Hey, it can be the unpackaged open font of the week, and some weeks just don’t have fonts, right?

Crimson Text is a traditional, Garamond-inspired serif font family meant for use, as upstream terms it, a “workhorse” font that could be used generally, including flourishes, small caps, symbols, etc. The font is a lovely example of an in-progress international open font project, as it’s being creating by a team of folks:

• Sebastian Kosch, a 21-year old German student studying in Toronto;
• Hector Haralambous, who is from Greece;
• Georg Duffner, who is from Vienna

Crimson Text is licensed under the Open Font License.

Note that as the upstream homepage indicates, the font is under heavy development and in particular the kerning is a little dicey. While you may not want to lay out documents using this font in its current state, the typeface is certainly suitable for custom type designs for logos and the like if you’re up for adjusting the kerning manually. This is definitely an interesting project to follow.

Oh! And as far as coverage… it’s already better than some of the other fonts we’ve featured here, although the creators will have you know it’s far from complete. Here’s a screenshot of some of the character map under Latin:

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Aldus_Leaf_Crimson_Text_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://aldusleaf.org/

So, you want to package Crimson Text?

Hot doggin’! You’re groovy! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last week’s font

We didn’t have a font last week. It’s been a while! Maybe I should do a blog post summarizing the state of all the previously-blogged fonts and check in on them. What do you think?

Comfortaa is a sans-serif typeface created by Johan Aakerlund, a young and very talented, self-taught font designer from Denmark who has been creating fonts for around 2 years now. I asked Johan what inspired him to create Comfortaa, and he responded, “What really got me interested in fonts in the first place was actually a documentary on Helvetica that i watched. At that time my favorite font was Century Gothic, but I wanted a softer (and plainly different) alternative, but with some of the same qualities as Century Gothic. So after searching a while without finding one I decided to try and design it myself.” He has named it Comfortaa because of his goal of making it ‘comfortable.’

Johan recently changed Comfortaa’s license such that it is now licensed under the Open Font License. Comfortaa is a great font feature-wise, because it features three weights:

Comfortaa’s coverage is also great. Fedora’s design team has been running a trial of Comfortaa to see if it’d be a suitable headline font for Fedora, and we’ve found it has much better glyph coverage in our languages than our current headline font, MgOpen Modata. One big win, for example, is Comfortaa’s Cyrillic support (it looks like only ‘Ҙ’ ‘Ҫ’ ‘Ҡ’ and ‘Ӏ’ are missing below):

Comfortaa is a clean & contemporary font that will serve you well as a heading font and in logo treatments. For example,
Luya Tshimbalanga (who first introduced the Fedora Design team to Comfortaa) used this font in the headlines for Muffin, the French Fedora user magazine (MgOpen Modata didn’t have sufficient glyphs for French!) Emily Dirsh, our recent design bountry winner also used it as a headline font in the Fedora slide presentation template. Typographically-speaking, Comfortaa can be considered a geometric sans serif font; geometric because some of the letterforms are based around geometric forms, such as the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘o’ being so close to perfect circles. The width of the letterforms is also quite uniform (meaning it’s not a humanist font.)

Comfortaa is licensed under the Open Font License.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Comfortaa
• Upstream Homepage: http://aajohan.deviantart.com/art/Comfortaa-font-105395949

So, you want to package Comfortaa?

The Fedora design team is planning to replace MgOpen Modata with Comfortaa in our brand guidelines. Getting Comfortaa packaged into Fedora is then a very important step. So if you would be willing to help us out, it would be very much appreciated, not just to expand the range of fonts available in Fedora but also to help improve Fedora’s branding!

You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Font

The last font this blog series covered was Gillus ADF. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

Yes, font blog posts are back! Probably not weekly though. I’ll give monthly a shot! .

Gillius ADF is a sans-serif typeface, heavily inspired by the famous Gill Sans MT typeface by Eric Gill – who designed Gill Sans inspired by the Johnston typeface designed for the London Underground which Gill had worked on as an apprentice.

The Arkandis Digital Foundry created the Gillius ADF font under the GPL with font exception. There is an alternative version available too (that also needs packaging ) called Gillus ADF No. 2. Each font has regular and condensed variants, each with bold, italic, and bold italic versions. The coverage is not bad for extended Latin characters:

Gillius ADF is a nice, clean font that should serve you well both in regular body text in documents as well as for headings and logo treatments. It’s a versatile and very readable font, just like the Gill Sans typeface that inspired it. One thing you might want to be aware of when working with Gillius ADF – just as cultural context anyway – in the same way that Helvetica is used heavily in the United States, especially on municipal and transit system signage, Gill Sans is used heavily in the UK and recalls ‘mid-century’ type usage in the UK. Gillius ADF, since it refers so closely to Gill Sans, might carry a bit of a UK connotation to it.

(Btw, I purposely picked a word with a lowercase ‘g’ in it for my little type sample because I really like the ‘g’ in Gillius Sans. )

Gillus ADF is licensed under the GPL with Font Exception.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ADF_Gillius_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://arkandis.tuxfamily.org/openfonts.html

So, you want to package Gillius ADF?

