More About Fonts

Carl Shank • March 9, 2021

Font Technicals

(Updated July 2021)

Postscript Type 1 Fonts

Historically, Adobe introduced what are called Postscript Type 1 fonts. The diagram above (and quoted comments here) are from https://www.adobe.com/products/type/opentype.html discussing the transition from old Type 1 fonts to new OpenType fonts. In 1984, when I began using Macintoshes and Laserwriters, Adobe was the premier place to secure Postscript Type 1 fonts. They were carefully crafted from the most well-known font foundries in the world. They represented the best in front formation and font delivery. Of course, many more designers and thousands more fonts came along the way.They offered fonts and font programs that took the jagged screen fonts on the early computers and "smoothed" them for better sight on the screen. They included what were called "printer fonts" that translated the font dynamics from the computer screen to a laserwriter printer that could print at 300 dpi (dots per inch). This was phenomenal at the time, getting printed pages that began to look like professionally designed and printed professionally set pages like that you would find in a book.


The set of characters in each font was generally limited to 256 characters. Therefore, to have a wider or thicker character, a new font had to be added to the font "family." Typically, there were four basic fonts to a family — book or regular, italic, bold and bold italic. Added to these basic four could be an ultra bold or extra black bold and small caps along with a condensed form of the font. Variations abounded, but there was one font for each basic variation. Adobe introduced MultipleMasters, such as Minion MultipleMasters, where smaller variations in font designs were included for different uses in different scenarios — "Called "Opticals," these variations have been optimized for use at specific point sizes. Although the exact intended sizes vary by family, the general size ranges include: caption (6-8 point), regular (9-13 point), subhead (14-24 point) and display (25-72 point)."


If you wanted a PC version of the same font, you had to translate the font characters to a PFB and a TTF version to use on a PC computer. True Type (TT) was then developed that gave one version of the font that worked on both Macs and PCs. Font management programs were then designed by Adobe and others, such as Adobe Type Manager (ATM) and ATM Deluxe and the Suitcase for managing and organizing the many fonts that became available. 


OpenType

"Any OpenType font uses a single font file for all of its outline, metric, and bitmap data, making file management simpler. In addition, the same font file works on Macintosh and Windows computers. As a result, OpenType lets you move font files back and forth between platforms with noticeable improvement in cross-platform portability for any documents that use type." Contrasted with 256 character fonts, OpenType fonts can now have 65,000 characters, making them highly desirable for font creators and users — "which allows a single font file to contain many nonstandard glyphs, such as old-style figures, true small capitals, fractions, swashes, superiors, inferiors, titling letters, contextual and stylistic alternates, and a full range of ligatures." OpenType fonts work seamlessly on both Macs and PCs and no translation from one platform to another is needed. In fact, Adobe has translated all of its fonts to an OpenType format with the .otf marking them as such, such as Minion.otf.


As Adobe points out, "Central to a discussion of OpenType feature support lies the distinction between characters and glyphs. Characters are the code points assigned by the Unicode standard, which represent the smallest semantic units of language, such as letters. Glyphs are the specific forms that those characters can take. One character may correspond to several glyphs; the lowercase "a," a small cap "a" and an alternate swash lowercase "a" are all the same character, but they are three separate glyphs. One glyph can also represent multiple characters, as in the case of the "ffi" ligature, which corresponds to a sequence of three characters: f, f and i."


"OpenType layout features can be used to position or substitute glyphs. For any character, there is a default glyph and positioning behavior. The application of layout features to one or more characters may change the positioning, or substitute a different glyph. For example, the application of the small capitals feature to the "a" would substitute the small cap "a" glyph for the usual lowercase "a" glyph. To access alternate glyphs in an OpenType Pro font, an application provides a user interface that allows end users to apply OpenType layout features to text. Applications that don't support Unicode or advanced OpenType layout features can still access the basic glyph sets of OpenType Pro fonts, which are analogous to the glyph sets in today's PostScript Type 1 fonts."


OpenType fonts also better facilitate foreign and complex languages with their many glyph variations and needs.


Adobe will discontinue use of Postscript Type 1 fonts in the near future.An important and informative article can be found in the recent issue of Macworld— "Adobe is Dropping Postscript Type 1 Font Support—Be prepared for the change," by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld, July 2021.


Translating Postscript Type 1 to OpenType

Thankfully, there are professional font creation programs, such as Fontographer and FontLab, that can translate older Postscript Type 1 fonts to newer OpenType fonts. They only caveat is that you must have the permission or license to either do such translations or purchase the newer OpenType fonts from their original font foundries. Use of Adobe OpenType fonts is available with subscription use of Creative Cloud programs from Adobe. Thousands of fonts are available through this monthly service.






Successful Layout & Design

Art Nouveau Typography

By Carl Shank • September 6, 2025
Art Nouveau fonts grew out of the late 19th-century Art Nouveau movement (c. 1890–1910), which sought to break away from academic, historicist styles and create a new art for the modern age. The style flourished across Europe and America in architecture, furniture, illustration, and typography. In lettering, Art Nouveau embraced organic forms, flowing curves, floral motifs, and asymmetry, reflecting the movement’s fascination with natural growth and hand-drawn ornament. Art Nouveau took its name from the Maison de l'Art Nouveau, a Parisian gallery that exhibited the works of artists and designers who were associated with the movement. The style was characterized by flowing, curvilinear forms inspired by natural shapes and motifs such as flowers, vines, and insects. It also incorporated elements from other artistic traditions, such as Japanese art and the Arts and Crafts movement. Art Nouveau was particularly popular in Europe, where it influenced a wide range of artistic disciplines, including architecture, interior design, furniture, jewelry, and graphic design. Some of the most notable Art Nouveau architects included Hector Guimard, Antoni Gaudí, and Victor Horta, while artists such as Alphonse Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, and Gustav Klimt were celebrated for their decorative and ornamental works. Art Nouveau declined in popularity after World War I, as artists and designers began to embrace new, more modernist styles. However, its influence can still be seen in many aspects of contemporary design, and it remains an important and influential movement in the history of art and design. 

Ornamental Gothics

By Carl Shank • August 30, 2025
Gothics History. Gothic typefaces are a broad group of styles rooted in medieval calligraphy and evolved into distinct print types during and after the invention of movable type via Gutenberg in the 15th century. They are sometimes confusingly named. In Europe “Gothic” usually refers to blackletter (medieval scripts), while in the U.S. “Gothic” often refers to sans-serif typefaces since the 1830s. Gothic script is a broad term for the entire family of medieval European scripts that developed from Carolingian minuscule around the twelfth century. “Minuscules” are lower case letters as distinct from capital letters, or uncials. Type developed in the sixth through tenth centuries with modern lettering evolving from Carolingian scripts. The Emperor Charlemagne used these letters as an educational standard. These densely packed scripts featured tall, narrow letterforms, strong vertical emphasis, sharp, angular connections, a dramatic thick/thin contrast and minimal spacing between letters. Gothic-inspired fonts create immediate medieval impact and work beautifully for titles, logos, and short display text. They are used today in Fantasy Gaming, Historical Projects, Themed Entertainment (like the Renaissance Fair), Book Design, Certificates, Breweries and Distilleries. Jack Nolan, a professional graphics designer, has provided a fetching display of such faces in his "33 Medieval Fonts Perfect for ‘Ye Olde’ Designs in 2025."(1)
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