Presentation QuarterBraille (Abbreviated as "QB" thereafter) is a decorative, steganographic and lattice font. Its core design concept is that Braille dots are represented as "quarters of a square"[1]. This is illustrated by posters 1 and 2 (NB: these glyph parts will be called "QB dots" thereafter). The other glyph parts (see poster 3) are purely decorative and meaningless in terms of Braille dots encoding[2]. All glyph parts are meant to generate a wide variety of patterns from horizontal and vertical combinations of glyphs. There is also a graphic convention to differentiate uppercase from lowercase letters with the presence or absence of shape subparts (in the "endings", "quarter of a circle with a ring" and "quarter of a diamond with a small square in the middle") like shown by poster 4. This font is suitable for very short texts (e.g. logos, acronyms, quotes, ambigrams, pangrams, palindromes, etc...) but on the other hand it may be used for steganographic purpose like geocaching as well as fictive alphabets (e.g. Alien/SciFi/Fantasy/Antique civilizations). Posters 1. Font Logo: the displayed text is " Quarter " followed by " Braille". There's a rainbow layer above the text to highlight the "QB dots", this is achieved by A..Z glyphs with "only QB dots" (codes 230..255) 2. Anatomy of a Glyph (L) and "QB Dots" (quarters of a square) 3. Glyphs Parts: Square and Cross (Inverted square), Circle and Inverted Circle (with or without the small circle in the middle), Diamond (with or without the small square in the middle), Inverted Square and Circle, Shape combos, Ending 4. Uppercase vs Lowercase (tiny shape subparts are shown in red) 5. Sample 1: Bathroom sink with QB tiles on the credence 6. Sample 2: Hands knuckle tatoos: "LOVE/HATE"[4] 7. Sample 3: Poker Hand: pocket Aces. It's an Ace of Hearts (Ah) on the left and an Ace of Spades (As) on the right. Like in regular cards, the card value (e.g. Ah) is displayed twice: at the top and rotated by 180 degrees at the bottom. This poster also illustrates that QB could be used to print embossed playing cards with tactile and visual display of card values. 8. Sample 4: Pangram: "Adept quick jog over frozen blue whisky mix" 9. Sample 5: Latin Magic Square: "SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS" (NB: for compensation of the 2/3 glyph ratio, letters on each line are separated by a space: "S A T O R", ...). 10. Sample 6: Quote of Mahatma Gandhi: "Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.". This is also a demonstration of border glyphs combinations. 11. Sample 7: Steganography use case: the text is a sequence of 64 aminoacids (1 Letter notation), this protein was described in a research paper "The complete Aminoacid sequence of an amyloid fibril protein AA of unusual size (64 residues) 1975". 12. Sample 8: Border Glyphs with the provided styles and mixed styles. The words are the same than in poster 9 ("SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS"). Despite the 2/3 glyph ratio, the "TENET cross" was achieved by both inserting spaces in horizontally ("T ENE T") and by using the "thin borders glyphs". Notes a. Border glyphs[3] are meant to enhance the esthetics of text samples displayed with QB b. Special characters (e.g. *$()[].,;:&@# ...) are provided and follow the NABCC (North American Braille Computer Code) convention. c. A..Z Glyphs with only the "QB dots" are provided as demonstrated by posters 1 and 2 (A/N: this was very useful to create them). d. Glyph Map: 32..64: Special characters - 161..187: "Thin variant" of Border glyphs, 192..229: Border glyphs, 230..255: A..Z with only the "QB dots" - Codes 176 an 181 are "regular SPACE" (empty glyph). Footnotes 1. There is indeed two shapes which represent the braille dot: the "quarter of a square" and the "quarter of a cross". It's because a cross may be considered as an "inverted square" because the square corners are merged in the center. 2. That's why the SPACE glyph is only made of decorative/meaningless glyph parts (i.e. no "QB dots"). 3. For other fonts with border glyphs, please take a look at my other "decorative Braille fonts" (GoBraille, HexBraille, KernigBraille, StackBraille, MaBraille, DiamondBraille, LorraineBraille). 4. LOVE/HATE knuckle tatoos are inspired by the anthology scene from "The Night of the Hunter" movie (Charles Laughton 1955), it also appearead in "Do The Right Thing" movie (Spike Lee 1989). Disclaimer This font is not appropriate and not meant to print text documents in Braille for the blind readers audience.

