Bobby Henderson

I'm accustomed to looking for overlaps when using Variable Fonts (in either Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW). It's surprising finding overlaps in static fonts (note, I've seen these overlaps in static versions of Roboto Serif and Roboto Slab as well as the sans Roboto). For most users this is not a big deal. But if you're creating lettering that will be sent to a vinyl cutter or cut out of aluminum on a computer driven routing table the overlaps can be very bad. Out of habit I'm looking at every project in outline view.

In order for Canva to compete with Adobe for professional-level graphics software users they're going to have to do so with something other than their name-sake web-based app. And it's going to take an entirely different marketing approach. If they're smart they'll leave the names of the Affinity applications unchanged and simply pour a lot of development resources into them. If they mess around applying the Canva brand name to them I think such a decision would backfire. Canva has been marketed as being creative software for people who have little or no artistic talent or technical knowledge of graphics production work flows. The Canva brand name evokes that image. It would be best if an app like Affinity Designer doesn't have a bunch of hints Canva is the overlord. Since private equity minded business guys are involved I feel certain they may put a good amount of Canva-spam inside those desktop applications. Also, it's not enough for them to use Adobe Express as a bar on where they should be reaching. If they want Designer and Photo to compete directly with Illustrator and Photoshop they need to aspire to that level.

Nearly all the commercial typefaces I've bought in the past few years have included variable versions. I just wish the introductory pricing specials at sites like MyFonts were still as good as they were before Monotype bought up everything.

I was drinking a fountain soda while reading that and almost did a spit-take. Pretty funny. While Adobe's software is geared for (and priced for) people doing creative work as a full time job Canva is not situated for that at all. Canva is a tool made for Karaoke Design. Users can just grab some pre-existing templates, pre-existing clip art and slap it together. They can quickly fake it at being an "artist." Another analogy: if a pro-level application like Adobe Illustrator is akin to a Fender Stratocaster then the Canva equivalent would be a plastic Guitar Hero video game controller with the funny colored buttons on the neck.

I'm pretty shocked and disappointed by this news. First of all, I just can't stand Canva. In my day job doing sign design work I'm dealing with an increasing amount of customer provided art made in Canva. Much of it is unusable garbage (especially the SVG files it outputs). The only thing that seems to yield art elements that can be "harvested" is its PDF for Print export filter. I'm always having to walk customers through finding the export filter in the online app. Canva is really dumbed down software. It can do some basic, rudimentary design work. Really the app just seems to be a glorified viewer of clip art and design templates. The only sort of positive thing I can say about Canva is its fonts collection is pretty impressive (especially the subscription version). Well, Monotype made a licensing deal with Canva. That explains the giant amount of fonts. BTW, Monotype sure looks like it is trying to monopolize the type industry. It's just scary how many type foundries the company has absorbed. Normally I wouldn't feel all that bad about one software developer acquiring another software company. But that's not what's really going on here. Canva got its start being bank-rolled by a couple or so private equity companies. Monotype is owned by a private equity company. These business people with the stock trader bro mindset have tunnel vision. They're only concerned about cutting costs to the bone and running any scam they can to goose the stock price if the company is publicly traded or doing other less than ethical things if the operation is all private. I just don't have a positive opinion at all of private equity firms. I've used CorelDRAW for a long time and I think that application's future is starting to look bleak -the app has been stagnating under private equity ownership since the 2000's. It's probably a lucky thing the app still exists at all. I've been wanting to see a number of new features and improvements added to Affinity Designer. But with Canva (and its private equity bosses) now in the mix my expectations are shot. These guys can promise all sorts of things to customers. But there are countless examples of how private equity firms or the private equity business mindset have hollowed out once good companies. Just look at the $#1T-show going on at Boeing. That's the private equity mindset at work right there. Boeing was more interested in cost cutting and stock buy-backs than paying any attention to quality control.

Some of us need to use multiple applications in our daily work. I currently have copies of Affinity Designer, Inkscape, CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator installed on my computer. One of the biggest reasons is being able to handle customer provided art files accurately. None of these applications have 100% feature overlap or 100% compatibility with each other. It's usually a lot easier to open an art file in its native environment than wasting time fighting with it in a rival application. Some of these applications have their own unique features as well as their own strengths and weaknesses. CorelDRAW has long been popular in the sign industry; although Illustrator has eaten into that lead via its strengths in large format digital printing. The branding work of most major companies is done using Adobe software. So we get a lot of AI and PDF files as art assets. I decided to check out Affinity Designer when Serif was having its 50% off covid pricing sale a couple years ago. I figured it might be good to have the app handy in case I started getting .afdesign files from clients. Lately though, uh, it seems like more and more client art is being generated in Canva. That's just creating more hurdles and wasted time dealing with customer provided art.

