AdamStanislav

A combination of both. FontForge allows me to do it automatically, but most of the time I disagree with its choices. Then there was the problem of having three fonts using the same kerning, something FontForge (hereinafter FF) definitely was not designed for. FF saves its fonts in a text file, so I learned its structure and I designed the most complex of the three fonts (Duct) in FF, then copied everything to the other two fonts and, at first, edited them in a text editor to delete the extra paths. That turned out to be a headache, so I wrote some simple software that allowed me to list the starting point of each path I wanted to keep, then copy the entire glyph to a text file, pass it to my little software, redirect its output to a text file, copy that and paste it to the simpler font (I had to do it for every glyph, I am afraid). Then I wished there was a way to not use an intermediate file. I found out that Windows has the clip command, which allows you to redirect the output of a command line utility (like the one I wrote) to the clipboard. That allowed me to eliminate sending the output of my thingie to a file, I just used clip and then pasted it to the font. I wished there was a way to also just copy it from the Duct file and send that to my command line utility straight from the clipboard, the other end of clip, so to speak. I could not find one, so I ended up creating it myself. I called it cbecho (as in clipboard echo) and even signed up for GitHub, so I could publish it (it is at https://github.com/Pantarheon/cbecho if interested). With all that I was able to create all three fonts. But what about kerning? It turned out close to impossible to copy from one font and paste to the other. I tried to save the fonts in the .ufo format in the hope there would be a kerning.plist file in the *Duct.ufo folder that I could just copy to the other two fonts, but no, FF uses its own something to export kerning. So I made a copy of the FF files of all three fonts, deleted all kerning from them, exported them to .ufo and quickly realized that typing up the kerning.plist file by hand would take more time than the rest of my life (I am 71). Especially considering the fonts have a variety of glyphs with diacritics, such as á, š and many more. After all, I grew up in Slovakia and we use those in Slovak. I created my own very simple format, called jadro (which means kern in Slovak) to describe the kerning for entire sets of glyphs (you can see OpenAir.jadro on the same page the fonts are), then I wrote a compiler that reads the jadro format and spits our kerning.plist. The compiler is at https://github.com/Pantarheon/jadro (a description of the jadro format is on that page, too). I then compiled my format, copied the kerning.plist to all three .ufo folders, imported the result back to FF, which then turned them to .otf fonts. Simple as that!

On second thought, it is so easy to do with GitHub, so I did upload it after all.

OK, then. Is this better? Still on my computer, as I do not want to upload before hearing any comments here. At any rate I don’t feel I should bring the T any closer to the A than this. But I am sure I still have to go through further kerning. As of this version still on my computer, there are 11,341 kerning pairs defined (the same 11,341 in all three fonts, or else it would be impossible to have them perfectly aligned).

As William might say, possibly.

In these videos I have noticed the letter T in SPORTS is too far form the letter R. To me, it almost looks like SPOR TS. So I checked my kerning pairs, and sure enough, there was no RT kerning pair. I, therefore, added the appropriate kerning and even uploaded the updated version of the fonts to their GitHub page. I am not going to make yet another video just for that, but here is a PNG picture of what the title looks like with the updated kerning: I think that looks a lot better. Do you agree? 😎

I have unlisted those two videos on YouTube (you can still watch them from here) because I have made a third one which is a much better way (I think) to make titles with these fonts:

It has occurred to me that using Affinity Designer contours with the white background would allow me a much better effect than stroking it. And it has occurred to me that if I export the whole thing as one PNG, perhaps I might be able to use the whole image as a multiplication layer in Vegas Pro (and it turned out I can). Here is the design in Affinity Designer: And here is the video:

Very nice work. All of it.

Interesting how the colors affect each other in human perception, so some of the red looks purple and the green almost cyan. And yes, I’ve seen worse, too.

Here is how I did that video. First I found some suitable background footage on one of the VideoTrax DVDs I bought a decade or so ago. Then I went to trusted old Affinity Designer: The bottom layer has the word SPORTS in The Open Air Wall font. It has a white fill and a thick white stroke. It still left an empty space inside the O, so I covered that with a white ellipse. Then the Open Air Window is in gray (7F7F7F), with the opacity of 75%, and finally the top layer is Open Air Duct in black. I exported three separate PNG images, one with the two white layers, one of the gray and of the black layer. In Vegas Pro, I placed the white layer above the video and set it to multiply with the video, which produced a black image with the exception of the white part which let the bottom video through. Above that I placed the transparent gray layer, and then the black layer. And it looks like the gray portion is frosted glass. I had to experiment with the right opacity for it to look good. But I think I got it.

