re-draw fonts?
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- ivan_cook
what's the scoop legally or from an etiquette standpoint on re-drawing fonts?
it seems to happen fairly often (ie elsner-flake's new avant garde gothic alternates) but what are the conventions?
- MrDinky0
go for it
- johndiggity0
it's how the new fonts get made.
- version30
go for it
MrDinky
(Mar 26 05, 19:42)
- ivan_cook0
aren't there some implied boundries of appropriateness here? or generally extended professional courtesies?
- johndiggity0
look at faces like gotham. someone just redrew turn of the century signage.
helvetica was likewise redrawn from swiss era posters and signage.
- Solid0
For sale or personal use?
- visualeipstm0
i think if u want to do that, just make up your own font.
- Zeitgeist0
Gotham was not a re-draw (revival is the more correct term), but a face created in a style. Tobias Frere-Jones was the designer and he really knows his stuff. Its quite interesting how Gotham came about:
http://www.typography.com/catalo…
Usually revivals are interpretive and created to improve, add weights to, characters to, etc on a type design. Adobe Garamond and other interpretations were designed to create a clean version of Garamond for modern use (postscript as opposed to set type, photo type, etc).
It is legal. Its known as a derivative work. The ethics mainly revolve around your interpretation. You'll find significant differences in various interpretations to fonts.
Go for it and good luck... its actually quite difficult to do this well...
- ivan_cook0
thanks for the advice / info everyone. hopefully soon i can find the time to start my first font.
- e-pill0
call it :
STOLEN
- visualeipstm0
i think just to make things interesting, we at newstoday should have a font competition to see who comes up with the best drwn over fonts!
that would be the ish, folkert and the rest of the ntb broadcasters could be the judges, and we could all compete for five-years free hosting or something like that..
- monNom0
create a font from memory.
I'd like to see what helvetica ends up looking like without any reference.
- boiconet0
Just draw it well. Call it a 'new cut' of blah blah blah typeface and you should be fine (kerning is a bastard though).
- thislandslid0
it seems weird to me that people are so harshly quick to call out revival/redrawings of fonts as "stolen". its on thing to open up the suitcase/ttf/whatever and change 2 things and just call it your own, but that rarely happens. its generally someones view of that typeface and how they would like to see it drawn. a perfect example is bodoni - there are easily over a hundred variations of it out there - but massimo vignelli took the time to make his own , which is a more squared off and less rounded version of traditional bodoni's. no harm in that. its his interpretation.
as far as the release of the Avant Garde alts, there isnt a widely available/publicized version around. which is maybe for the best the way some people use them.
i recently drew out the font motter ombra which was put out by letraset in the 70's[ click here to see it]. i also created 3 variants on it. is that wrong? i dont think so, but its for personal use. im not looking to sell it. i don't really know what the logistics of that would be if i wanted to - this font has never been digitized, so who knows. i assume there is a measure of intellectual property you have to be sensitive to, but its also technically a new interpretation, even if you think you are just tracing it.
it seems like a grey area. especially in america there is really no convention for copyrighting a lot of things like this.
- boiconet0
That's so wierd. I was trying to rebuild a copy of Motter Ombra from a dodgy one that I downloaded years ago just last week. I gave up becuase I could find a reference for the 'Q'.
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Personally I think 'Personal Use' is okay. I think you can draw the line when people try and flog off badly drawn versions of original cuts.
- boiconet0
Hey Mr Kay
Your pages for the Complex book are super stylish.
- ivan_cook0
monday bump. :-)