Sometimes a 1970's look is desired for certain graphics projects. Extrusion/block-shadow effects can be added for other reasons. Sometimes the effects filter works as a way to speed up the drawing process of making isometric 3D designs. One person's taste should not be a reason to keep a certain effect out of a vector drawing application. Let's face it, people do all sorts of extremely tasteless things with graphics even with the most simple of tool sets. I strongly dislike the Arial typeface, but lettering in that typeface looks especially hideous when people squeeze and stretch it out of its normal proportions. I see that all the time on poorly designed signs. But I wouldn't ask software developers to prevent users from being able to squeeze or stretch lettering. There are certain cases where being able to squeeze, stretch or shear type is necessary (certain simulated 3D drawings come to mind).

RTL text is a line composing convention, not a font format. If Serif wants Affinity Designer to be used by a lot more people globally they'll need to support Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu and other scripts. Let's not forget about vertical text used in nations like Japan. But that's a different matter than support of font formats. Variable fonts are not going away. The OTF Variable format is already far more successful than the Type 1 Multiple Master and TrueType GX formats from the 1990's. I use variable fonts frequently in my design work. Whenever I'm considering to buy a new typeface package I'll check to see if it includes any variable fonts as well as how many variable axes it includes. It's just as much a selling point as a typeface having an expanded character set with lots of OpenType features.

The OpenType Variable format is already far more successful than the Type 1 Multiple Master and TrueType GX formats were in the 1990's. When Adobe was promoting the Multiple Master format they were pretty much going it alone both in supporting the standard in applications like Illustrator and developing Multiple Master fonts. Apple was competing with its GX format. I never heard the story before of Microsoft convincing Adobe to drop the T1 MM format in order to get "Works With Windows" labels put on retail packages. I had Windows versions of Illustrator in the late 1990's that could use T1 MM fonts. A big difference with OpenType Variable is Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Google worked together on developing the new standard (this is more than just Adobe's baby). Another big difference is far more type foundries are developing and releasing OTF Variable fonts. There is even a decent number of open source Variable Fonts available for free at the Google Fonts web site. Some of them are very useful and even innovative. Check out how Kablammo "morphs" in Google Fonts' type tester. Pretty incredible. The Tilt family (Warp, Prism & Neon) has 3D-like rotation axes. It's clear the OTF Variable and OTF-SVG font formats are not going away. I'm certainly not going to stop using them in my sign design work. They solve too many geometry problems for me to be willing to live without them. But that means me using Illustrator or CorelDRAW to utilize those fonts, not Affinity Designer.

Some applications are better than others at supporting backward compatibility. Out of vector-based "drawing" programs, Adobe Illustrator (IMHO) is the best in this regard. The latest version of Illustrator can open AI & EPS files made in the very first version from the 1980's. It can down-save to any prior Creative Suite version as well as versions 10, 9, 8 and 3. Obviously certain newer features and effects will be flattened or just break when down-saved too far. But that's true for just about any graphics application. CorelDRAW isn't as good as Illustrator for backward compatibility. The last couple or so versions can't save CDR files back any farther than version X5. And they can't open or import CDR files made prior to version 6. That can be very aggravating to long time users, especially since the CDR format isn't supported by rival applications anywhere near as well as AI, EPS and PDF. It is short sighted for V2 of Affinity Designer to have no ability to down-save afdesign files to V1 format. An interchange format like EPS or PDF has to be used instead (with associated limitations) to share artwork with people still using V1. OTOH, it's not all that difficult to upgrade. Serif runs pricing specials now and then. I bought the V2 upgrade taking advantage of one of those 50% off specials.

I don't think it's a software developer's fault for people not knowing the ins and outs of exchanging files. I'm using the latest versions of Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW. But if someone requests art files from me I'm not going to simply click the "save" button and blindly email him what I have. I always ask what software they're using as well as the versions of that software. Then I provide files down-saved to the versions of software they're using. I also try to be careful about using certain kinds of application-dependent effects and features in artwork if I want that artwork to be able to export to non-native environments. There are certain features I want incorporated into future releases of Affinity Designer. Support for variable fonts is very high on that list of "wants." I know good and well art files made in a future version of Affinity Designer that allow variable font use are not going to be backward compatible with older versions. That has been the reality of all vector graphics applications going back 30+ years.

