E-Gerard

And here's a brilliant site: well-designed, modest and informative. In other words, everything that the Giampa (TM? Give me a break!) horror isn't.

Aww, Andrew, relax. There is far more harmful drivel on the web than lanstontype.com. Spend a little more time there. You'll learn something. Really.

Back to Unger: we hope to have some more on Gulliver and the USA Today soon. Stay tuned.

WOOOOOOW!
(and I haven't visited the site, yet)

Hey finally some digestive info on Mr Gerard Unger and his fonts. Not the best looking site around, but it comes handy anyway.

Andrew

If you were wondering about the TM it is because a company used my last name 'GiampaTextWare' when they were digitizing typefaces.

Originally they had agreed that my name would come off if I stepped down from the board of directors. When I did did they would not change name.

In any event I think you should get some background before making your mind up about these sorts of matters. Obviously it was a legal concern.

So do you think anyone other than yourself will use yours?

My advise is to take another look, I have many good typographical qualities.

Giampa

Giampa,
The "TM" just makes it seem like you're for sale! ;-)

hhp

Andrew, why the hostility? Mr. Giampa has a tremendous amount of technical skill and knowledge in a wide variety of typography-related areas. While you certainly have the right to your own opinions, I don't think anyone here really cares about character assassination. I'm sure your energies would be much better served in a more constructive fashion.

I rather like Unger's site. I like the layout, color scheme, and the comprehensiveness. The PDF specimens are great, too.

Unger rocks!
And I love the pages. Alos, I don't find any problem with Giampa pages.
A website is not necessarily meant as a "display of Java or Flash power".
I hate anything that gets in the way when I wish to access information on a site, so I hate the abuse of Java, Flash, Shockwave et al.

Just waiting for an .swf file to load pisses me off. Not everyone is on a high-speed connection already, and I think that you should reserve the "interactiveness" for localized parts of your website. This is just my idea, anyway.

And "Giampa horror" is not so nice, Andrew, don't you think?
You could just say: I find it uninspiring, or something like that.

> I hate anything that gets in the way

You mean like lousy navigation?

And Claudio, too much tact slows things down to a crawl.

hhp

Just so we're clear, I'm talking generally, not Unger's site (which is very nice, except for the colors).

hhp

The reference Stephen makes to Gulliver and USA Today reminded me of something I have been wondering about for a while.

In the Eye interview with Unger (Summer 2001) he was asked about USA Today: "The Americans used Gulliver in an American way -- they've taken away space from between the characters, condensed the characters, blown them up, made them bigger and taken away space from between the lines ... They went too far with it, so they went one step back -- when they launched it was even more inflated ... but I'm excited about what USA Today did with the face. It was something I would never have done myself and they claim it works, for three million copies per day."

I think most people would agree that USA Today didn't do such a good job with Gulliver, but I also can't easily tell how they have changed the typography since April 2000 (when they introduced the face). I still have a copy of the 3 April 2000 paper. When I compare that with a copy of the paper from this week, I can't really see the improvements that Unger refers to. The tracking still looks too tight and it seems like there is still no inter-linear spacing. The cramped feeling Unger describes is still there. Here is a scan (enlarged 400%) of the old issue's type next to a recent issue's type. The idea with the red line is to show that the x-heights seem to be about the same.

There is some information about the circumstances surrounding USA Today's switch to Gulliver in this article (see page 4). A quote from there: "[The paper has adopted] an overall updated look with consistent typography -- Gulliver -- for all heads." Something I wonder about is whether this sort of consistency (using the same face for headlines, subheads, and text) really makes sense. It seems pretty clear that Gulliver was made with small point sizes in mind, though this doesn't mean it can't be an adequate display face. Some of the same features that make it good for newspaper text -- short descenders, for example -- might also make it good for headlines. But I wonder if Unger would agree with its use in headlines, or whether he wouldn't make some changes to the face if he were to do a version for large sizes.

Another paper that uses Gulliver for both headlines and text is Stuttgarter Zeitung. As the Eye interview points out, that paper uses Gulliver quite differently from the way USA Today uses it. Here is a scan (enlarged 400%) of Stuttgarter Zeitung's body type.

Hey Andy - nice scans.

BTW, I think using such a smartly optimized text face for display work is generally stupid.

hhp

About the USA Today before&after:
1) The After column-width is greater, which means it would need more leading; but the leading has been maintained, which makes the cramping worse.
2) Since the setting is justified, the only way to actually measure the comparative tracking is by analyzing words in the last lines of paragraphs; but they don't share any. Could you find and show a nice not-too-short word that's on a terminal line, in both settings, preferably higher res?
3) The overall brightnesses are different, so it's hard to make an eyeball comparison (which could be done in parallel to #2). Try normalizing that.

BTW, one subtle bad effect of compression is that the italic angle decreases - and I think short words especially (like that "Idol") are having trouble standing out enough.

hhp

BTW, are they still using those putrid ffx ligatures?

Which reminds me: changing the "natural tracking" of a font throws off the ligatures too - look at the overly-open "fi"s in there.

hhp

I'll take that Zeitung setting any day. Does that mean I'm more European than American?

What do you want to be, SLC boy?

hhp

Nordic.

>> I hate anything that gets in the way
>You mean like lousy navigation?

Yes. Do you agree?

