Comments on: New Typeface for Yale

New Typeface for Yale

ColdChef — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:33:46 -0800

A New Typeface for Yale The 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.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:39:47 -0800

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

By: _sirmissalot_

_sirmissalot_ — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:40:56 -0800

Nice, but where can I find the Skull and Bones typeface?

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:44:50 -0800

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.

By: Utilitaritron

Utilitaritron — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:46:30 -0800

Carter's stuff is beautiful. And that site has a great explanation.

By: luriete

luriete — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:50:59 -0800

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).

By: XQUZYPHYR

XQUZYPHYR — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:51:30 -0800

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.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 17:57:24 -0800

looks a lot like bembo to me--a little narrower.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:02:55 -0800

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.

By: matteo

matteo — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:03:12 -0800

where can I find the Skull and Bones typeface? ssssssshhhhhhhhhh... it's like invisible ink, only it's for computers

By: Aaorn

Aaorn — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:06:11 -0800

It is Bembo -- but newly digitized by Matthew Carter, of Verdana and Georgia fame. (The original digital version of Bembo was not well-recieved.)

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:07:32 -0800

Curse you, Commish!

By: Sidhedevil

Sidhedevil — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:18:56 -0800

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.

By: superfem

superfem — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:29:12 -0800

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...

By: Hildago

Hildago — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:37:40 -0800

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.

By: the fire you left me

the fire you left me — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:38:31 -0800

Looks jittery to me.

By: gesamtkunstwerk

gesamtkunstwerk — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:40:44 -0800

...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.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:43:51 -0800

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.

By: Zonker

Zonker — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:46:29 -0800

They're letting students use it? It'll be up on kazaa any minute now.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:57:03 -0800

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.

By: pmurray63

pmurray63 — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:08:44 -0800

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.

By: c

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:10:10 -0800

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.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 19:14:17 -0800

More famous font designers' biographies can be found here (the specific link is to Paul Renner, designer of my favorite font, Futura).

By: teg

teg — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 21:45:03 -0800

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.

By: luriete

luriete — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 22:06:59 -0800

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.

By: namespan

namespan — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 23:04:42 -0800

Hmm. Non-moveable type.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 23:24:03 -0800

By: madman

madman — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 23:28:15 -0800

Damn, coulda sworn it looked mostly like Garamond.

By: Down10

Down10 — Sun, 25 Apr 2004 23:40:45 -0800

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.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 07:46:05 -0800

It's the goddam alphabet, people, nothing more. Wake me up when Yale finds a cure for cancer or something.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 08:34:18 -0800

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.

By: turbanhead

turbanhead — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 08:40:38 -0800

so who has the font?

By: c

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:02:53 -0800

hand it over, haughey.

By: gimonca

gimonca — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:05:33 -0800

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.)

By: c

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:11:21 -0800

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.

By: JollyWanker

JollyWanker — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:38:37 -0800

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...).

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:55:18 -0800

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 ; >

By: Nauip

Nauip — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:28:45 -0800

It's close matthowie, but look at the capital E's - there's one of the differences.

By: greengirl

greengirl — Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:36:54 -0800

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.