LinoLetter 2007/08

Broadway, Franklin Gothic, and Century Schoolbook. These are just a few of the typefaces designed during the early 20th century that we still see almost every day, and they were each designed by Morris Fuller Benton. As the creator of more than 200 typefaces, Morris Fuller Benton was quite prolific. In a new Font Feature at Linoytpe.com, we’ve grouped many of our favorite Morris Fuller Benton typefaces (50, to be exact) into four easy-to-navigate categories. Browse them today, and see how this design still influences our environment!

A colleague has just sent you a document to edit; after opening the file, you notice something doesn’t seem right. Could it be that fonts were used that you don’t have on your computer? How can you get the fonts as quickly as possible?

Users of the freeware application FontExplorer X don’t have this problem often. FontExplorer X activates the fonts if you have them installed on your computer. And if you don’t, you can purchase a license and download the fonts quickly via FontExplorer X’s integrated store.

Until now, there was one restraint in the automated font search process: if the fonts you needed weren’t part of the Linotype library, they wouldn’t be in the FontExplorer X Store either. Through the recent integration of fonts from the Monotype and ITC libraries, the FontExplorer X store now offers a larger and more comprehensive font database; and it is right inside the same application you use to manage your fonts, too.

And if you haven’t decided which fonts you need for your current project, you’ll quickly realize how much more fun browsing through the FontExplorer X store now can be. With a fresh new design, the integrated FontExplorer X store offers a vast selection, concisely and professionally arranged. Test-drive every font! Enter in your own sample text, and preview its appearance in different fonts. You can also change the sample text’s size, color, and background; the preview window in the FontExplorer X store functions just like the preview feature for the fonts you have installed on your system. The newly designed “About” section offers interesting information about fonts and their designers—and naturally also the important technical information—just like the information listed for the fonts you’ve already installed on your computer.

After you’ve decided to buy a font license, the purchasing process is child’s play. Just a few clicks, and the font download begins. But we don’t abandon you after the purchase: FontExplorer X will also automatically install the fonts on your system after their download is completed. There is no simpler way to purchase font licenses. Try it out for yourself!

ITC Avant Garde Gothic’s design was created in the late 1960s as the logo for the short-lived, but highly influential magazine, Avant Garde. As art director, Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and a companion headline face. The style used in the magazine was very unique; some letters exhibited several alternate forms, and dozens of ligatures were seen as well – not just between the lowercase letters but between uppercase letters, too! Lubalin and Tom Carnase, a partner in his design firm, worked together to transform this popular idea into a full-fledged typeface. Later made commercially available by ITC, the initial phototype faces offered customers access to these many additional characters, too. Over time, more weights were added to the family as well. But the initial limitations of digital typesetting put these distinctive combinations and variants in the background. More recently, OpenType technology has allowed for a complete digital version of ITC Avant Garde Gothic to be released, one that encompasses the full breadth of the original design! ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro offers all of the original alternate characters and ligatures, plus many extras. Included are a suite of additional cap and lowercase alternates, new ligatures that were drawn just for this release, and a collection of “biform” characters (lowercase letters with cap proportions). In addition to English, ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro fonts support most European and many Central European languages, including Baltic, Turkish, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish.

One of the more than 200 typefaces developed by Morris Fuller Benton (see the first item in this month’s newsletter) was a vertical script named “Typo Upright.” This creation of Benton’s would go on to many revivals and swings of popularity, most recently in 2003, when Monotype redigitized the design and released it under the name “French Script.” Based on formal handwriting and engraving found in announcements and invitations, French Script, with its unique appearance and decorative capitals, is an excellent font for projects in which an elegant mood is desired.

In the April issue of the LinoLetter, we announced the release of Hermann Zapf’s new book, Alphabet Stories. There are still copies of this book available, both in the English and in the German editions!

The Linotype OpenType Essentials packages 1, 2, and 3 are now available on CD-ROM as well as direct download!