Zomg! You’re sweet! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was League Gothic by The League of Moveable Type. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

League Gothic is a sans-serif Gothic typeface, originally designed by American typeface designer Morris Fuller Benton in 1903. The League of Moveable Type has made this typeface available as a font under the the Open Font License as it was designed pre-Steamboat Willie and is under the public domain. Morris Fuller Benton designed over fifty typefaces, including well-known (to designers at least) ones such as Franklin Gothic, ATF Bodoni, Century Schoolbook, News Gothic, and Parisian.

How can you use League Gothic? It’s a very bold and strong font, easily readable from far away. Actually, it reminds me a lot of the Marvel Comics logo, so naturally I used it to create a tightly-spaced Batman (DC Comics) related type specimen. In all caps, the font has a very tall feeling because the legs of the letters are very tall – the x-height seems to be much taller in proportion to the full letter height than in other typefaces. The League of Moveable Type page for League Gothic has a nice type specimen for the font – it’s a clear and readable typeface for info graphics, but also could make for a nice, epic-feeling logo.

League Gothic has coverage of some accented characters in Latin Supplemental, but Latin Extended A and B are not covered:

League Gothic is licensed under the Open Font License.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/TLOMT_League_Gothic_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/fonts/7-league-gothic

So, you want to package League Gothic?

Way to go – you’re rad! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was Tuffy Infants 2 by Thatcher Ulrich. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

Tuffy Infants 2 is a font derived from the Tuffy fonts created by Thatcher Ulrich. The Tuffy fonts are a really cool example of how folks around the world can work together to create new things under open licenses. Thatcher, who is from New York released his first Tuffy under the public domain in 2004. Jowaco, from York in the UK, created both Tuffy Infants 2 and Tuffy 5 as derivatives of Thatcher’s original Tuffy fonts.

That being said, Tuffy Infants 2 is a sans-serif font. Note I’m not an expert on classifying fonts, but I believe it is a humanist sans-serif font like last week’s font, Junction. Looking at the loop in the lowercase k, the finial in the lowercase ‘a’, ‘m’, and ‘d’ – among other parts of the letterforms – there seems to be variation in line with a humanist-style font.

Tuffy Infants 2 is nice, clean yet organic – and it also has a very fun feel from the merry curves of its letterforms. Jowaco suggests it would be used well for teachers creating type for their students.

Tuffy Infants 2 has no license – it is under the public domain.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tuffy_Infants_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://forum.high-logic.com/viewtopic.php?t=1138

So, you want to package Tuffy Infants 2?

Beautiful! You’re super fly! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-fonts-list.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was Junction by Caroline Hadilaksono. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

Junction is a humanist sans-serif typeface developed by Caroline Hadilaksono. The font actually reminds me a lot of Myriad which is very popular humanist sans-serif typeface – but Junction has some unique personality traits to it. Check out that uppercase ‘D’ in my type sample above – it kind of looks like a tongue sticking out at you! It’s a spicy font

Typography terminology is a bit intimidating, but I’ve been reading up a bit on the history of type and its terminology to help make this series of posts more useful. I’m about halfway through Ellen Lupton’s excellent typography book Thinking With Type and the first section of the book details the history of type from calligraphy to metal blocks to fonts on a computer. Really fascinating stuff and a very enjoyable read.

That being said, I wanted to point out that Junction is a humanist sans-serif typeface. Humanist refers to the calligraphic-like way the strokes of letters are ended and how the line widths are not one consistent width but vary depending on where in the letter they are (unlike Helvetica or Futura, where the line widths are very consistent and don’t vary at all.) Humanist typefaces I think are called ‘humanist’ because they reference / are influenced by how the human hand produces lettermarks. Sans-serif refers to the fact that the type does not have serifs, or little ‘ink wells’ at the end of each stroke (in contrast to a font like Times New Roman which does.) I believe since serifs can be difficult to render cleanly on a pixel-grid in the sizes typically used for body text, sans-serif fonts tend to be easier to read on pixel-based displays.

So, you can use Junction to give an organic feel to your text while at the same time allowing it to display crisply & cleanly on a computer screen.

Junction is licensed under the Open Font License.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/TLOMT_Junction_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/fonts/1-junction

So, you want to package Junction?

Legend. You’re kickin’! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was Blackout by Tyler Finck. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

On the future of these posts

I’ve taken a couple weeks’ break for the holidays and I’ve decided that once a month I’ll feature a cool unpackaged piece of FLOSS software rather than a font. So each month will have 3-4 font highlights and 1 software highlight. Thanks to everyone who responded to my call for feedback!

Blackout is a decorative typeface that uses filled-in sans-serif lettering with a little bit of a grungy feel. Tyler Finck developed the font for his homepage / portfolio which is also a great example treatment of the typeface. It’s a bold and attention-grabbing typeface but it also has some attitude, so you could use it on posters to get people’s attention from far away, or you could also use it in limited doses around any kind of composition for a little bit of spice.