And Claudio, too much tact slows things down to a crawl.
>Yes, but what do you think if I, assuming I don't know you, start a thread saying: "Emigre webpages is everything that Papazian Horror isn't".
;)

Btw, what do you think of the pricing policy Gerard Unger has adopted in the new website? I agree with Gulliver's policy but aren't the prices quite high? The types are high quality and great, anyway, so I'm curious to hear your opinion.

>assuming I don't know you

Well I might do it even now that I know you. Your site sucks. :))))

> "Emigre webpages is everything that Papazian Horror isn't".

First I would try to take into account your context of judgment, directly (the way Giampa did -although a bit harshly- with Andrew), but also indirectly; then I would try to extract good advice from the statement, using any perceived subjectivity as a filter; I would also try to use my own subjectivity as a filter: for example if I disliked you I would try to prevent that from blocking the good advice. Oh, and I would appreciate the candor.

----

I think Unger's prices make sense.

hhp

i'm curious why nobody has commented on this yet, because it looks fantastic!

Well, I did, but on Typophile.
Yeah, it really works - wonderful.

But frankly I'm still waiting for like a 2-hour block of time to go through the site for real.

hhp

Well, I did, but on Typophile.

sorry, i didn't see it.

i have to confess, i don't read Typophile. ever. i don't know how anyone has time to keep up with it... if i read everything on there, i wouldn't have any time left to draw type!

I hear you, Christian. A tip: edit your Typophile profile to email the posts from the forums you are most interested in. Then set up your email app to send all messages from Typophile to a seperate folder. Sorts out the mess. Makes clear which posts are new.

Christian, you're right - this is getting out of hand, as far as I'm concerned. Too much of a good thing.

hhp

i’m curious why nobody has commented on this yet, because it looks fantastic!

Doesn’t it?

I love Monotype Sung and Hei and have used them for years. But I couldn’t find good matches of Latin fonts to go with them. The Baskerville that comes with Sung is really weak compared to the Chinese, which is precise and strong. What’s worse, the medium weight of Sung comes with I think the medium weight of Monotype Baskerville which is more like a bold! When you set foreign words within Chinese text they just pop right out at you! Monotype Hei comes with Arial, which is pretty dire. Vesta works impeccably.

There couldn’t be better matches than these. Even the weights match perfectly (well, only the lights don’t work, because Coranto and Vesta don’t come in extra light weights. But I don’t use light for text anyway).

Take a look at the project which I chose these fonts for: http://keithtam.net. Go to work, and view portfolio. It’s the second piece.

K.

>Christian, you're right - this is getting out of hand, as far as I'm concerned. Too much of a good thing.

Yes, definitely. We should write less on forums and work more on letters. The web is a drug.

Besides, Keith's choice and the Unger types are just great. (Am I repeating myself?)
Do you know Alejandro LoCelso (Morisawa winner with Borges) has been a student of Gerard Unger.
And Unger will show Borges to his students in Reading. Alejandro has given me this info and was very excited about this. I love his work, too. My soft spot is for Rayuela, you know.

HHP wrote:

>I think using such a smartly
>optimized text face for
>display work is generally stupid.

Yeah, I think you're right. And maybe USA Today's use of Gulliver for headlines is another example of their generally naive implementation of Unger's typeface.

>The After column-width is
>greater, which means it would
>need more leading; but the
>leading has been maintained,
>which makes the cramping worse.

I think that papers generally don't change the spacing between lines when they vary column widths. I can see some columns on the front page of my copy of USA Today that look to be about 9 picas wide. Then you have those left-hand columns (Newsline, Moneyline, etc.) that must be twice as wide -- maybe 17 or 18 picas -- but have the same solid setting. This tight spacing between lines is also maintained in headlines and subheads. The cramped look at large sizes may not have as great an impact on legibility and readability as it does for text, but I still think it hurts the appearance of the paper. The rationale for all of this, whether at text sizes or for headlines, probably has to do with the desire to save space.

>The overall brightnesses are
>different, so it's hard to
>make an eyeball comparison (which
>could be done in parallel to #2).
>Try normalizing that.

It is hard for me to do this because the quality of printing is noticably different between the two copies that I have. This may just have to do with the variability of inking during any given run.

>Since the setting is justified,
>the only way to actually measure
>the comparative tracking is by
>analyzing words in the last lines
>of paragraphs; but they don't share
>any. Could you find and show a nice
>not-too-short word that's on a
>terminal line, in both settings,
>preferably higher res?

Here is a scan of the word 'about' from both old and new copies of the paper. The word in each case was found on the last (unjustified) line of a paragraph. The 'about' on the right is from the more recent copy. It does look like the tracking may have been loosened, though like I said, my old copy of the paper was comparitively smudged and over-inked, so that could work to reduce the apparent space between letters.

Thanks.

The After "about" is in fact almost 5% wider (while the individual letters are the same widths). So:
1) Line-settings are less cramped, and this probably makes up for the relatively less leading (in terms of cramping).
2) But the risk of the leading being insufficient is increased.
3) Bouma formation could be better or worse: to me it seems better overall.
4) Assuming the same H&J settings, the economy is slightly less (but very slightly, since paragraph breaks negate most line-wise horizontal savings anyway).

This is assuming the font weight is the same, which is most probably the case.

hhp

http://www.lanstontype.com/GiampaHouse.html