Saturday, April 5, 2014

K22 Gadget

 

K22 Gadget was derived from K22 Gadget Lined, which was based on Gadget Lined. Gadget Lined is a dry-transfer font designed by Peter Bennett for Zipatone. 



I first thought of doing this two years ago but shelved the idea. The plain version is not that difficult to do considering the design of Gadget Lined. It is a simple question of willingness to do it. I wasn't up to it then but then I need something to get things going again. 

Aside from stripping off the lines from K22 Gadget Lined, I also expanded the font's cgaracter set. When I was done, I was only two characters (florin and mu) short of completing the Latin-1 codepage. 



An all-caps version of this font is available at Dafont. I made it all caps to  test an idea. The full font will be made available at Dafont later. This is part of my experiment.


By downloading the font, you agree to use the font for personal, private and non-commercial purposes only. You also agree that you will not make the font available for download from any web site and/or upload the font to font archives without my expressed and written permission. 

Download K22 Gadget: Mirror1 or Mirror2 

I am requesting you to link to this web page (https://k22fonts.blogspot.com/2014/04/k22-gadget.html) instead of directly linking to the font download -- please do not hotlink my download. 

And if you are interested in my fonts, you will find almost all of them at ABFonts and OFFSite. I also made available some of my fonts at Dafont and Fontspace. If you happen to find my fonts in other font archives, I did not upload my fonts there and those sites probably stole their content from the sites I linked to. You are solely responsible if you download a virus instead of a font from those unscrupulous sites masquerading as font archives. 

Saturday, March 22, 2014

K22 EricGill Shadow

..

I did K22 EricGill Shadow back in 2011. This was the first of many fonts that I did resulting from the persistence of a good friend. It didn't hurt that he provided the source materials for the fonts. :) 

This is a digitization of Gill Sans Shadow 338 designed by Eric Gill for Monotype in 1929. AFAIK this is the only digitization of this font to date. The specimen that I have has a very limited character set that I expanded using specimens of other styles of Gill Sans Shadow as a basis. 

I did not use Gill Sans as the font's name as it could be a trademark for a font. Since the font was designed by Eric Gill, I thought that it would be safe to name the font after him. 



Going through the specimen, the 'S' does not seem to conform to how the other letters were done. There's too much white space and my eyes got lost trying to find the 'S' in it. I still did it the way it was shown but I also did an alternate 'S' somewhat similar to how it was done in the Gill Sans Shadow 408 specimen. The Scaron/scaron also have an alternate. 


I could not find a font with the Philippine Peso sign so I added one. It is found at Unicode 20B1 (Alt-8369) The peso sign is also available as a ligature in OpenType features. Typing the three characters P H P (no spaces between letters and in any combination of cases) will be replaced the Peso sign.



This is a minor update of the font. I switched the positions of the two versions of S. The alternats for S and Scaron are accessible through OT feature. Also added other OT features where applicable. Looking at the font, I believe that it should be redrawn but that has to wait. 

 

The original release of the font was in True Type, Open Type and Windows Type 1. I dropped the Windows Type 1 from this version as it seems like there is no longer a need for this format. 

By downloading K22 EricGill Shadow, you agree to use the font for personal, private and non-commercial purposes only. You also agree that you will not make the font available for download from any web site and/or upload the font to font archives without my expressed and written permission.

Download K22 EricGill Shadow: Mirror1 or Mirror2 

I am requesting you to link to this web page (http://k22fonts.blogspot.com/2014/03/k22-ericgill-shadow.html) instead of linking directly to the font download -- please do not hotlink my download. 

And if you are interested in my fonts, you will find almost all of them at ABFonts and OFFSite. I also made available some of my fonts at Dafont and Fontspace. If you happen to find my fonts in other font archives, I did not upload my fonts there and those sites probably stole their content from the sites I linked to. You are solely responsible if you download a virus instead of a font from those unscrupulous sites masquerading as font archives. 

