New Typeface for Yale

April 25, 2004 5:33 PM

A New Typeface for YaleThe Yale typeface is available to Yale employees, students, and authorized contractors for use in Yale publications and communications. It may not be used for personal or business purposes, and it may not be distributed to non-Yale personnel.
posted by ColdChef (38 comments total)

Any Yale students care to hook us up with the download? That's a nice serif.
posted by mathowie at 5:39 PM on April 25, 2004

Nice, but where can I find the Skull and Bones typeface?
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 5:40 PM on April 25, 2004

I don't like the lowercase a, and that's about the only thing interesting in it.

Whatever Yale used to use wasn't that different.
posted by smackfu at 5:44 PM on April 25, 2004

Carter's stuff is beautiful. And that site has a great explanation.
posted by Utilitaritron at 5:46 PM on April 25, 2004

Damn Yalies and their typographic elitism! Anyone can download and use Cal's identity typeface: Goudy's University Old Style (also known commercially as ITC Berkeley).
posted by luriete at 5:50 PM on April 25, 2004

Any Yale students care to hook us up with the download? That's a nice serif.

If you have the Sylfaen font, you can pretty much get close enough to it just by hitting the horizontal kern to about 150%.

Sorry to self-link for an example, but the white-on black text card is a still from one of my films, and it was done in Illustrator with a 150% wide Slyfaen font, which I believe comes standard with Windows/Office XP.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 5:51 PM on April 25, 2004

looks a lot like bembo to me--a little narrower.
posted by amberglow at 5:57 PM on April 25, 2004

I'm sorry. I saw a post by ColdChef and read the header as "a new typeface for y'all" which sounded perfectly appropriate in my mind. I was momentarily confused, then, as to just what the heck Yale had to do with the whole thing.
posted by yhbc at 6:02 PM on April 25, 2004

where can I find the Skull and Bones typeface?

ssssssshhhhhhhhhh... it's like invisible ink, only it's for computers
posted by matteo at 6:03 PM on April 25, 2004

It is Bembo -- but newly digitized by Matthew Carter, of Verdana and Georgia fame. (The original digital version of Bembo was not well-recieved.)
posted by Aaorn at 6:06 PM on April 25, 2004

Curse you, Commish!
posted by ColdChef at 6:07 PM on April 25, 2004

It looks like the bastard child of Bembo and Baskerville. Don't love it, don't hate it.

However, as a former communications and publications director for a much smaller educational institution, I honor the wisdom of picking one font and making everyone use it.

Even smarter is creating a unique font, thus avoiding the variation between Mac and PC fonts and their names, which is the bane of all communications and publications directors.

They should have commissioned a special sans-serif font at the same time, though, and called it "Elihu".

While we're talking fonts, let me plug the work of the wonderful George Ryan, who's a good guy and a very thoughtful designer.
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:18 PM on April 25, 2004

Wow! Students can use that?? I would never have guessed the Office of Publications would let students use the font... Thanks ColdChef for posting something my school neglected to inform me of. :) *must go update graphics for student group websites now...
posted by superfem at 6:29 PM on April 25, 2004

Typeface design is interesting. It's odd for me to learn that someone named Matthew Carter designed Verdana and Georgia, and that someone named George Ryan designed Oz Handicraft. It's like learning that someone invented the table, or someone invented circles.
posted by Hildago at 6:37 PM on April 25, 2004

Looks jittery to me.
posted by the fire you left me at 6:38 PM on April 25, 2004

...It may not be used for personal or business purposes, and it may not be distributed to non-Yale personnel

Um, does anyone else view this as a challenge? I'm going to get my hands on it and use it for dirty purposes. Like applying to Harvard.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 6:40 PM on April 25, 2004

It is Bembo -- but newly digitized by Matthew Carter, of Verdana and Georgia fame. (The original digital version of Bembo was not well-recieved.)
ahhh..thanks Aaorn..i've never liked Bembo. A lot of fonts didn't translate well.
posted by amberglow at 6:43 PM on April 25, 2004

They're letting students use it? It'll be up on kazaa any minute now.
posted by Zonker at 6:46 PM on April 25, 2004

The difference between this, and maybe 30 other fonts out there, to most people, amounts to a silent dog whistle.

But telling people not to use it without permission pretty much guarantees it will spread like wildfire. Without permission.
posted by gimonca at 6:57 PM on April 25, 2004

Anyone can download and use Cal's identity typeface

Um, didn't you see this at the bottom of the page, luriete?

