15–19 July 2008 in Buffalo, New York, USA

On July 15–19, Fontlab Ltd. will be hosting workshops at the TypeCon 2008 conference in Buffalo, New York, USA.

To participate in a workshop, you must register through the conference site. Please visit http://www.typecon.com/ for more information about the conference, location, program details and registration opportunities

Below is a partial list of type design and font technology workshops to be held during TypeCon  hosted or endorsed by Fontlab Ltd. The details below are subject to change; check the TypeCon site for definitive details.

Verdana is good, mine is better

Lecture by Adam Twardoch

Type is an integral component of each image campaign, but the Web does not allow us to use the countless typefaces that we use in print. We can use non-default fonts in certain elements of a website using Flash and graphics, but in the searchable text portions, only a few standard fonts such as Verdana can be used. New techniques such as web fonts, embedded web fonts and embedded web photofonts remove those limitations. Soon, we will be able to set Web typography free. Adam Twardoch shows which tools and techniques can be used to make the first steps.

In 2008, Apple released Safari 3.1 which supports linking of TrueType-flavored OpenType fonts directly to web pages. Opera Software has also announced support for those linked web fonts. Microsoft Internet Explorer has had support for embedded OpenType fonts font many years now, and the Flash player is a container format that can present any type on practically any browser. In 2008, Fontlab Ltd. will introduce Photofont WebReady, a first product that allows users to convert their OpenType and TrueType fonts into embedded web fonts and embedded web photofonts using the Flash format. Linked web fonts, embedded OpenType web fonts, embedded Flash web fonts and embedded web photofonts are not necessarily exclusive to one another, they can be used in combination. I would like to present the different techniques that can be used to get non-default fonts on the web, using tools from Fontlab Ltd. and Microsoft, both commercial and freely available.

Setting web typography free: using custom Photofont and OpenType fonts on the web

Workshop by Adam Twardoch and Ted Harrison

This workshop is for people interested in web design. The participants should have some knowledge of HTML and CSS.

The web does not allow us to use the countless typefaces that we use in print. We can use non-default fonts in certain elements of a website using Flash and graphics, but in the searchable text portions, only a few standard fonts such as Verdana can be used. In this half-day workshop Adam Twardoch and Ted Harrison will guide the participants through various ways of using custom typefaces on websites. We will not discuss the most crude of all methods, i.e. inserting static images into the HTML code, as this does not give the user searchable, user-friendly text.

But in the recent months, a number of alternative, better approaches has emerged, such as linked OpenType fonts, Flash font replacement using sIFR, and embedded Photofonts. Combined with the already well-known technique of embedded OpenType fonts, those techniques give the web designer a number of possibilities to style their text and headings with non-default fonts.

During the workshop, the participants will turn a plain web page that uses default fonts such as Verdana and Georgia into a web page that uses custom fonts specified by the designer. We will combine different tools (Adobe Dreamweaver, FontLab TypeTool, Photofont WebReady, Microsoft WEFT) and techniques so that the final result will work equally well in Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Opera, while the page will remain to be made of valid HTML and CSS, ensuring findability and standards-compliance.

Help, I wanna make fonts but cannot tell FontLab from BurgerKing: the real basics of font making

Workshop by Adam Twardoch

The participants will learn how to work with ScanFont and TypeTool (or optionally FontLab Studio), no prior knowledge of those applications is required. The workshop will have a moderate pace and will be concentrated on practical exercise. It will be concluded with the creation of a simple, working font.

a) How a font is made (1 hour)

Here, we will talk about the concept of OpenType fonts and font families, will introduce some essential terminology and give an overview on what an OpenType font looks like. We will explain the necessity of doing some planning, give best practices about the organization of a type design project, explain the basic principles of glyph naming and encoding.

b) My first quick and dirty font (1 hour)

In this session, we will take an existing scanned alphabet and turn it into a "somewhat working" font using ScanFont and TypeTool.

c) Towards my second, less quick, and definitely less dirty font (1 hour)

In this session, we will explain the principles of high-quality outline design, and we will look at the basic tools and techniques for designing glyphs in TypeTool or FontLab Studio, such as importing EPS, autotracing, drawing using Bezier curves, Paint tools, Smart shapes, node types, contour types and directions.

d) Refine, test, and go (1 hour)

In this session, we will discuss tools and techniques for automatic and manual specing and kerning, and we will produce a basic working OpenType font.