I haven't seen any free variable fonts at the Font Squirrel web site. But the Google Fonts web site has a pretty good collection of free, open source variable fonts. Out of commercial sites, I like checking the MyFonts site every few days to see what is newly released as well as what else is on sale. Most of the variable fonts I've bought over the past few years were purchased when the fonts were newly released and heavily discounted. Even with the discounts they still can be kind of expensive. For instance the introductory price for Helvetica Now Variable was $199. That's for two font files. When the static version of Helvetica Now was introduced in 2019 it had a bunch of font files (in Display, Text and Micro sub-families); introductory price for that was around $100. If I had a choice between either feature I would take variable fonts capability over tagging PDFs. There is a variety of third party PDF editors that can modify PDFs after creation. Variable font capability is a pretty basic thing affecting the creative front end of the application.

I think it depends on the typeface. Most variable typefaces retain much of their style DNA regardless of what variable instance is chosen. Roboto Flex is neutral enough that it can get disguised pretty heavily with certain axis combinations. As it stands, so many people abuse standard static fonts by artificially squeezing and stretching them out of their normal proportions. That will throw off online font ID tools like MyFonts' What the Font utility. I have an intense dislike of such manual squeezing and stretching of fonts, particularly default fonts like Arial, because I see so much of it in the sign industry. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Another bad one is Gotham (now that so many people have gotten hold of it). The Gotham typeface itself is a great design, but it looks downright horrible when distorted. The carefully balanced monotone strokes are no longer uniform. The whole thing takes on a fun house mirror appearance. The practice of crudely distorting fonts will make any graphics layout take on an air of amateur quality. Variable fonts that sport both weight and width axes come overcome much of that nonsense if the "designers" will go through the effort of actually using the features. I have some variable typefaces whose width axis will allow it to go from ultra compressed to very wide yet still keep the horizontal and vertical stroke thicknesses naturally balanced.

Some of the variable font families available on the Google Fonts site are pretty impressive, such as Recursive, Roboto Serif and Roboto Flex. Roboto Flex has a whopping 12 variable axes. Within Google's fonts browsing page they recently added listings for the number of axes a variable font family contains. Most have just one axis (usually weight). It seems like more of the recent additions have 2 or more axes.

In the case of Inkscape, the application does indeed allow manual or numerical adjustment of variable font axis values in the Text and Font panel. But it does not provide live previews of the changes. The "apply" button has to be pressed in order to see updated changes. The panel also behaves a bit wonky (in version 1.2.2).

VectorStyler is in a similar price range as Affinity Designer. It supports Variable Fonts as well as SVG color fonts. Inkscape supports Variable Fonts, but it only works in RGB color space (not a great option for print-based work). Of course Variable Fonts and Color Fonts have been fully supported for the past several years in Adobe Illustrator. CorelDRAW added Variable Font support in 2020. More and more commercially sold type families are including variable versions; some are even variable only. Google had added a decent number of variable fonts to its Google Fonts site. It seems Variable Fonts are here to stay (unlike Type 1 Multiple Master fonts in the 1990's).

I don't know about you, but every time Adobe was going to shut off activation servers for a Creative Suite product I bought and registered I was notified by email about it and how I could get either an activation free serial number and/or an activation-free installer with its own serial number. They tended to change approaches from one release to the next.

