The italics for the serif version of Merriweather are live!

http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Merriweather

upanditalic

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The Sans Serif italics have shipped to Google.

Hello

The Sans Serif italics have shipped to Google. I am not sure when they will go live as usual but perhaps sometime in the next week or two. Although as always I still see things I would like to improve over all I am very happy with them. Maybe happier than with the rest of the family at this point. The glyph set match the extensive set seen in the Sans. The Serif will be updated next so that it has this larger glyph set as well.

Here are some screen grabs to give you a sense of what the fonts will be like when they go live at Google Fonts.

You may have to click on each one to see it properly

The first is the web site http://www.fuchsundhase.de/aktuell/

Here I have replaced their fonts with Merriweather Sans Book and Merriweather Sans Italic.

fuchsundhase

 

fuchs2

Keeping the German theme here is the Lufthansa airlines web site altered to use only Merriweather Italic and the Extra Bold Italic

Lufthansa

 

Here is a zoomed section showing a bit more detail in the glyphs

Lufthansa2

 

I expect that I will post at least one round of bug fixes this year so if anyone does find problems or has suggestions please do let me know.

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Merriweather Italic has shipped to Google

Merriweather Italic has shipped to Google. It supports a wide range of languages and is hinted with TTFA for better legibility on Windows and in FreeType. This edition comes in 4 weights: light, regular, bold and heavy.

A revised version of the original Serif design will be next followed by Merriweather Sans Italic.

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Merriweather Sans is live on Google fonts

Merriweather Sans is live on Google fonts

http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Merriweather+Sans

I’ll be interested to hear your reactions and to see URLs where it is used. Thanks!

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Merriweather Sans and the basic weight of Merriweather Italic are done

Merriweather Sans in 4 weights and the 1st weight of Merriweather Italic have been released to Google. These editions covers all of the Adobe Latin 3 glyph set. It is quite broad. My guess is that you should see them in 1-2 weeks. I hope to have the full re-released of the serif out complete with support for more languages and windows hinting off to Google later this week. Thanks for everybody’s patience! Support for vietnamese will have to wait until the next edition. I am sorry about that.

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Gelasio samples

Here are some mac rendering samples of Gelasio.

When the letterforms are large it is fairly easy to tell the two apart. When they are small it may be more difficult but there is still a clear difference in personality. In print this difference is quite obvious even at small text sizes.

Gelasio large
Gelasio

Georgia large
Georgia

When the letterforms are large it is fairly easy to tell the two apart.

Gelasio
Gelasio

Georgia
Georgia

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A short intensive course on type design Feb 2-4 2012 – Boston

I am teaching at Crafting Type, a 3 day intensive course on type design in Boston area. It is from Feb 2-4 2012. It will be held at the MIT Media Lab.

http://craftingtype.com

If you are interested or have questions feel free to be in touch.

If you want to tweet about it – please do!

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New web site for Sorkin Type

I have recently made a new web site for sorkin type. It is in many ways a placeholder for what’s coming ( a store and blog ) but it provides some context for Merriweather and shows some of the new shapes Merriweather is taking on and some of the other font design projects that have stolen time away from Merriweather.

http://sorkintype.com

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Merriweather Sans preview

To see these image full size click on them. The windows rendering may actually be better than the Mac OSX in Safari which is what you see here in the last example.

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The new Merriweather italic

After starting and rejecting a few different approaches the new Italic for Merriweather is properly underway now. This italic is a kind of midpoint between a floridly italic design and a slanted version of the roman. It takes on many classic italic style structures and details but retains many of the element font in the roman to maintain better rendering characteristics on screen. So for instance the a and g take on the infant or single loop style as you would expect from an italic using traditional construction. Similarly there are in and out strokes. However these strokes are quite muted in their impact because they are quite short. The joins on a traditional italic would be expected to be much lower than the ones used in Merriweather’s italic giving a more triangular counter shape. Retaining a high join from the roman will mean that the counters stay more open allowing for better rendering at small sizes.

Arrotino Italic

Arrotino deliberately takes on the structure and manner of 15th and 16th century written italic.  Arrotino italic also shows the low joins and triangular counter shapes characteristic of this style. The flat middle join in letter e shows this is an unfinished design.

Merriweather Italic

Merriweather Italic - in progress

Merriweather Italic looks to integrate the flowing feeling found in Arrotino’s style with a more rational and quieter feeling

Helvetica Oblique

Helvetica Oblique

Helvetica’s oblique italic is a classic example of slanting the upright forms to make an italic. Note the two storied a shape and the flat middle on the e.

I know that I have been heavily influenced both by short time learning to carve letters at the Cardozo Kindesley workshop and by my teacher Gerard Unger who taught me at the MATD program, Reading University, UK.

Carved letters from the Cardozo Kindersley workshop

Cardozo Kindersley style italic

Coranto, designed by Gerard Unger

Coranto, designed by Gerard Unger

Coranto is available from Type Together. This image was captured from the Type Together web site.

Other designs can also be licensed from Gerard’s own web site

As I test the italic Merriweather font in web browsers I am sure there will be changes. So that you can get a better sense of the way the italic works with the roman I will post images of it in use with the roman.

I will also be posting image of the larger glyph set in Merriweather and some examples of the improvements that can be found in the design of the roman.

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