laser-lovers@uw-beaver.UUCP (Chuck Bigelow <CAB@SU-AI>) (10/19/83)
From uucp Sat Oct 15 02:35:52 1983
>From uw-beaver!root Sat Oct 15 02:27:26 1983 remote from utcsrgv
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Date: 14 Oct 83 1803 PDT
From: Chuck Bigelow <CAB@SU-AI>
To: reid@SU-GLACIER, laser-lovers@WASHINGTON
Dear Brian:
I enjoyed immensely your tirade on fonts, and was further delighted by
the reactions to it. Congratulations on your bold and vigorous sally into
the font fray. Not only do I agree with nearly everything you said, but I
applaud the fervor with which you said it. (You are right that I am not on
the laserlovers mailing list -- perhaps I should be -- but ler kindly gave
me the whole sequence of the controversy.)
There are some small matters of detail I would like to comment on, and
then I would like to state what I have come to see as the crux, the heart,
the kernel of digital font design problems.
1. Indeed I have written a book about digital typeface design.It is entitled,
appropriately enough, DIGITAL TYPEFACE DESIGNS, and will be available
from Seybold Publications, Media, PA, late this winter or early spring.
It was delayed because I took some time to organize the ATypI Seminar
on "The Computer & the Hand in Type Design".
For those who want a preview of the book, the issues of the Seybold
Report (August 1981, February 1982), or the August 1983 Scientific
American article on "Digital Typography" will provide an introduction.
2. The proceedings of the ATypI Seminar at Stanford will be published as a
special issue (or issues) of VISIBLE LANGUAGE in 1984, and probably
also as a Stanford technical report. The proceedings will be edited,
designed, and produced by the digital typography group here at Stanford.
3. As for the Xerox Star fonts you mention:
A. The "Classic" is actually a plagiarism of Century Schoolbook,
designed in the early part of this century by the prolific Morris
Fuller Benton (he based it on a type by his father, Linn Boyd Benton,
and Theodore Low DeVinne, called Century. An article by Paul Shaw
about the Century family of types was publshed in Fine Print a few
years ago. (I remember editing it, but forget the exact date.)
B. The "Modern" is a plagiarism of Frutiger, designed in the 1970's
by Adrian Frutiger. You have probably seen it, Brian, in the
signage for the Aeroport Charles de Gaulle at Roissy. No doubt
you were dazed by jet lag as you were jittered through the "metal
hurlant" surrealistic toroid plexiglass phantasmagoria of that
airport, but at least you could read the signs.
It is ironic, and perhaps more than a little shameful, that Xerox chose to
plagiarize these designs, rather than to license them ethically and get
along with them some needed typographic consultation on them, as they in
fact did with several other font families that they licensed from Mergenthaler,
complete with bit-tuned fonts for 300 lpi printers.
Moreover, when one considers the tremendous developent effort that produced
the Star, and the creative research that produced the Alto, MESA, and so forth
before it, it is astonishing that Xerox could do no better than to steal a few
type designs for their system. How much better, for the Star, the users, and
the world of digital typography, if Xerox had simply commissioned some good new
designs directly from Frutiger himself, or from Hermann Zapf, or from another
of the acknowledged fine typeface designers.
Then the typography could have been as exciting and innovative as the systems
that display it. As it is, the Star display and printer output are slightly
tainted by the inappropriate designs -- left over from analog typography --
the doubtful morality of plagiarism, and the confusing subterfuge of renaming
well known font designs.
Nevertheless, it would be quite unfair to conclude that Xerox is the main
offender in this regard. So many other firms do far worse fonts, with even
less regard for the rights of artistic and intellectual property.
4. As for the question of type design and how one learns it, the issue of
school vs. job training is misleading. Type design is so specialized an art,
and the skilled practitioners of it so rare, that it is not taught in any
school that I know of. However, several schools teach calligraphy and/or
lettering, and these are good subjects to start with. But for the same reasons,
no firm that I know of does an adequate job of training their staff in creative
type design. Most American firms are only interested in plagiarizing popular
existing designs, and their font divisions are managed by non-typographers.
Consequently, in such a climate the opportunity to learn more than hack work
and dubious ethics is minimal. A few firms do train competent draftspersons,
but even this is relatively rare.
