4 ms·

From Moleskine to Market

39 points by gnosis 17y ago

barrkel 17y ago
Ironically, I found the typeography of the main article so hard to read I had to use Readibility. The main font appears to be one of these two: http://typekit.com/colophons/vcb6rkj http://typekit.com/colophons/vcb6rkj The combination of font and size chosen is an exceedingly poor match for 96dpi web rendering.
- spicyj 17y ago
  It's Le Monde Courrier STD.
- latortuga 17y ago
  Wow I sort of felt bad thinking the same thing but the first thing I noticed on the page were the words "I love typography" and the second thing was how difficult the article was to read.
- bmj 17y ago
  My version of Chrome on Windows (4.0.249.43) isn't rendering some of the characters at all.
- San 17y ago
  The font rendering varies wildly between browsers: http://i47.tinypic.com/1125ssp.png http://i47.tinypic.com/1125ssp.png From left to right: Firefox (Win), Chrome (Win), Safari (Win), Safari (Mac) Firefox renders the font way too light, Chrome (this version at least) falls back to a default font, and Safari on Windows uses incorrect kerning and renders the some characters too narrow. Only Safari on Mac renders the font acceptably (except from the heavy diagonal on the capital N and the oversized apostrophe, maybe).
  - gnosis 17y ago
    Another data point for you, Opera on Gentoo Linux: http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4621/1231150731.png http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4621/1231150731.png To me it looks pretty similar to your Firefox screenshot.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      That isn't using the right font either. The 'e' is all wrong.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - barrkel 17y ago
    As I understand it, Mac doesn't use 96dpi as its logical mapping, but rather 72. The kerning in Firefox (Win) isn't great either.
robfitz 17y ago
Does anyone know how the economics of font creation work out? This seems to take an enormous amount of time to create [what appears to me to be] a very niche product that sells for only $250.
- replicatorblog 17y ago
  It is terrible. An old girlfriend worked as a type designer and rampant piracy makes selling fonts to end users a terrible business. These "Type Foundries" make their main revenues by designing custom fonts for magazines where you can earn 5-6 figure sums. e.g. Martha Stewart may want a custom script font family for her magazines. She'll turn to a company to design a font exclusively for her. They also make money when selling large bundles of licenses to media companies that tend not to pirate fonts. Much the same way Adobe sells lots of software to institutions, but suffers piracy among hobbyists. Except there are thousands of font options, many of which are free.

39 points by gnosis 17y ago

Ironically, I found the typeography of the main article so hard to read I had to use Readibility. The main font appears to be one of these two: http://typekit.com/colophons/vcb6rkj http://typekit.com/colophons/vcb6rkj The combination of font and size chosen is an exceedingly poor match for 96dpi web rendering.

spicyj 17y ago
It's Le Monde Courrier STD.
latortuga 17y ago
Wow I sort of felt bad thinking the same thing but the first thing I noticed on the page were the words "I love typography" and the second thing was how difficult the article was to read.
bmj 17y ago
My version of Chrome on Windows (4.0.249.43) isn't rendering some of the characters at all.
San 17y ago
The font rendering varies wildly between browsers: http://i47.tinypic.com/1125ssp.png http://i47.tinypic.com/1125ssp.png From left to right: Firefox (Win), Chrome (Win), Safari (Win), Safari (Mac) Firefox renders the font way too light, Chrome (this version at least) falls back to a default font, and Safari on Windows uses incorrect kerning and renders the some characters too narrow. Only Safari on Mac renders the font acceptably (except from the heavy diagonal on the capital N and the oversized apostrophe, maybe).
- gnosis 17y ago
  Another data point for you, Opera on Gentoo Linux: http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4621/1231150731.png http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/4621/1231150731.png To me it looks pretty similar to your Firefox screenshot.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    That isn't using the right font either. The 'e' is all wrong.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- barrkel 17y ago
  As I understand it, Mac doesn't use 96dpi as its logical mapping, but rather 72. The kerning in Firefox (Win) isn't great either.

robfitz 17y ago

Does anyone know how the economics of font creation work out? This seems to take an enormous amount of time to create [what appears to me to be] a very niche product that sells for only $250.

replicatorblog 17y ago
It is terrible. An old girlfriend worked as a type designer and rampant piracy makes selling fonts to end users a terrible business. These "Type Foundries" make their main revenues by designing custom fonts for magazines where you can earn 5-6 figure sums. e.g. Martha Stewart may want a custom script font family for her magazines. She'll turn to a company to design a font exclusively for her. They also make money when selling large bundles of licenses to media companies that tend not to pirate fonts. Much the same way Adobe sells lots of software to institutions, but suffers piracy among hobbyists. Except there are thousands of font options, many of which are free.