1. Cody

   Hmmmm, so many books. So little money.

   I’m with you on the cover Johno. Just because the foundry has a massive library of fonts, doesn’t mean they can show 30% of them on the cover. Haha.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

2. johno (iLT)

   Cody (definitely from Tokyo and not Osaka)

   Haha! These type and design books are not cheap, though if you could manage to go without food for 3 or 4 days…. ;)

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

3. Cody

   Haha! Well, I could always eat at Yoshinoya or Matsuya for 3 weeks (oh god, the thought).

   PS - あの時来たぞ！MR. ILTのタイポグラフィ見たいからさぁ。もし時間があるならメールで見せて。

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

4. Alec

   I’m really glad you reviewed this, as I never would’ve considered buying it otherwise. LIke you, my first thought would’ve been “uh oh — giant, yellow advertisement!” Unlike you, I wouldn’t have had a second thought.

   My obsession of the day is Scala. What a strange, beautiful font! At first glance, it’s just a lovely serif face:

   

   But notice the seemingly arbitrary decision to leave some lobes open while closing others. And look at the slab serif on some characters and the traditional serif on others. Somehow it all works together.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

5. johno (iLT)

   Alec

   Yes, Scala is lovely; it’s funny you mention those “open counters”. When I see it at large point sizes, I always have an urge to fill in the gaps with my pencil.

   I was trying to think of other faces like that; the only other ones that immediately spring to mind are something like Garamond and Goudy Old Style — their P-cap’s have open counters.

   Off the top of my head, I can’t think of other faces that have these open counters in the lowercase….I might introduce some into my own serif :)

   BTW, there’s a great article My Type Design Philosophy by Scala’s designer Martin Majoor.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

6. Squawk

   Very nice book indeed. But as Cody said: “Too many books, too little money”.
   However, I am currently eating cereal without anything, because my fridge is empty. If I continue in this tradition I might just buy a book or two…;-)
   Oh, and johno: do you still want an illustration? We could do a test on one of your articles…

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

7. johno (iLT)

   Squawk
   Is that a violin I hear playing in the background? ;)

   I think I need to offer one of these as a prize (if FontFont donate one ;) )

   I’ve just sent you a mail about the illustrations. Love that Nuts and Bolts piece.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

8. Masud

   Are you sure you meant to put this youtube link. Because that one’s a mock video of Steve Jobs…

   And mmm tasty Helvetica in the comments form.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

9. Squawk

   A violin? Strange thought or am I missing out on any English idioms. Thanks for the comment on Nuts and Bolts.

   A note on the prizes: You also might want to check this out: http://www.typoart-freunde.de/
   (The site is in German, but the book that they have produced is universally applicable;-) I heard that it was supposed to be very nice to look at.

   ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

10. johno (iLT)

    Masud
    Yes, that’s the right link. It also shows BG running (that’s why I linked to it). Thanks for stopping by.

    Squawk
    I was referencing those sad, heart-rending films, with the violin playing in the background. Thanks for the link. That book looks interesting; like the packaging too. I’ll take a closer look.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

11. Stephen Tiano

    Ugh, Scala! That seemingly arbitrary use of open lobes drives me crazy. It distracts the hell out of me, has me staring at the letters more than reading the words they form. The larger issue would seem to me to be why liking tuff like that is arbitrary. I mean, I could talk about symmetry and uniformity, but the truth is, the first time I notice a Scala “b” and a “d” near each other, I involuntarily said, “Yech!” before any intelligible words came to me. Now there’s something I’ll wonder about all day long. Like a song you can’t get out of your head. Thanks a lot! Heh heh.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

12. johno (iLT)

    Cody 今めっちゃ忙しくて時間がないねん。。。ブログ書くので精一杯で自分のタイポグラフィーやる時間がつくられへんのよ。。。でも時間が出来たらメールするわ！

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

13. Hamish M

    Thanks for the review, John. I was actually somewhat interested in this book when I saw it on the FF site, but I probably put it off for the same reason as many others — you think it’s just a big ad. It’s nice to hear that there’s more too it.

