justinpenner / type-design-resources

An exhaustive collection of type design resources.

Hello! 👋

I’m Justin Penner, a multi-disciplinary designer currently working in Vancouver, Canada.

I design and develop fonts, but I also have a wide range of experience in identity design, printing, signage, and front-end web design. Most of my work is focused on typography and communication, and I always have a number of side projects ongoing.

Let’s work together!

I’m currently available to work with type foundries, design agencies, or any design-focused companies and organizations.

TYPE FOUNDRIES & TYPE DESIGNERS

• Font production and development work
• Collaborative work with type designers and foundries
• Custom Python tools for font development
• Variable font engineering

DESIGN AGENCIES

• Wordmark/logo design
• Custom typeface design
• Font development from existing drawings
• Font selection and research

→ justinpenner.ca

type-design-resources's Issues

[Courses / Events] 2 suggestions

Type Electives

To add in the events section?
https://www.typeelectives.com/events

Description:
Co-founded by Lynne Yun and Juan Villanueva, Type Electives offers courses and events that go beyond traditional type design education.

I Love Typography Academy (courses)

https://ilovetypography.com/academy/courses/

Description:
ILT academy exists to promote expert teaching of type design, font production, and typography. Courses cover various script systems and are taught in a number of languages.

To-do list

• Add a libre license to the repo
• Rewrite Software item descriptions to sound more impartial (#6).
• Update Software category description and item descriptions to better explain the differences/pros/cons of each (but keep them very brief).
• Add descriptions (one line/sentence) to the Web specimen tools items.
• Find more website platforms to add to Website platforms. Any platform that might be particularly good for a foundry website, either for a developer working on it, or for someone starting a foundry and DIYing their website.
• Expand Community/Groups to include more regional in-person groups, like the ones mentioned here on TypeDrawers
• Add a Python scripting for FontLab section
• Add a Python scripting for FontForge section

Anyone is welcome to contribute by working on these items, or suggesting more items to add to this list. Submit a PR or open an issue for anything you want to add/update.

Greek polytonic tutorial

Hi Justin,

Irene has a great polytonic tutorial for Greek.
https://github.com/irenevl/Polytonic-tutorial

Use more impartial language when describing font editors?

On the whole, the language used in link descriptions on this site tend to be simple, informative and without marketing spin... except, it seems, when talking about font software.

Given the place this website has in informing new type designers on how to start, I think the language used to describe the editors in the Software section should be as informative as possible without engaging in marketing spin.

A good example of this is the Fontself description — it describes what it does without making any marketing claims:

Fontself
Illustrator/Photoshop plugins to turn your designs into fonts.

However the description High Logic Font Creator takes marketing language directly from their homepage ("With over 5 million downloads to date, FontCreator is considered the world's most popular and best font editor."). The description for FontLab makes claims about its primacy ("Gold standard") which might have been true at one point but doesn't reflect the current editor landscape. They doesn't appear to be as impartial as other link descriptions on the page:

FontLab
The gold standard for type design software, and the longest history – first released in 1992.

High Logic Font Creator
The world’s most popular font editor

If you would appreciate a PR, I can attempt to write more neutral descriptions — otherwise I'll leave it with you, of course.

Either way, thanks for this wonderful resource!

FontFreeze

I discovered this today:

https://mutsuntsai.github.io/fontfreeze/

An online converter that lets you make versions of fonts with various OpenType features frozen on or off. Might be worth a mention...?

Type Foundry Directory

Hi Justin, I just wanted to let you know that the Type Foundry Directory and the TFD (early Airtable version) use the same database. You are welcome to keep both, but it may not be necessary to include the airtable version :)

I am also going to start working on the next iteration of the TFD, and there is a chance that I may start a new database, and so the old one might go away. (Unsure if this will actually happen, but giving you a heads up just in case.)

[Full-time programs] Master’s degree in Type Design ECAL

Master Type Design

https://ecal.ch/en/courses-and-research/master/type-design/

Description:
Students work on techniques specific to typeface design (calligraphy, work on curves, construction, digital drawing), including the development of multi script font families.

Adding FontArk font editor?

Maybe it's worth adding FontArk to the ‘Free and open source (FOSS) font editors’ list:
https://fontark.net/farkwp/

[Conferences / Events] 3 suggestions

Inscript

https://inscript.tf/

Description:
A formative five-day festival showcasing inspiring presentations at the overlap of typography and today’s evolving industries, including: artificial, augmented, and virtual realities, creative computing, font specifications, and innovative use of craft.

Fontstand conference

https://fontstand.com/conference/

Description:
Annual typography conference organized by Fontstand, the typeface discovery and rental app.

Kerning

https://kerning.it/

Description:
Kerning is the first international conference in Italy dedicated solely to typography and web typography.

Although the conference stopped in 2019, the valuable talks are available online: https://vimeo.com/channels/kerning
Maybe one day the conf will be back…

Add OpenType programming documentation

• Fonts and Layout for Global Scripts
• The OpenType Cookbook
• OpenType Feature File specification

The Testing Page is back online

Hi Justin, just letting you know that the testing page is back online
https://impallari.com/testing/

Cheers

[Web-based proofing and testing] Fontbakery 🧑‍🍳

Description:
Font Bakery is command-line tool for checking the quality of font projects.

The brand new online version (drag'n drop version):
http://fontbakery.com/

The code-based version:
https://github.com/fonttools/fontbakery

[Web-based proofing and testing] Stack & Justify

https://max-esnee.com/stack-and-justify/ by Max Esnée

• A tool to help create type specimens by finding words or phrases of the same width
• 16 languages available
• Similar to Waterfall by Mass Driver.

Update favicon formats

Gah! Why can't Apple just follow standards for something as simple as a favicon?! It was only about a year ago that I updated my favicon formats to support all major browsers, but now it's broken in Safari again.

Screenshots on Monterey 12.6.3:

Safari 15.6.1

Firefox

Chrome

Spotted a (new) free online font editor

• Category: Free and open source (FOSS) font editors
• Name: Typlr
• Link: https://typlr.app/
• Description: A free online font editing tool by Evgeny Agasyants.

Fix for Reader Mode (Safari, Pocket, Instapaper)

HTML needs to be restructured, and/or some attributes may need to be added to certain tags to help some apps understand the content and display it properly in their "reader" modes. Mandy Michael has a nice article about this.

• Safari Reader Mode: Only shows one entry (Type Directors Club??) as a description with no link. All other content is hidden.
• Pocket: Does not allow reader mode. Only links directly to the site.
• Instapaper: Not tested yet.

Safari Reader Mode currently looks like this:

Tipo-g. La escuela de tipografía de Barcelona

Hello! I'd like you to consider adding our
Curso de diseño de tipografía. Del boceto a "Variable Fonts" de Tipo-g
in your list of courses [https://typedesignresources.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email#courses]
It consists of a course of 248 hours, presential, not online, in Barcelona. The faculty is composed by a group of enthusiastic professionals who are well known in the international typographic scene.

Thank you!

Tipo-g. La escuela de tipografía de Barcelona
www.tipo-g.com