff on March 2nd, 1987, as Adobe’s nascent program for original typeface design took shape under the guidance of Sumner Stone. Since then, Robert has accumulated awards and accolades for his work, including the Prix Charles Peignot in 1991, and numerous Type Directors Club awards. In 2006, Robert became Adobe’s first Principal Designer — a title he probably earned in spirit long before that.
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June 21, 2011
Some more additions to the Adobe Web Fonts collection are available today through our partners, Typekit and WebINK.
First, one of the most popular Adobe Web Font families so far, Chaparral Pro, has been supplemented with more optical sizes (Caption, Subhead and Display) in a range of weights, from Light to Bold. Chaparral is the only design Carol Twombly created with an optical size axis, so we’re pleased to now offer you more choices to explore Carol’s entire design.
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May 20, 2011
I’m happy to announce the availability of three new Adobe typeface families and one new Japanese font package on our Type Showroom.
Adobe Text first became available in May 2010 as a registration incentive for CS5 and was included in the first wave of Adobe Web Fonts. Designed by Robert Slimbach, this text typeface is classified as a Transitional design (between calligraphic Renaissance and high-contrast Modern styles), with distinctive, contemporary touches. Continue reading…
March 29, 2011
We are excited to announce that, beginning today, over 180 of Adobe’s Web Fonts are available through Extensis’ WebINK web font service. Those of you who already use WebINK have some fantastic new fonts from which to choose. And for the rest of you who are not yet using Adobe fonts on your web pages, you now have more great ways to get started with Adobe Web Fonts.
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