Blackout and is licensed under the Open Font License.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry:http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/TLOMT_Blackout_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/fonts/5-blackout

So, you want to package Blackout?

Schweeeeet! You’re rad! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was Selfism by Jan Sonntag. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

And on that note:

Now people. Let’s be frank here. This is week #11 of the Unpackaged Font of the Week blog posts. It’s been over a month since these fonts I’ve been highlighting to you have gotten some packaging love. So talk to me:

• Am I posting these too often? Should I go bi-weekly? Monthly?
• Do you want to help and don’t know how to package? Or is the font-packaging process too complicated?

• Do you just not care about fonts and would rather see packaging needs highlighted for some other type of thing? (I recently discovered there’s a lot of great audio apps that we don’t have packaged yet!)

Please let me know, because I need to decide if I should keep doing this. My goal here is twofold: I want folks to see what awesome openly-licensed stuff is out there to use, but I also want to show folks very specific, well-defined, and not too-overwhelming ways they can jump in and help further free & open source projects – packaging content for use in a distro is a great way to do that.

When you package fonts and help me out, I see the love, but when I don’t see stuff getting packaged, I feel sad!

One idea I had was maybe to do fonts on week 1, do a wishlisted audio package on week 2 (omg do I want pure data packaged), do maybe something interesting off of the general package wishlist on week 3, and wishlist games on week 4, then rotate. That’s just one idea I had though. I want to hear what you think I should do!

Selfism is a decorative typeface that mimics the look of an electronic display (like an LED clock.) It has both a regular and a bold weight. Selfism’s homepage has an interesting type treatment – in general I think Selfism, as a decorative font, can be used to provide a retro technologically-savvy feel to non-essential text in a print layout or webpage. You could also use it in an artistic type treatment of course. Actually, to be honest, you could use it to give text a shopping receipt look…

Selfism was designed by Jan Sonntag and is licensed under the Open Font License.

Selfism has some coverage beyond basic Latin – the Latin Supplementary coverage is quite good but the extended Latin coverage is poor.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Sonntag_Selfism_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://www.sonntag.nl/seiten/free/selfism/selfism.htm

So, you want to package Selfism?

Gee whiz! You’re fantastic! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last Week’s Font

Last week’s font was Cyklop by Janusz Marian Nowacki. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?

Cyklop is a high-contrast sans-serif font. Because this font is so bold and has such high contrast, it would work well in treatments where you would like to call attention to some particular piece of information. For example, if you were designing a poster to hang up on a bulletin board and wanted to catch the attention of passers by – try using Cyklop with a catchy phrase in a large point size on the page.

Thanks goes to Janusz Marian Nowacki for creating the font from the historical typeface design – the typeface was designed in the 1920s – “at the workshop of Warsaw type foundry “Odlewnia Czcionek J. Idzkowski i S-ka” according to the upstream homepage. I do get a 1920′s vibe from it, but it also kind of reminds me of a retro view of the future (thus the ‘outer space!’ type sample I came up with. ) Hopefully this isn’t too terrible an abuse of the typeface.

Many of you have asked for some notes on the font coverage in these posts. Cyklop has some coverage beyond basic Latin – the Latin Supplementary coverage is quite good and the the Latin Extended A coverage is not too bad either.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GUST_Cyklop_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://nowacki.strefa.pl/cyklop-e.html

So, you want to package Cyklop?

Wonderful! You’re amazing! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Previously-Featured Fonts Updates

I wanted to update you on the status of some of the fonts previously featured here:

• Robin Sonefors has built Anonymous Pro for Fedora 11, 12, and Rawhide. (It’s not in the repos though. I’m not sure why.)
• Edward (aka tk009) has built Tiza and it’s now available in the Fedora 12 repos.
• Edward (aka tk009) also built Bola and it’s available in the Fedora 12 repos too – awesome work Edward!

Fonts Still in Need of Your Love

These fonts were previously highlighted but still need your love so they can be packaged!

• Chemist by Cathy Davies – Fedora font wishlist entry
• Chunk by Meredith Mandel – Fedora font wishlist entry
• Comic Serif Pro by Hannes von Döhren – Fedora font wishlist entry

Chemist is a handwriting-style font. One idea of a treatment that would work well with this font is using it for blockquotes in a print layout. The font was created by Cathy Davies as a memorial to her late father.

• Fedora Font Wishlist Entry: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CDavies_Chemist_fonts
• Upstream Homepage: http://cathydavies.com/fonts.html

So, you want to package Chemist?

Sweet! You’re the bomb! You’ll want to follow the first steps here next to the ‘if you intend to do some packaging’ header:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Joining_the_Fonts_SIG

Our fonts packaging policy, which the above refers to, is documented here:

• https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Fonts_packaging

And if you have any questions throughout the process, don’t hesitate to ask on the Fedora Fonts SIG mailing list:

• https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/fonts.

Last week’s font

Last week’s font was Chunk Five by Meredith Mandel. Nobody has picked up the font package request yet! Would you like to?