    Also, I love your idea of putting away Lorem ipsum dolar… as the standard filler text. There are hundreds of great public domain books available online, only a copy & paste away.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

14. Alec

    @Johno — I did a little snooping around on MyFonts.com. Here’s one other font with open lobes: Fedra Serif.

    @Steve — Sorry to raise the spectre of Scala and open lobes. I wonder if there’s some sort of support group you could join… ;) Seriously, I get what you mean about the visceral reaction to Scala. Certainly the open lobes could be a distraction for a body text font. On the other hand, without people pushing some boundaries on these body fonts, we’d be stuck with a few variations on the classics, and what fun would that be?

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

15. Robert

    Well it looks like I’m going to have to check this one out. Who says you can’t have to many type books. What interest me is that the dummy text is turned into quotes. I look forward reading some of them.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

16. LaurenMarie - Creative Curio

    Weren’t you going to give this one away? Or perhaps it past and I missed that contest, too. Grr. I need a t-shirt consolation prize.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

17. Stephen Tiano

    It’s not the open lobes per se. It’s the uneven use of them. Surely the d and p ought to have one. Perhaps the g. I’d love to know the thinking behind the changeable design.

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

18. Robert

    I was wondering the same thing LaurenMarie

    ^Oct26²⁰⁰⁷

19. johno (iLT)

    Hamish
    Thanks for that better link.

    Alec
    Yes, of course. I bet I’ll be seeing them everywhere now.

    Stephen
    I couldn’t find any info on that partucular feature. Would be interesting to know the rationale behind it — if there is one, that is.

    LaurenMarie & Robert
    Yes, I was going to, but my prize “fund” is almost empty. I do, however, have two other books and a magazine, still in their wrappers, that are just waiting to be given away:

    The Elements of Typographic Style
    Typography Today
    Special typography issue of Idea Mag

    That reminds me, I must chase the winners of the two Thinking With Type books for their photos — classic cheesy grin with book shot.

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

20. Stephen Tiano

    Okay, so I finally followed the link above and read “My Type Design Philosophy” by Scala’s designer Martin Majoor. It prompted me to leave the following comment, five years after the article was written.

    It will be interesting to see whether I can raise Mr. Majoor and get any knd of answer. What I wrote was …

    “Well, okay, maybe type design philosophy is a bit much. I’ve been a freelance book designer, page compositor and layout artist for about 15 years. From there, I’ve backed into an interest in designing types. I’ve come to your article five years late after making a comment about Scala on a typography website, but I read it eagerly.

    “If I can get my thoughts straight and actually overcome my inability to draw, I might just design a typeface family of my own, containing both a serif and serif for use in a book project. But that is certainly a long-term issue.

    “What I would like to ask you concerns the sometimes open lobes and sometimes not in Scala. I find it a little jarring, and wondered why you wouldn't do them all one way or the other. I find it distracting—it interferes with my reading of something set in Scala, because I stop and compare the letterforms—that “b” and “q,” for instance, have the open lobes, but their virtual mirrors, “d” and “p,” do not. How did that come about, and—more importantly—why?

    “Thank you.”

    Whattaya think my chances are of getting an answer?

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

21. Cody

    やっぱ忙しいんだ！しょうがないなー
    最近は忙しくなちゃった！今いいプロジェクト探してるわ。

    You speak such Kansai / Kyushuu dialect. Kind of wasn’t expecting that! Haha.

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

22. Cody

    Ah! Speaking of Scala. Someone brought up the point of classic serif and slab serif used.

    I remember in typography class when I was making a slab serif my teacher said, “Many serif fonts use an alternate serif for the bottom of a few letters. Mostly p, q, y and sometimes letter with high ascenders t, f, h, b, d, and k.” Apparently it’s not uncommon to see a slab serifs and traditional serifs used for readability and balance of the letter form.

    I think this is similar to what he said. It was a few years ago now.

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

23. Robert

    Sounds good John, keep us in the loop. :)

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

24. Masud

    Oh, I get it. Sorry for being slow!

    ^Oct27²⁰⁰⁷

25. johno (iLT)

    Stephen
    Not sure, but if you do receive one, then be sure to let us know.

    Cody
    …with a little help from my friends ;) Very interesting what you say about that serif mix. I’m not sure that that rationale stands up; I’ll have to take a closer look.

