Fonts and Typography

Fonts are actually pretty neat. Can you imagine how just so a font must be for you to be able to stare at the same 60-odd shapes in sequence after sequence for hundreds of pages on end? Without going absolutely nuts? They're a lot harder to design than people think (if you don't believe me, try to design one yourself someday and set a page in it, then try to read it). I've been studying some of the classic fonts, and by now have maybe a dozen or so that I can recognize on sight. It drives my wife nuts, but I think it's kind of cool to be able to tell that this sign is in Minion while that one is in Palatino (or at least a look-alike; Palatino is probably the most pirated font in the world) and this label over there is in Felt Tip Roman. I think this reflects something in me that probably deserves more contemplation somewhere else: I think it's really neat to be able to see what isn't obvious to other people.

I've played with designing fonts myself, mostly just for the fun of tinkering with the software and to create ones that weren't otherwise available. So it is that I created fonts for Visible Speech, first in METAFONT form and then in TrueType (in the Private Use Area of Unicode, for now). And for that matter a font of the trans-zebrine letters from Dr. Seuss' On Beyond Zebra. And others that will be described on their own page.

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