I'm the Speedrunner of Bezier drawing but there's gotta be more: second look at FontLab Studio

Workshop by Adam Twardoch

This workshop is intended for designers who have a fine grip on handling the basic functionality of FontLab Studio, TypeTool or Fontographer and would like to utilize some of the productivity functions of FontLab Studio to speed up their work, to handle large character sets or large font families more easily.

a) Bezier Speedrunner: Advanced tools and techniques for designing glyphs in FontLab Studio (2 hours)

In this session we will discuss various productivity tools offered by FontLab Studio in the area of glyph design: discuss shape groups, neighbors, composites, anchors, blending, Multiple Master, changing weight and geometric transformations.

b) Kerning Speedrunner: Advanced tools and techniques for letter fitting and kerning (1 hour)

In this session we will discuss various productivity tools offered by FontLab Studio in the area of letter fitting and kerning: class kerning, exceptions, expanding and compressing kerning.

c) Family Speedrunner: Making fonts work as a family (1 hour)

When developing a font family in OpenType format, a number of font parameters needs to be synchronized between the fonts so that applications can "see" the final product as a coherent family. We will discuss several different strategies of approaching the family and style naming and linkning inside a family. We will also discuss the importance of vertical metrics in a family, and will discuss synchronizing them across styles, and about other Font Info parameters that the designer should take care of when preparing the fonts for shipping.

All this technical nitty gritty I hate about font making: Prepare fonts for shipping using FontLab Studio

Workshop by Adam Twardoch

This workshop is targeted at seasoned FontLab Studio users who would like to delve into the more technical aspects of OpenType font creation to make sure their fonts are rock-solid.

a) Pretty Features: best practices in defining and implementing OpenType Layout features for European fonts (1.5 hours)

The OpenType font format specification lists a large number of OpenType Layout features. Some of them are currently implemented in mainstream applications by Adobe, Microsoft and Apple, so it does make sense to put them into fonts. Some features will most likely never be implemented, so placing them in fonts is at least questionable. We will give a brief overview of the current status of OpenType support on systems and applications. We will also give recommendations which features should be included in European fonts (that support Western, Central European, Cyrillic and/or Greek letters). Finally, we will give specific recommendations about the technical implementations of some of the most popular features, such as ordinals, superscripts and subscripts, small caps, ligatures -- taking into account recent advances made by Adobe, Microsoft and other vendors.

b) Quality Challenge: technical quality of OpenType fonts (1 hour)

When developing fonts, a number of different tools and applications can be integrated into your workflow. FontLab Studio 5 can be the centerpiece of your font development environment, but there is a number of other Mac tools (as well as some Windows tools) that can be pulled into the equation, especially for the purposes of font quality assurance. Many of those tools are free, many are also cross-platform. Python, RoboFab, FontTools/TTX, FontQA, Adobe FDK for OpenType (AFDKO), Apple Font Tools for OS X, Microsoft Font Validator. In this session, we will show how to set up your FontLab Studio 5 working environment, install additional 3rd party font development tools, link them together and make them available in FLS.

c) Crystal Clear: tuning your fonts for screen (1.5 hours)

Even though screen resolutions become bigger and the font rasterizers more sophisticated, the need for optimizing font screen quality does not entirely go away. FontLab Studio 5 brings various general font screen quality parameters such as alignment zones and standard stems, which can be automatically or manually edited to achieve best results. In addition to the PostScript autohinter built into FontLab Studio 5, there is now also the new Adobe autohinter that is available as part of the AFDKO package and integrates into FLS as a macro (more native integration is planned for a future release of FLS). Finally, the manual tools for working with hinting in FLS5 are virtually unchallenged. We will explain how to combine both automatic and manual hinting to quickly achieve best results.