r/typography

TNR first emerged in the UK for The Times after the typographer Stanley Morison wrote a diss track against the 19th-century-themed typeface that was in use at the time. Thereafter, under Morison, Victor Lardent developed Times New Roman, modelled after certain traditional typefaces (with Plantin as the leading template).

From my limited knowledge, this font was (at least initially) designed as a uniquely Timesean typeface, though it was soon enough released commercially. This allowed non-TheTimes uses, culminating with Microsoft Word making it the default font.

Questions:

1. If Microsoft Word hadn't chosen TNR as their default font, would it look more unique? Or was TNR designed to look anonymous?
2. Why exactly do so many use it (not only The Times; also reports, theses, etc.)? Is it thanks to its traditional-themed design?
3. Do you personally like TNR? I personally don't like it that much (though I don't hate it either); I prefer open-source serif typefaces, like Lora.

I am currently working on creating a linguistics website called The Online Encyclopedia of Linguistics and Related Fields. Because of its subject matter, the font in question will have to support the International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as some other uncommon characters. I initially wanted to use Brill, but it has a noncommercial-only license. I was also thinking of using Gentium, but its calligraphic vibe doesn’t really fit well with the semi-scholarly purpose of the site. I would absolutely love to use STIX Two Text, but a few IPA symbols (such as the labiodental flap and the symbols for upstep and downstep) are not supported, and the Greek letters βχθ clash visually with the rest of the font.

So put simply, which alternatives to Brill allow commercial use, and don’t have a calligraphic vibe? Would it be worth spending the money to get a custom font that has full IPA support?

I’ve been a bit annoyed by the lack of Frutiger in my toolkit of late, and I’m not sure which flavor I want to license to remedy that. Currently leaning towards either Neue Frutiger (Linotype = Monotype) or Fact (ParaType), but I’d love to hear y’all’s takes.

A few factors I’m weighing:

• Fact is significantly cheaper than all of Monotype’s offerings.
• Adrian Frutiger himself was not happy with Frutiger Next; he did not draw the calligraphic italic and found it inappropriate.
• There is a spectrum of language/glyph coverage here. Across the upright of the Light weight: 394 glyphs in the OG Frutiger, 487 in Neue Frutiger, 703 in Fact (adds Cyrillic), and even 1819 in the massive Neue Frutiger World (adds Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Georgian, Armenian).
• There are tradeoffs in weights and widths. The OG and Neue have two widths (regular, compressed); Fact has six (compressed, narrow, condensed, regular, semi-expanded, expanded), while Neue World has only one. There is a Neue Paneuropean with fewer scripts than World that retains the compressed width, but I’m not really considering it due to the price tag.

Which flavor(s) have you chosen and why?

Hi everyone, i really need help for my thesis project.

For my thesis, I’ve chosen pixel art, from video games to graphic design as my topic. As part of the project, I’ve been asked to create a pixel art font that, when the letters are put together, forms something for example, a pixel character sprite, a map of a videogame, a background, or some kind of image/pattern. The main problem is that I honestly don’t know where to start. I’ve been looking for inspiration and for people who have done something similar, but I haven’t really found anything useful. The letters need to remain recognizable as letters, but at the same time they should work when placed next to each other, so that they can create a larger image or pattern.

I’ve been stuck on this for about a month now, and I’m starting to run out of ideas. Does anyone have any advice, references, or examples of similar projects? Thank you so much in advance for any help!

I grabbed some variable font files for a client last week and tested them in the usual programs. Inkscape kept the weights looking right but the spacing went off at intermediate weights. LibreOffice just skipped the variable axes completely. I ended up exporting static versions by hand, which took a couple hours. If anyone here actually works with variable fonts in open source software on a regular basis, I'm curious which setup keeps spacing consistent. Screenshots would help. The marketing talks up how flexible these fonts are, but the practical experience seems to lag behind