Saturday, March 15, 2014

K22 Ronsard Inline



A good friend showed me Ronsard Crystal on page 68 of Dan X. Solo's Moderne Alphabets: 100 Complete Fonts published by Dover Publications in 1999. 



I was not interested in the font but I was told that it has not been digitized. It was only after doing everything on the Solo specimen when I learned about the Red Rooster take on Ronsard Crystal. I went looking for more specimen sheets of the font and saw a MyFonts listing included in the search result. I should have done a search before doing the font. 

Aside from Red Rooster's, Vista Bill also told me that Castcraft Software, Inc. released their version, Opti Ronsard Crystal, in the early 1990s. Unlike other Castcraft fonts, Opti Ronsard Crystal was cleanly done. Castcraft is no longer in business and their commercial fonts are found in free font archives.

Well... what's done is done. It is a waste of time and effort to just trash what had already been done so I decided to expand the character set a little and made an effort to complete the accents. However, there was no attempt to copy how Red Rooster did their font. I did not retain the name of the original font but instead used K22 Ronsard Inline so as not to confuse my font with that of Red Rooster. 



The finished font, in both True Type and Open Type, was made available to a very select few early this year. I was not prepared to do an uncontrolled public release because of the circumstances. that is, until today. 

By downloading the font, you agree to use the font for personal, private and non-commercial purposes only. You also agree that you will not make the font available for download from any web site and/or upload the font to font archives without my expressed and written permission. 

Download K22 Ronsard Inline: Mirror1  or Mirror2


I am requesting you to link to this web page (http://k22fonts.blogspot.com/2014/03/k22-ronsard-inline.html) instead of directly linking to the font download -- please do not hotlink my download. 

And if you are interested in my fonts, you will find almost all of them at ABFonts and OFFSite. I also made available some of my fonts at Dafont and Fontspace. If you happen to find my fonts in other font archives, I did not upload my fonts there and those sites probably stole their content from the sites I linked to. You are solely responsible if you download a virus instead of a font from those unscrupulous sites masquerading as font archives.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

K22 Hardy Script, a font in progress


I saw a specimen of a font that I really like and I decided to do it. That font is Hardy on page 36 of Dan X. Solo's alphabet book Brushstroke and Free-Style Alphabets: 100 Complete Fonts published by Dover Publications in 1977. 



Knowing that majority of script and brushstroke fonts in Dan X. Solo's Solotype Catalog and alphabet books are from the Filmotype library of photo/film type fonts, I asked around for the provenance of Hardy. A good friend, Vista Bill, confirmed that Hardy is indeed a Filmotype font. Luc Devroye posted scans from the 1955 Filmotype catalog, which lists Hardy as a 1955 font release. Unfotunately, the showing of Hardy was not posted on the site. 

I am aware that Stuart Sandler of Font Diner acquired the rights to the Filmotype library and that the fonts in the library are being digitized. I checked the officially digitized Filmotype fonts and Hardy was not among them. I, however, did not check whether other font foundries already did Hardy because it does not concern me. What matters to me is that Font Diner, dba Filmotype, has not published a digitization of Hardy before I started doing my font. 

The font is still in progress and I have no idea when it will be completed. What I am sure of is that the font will not look exactly like the one in the specimen. Some changes will only be noticed by eagle-eyed type experts while other changes will be very obvious. A good example is the lowercase letter p (compare the p in the two images above.) Expect many more like that in my font. 

It came to my attention that Dos Diez Type already digitized Filmotype Hardy as Icenomina Script. Because of this I decided to abandon my digitization of this font even if Filmotype has not done its own digitization.


And if you are interested in my fonts, you will find almost all of them at ABFonts and OFFSite. I also made available some of my fonts at DaFont and FontspaceIf you happen to find my fonts in other font archives, I did not upload my fonts there and those sites probably stole their content from the sites I linked to. You are solely responsible if you download a virus instead of a font from those unscrupulous sites masquerading as font archives.