The only reason I bought my iPad was due to the Apple Pencil and its on-screen drawing quality. It's the best bang-for-the-buck option that exists. The newest 12.9" iPad Pro models have a really beautiful, wide gamut screen. Of course a reasonably well-equipped model costs as much as a mid-range notebook PC. Regarding software activation, I think it's here to stay unfortunately. From the developers' point of view I get it. The so-called "honor system" just doesn't work. I'm not sure if there are laws on the books about it, but I think software developers are supposed to make good (to a limited degree) on allowing customers to continue to use their software somehow after they turn off activation servers. In Adobe's case I know they've provided activation-free serial numbers to CS2 and CS3 users when those activation servers were shut down. They also provided an activation-free serial number to Freehand MX users when Adobe turned off those activation servers. In a lot of cases the customer must still have their original product CDs (and a working optical disc drive) in order to install the software. And they need a compatible operating system. Most of this vintage software will not install in modern versions of OSX or Windows. One either needs a vintage computer or a vintage OS running in a virtual machine. IMHO, a bigger liability is software companies cutting file>open/import support for files saved in prior versions of their applications. For example, the last few versions of CorelDRAW have not been able to open or import CDR files made in version 5 or earlier. By contrast the current version of Illustrator can open any previous version AI or EPS file. Apple created a huge fiasco when they released Final Cut X -featuring no ability to open existing FCP projects saved in version 7 or earlier. Some of Apple's FCP users bolted to Premiere Pro (which could import FCP projects). I've been doing graphics work for over 30 years now. I've seen a lot of applications come and go. I remember hearing people extolling the virtues of digital technology and how someone could put a CD-ROM in a time capsule, dig it up 100 years later and the data would still be "perfect." Even when I heard that claim a generation ago I laughed at how utterly ridiculous it was. Digital data is fragile and fleeting. There are so many factors that can destroy one's ability to access and use their data. I like using the movie Jurassic Park as an example when talking about this subject. If somebody wanted to go back and re-render all the CG imagery in 4K they would have to start from scratch. All the applications they used to model and animate the imagery (Alias Power Animator and SoftImage) are dead. The whole Silicon Graphics IRIX platform has been dead for decades. If ILM still has data tapes of the work they wouldn't be able to read any of the stuff unless they had working SGI workstations and peripherals. They can still re-scan the original 35mm camera film negatives of the live action footage though. In a perfect world we would have an "open," generic vector graphics standard that could support all the bells and whistles found in commercial applications like Illustrator. Nothing like that exists currently. EPS is very limited; it does not support true transparency effects for one thing. SVG is also very limited; it can't be used for professional level print production. PDF is partially open source. But PDF is technically a print-only and read-only format. PDF files are not meant for further editing.

The only new Apple product I personally would consider buying any time in the next couple or so years is a replacement for my iPad Pro, which is now about 5 or so years old. My work desktop PC is a Dell XPS model and I use an Alienware 17" notebook at home. My smart phone is a Galaxy S22 Ultra; I used a Note 5 for about 6 years prior to upgrading. Yeah, I'm not one to just go with one brand of computing platform. That just me though.

I think one of the reasons why Mac sales numbers are dropping is a bunch of the product line is severely limited and has features that turn off a lot of people. For example, look at the current iMac lineup. There's just one 24" model. It kind of looks like a child's toy rather than something that would look proper on an adult's desk. The units have no expandability or user service-ability inside; all the parts are soldered-in. They max out at only 16GB of "unified" memory (translation: a graphic chip is sharing system RAM). Older iMac models could be ordered with more than 16GB of RAM and I think some past models had removable memory modules. All of Apple's notebooks have baked-in RAM. The Mac Mini also has a max of 16GB of RAM (baked-in). Only the expensive Mac Book Pro can be ordered with more than 16GB of RAM. The Mac Studio (a Mac Mini on steroids) can be ordered with more than 16GB of RAM, but its starting price is $3999. And all its parts are baked in. The only computer Apple sells that is truly expandable after purchase is the Mac Pro tower. That thing is hella expensive.

I have a hard time singling out any favorite typefaces. So many of them fit different specific themes or purposes. But there are certain type families I find to be frequently useful. They work in a greater variety of situations. One example is Heading Now from Zetafonts. It's a fairly neutral looking sans face. The package has 160 static OTF files and two variable fonts (upright and italic). The variable fonts have weight and width axes. They can span any variation between thin to very heavy as well as very compressed to wide. The typeface can fit in a lot of spaces and serve a lot of purposes. Helvetica in its various forms is a staple typeface for sign design. Like them or not, the 1957 cuts and the greatly expanded 1983 "neue" family are very useful (far more useful than crummy Arial). There's lots of Helveti-clones out there, such as Nimbus Sans or Swiss 721. I had grown pretty tired of Helvetica over the years, but Monotype got me liking it again with Helvetica Now. The display range of fonts has a certain grace to them; the '57 cut seems crude by comparison. The 2019 static package was really good, but the 2021 variable version has been much more useful. It has weight, width and optical size axes. Helvetica Now has a variety of alternate characters, a bunch of different number sets and other useful features. The only thing I don't like about the variable package is the width axis only goes from normal to compressed. I'm guessing Monotype will release another version of Helvetica Now that goes from normal to wide. Futura Now, Obviously, Proxima Vara, Coco Sharp and TT Supermolot Neue are a few other commercially sold variable fonts I like. Out of freely available fonts I think Roboto Serif and Roboto Flex are pretty impressive variable fonts. Speaking of Bookman, I really like Mark Simonson's version of it, Bookmania. I have it synced through Adobe Fonts. Each font file has over 3100 glyphs. There are hundreds of swash characters, ligatures, native small caps and lots of other stuff not found in previous versions of Bookman.

