Preface Progress

I'm with you on ApexSans, Claudio. I'm a big fan of the light to book weights, but the bold and heavier really suffer from clogged counters.

Yes, I may understand the desire of keeping a design the most monotone (in weight) as possible, linked to the fascination of technology inspired or flavored faces, but as long as this does not damage readability. I've received from chester the poster of ApexSans and even in print the darker weights close up at small sizes.

A moderate modulation, which you may be even almost unable to perceive, would help enormously.
Besides, this choice of taste excludes a serious evaluation of those types by old-school, traditional type designers, which could easily dismiss them as "amateurish" and don't even look at the shapes et al.

A good example, conversely, is the Shinn typeface. Modulation is not exaggerate and it keeps that "technology" feel. But Nick is a devil of a type designer...
This was not a big problem in Nillennium, at last if you didn't use the black in really tiny weights. Nillennium is great, the radical stylization is fascinating, but a bit of modulation would have helped a lot.

Besides, when you print on a Laser printer (even with a 1200ppi resolution) these faces turn out ugly.
What does the pioneristic efforts made to meet the restrictions of low quality digital printing have taught us, in the end?
I'm thinking of Matthew Carter (Bitstream Charter), Sumner Stone (Stone Sans and Stone Serif) or Zuzana Licko (Matrix).
Charter is a breathtaking typeface if we just think the time in which it was designed.
It's not a surprise Zuzana's earlier faces continue to work so well: they were developed as a challenge to the constraints of the new technology instead of following trends.

"developed as a challenge to the constraints of the new technology instead of following trends."

Sorry Claudio, I don't subscribe to this polarized paradigm of design - the purity of the artisan vs. the corruption of the manufacturer.

In the first place, although I can't speak for Zuzana Licko, I'd like to believe that if a type design is not a commission, it's art, intuitive, expresssive, and the rationalization comes afterwards.

Design is not a battle, defined by the constraints of the new technology: it was the phototype old guard who floated this idea of the faults of digital. Sure, Phototype was sharper, but it also lacked density. As as AD back in the day, I was exasperated by phototype galleys with the non-existent hairlines and joints of faces like ITC Garamond and Galliard. 300 dpi laserwriter was low res, but it had great density, a virtue long prized by printers. It was just a new medium, not better or worse, and the type designer's task was to do it justice.

"Following trends" sounds uncreative and plagiaristic. But in fact, if you're designing a retail font for internet marketing, what you're doing is market driven, and the challenge is to be creative within those constraints.

Rather than a world with a few leaders and many followers, let's have one where everybody is a trend bender.

> if a type design is not a commission, it’s art, intuitive, expresssive, and the rationalization comes afterwards.

I think this is also polarized. There is creative expression in any commission, and serious functional issues in any "self-motivated" design. It's entirely possible to make a "neutral" text face simply for the heck of it.

> let’s have one where everybody is a trend bender

But that's contrary to human nature.

hhp

Sorry, Nick, language always defies me.
I did not mean to sound so "radical".
I didn't say digital have "faults". But it surely had constraints in those heydays, as any technology in early stages (lead, photosetting). What I wished to say was just that there actually *are* people just following trends without a care, and as market-driven or "trendy" as it may be, Preface shows your skills in a world saturated by people which are not interested to learn and grow.

I welcome as I have always done fresh imputs and experiments, but when you call an "experiment" whatever crappy face "designed" in 5 minutes, and you enjoy presenting yourself as a trendsetter, well this is plain sad.

So I fully agree with Hrant first sentence, but not with the second.

Everybody might be a trendsetter, but a trend (and its sequential implications) is not always a good trend.

I appreciate your indulgence but there are so many people doing things just because "it's easy" and totally uninterested in growing in what they do that... bah!

I was reading today an article by Billy Idol, (on the cd sleeve of the remastered version of his 1983 album Rebel Yell), where he explains how things evolved and developed from his first release, in the attempt of "weave into one album all the remix, rap, techno and rock'n'roll we had been part since the breakthrough of punk in '77. Our work as writers, performers and as a band really unite on this record" (these are Idol's words).
You were into punk. Punk grew, too. You grew, and this is always good. The people I was talking about are not interested to grow. I didn't mean to make an ode to Zuzana, Carter, the digital type pioneers, and your work. Inversely I wished to underline the lack of content of many uninspired things of today.

And I'm sorry to say, in the end, borrowing the title from a 1986 song of The Stranglers "You'll Allways Reap What You Sow". I'm really firm on this idea.

> let’s have one where everybody is a trend bender

>> But that’s contrary to human nature.

Which is why it's called culture.

And I like "density", but the toner cartridges of my laser printer are too expensive, by the way... ;)

Nick, do you mean culture is contrary to human nature?

hhp

Nature and culture as opposites is a pretty standard way of looking at things.

You said that a world of "leaders and followers" was human nature. A culture where everybody is both shaper and shaped is indeed contrary to that.

Hmmm... I think a thing entirely defined by "nature" hardly exists.
BTW, How would you consider the current obsession with economy and economical "growth"? To me it seems pretty much a thing way beyond our control. Nature?

BTW, how's that no one has shown interest in seein the complete character set of Preface or Progress?
I for first I would like to.

Besides, pardon the pun, but are those things we are experiencing, "progress"?
Have you read, by chance, the book "The Malaise of Modernity", by Charles Taylor. Published by Taylor and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1991(I have the Italian edition).
Taylor teaches at the McGill University in Monteal and he's written books on Hegel, multiculturalism, and modernity.
Very interesting.
At least to me.