    Masud
    No problem. I’ve be known to be slower :)

    ^Oct28²⁰⁰⁷

26. Stephen Tiano

    I guess it’s become obvious I’m not going to get an answer from Mr. Majoor. But that leads me to wondering whether you couldn’t invite in for a session on ILT—perhaps for a guest stint or an interview—any for-real, serious pro type designers. God knows how much we could all learn from even a few lines from the likes of them.

    ^Oct28²⁰⁰⁷

27. johno (iLT)

    Stephen
    That’s a very good idea. It’s worth a try. I’ll mail him.

    ^Oct28²⁰⁰⁷

28. Stephen Tiano

    You know, I’d almost be willing to conduct the interview with Mr. Majoor myself. I mean, by written questions-and-answer, if you could get it arranged, and—of course—to appear on ILT. Tho’ I’m not sure you’d see that as beneficial to you or not.

    Since I’m having major server problems with my website, I can’t do anything there yet anyway. I’m getting close to looking for a new, inexpensive but more reliable host.

    ^Oct28²⁰⁰⁷

29. Bálint Magyar

    I don’t understand your opinions about Lorem Ipsum. Forgive me, if I’m being ignorant, I’ve only started getting into typography and design a couple of years ago. As I understand it, Lorem Ipsum is just that: dummy text. It’s incomprehensible for the sole purpose of just LOOKING like comprehensible text. It does not let the mind wander about the content, it allows the observer to concentrate on nothing but the layout.

    To me, this seems logical and practical.

    ^Oct31²⁰⁰⁷

30. Cody

    Balint
    You have been a typographer for a few years now and you aren’t sick of looking at Lorem Ipsum? Also, in a book like this, would you want to see Lorem Ipsum as dummy text? No. I personally would not pay for a book with a word of Lorem Ipsum in it.

    ^Oct31²⁰⁰⁷

31. johno (iLT)

    Bálint
    You’re certainly not being ignorant; but this is the point:

    Text serves one sole purpose — and that is to be read. When layout becomes more important than the text it is intended to support, then something is wrong.

    There is, of course, nothing wrong with “dummy text” per se; but it must be remembered why it is we use a layout (a grid) in the first place — simply to enhance or say to the reader, “here I am, read me!” The layout is the supporting act; the copy, the text is the star attraction. Dummy text that can actually be read, then is more realistic; it’s not until we can actually read the text that we can begin to form objective opinions about the entire page. And often times, it’s not until we actually READ the text, that we see problems with the layout.

    With a book like Made With FontFont — by its very nature — if it were to employ “dumb dummy text”, then it might as well be called, Made With Lorem Ipsum. And on that point, I’m with Cody.

    I’d be interested to know what others think about this particular topic. Perhaps it’s high time we start a “Banish Lorem Ipsum” campaign. Let the revolution begin! “You can take our families, you can take our homes. But you can’t take our text! Into the fray, comrades!”

    Thanks, Bálint.

    ^Oct31²⁰⁰⁷

32. minusf

    ConTeXt has a meaningful dummy text (nice oxymoron)

    \starttext
    \input tufte
    \stoptext

    We thrive in information — thick worlds because of our marvelous and
    everyday capacity to select, edit, single out, structure, highlight, group,
    pair, merge, harmonize, synthesize, focus, organize, condense, reduce,
    boil down, choose, categorize, catalog, classify, list, abstract, scan, look
    into, idealize, isolate, discriminate, distinguish, screen, pigeonhole, pick
    over, sort, integrate, blend, inspect, filter, lump, skip, smooth, chunk,
    average, approximate, cluster, aggregate, outline, summarize, itemize,
    review, dip into, flip through, browse, glance into, leaf through, skim, refine,
    enumerate, glean, synopsize, winnow the wheat from the chaff and
    separate the sheep from the goats.

    althought i personally like lorem ipsum. it is a traditional part of the
    mysticism surrounding typography :)

    ^Oct31²⁰⁰⁷

33. Bálint Magyar

    Cody and johno, thank you for your insightful replies.

    ^Oct31²⁰⁰⁷

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