![]() ![]() The goal was to create a family of fonts that appear at least distantly related. Some fonts, like Runic, are so obscure that typographers at Monotype built the font from scratch using stone engravings for inspiration. The Arabic typeface is emphasized in left to right strokes, while French's letters carry their weight in their vertical stems. The Tibetan script, for example, draws heavily from a calligraphic tradition, while English is more linear and geometric. ![]() And making those fonts “unmistakably Google” is nearly impossible. “That was always the complaint we got-fonts just don’t look good when you mix languages.” But developing a typeface for 800 languages that feels cohesive yet respectful of each language's cultural heritage created inherent tension. “You’d get this mishmash of fonts,” Jung says. So they’d buy one for Latin scripts like Spanish and French, another for Arabic scripts, and yet another for Japanese and Chinese. In the past, platforms licensed fonts for different scripts piecemeal (a script can cover a number of languages-English, Icelandic, and Dutch are just three of the dozens of languages that rely on Latin script). He led hundreds of researchers, designers, and linguists in giving every Unicode-enabled script a font, and ensuring those fonts feel like part of the same typographic family. If these less common languages have a digital typeface, it’s probably not well considered, because “certain regions of the world have much more rich typographic traditions than others,” says Steve Matteson, Monotype’s creative director. But people read and write in hundreds of languages.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |