Microsoft has discontinued its free distribution of TrueType core fonts for the Web. Over the last five years, I found it was a great resource for guiding users to pick up commonly used fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, Andale Mono, Verdana, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Impact, Comic Sans and Webdings) that were available to multiple operating systems.

Okay, I don’t love Comic Sans or Arial, but to offer these standard Web fonts for free for so long and then to take them down seems like a cruel tactic to me. It’s a shame.

UPDATE – S. Coles, Aug. 14, 2002

A Microsoft spokesperson kindly answered our questions...

Why did you take the fonts down?

“Most users who wanted the fonts have downloaded them already. They ship with recent operating systems – Windows XP and Mac OS X (via IE). In addition, the downloads were being abused – repackaged, modified and shipped with commercial products in violation of the end-user license agreement.”

Where can I get these fonts now?

“The fonts ship with Windows XP and recent versions of Mac OS. Earlier versions of Windows (Windows 98 thru Windows 2000) included most of them (but not Trebuchet MS, Andale Mono or Georgia).”

UPDATE – S. Coles, Aug. 15, 2002

Simon Daniels of MS Typography clarifies...

“Fonts that ship with different versions of Windows are listed here. (Note that Windows XP does not ship Andale Mono, because only one weight was available when the Windows team took font drops. We expect future versions of Windows to ship all four weights of Andale Mono.)”

Letterror is redesigned. Erik’s illustrations are great! He reminds me of the illustrators I liked most when I was a kid – Richard Scarry, Shel Silverstein, Leo Lionni.

How about more discussion on illustration here – especially book illustration? So many kids’ books illustrators are also really great letterers – Eric Carle, Robert McCloskey, Clement Hurd, Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, Virginia Lee Burton, Mercer Mayer, Ludwig Bemelmans, Garth Williams, Kurt Wiese, Jean de Brunhoff, etc. Illustration programs used to really emphasize lettering, but it’s been awhile since I read or heard about one that addressed the discipline with more than one or two classes.

Today the New York Times runs Julia Flaherty’s article on the North Bennet Street School in Boston and their excellent bookbinding program. NYT  link; free registration required, or use “Typographica/Typographica”

Programs like this are becoming replacements for the usual 1-5 year internships that bookbinders have traditionally used to launch their careers. Does anyone here see this shift – more and more crafts programs in printing, binding, papermaking, typesetting (all crafts that have traditionally relied more on apprenticeships than formal in-class training) – as reducing the craft to a rich-persons hobby? After all, who can afford 2 years of full-time education at a school excluded from state and federal grants? Or is this not a major force in who the next generation of binders and craft printers are and the type of work they’ll do?