The creative type designers who contribute to the culture of letterforms by
original and innovative alphabet designs, have all learned the art by two
simple methods: they studied with or worked for another type designer or
typographic lettering artist -- Bill Dwiggins from Fred Goudy, Andre Gurtler
from Adrian Frutiger (himself from Alfred Williman and Walter Kaech), Eric
Gill from Edward Johnston, or they taught themselves from books and examples --
Hermann Zapf being the most prominent example. In either case, their maturity
as artists came from long practice and a deep love of letters. As the great
Rudolf Koch once wrote: [I quote from memory, so it may be a little inaccurate]
For me the making of letters in every form is the purest and the
greatest pleasure. At many stages of my life it has been for me
what a picture is to the painter, a song to the singer, a shout
to the elated, or a sigh to the oppressed. It was and is the purest
and most perfect expression of my life.
THE BIG PROBLEM
I have now been studying the problem of aesthetics and technology in digital
typography for six years. There is no doubt that we are faced with a significant
degradation in typeface design, and hence in legibility and the effectiveness of
printed communication, while at the same time we have more and more control over
the digital image, in creation, transmission, and display. No matter what
analytic perspective I have taken, I have always come to the conclusion that there
is nothing so really wrong with the technology of digital typography that we cannot
produce truly legible and even beautiful pages of text, fully as handsome and
readable as the fine books produced in any of the eras of analog typography,
whether the French Renaissance or the Russian revolutionary avant-garde.
Granted, many laser printers can't produce output as delicate as fine letterpress
printing, but there has always been a good deal of mediocre printing, and even
that has some qualities that seem to elude us in digital typography.
But the problem is not really a lack of talent either. There are as many good
type designers around today as there were in the French Renaissance, a time of
stupendous typographic creativity, but our modern designers are underemployed.
To give you an idea who is out there, here are some of the text type designers
(and text types are what we need for digital printers) whose work I know and
admire, though it is by no means an exhaustive list.
Hermann Zapf, Gunter Lange, Erik Spiekermann in Germany.
Adrian Frutiger, Ladislas Mandel, Jose Mendoza, Hans-Jurg Hunziker in France.
Gerard Unger, Bram De Does in Holland.
Aldo Novarese in Italy.
Hans Ed. Meier, Andre Guertler, Christian Mengelt in Switzerland.
Matthew Carter, Richard Southall, Colin Brignall in England.
Kris Holmes, Sumner Stone, Steve Harvard in the U.S.
So, if it is neither defects in technology, nor shortcomings in designers that
account for the debased typography with which we are afflicted, what is the
source of the problem?
It is simply this: Typeface designs are unprotected as artistic property.
There is no U.S. copyright protection of typeface designs. This means that
any design can be plagiarized, pirated, ripped-off, appropriated (you choose
the connotaion you prefer) with impunity. This has several consequences:
A. There is no economic incentive to become a type designer, since it is so
poorly compensated. Designing a typeface is roughly equivalent in difficulty
to writing a novel or developing a large piece of software. It usually
requires several years of creative effort. A few prolific designers may have
designed several dozen alphabets in their careers, but many more design only
a few types. In either case, a lifetime of creativity can be stolen from
these designers, with no compensation. When talking about type designs, it
is important to recall that they were DESIGNED by PEOPLE. Typefaces are not
natural resources to be mined from the environment by avid exploiters, but
that is how they are treated in America.
HELVETICA was designed by Max Miedinger.
TIMES ROMAN was designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent.
OPTIMA was designed by Hermann Zapf.
CENTURY SCHOOLBOOK by Morris Fuller Benton.
SOUVENIR by Morris Benton and adapted to phototype by Edward Benguiat.
and so on.
Without the kind of legal protection that allows designers to profit
from their creativity, very few artists will make a career of type design.
Since it requires about six years of training and practice to get reasonably
good at type design, it is not something that a hacker can figure out in
an afternoon, even with amphetamine (a Nazi invention anyway).
B. Without copyright protection for typefaces, firms prefer to plagiarize
because it is easier, faster, and above all, cheaper. That they do a lousy
job of copying is immaterial to them (though important to the reader).
Thus, even staff designers wind up doing shoddy copies instead of
worthwhile original designs. Further, artists who learn their craft in
such firms are often irreparably maimed in thier creative and moral spirit.
