Recently Commented
- 01.28.12
Ambicase Fatface
Stephen Coles: Celebrating its inclusion on this list, Ambicase Fatface is now 30% off at MyFonts.… - 01.28.12
Chartwell
AndrĂ© Mora: I really like Chartwell and have used it for editorial design. I'm impressed by its ingenuity and excited by what it may insp… - 01.27.12
Sutturah
Marian Bantjes: I love this! My highest compliment: envy.… - 01.27.12
Neue Haas Grotesk
Erik Spiekermann: That, Matthew, is why Helvetica was so successful: nobody except a few Swiss & German designers would have ever dared order t… - 01.27.12
Apple Color Emoji
Christoph: You can find a complete overview of all the Apple Color Emoji characters here. (Works only with Safari. Hover to see Unicode … - 01.26.12
Changing
AndrĂ© Mora: I would love to read a 5,000 word review by Paul Shaw on this typeface. Though something tells me he'd only need 5.… - 01.26.12
Our Favorite Typefaces of 2011
Stephen Coles: Jason Santa Maria just posted a nice summary of highlights from the list.… - 01.26.12
Reina
Marian Bantjes: Whoa. Fantastic!… - 01.26.12
My Favorite Font Sources: A Shortlist of Trusted Foundries and Retailers
Josh Farmer: What about Underware and TypeTogether?…
Technically, it’s only a partial font. I know someone’s gonna get all nitpicky about that.
Out of curiosity I took the photo and scaled it to where the height of the piece was 6 1/2 feet tall and tried to determine the point size by overlaying Caslon 3 (the closest I have). It comes out to about 400 to 410 point by what I can tell, do you think there’s any significance to the point size? Maybe my measurements are off from the distortion of the photo and it’s actually 471 pt?
JLT, I agree it’s absolutely gorgeous. Truly so.
In staring at the photo, I wonder what happened to the thickness of the ascender and descender in the N. They look positively anemic compared to the (true) left facing side of the M. Is it a glare issue or a byproduct of über enlargement (or my take)?
Truly very lovely.
And not to split hairs, but I think it’s a complete font, as that is a narrow definition by nature. What it is not is a complete typeface.
Cool, Joshua.
The question of what makes a font “complete” is interesting. For one thing, the criteria are different for metal and digital. In the case of digital you could say a font has a certain “level” of completeness depending on what groups of characters are supported: caps only, alphabetics, alphanumerics, Latin-1, CE, etc. While in the case of metal you could say it’s much more of an issue of what sorts the given setting requires; in this way you could even say for example that a font with one “e” and one “z” is in fact less complete than a font with two “e”s and no “z” (because of linguistic frequency requirements).
Judas: I think the thinness of the “N”‘s stems compared to the “M”‘s might be due to parallax.
hhp
I was told in school that a complete font of type (i.e. of metal foundry type) was a complete case – a “useable amount” as it were, and more than just a single alphabet showing.
I did have to distort the photo quite a bit – the parallax was all wrong on the original, so it’s very possible that it is actually 471 point – the folks who took the photo for me did not have a tripod, so they couldn’t get up right in front of the piece.
Amos Bethke was my grandfather. I always loved visiting his home and being in his workshop there. After he passed away his headstone was engraved in this font. I rember my dad saying it was special, something about the symmetry of the O. I am so pleased to see a mention of him here. I didn’t know about this art work until now. I will have to see it the next time I am in New York.
Thank you for your comment, Sarah. I’ve fixed the link to JLT’s photo so it should be visible now.