Looks like the same idea, yes. By the way, I have tried something different with these fonts:

The lady in the video is confused. For one, different fonts are designed for different things. Times New Roman is hardly a vanilla font, nor is it overused because of Microsoft software. Long before Windows even appeared, Adobe made the horrible decision of including Times Roman as the default serif font in all Postscript printers (and Helvetica as the default sans serif font). That is the reason why so many computer generated theses have been printed in Times Roman. It is not a vanilla font for books. Baskerville is probably the best book typeface. Extremely readable, as well as esthetically pleasing, Baskerville is a classic that predates computers. Times was designed for narrow newspaper columns, in which it is quite well readable. It is very hard to read in books which have wider lines than newspapers. As for my three fonts, I designed them specifically to be used together as shown above. Not for books, not for brochures, not for newspapers, but for something catchy, a few words will catch your attention if used in a large size and with the right colors. The colors need to be different in each layer, but they still have to be similar. It would look awful if, for example, one layer was red, one blue, and one green. It is meant for graphic design, not for the text of a novel.

The .ufo folders are in the Unified Font Object format, which is to fonts what source code is to apps. The .otf files below them are the fonts to use in Affinity Designer.

I have created three new fonts. I made all the glyphs using Affinity Designer, exported them to SVG, which I imported to FontForge to make the fonts. I made the fonts to work with each other. So it is possible to duplicate some text in Designer and give each layer a different color and different one of the three fonts, and you can get some interesting effects. The first one is called Open Air Duct and looks like this (over some path drawn in Affinity Designer), The second one is derived from the first one and is called Open Air Window: And the third one is called Open Air Wall: The nice thing about them is that the same glyph in all three fonts has the same outline, width, left and right bearing, as well as kerning. Thanks to that, we can just duplicate the same text, assigned different colors to each and stack Open Air Window above Open Air Wall, and Open Air Duct above both, and the result can be quite nice: I have uploaded all three fonts to https://github.com/Pantarheon/OpenAir, where anyone can download them from.

It has been over 50 years since I was dissecting a human body in an anatomy class, but the way I remember it, yes. The heart is a muscular organ, so it is about the same color as the meat you can see in a butcher shop.

No, %appdata%etc is there but is empty. I have symlinks for both of my program files folders, so whenever some inconsiderate programmer installs software without asking (yes, that still happens in this century), it still goes to D:. But really, would it kill Serif to pop up a simple save-file window that comes with Windows and has come since Windows was running under MS DOS?

Alas, Windows refuses to move the Appdata folder. And yes, I tried it, but the instructions do not work. Even if it did, no software should just download anything without first asking where to save it to. No, I did not see a blue progress bar. I just bought it two days ago, from the Affinity web site. I will test and see if I can live with the annoyance. Since there are only two sample files, I will just live without them. But I would strongly urge Serif programmers not to decide where to download files without asking. I only have 20 GB of free space on drive C: precisely because so many programmers act without asking. I am a programmer myself (started back in 1965), so I do know what I am talking about.

And now, it suddenly popped this up: And that makes no sense because all it showed me was what I showed above, clearly indicating an error. It has not asked me where to save it to, either. I surely hope it does not presume I want it saved somewhere in my C: drive, because if so, I want a full refund. Any software that assumes it is OK to clutter my system disk is produced by a bunch of incompetents.

A link? Where? I don’t see any link. If I click on a sample (there are two), it pops up a little cloud with a red x in the middle. If I click on it again, the pop-up disappears, but I certainly see no link to download the sample(s). Here is what it looks like at first: And here it is after I click on the Lifestyle Magazine thing: And if I click on that, it just goes back to what it looked like at first. So, how do I download a sample (and where does it save it at)?

Thanks, Alfred!

Then how about giving us the link to the videos on Vimeo instead of just hiding it in your own player (which, I am sorry to say, is horrible)?

Yes, thank you. Before I only turned windows Update on and that did not help. but after you asked again, I also turned Windows Module Installer and that worked. After that I turned both off (having them on causes some problems on my system) but I was able to update Designer and it is working.

OK, thanks, it was the Modules Installer. With it enbaled, I was able install .net 4.8, and then Designer 1.7.0. Thanks, everyone.

I guess I’ll just have to stick with Designer 1.6. I just wish there was a way to turn off the upgrade notifications.

That’s what it said. I just copied and pasted the whole thing.