Thomas Phinney is CEO of FontLab. Previously he worked at Extensis (web fonts and font management tools) and Adobe (as product manager for global fonts and typography).
Thomas is also a type designer, teacher, writer, and consultant on fonts and typography. He has been consulted by Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Oxford University Press, a “big three” US auto maker, the US Treasury Department, and PBS “History Detectives,” among others. He teaches type design with Crafting Type and has been a repeat guest lecturer for MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading. Since 2004 he has been a board member of ATypI, the international typography association. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original with over 3000 glyphs per font.
FontLab announces today the retirement of co‐founder and corporate business leader Theodore (Ted) Harrison. Harrison will continue as Chairman, but has stepped down from most day‐to‐day operations. Thomas Phinney, who joined FontLab in May 2014, replaces Harrison as FontLab President. The rest of the FontLab team is unchanged, but Adam Twardoch has been promoted to Director of Products, reflecting his increasing focus on the software itself.
At FontLab we have long believed in the value of education. So we have just added to and increased our educational discounts for students and staff, and are additionally adding a time‐limited offer for free posters!
FontLab education pricing is now half off regular retail
for full versions over $50. 80% off for one‐year license!
Legendary type designer, calligrapher and gentleman professor Hermann Zapf died on June 4th, 2015. He was 96 years old. He is survived by his wife, Gudrun Zapf‐von Hesse, a noted book binder, calligrapher and also a type designer (Diotima).
People working with engraving machines and vinyl sign‐cutting machines sometimes ask for special fonts that are made with single‐stroke lines instead of closed shapes. Even though this is not legal in the font formats, it is possible to work around it in FontLab Studio 5 and TypeTool 3. Here’s how, and why you might be fooled into thinking you have failed even when successful.
Please join us for an exciting new free webinar for beginning type designers!
Typerobics: Type design exercises
with Fábio Duarte Martins
Tuesday 16 June 2015 9:00 am Pacific / noon Eastern / 16.00GMT / 18.00CEST Register now!
The video from the webinar is now available!
Are your letters feeling out of shape? Do you aspire to win the regional kerning championship? Typerobics is a type‐making workout régime intended to shape up your Bézier biceps. Every sport requires exercise, and so does type design. Typerobics is your type design fitness plan: pick a word, pick a typographic style, draw that word in under 40 minutes‐then repeat at least three times a week.
I’ve posted a new beta build (5611) of FontLab Studio 5 version 5.1.5.
This is a test version of a free update, which will require you enter your FontLab serial number during the install. I suggest you first rename your existing FontLab Studio 5.app to, say “FontLab Studio 5 old.app” before you install the new build. This way you can run your previous version at any time if the new version proves an unworthy successor in any way. I do not expect it, but it is better to be cautious in such things.
Update April 8, 2015: OS X 10.10.3 shipped today, and as hoped, the final shipping version does not in fact break FontLab Studio 5.1.4 (or 5.1.2; earlier 5.0.x versions are probably also okay but not tested).
We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our appreciation for our friends and colleagues at Apple: they proactively alerted us to the problem, and then later changed path to avoid triggering it with the actual shipping 10.10.3 update when it came. A class act all around!
As announced April 1,FontLab Studio 5.1.5 build 5568 (release candidate 1) is available (since replaced by FontLab Studio 5.1.5 build 5611, release candidate 2). Because it is possible that a future Mac OS X build will cause the same problem we previously saw, we will continue testing 5.1.5 and expect to make it available in the future.
Use FontLab Studio 5 to Make Connecting Script Fonts with Laura Worthington
Tuesday 20 Jan 2015 9:00 am Pacific / noon Eastern / 19:00CEST
$24.95 Register now!
DTL OTMaster 5 is here! It’s a major advance in OpenType proofing and table‐editing for Mac and Windows, and it’s 25% off until Jan 6, €191.25 instead of €255.
Upgrades are only €7.50 for registered users of OTMaster 3.7 until Jan 6 (€50 for users of older versions, and for everyone after Jan 6). Use the form at the bottom of our Upgrades page to order.
Holiday sale on the font creation and editing program for graphic designers, Fontographer 5. Save $133, only $266 with coupon.1/3OFFFORFIVEDAYSWITHCOUPONCODE! (Coupon expires midnight PST, Friday 12 Dec 2014.)