It's pretty common for other vector graphics applications to be able to save layouts down to earlier versions of the software. Obviously newer effects and features would "break" when saving down, but if all one needed to do was get elements with a basic appearance exported to another application such a thing should be do-able. For example, the current version of Adobe Illustrator can open an AI file made in any prior version, going all the way back to the late 1980's. In Illustrator it's possible to save AI or EPS files down to any prior Creative Suite version, as well as versions 10, 9, 8 and 3. This capability is there because a lot of other applications, such as industry-specific software, cannot import an AI, EPS or PDF file saved using the latest version of Illustrator. CorelDRAW has some backward saving capability, but not nearly as good as Illustrator. The past few versions of CorelDRAW will not open or import CDR files made prior to version 6 and will save down no farther back than version X5. I wish there was such a thing as a truly generic, open source vector graphics format that supported all the advanced features in applications such as Illustrator but wasn't dependent on such an application. I think EPS is about the closest thing we have to that (PDF is not really an edit-friendly format; it's really for viewing & print only). But the EPS format is primitive. It doesn't support features like true transparency. SVG is not a print-friendly format.

People were getting along just fine doing graphics and publishing work for decades prior to personal computers showing up in the 1980's. 🙄 Variable Fonts are a technological improvement that provide a lot more flexibility to certain kinds of design tasks. They make certain results much easier to achieve or far better in visual quality. In the sign industry people like me frequently have to fit type elements into constrained spaces, such as an odd-shaped replacement face in a building sign cabinet. A type family with only a few styles will work only so well. Lots of hacks in this field simply don't care. They have the knee-jerk habit of styling a type object in Arial or some other commonly used default and then artificially squeezing or stretching it to fit. The results look horrible and very unprofessional. But like I said they don't care. A type "super family" with many weights and widths will provide more latitude for type objects to fit certain spaces better. A variable font with weight and width axes can allow someone to use axis sliders to fine tune the appearance of the type objects even better than the best static super families. The result is type that fits the layout perfectly with stroke proportions that still look natural. I can do other tricks with variable fonts, such as make natural looking large-capital/small-capital type treatments even if the typeface has no native small cap character set. All you have to do is use the weight slider to balance the thickness of the letter strokes. Lately most of the commercial font packages I've been buying have included variable fonts. Just to repeat what I said earlier, more of Affinity Designer's rivals are supporting variable fonts and even SVG color fonts. Adobe Illustrator offers the best support of both formats. CorelDRAW has supported variable fonts in its past couple or so versions. Inkscape supports variable fonts. VectorStyler (similar in price to Affinity Designer) supports variable fonts and color fonts. Serif needs to be doing a little bit of "keeping up with the Joneses" in this category. 20 years ago I was hearing similar "nobody needs that" arguments regarding the advanced features of OpenType. Today anyone creating and selling commercial font packages has to include numerous OTF features otherwise the fonts aren't going to sell. We're not in the 1990's anymore.

While AI has the potential to eliminate a lot of creative jobs, I think computer users in general should be really alarmed at the idea of software companies using AI to write code. If developers lean more and more onto AI as a crutch for writing code their own understanding of how the code works will atrophy. Then when problems, such as security vulnerabilities are discovered, the developers won't be able to fix the problems as quickly. Or they'll be dependent on AI to somehow fix the problem.

There is a lot of specific things in graphic design that AI-based art generators can't do, at least not yet. My biggest concern are the motives behind developing these tools. Ultimately what is the angle they're playing? Are the developers deliberately trying to eliminate just about any kind of creative job (writing, visual art/design, music production) or will all the possible job losses across multiple creative industries just be incidental? The developers of these AI tools seem to be in some kind of arms race with each other. The possible fallout from their advances in technology remind me of the "Ian Malcolm" character Jeff Goldblum played in Jurassic Park. Early in the movie Malcolm has this line of dialog: "but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should."