Typblography

The Adobe Type team is often asked for more details on how we go about designing typefaces; what sort of historical elements went into the design, was there a specific approach that we took, and what problems we were trying to solve. Very often, a combination of factors like historical precedent, language coverage, stylistic trends and media target (print, web, UI, app, etc.) can be interesting to our customers.

With the typophile in mind, and others who are interested in font design, we produced our latest set of type specimens. These specimens, now available as PDFs on www.adobe.com/type, delve into the design of four recent Adobe Original typefaces – Trajan Sans, Trajan Pro 3, Myriad Arabic and Myriad Hebrew. We hope you enjoy reading this material and learning more about these typefaces.

Back in December, I did a post to thank all of the people who contributed translations to our Community Translation project. Since then we’ve had a lot of activity translating our typeface notes to Chinese and Japanese (over 100 accepted translations). We are very pleased to see all of this activity and want to publicly thank the following five individuals

Ying Ning

Tonny Xu

Vincent Ding

Hai Liang

Takesato Hayashi

Without them, and all of the other individuals we mentioned in December, this program would not be a success.

To learn more about the Adobe Type Community Translation program, refer to Typblography project page. If you have any questions or requests related to the Type Community Translation program feel free to reach out to us at type-translations@adobe.com.

Over at Daring Fireball yesterday, John Gruber waxed rhapsodic about his lifelong relationship with pixels, and their marginalization in the new MacBook Pro Retina Display. He then talked about fonts in that context:

Regarding font choices, you not only need not choose a font optimized for rendering on screen, but should not. Fonts optimized for screen rendering look cheap on the retina MacBook Pro — sometimes downright cheesy — in the same way they do when printed in a glossy magazine. [...] Great fonts, intricately designed for high-resolution output, aren’t just allowed, they are necessary for a design that truly sings on this display.

John is talking about the long game of type design that Adobe has been practicing and advocating for over 25 years — especially in the last two or three years as screen fonts (a.k.a. web fonts) have taken a front seat in designer workflows and font foundry business planning. While there’s nothing wrong with finding the perfect solution to a contemporary problem — as many foundries have sought to do with highly screen-optimized fonts — it’s an endeavor that takes a lot of time and resources, always with the looming threat that those benefits will be fleeting. At Adobe, we’ve always been very comfortable relying on the inherent value of type designed to work well in print and high-resolution environments. No doubt that is a conservative choice, but keep in mind that Adobe Type has always been a product for digital workflows. One of the first Adobe Originals, Adobe Garamond, was designed in consideration, not defiance, of the 300 dpi laser printers of its time. Doing so did not make it incongruous with the past or the future.

I’m looking forward to the day when this bifurcation, “fonts” and “web fonts,” disappears and we can get back to simply practicing good typography with good typefaces, and worrying less about the medium and the technology. Although it seems like we’ve been anticipating high resolution screens for at least fifteen years, perhaps we are, finally, almost there.

Our holiday card is supposed to set you in the right mood for a sparkling holiday time; click on the image above to experience a truly starry experience! Close observers might even get a glimpse of an unreleased typeface – which has been obfuscated using a seasonal Python script. Continue reading…

Twenty five years ago I worked my first day at Adobe. It was quite exciting; there were about 75 people at the company, all crowded in a small building in East Palo Alto. Continue reading…

By now, the news has reached the farthest corners of the Web: Adobe has acquired Typekit. Adobe made the announcement at Adobe MAX 2011 on Monday, Typekit spread the news on its blog, and tweets and other assorted commentary followed. After taking some time to come down from the excitement of the announcement and the reaction to it, I want to add my own thoughts and some general observations, from my vantage point here in the Adobe Type group.

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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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Update: We’re excited to have hired not one but two new MA graduates, who’ll be starting at Adobe in January. Watch for a post introducing them later. I want to thank all the people who inquired about the position; it was an impressive group!

- David L

To help keep things fresh, Adobe Systems has a program dedicated to bringing in people just out of college. As part of this program, we now have the opportunity to add someone in the Type team. If you’ve just received your Masters degree or are in your final year, you might be the person we’re looking for. Continue reading…