C. Many firms will whine and moan that copyright is bad, because it would
prevent them from competing with established firms, even though they have
a dandy new widget that can output faster and cheaper documents. Well,
to put it delicately, this is the purest swill. That argument is like a
publisher claiming that it should be able to plagiarize any block-busting
best seller, just because it needs popular books to be in the publishing
business. We would have nothing but Thornbirds, or Princess Daisy, or
other volumes of fleetingly ephemeral popularity, and very little decent
prose literature. The richness and diversity, not to mention quality of
or literate culture would be debased. The same for movies -- we would
never even have seen Return of the Jedi if Star Wars had been pirated from
day one, not to mention less popular but possibly more interesting movies--
we'd probably still be watching "versions" of Gone with the Wind and Psycho.
If a firm wants to be in the typographic business, it certainly should
have to develop type designs without resorting to theft. Nearly every other
creative skill has some protection, and that is one way to encourage progress
in an industry. Without protection of type designs, we do not have progress
in typography, despite radically new uses for typefaces and marvellously new
new and more powerful ways to organize printed text. More than any time in
literate history, we need new designs and new concepts of text. Firms should
support this development as much as hardware and software.
D. The cynical view of why we have no copyright protection for type designs in
America is simple:
The majority of good type designs are European and British. The majority
of clever technological innovators are American. In the politics of the
U.S. Congress and Copyright office, it has been very hard to make a convincing
case of why America should prevent American firms from making a good profit
by ripping off a bunch of helpless foreigners. I apologize for this chauvinistic
view of the situation, but it appears to be true.
The situation is changing, however, with the entry of competent Japanese
firms in the non-impact printer market. If the Japanese can make a handsome
profit by developing better and cheaper hardware, and plagiarizing type designs
better than American plagiarists (recall the Japanese reputation for quality
control), then the American firms might start demanding "protectionist"
legislation that would copyright American type designs.
E. The issue of protecting the digital data that describes a type design is
separate from protecting the design itself. In an effort to protect its
digital fonts, and to promote the sale of its digital fonts, Xerox refuses
to divulge font formats for it printers. This is pernicious, not to say
stupid. No digital font production facility today can meet the large
demand for variety and quality in fonts that we see from many users.
By not making font format information available, a firm just encourages
the customer to shop around for a more accessible device. Further, it does
nothing to encourage the development of new designs, it just fosters
proprietary secrecy, confusion, bad faith, and dreck.
Copyright protection of designs would encourage manufacturers to develop
new designs, but to reveal font formats, since they would still be able
to profit from the use of the designs. Moreover, it would make the machines
all the more useful, since a given machine would be potentially able to
use a much larger pool of available digital fonts, at the minimal cost
of a design royalty on each font.
F. The Trademark protection of types extends to the name only. This contributes
to the near total confusion about the origins and provenience of typefaces,
since rip-offs can be "legitimated" by a simple name change. Astonishingly,
some pirates become proud of their bastard appellations, and trumpet them
about, demanding that customers use the tainted titles.
Patent protection of types is useless, since patent requires that the
design be so new and distinctive that it can clearly be distinguished from
all others. In practice this means that a middle-aged, myopic, and no doubt
artistically disinclined judge must make the distinction. A typeface with
flames and tail fins is barely able to pass patent muster, and any subtle
text design is beyond the ability of most jurists to discriminate.
If I had not just finished organizing a large international conference on the
aesthetics and technology of digital typeface design, I would organize a
conference on the protection of intellectual and artistic property rights in
typeface design, since six years of research have convinced me that the real
problem is an ethical-economic one, not a techno-aesthetic one.
--Chuck Bigelowlaser-lovers@uw-beaver.UUCP (Flavio M. Rose <FLAVIO @ MIT-ML>) (10/19/83)
From uucp Wed Oct 19 04:33:00 1983
>From uw-beaver!root Wed Oct 19 03:59:46 1983 remote from utcsrgv
Received: from MIT-ML by WASHINGTON.ARPA with TCP; Tue 18 Oct 83 13:35:09-PDT
Date: 18 October 1983 16:36 EDT
From: Flavio M. Rose <FLAVIO @ MIT-ML>
To: laser-lovers @ WASHINGTON
This message is for LN01 owners: there are a few
of the TeX AM* fonts, in LN01 format, on
the directory FLAVIO; at MIT-ML. There are
two versions, one with extension SIX which has
the whole font, the other with extension SX2
which has just characters 33-126. If anyone is
interested in getting other AM* fonts in this
format, please contact me directly (not through
LASER-LOVERS). (Note: MIT-ML runs ITS so file
name format is FLAVIO;AMR10 SIX using SPACE
to separate filename from extension.)
Yours truly,
Flavio Rose