Any use of the UC Berkeley IP requires an Agreement (license) from The Regents.
posted by pmurray63 at 7:08 PM on April 25, 2004

pretty pretty bolder bembo! its dissapointing to read in its history an admission that previous bembos were inferior but they then produce a more beautiful and better working one with restricted release. but im not one to scoff at graphic standards and integrity.

my school's typeface was the nice enough palatino.
posted by c at 7:10 PM on April 25, 2004

More famous font designers' biographies can be found here (the specific link is to Paul Renner, designer of my favorite font, Futura).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:14 PM on April 25, 2004

pmurray, from the full terms of use, which is the agreement/license: You may download the UC Berkeley IP only for official UC Berkeley campus use, or if such use is subject to a fully executed Trademark License Agreement, Sponsorship Agreement, or personal use subject to the terms of this License and where such use would not be commercial or infringe on the rights of others.
posted by teg at 9:45 PM on April 25, 2004

Good discussion of the Yale face up at Typographica (plug).

Also - Ryan designed Handicraft after drawings by the late great Oz Cooper [1/2/3] - I'm not sure if it is technically a revival (that word is fraught with multiple meanings and a lot of friction usually accompanies its use, in the world of type designers and their critics, at least) but does seem to be a faithful rendering if some of Cooper's original drawings.
posted by luriete at 10:06 PM on April 25, 2004

Hmm. Non-moveable type.
posted by namespan at 11:04 PM on April 25, 2004

posted by mathowie at 11:24 PM on April 25, 2004

Damn, coulda sworn it looked mostly like Garamond.
posted by madman at 11:28 PM on April 25, 2004

Venetian typefaces tend to do that. ...Look like Garamond, that is.

It's nice enough, I suppose. Pardon the lowercase a, though, it doesn't look very distinctive to me — like another second-hand Garamond. Maybe I'd need to examine a printed version to notice anything special.
posted by Down10 at 11:40 PM on April 25, 2004

It's the goddam alphabet, people, nothing more. Wake me up when Yale finds a cure for cancer or something.
posted by gimonca at 7:46 AM on April 26, 2004

Wow, another person who thinks it's a good idea to drop into a thread on a subject they know nothing about just in order to say "Yawn -- I don't care about this." Congratulations on your superior coolitude.

Nice post, ColdChef; I like the typeface, but I'm obviously not as picky as some of y'all.
posted by languagehat at 8:34 AM on April 26, 2004

so who has the font?
posted by turbanhead at 8:40 AM on April 26, 2004

hand it over, haughey.
posted by c at 9:02 AM on April 26, 2004

All right then, lemme put it this way: this font offers nothing that can't be achieved with a whole boatload of fonts that are out there on the market (or are already free downloads). There is only very rarely any originality in this field, and this isn't it--it's not that functionally different from carving M AGRIPPA FECIT on the Pantheon. Nothing wrong with it, it's just not newsworthy in and of itself.

(Yale telling people not to use it, yes, that's amusing, because it's such a silly premise.)
posted by gimonca at 9:05 AM on April 26, 2004

its the tweaking of a classic typeface for institutional use and its pretty damn interesting if i do say so myself. rarely any originality? functions of typography are usually subtle for a reason. so you wont notice them. they are just supposed to work right if done well.
posted by c at 9:11 AM on April 26, 2004

How is it "original" to introduce such inconsequential changes that the resulting typeface is, for most intents and purposes, indistinguishable from dozens of other works? That's not original, that's manufactured job security (which is fine, just call it what it is...).
posted by JollyWanker at 10:38 AM on April 26, 2004

It's a feather in any organization/business's cap to have their own face. Many many places do it, often just with slight tweaks to an existing face, and adding in their own dingbats and things. I think it's weird that you can't use the shield dingbat in Quark--what are they using up there?

and mathowie: font thief ; >
posted by amberglow at 10:55 AM on April 26, 2004

It's close matthowie, but look at the capital E's - there's one of the differences.
posted by Nauip at 1:28 PM on April 26, 2004

My first thought was "hey, looks like Galliard" -- especially the "a". But there are lots of nice touches -- the way the "h" curves back on itself is neat, the built-in spacing for the dashes is very useful, etc.

Interesting that there are Admin and Designer versions, rather than Standard and Pro. This is user-centered design at the typeface level.
posted by greengirl at 2:36 PM on April 26, 2004