Gerry Leonidas

Gerry Leonidas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:10:42 +0000

Resources for Greek typeface design

Gerry Leonidas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:08:33 +0000

A sheet to practice writing Greek, before designing →PDF writing practice

The first letters to design, with a few sample words →PDF first letters

The basic 25+24 letters arranged by stylistic grouping →zip letter groups and →PDF letter groups example

A one-page text with all occurring pairs in Standard Modern Greek (rare pairs in brackets); real words, no meaning: produces slightly denser texture due to lack of punctuation, articles, and very short words. Sequence follows vowel combinations, then consonant combinations. Version 61, updated 27 July 2009
→zip unaccented version unaccented occurring pairs and →PDF unaccented occurring pairs example
→zip accented version accented occurring pairs and →PDF accented occurring pairs example

A two-page test: one page with good-level SMG, and one page with faked mixed-setting for both Greek-with-a-bit-of-English, and English-with-a-bit-of-Greek
→zip test texts and →PDF test texts example

starter resources

Victor Scholderer's Greek printing types 1465–1927 catalogue is a good historical introduction, but it stops in 1927, and has a specific bias. There is a somewhat rare original (500 copies only) and a reprint from 1995, with a couple of new essays in (Oak Knoll sells it in the US). If you read this you can safely skip Proctor's The printing of Greek in the fifteenth century, a 1900 text.

John Bowman's book Greek printing types in Britain: from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century is interesting in its totality, but has an invaluable chapter (no 2).

Books with manuscripts and images of rare books might be good; there are some truly comprehensive editions of Greek manuscripts, like _Greek Literary Hands_ by C H Roberts (two vols, one easier to find than the other) and _Repertorium der griechishen Kopisten_, in three vols. It is important to get a feeling for Greek writing, as it is (and was) done on entirely different models than western writing – the whole of the arm rotates, and the nibs (when not round) are cut with an opposite bias. (I attach three PDFs with writing exercises that are n ideal staring point.)

Michael Macrakis's (ed.) Greek Letters: from tablets to pixels (1996) has some articles that are very useful, others that are out of date, and a few that are poor.

NBow read this (2003). John D Berry (ed.), Microsoft. The booklet describes the ClearType typefaces project, and has some good points about cross-script design.

Historical typefaces to look at, in addition (for text typefaces): - the Didot Greeks, mostly
- the Monotype hot metal sans serifs
- the monoline incunable types in Kalliergis and Ximenez editions, and the latter's descendant New Hellenic by Scholderer
- Porson's Greek for Cambridge (1806 and many editions thereafter)

Digital typefaces to look at: - the ClearType family Greeks (Candara is my favourite)
- the Adobe modulated Greeks (Arno Pro, Garamond Premiere Pro, most lately): for a pen-based approach
- Jeremy Tankard's Bliss Pro, and the earlier Harmony
- Alice Savoie's MATD Capucine Greek; her specimen for Capucine is on <http://www.typefacedesign.org>
- the Vodafone Greek corporate typeface (a bit of it on <http://www.vodafone.gr/>; designed by DaltonMaag)
- Frantisek Storm's Anselm Greek
- Peter Bilak's Fedra Greek v. 2
- Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Whitney Greek
- John Hudson's SBL Greek (free download from the SBL site; the best new typeface inspired by the traditional Didot style)

articles

Gerry Leonidas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:02:32 +0000

In search of the digital Cresci: some thoughts on Don Knuth’s _Digital Typography_ | 2000
A response to Don Knuth's Digital Typography. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 1999. ISBN 1–57586–010–4 (123 + xvi pp). First published in Information Design Journal 9 2&3, 2000, pp 111–118 →digital_cresci [footnotes in progress]

[article in Language / Culture / Type, 2002]
pending upload

Γραμματοσειρές και πολιτισμική ταυτότητα | 2000
Δημοσιεύτηκε στην ειδική έκδοση με τίτλο Ελληνική τυπογραφία του Marketing Week →hellenic_typography

snippets

In tipoGrafica no 70: fonts_and_languages | 2006

From a reply to an email with the question What makes a font, a_good_font in the general sense? | 2006

On greek_handwriting_models, from a reply on Typophile to a thread on Greek scripts | 2007

On the development_of_greek_typeforms, from a reply on Typophile to a thread about Garamond Premier Pro | 2005

On Greek character design standards, from a reply on Typophile to a thread on, well, Greek character design standards | 2005

interviews

Ιnterview by Liza Enebeis and Donald Beekman during the Typecon conference in New York →Typeradio | 2005

Συνέντευξη στο “Ε” της Κυριακάτικης Ελευθεροτυπίας. Δημοσιεύτηκε λίγο πριν το πρώτο Διεθνές Συνέδριο Τυπογραφίας και Οπτικής Επικοινωνίας στη Θεσσαλονίκη (ICTVC) | 2002 →Epsilon

in progress

Handout at TypeCon 09 multilingual typography session | 2009

Notes on postgraduate education in typography

three

Gerry Leonidas — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:36:41 +0000

Three things at the same time, again and again.

Family, work, personal development. Children, spouse, self. Teaching, research, admin. The local, the world, the self. Think, speak, write. It's a built in perspective, but it seems that vision, inspiration, exploration all too often take a hit. Another triad, those.

reading