In 1955 the Czech State Department of Culture, which was then in charge of all the publishing houses, organised a competition amongst printing houses and generally all book businesses for the design of a newspaper typeface. The motivation for this contest was obvious: the situation in the printing presses was appalling, with very little quality fonts existing and financial resources being too scarce to permit the purchase of type abroad. The conditions to be met by the typeface were strictly defined, and far more constrained than the ones applied to regular typefaces designed for books. A number of parameters needed to be considered, including the pressure of the printing presses and the quality of the thin newspaper ink that would have smothered any delicate strokes. Rough drafts of type designs for the competition were submitted by Vratislav Hejzl, Stanislav Marso, Frantisek Novak, Frantisek Panek, Jiri Petr, Jindrich Posekany, and the team of Stanislav Duda, Karel Misek and Josef Tyfa. The committee published its comments and corrections of the designs, and asked the designers to draw the final drafts. The winner was unambiguous — the members of the committee unanimously agreed to award Stanislav Marso’s design the first prize. His typeface was cast by Grafotechna (a state-owned enterprise) for setting with line-composing machines and also in larger sizes for hand-setting. Regular, bold, and bold condensed cuts were produced, and the face was named Public. In 2003 we decided to digitise the typeface. Drawings of the regular and italic cuts at the size of approximatively 3,5 cicero (43 pt) were used as templates for scanning. Those originals covered the complete set of caps except for the U, the lowercase, numerals, and sloped ampersand. The bold and condensed bold cuts were found in an original specimen book of the Rude Pravo newspaper printing press. These specimens included a dot, acute, colon, semicolon, hyphens, exclamation and question marks, asterisk, parentheses, square brackets, cross, section sign, and ampersand. After the regular cut was drafted, we began to modify it. All the uppercase letters were fine-tuned, the crossbar of the A was raised, E, F, and H were narrowed, L and R were significantly broadened, and the angle of the leg and arm of the K were adjusted. The vertex of the M now rests on the baseline, making the glyph broader. The apex of the N is narrower, resulting in a more regular glyph. The tail of Q was made more decorative; the uppercase S lost its implied serifs. The lowercase ascenders and descenders were slightly extended. Corrections on the lower case a were more significant, its waist being lowered in order to improve its colour and light. The top of the f was redrawn, the loop of lowercase g now has a squarer character. The diagonals of the lowercase k were harmonised with the uppercase K. The t has a more open and longer terminal, and the tail of the y matches its overall construction. Numerals are generally better proportioned. Italics have been thoroughly redrawn, and in general their slope is lessened by approximatively 2–3 degrees. The italic upper case is more consistent with the regular cut. Unlike the original, the tail of the K is not curved, and the Z is not calligraphic. The italic lower case is even further removed from the original. This concerns specifically the bottom finials of the c and e, the top of the f, the descender of the j, the serif of the k, a heavier ear on the r, a more open t, a broader v and w, a different x, and, again, a non-calligraphic z. Originally the bold cut conformed even more to the superellipse shape than the regular one, since all the glyphs had to be fitted to the same width. We have redrawn the bold cut to provide a better match with the regular. This means its shapes have become generally broader, also noticeably darker. Medium and Semibold weights were also interpolated, with a colour similar to the original bold cut. The condensed variants’ width is 85 percent of the original. The design of the Bold Condensed weights was optimised for the setting of headlines, while the lighter ones are suited for normal condensed settings. All the OpenType fonts include small caps, numerals, fractions, ligatures, and expert glyphs, conforming to the Suitcase Standard set. Over half a century of consistent quality ensures perfect legibility even in adverse printing conditions and on poor quality paper. RePublic is an exquisite newspaper and magazine type, which is equally well suited as a contemporary book face.

In March 2011, the Society of Typographic Aficionados began organizing a collaborative project that would unite the typographic and design communities. The goal of Font Aid V: Made for Japan was to raise funds to expedite relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Nearly 300 contributors from 45 countries sent in over 500 glyphs in a single week. Behind the scenes, volunteers Neil Summerour, Silas Dilworth, Delve Withrington, and Grant Hutchinson were up to their elbows in Adobe Illustrator and Fontlab assembling the typeface. The sheer number of submissions coupled with the complexity of some of the designs caused unforeseen delays in completing the typeface. The team not only managed the immense influx of submissions, it also had several technical hurdles and multiple content reviews to mitigate before the final font could be produced. Several months after the project was initiated, Font Aid V: Made for Japan was finally ready for distribution. With the help of Sogo Japan, all proceeds from sales of this typeface will be delivered directly to organizations in Japan, such as Second Hand and AMDA International (Association of Medical Doctors of Asia). Sogo Japan strives to help circumvent regular international charity channels and the inefficiencies associated with them. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped us spread the word about the Font Aid V: Made for Japan project. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the following individuals and groups for their participation and involvement: Jonathan Abbott, Rui Abreu, Frank Adebiaye, Tim Ahrens, Anonymous, Eero Antturi, Leonardo Aranda, Hector Carrillo Aspano, Danielle Atnip, Alejandro Cabrera Avila, Christophe Badani, Joanne Gyo Young Bae, Ben Balvanz, Cynthia Bataille, Priyanka Batra, Donald Beekman, Hannes Beer, David Berlow, Kevin Beronilla, Fabian Bertschinger, Nicole Bittner, Bart Blubaugh, Dathan Boardman, Andrew Boardman, Joel Vilas Boas, Konstantin Boldovskiy, Scott Boms, Michael Browers, Vickie Burns, Matt Burvill, Daniele Capo, Seymour Caprice, Mauro Caramella, Matevž Čas, Eli Castellanos, Sarah Castillo, Tom Censani, Pinar Ceyhan, Ivette Chacon, Hin-Ching Chan, Sarah Charalambides, Karen Charatan, Sinde Cheung, Todd Childers, Justin Chodzko, Felipe Coca, Antonio Coelho, Jefferson Cortinove, Alan Lima Coutinho, Nick Cox, Nick Curtis, Girish Dalvi, Christopher DeCaro, Thomas C Dempsey, Matt Desmond, Chank Diesel, Anum Durvesh, Suzie Eland, Engy Elboreini, Craig Eliason, Emi Eliason, James Elliott, Grace Engels, Exljbris, Hillary Fayle, Carol Fillip, Jeff Fisher, Scott Fisk, John Foley, Stuart Ford, Mathias Forslund, Brock French, Anina Frischknecht, Eric Frisino, Chiyo Fujimori, Kaela Gallo, Ayesha Garrett, Harald Geisler, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Adriana Esteve González, Richard Gregory, James Grieshaber, Grupoingenio, Kemie Guaida, Carlos Fabián Camargo Guerrero, Rachel Han, Erin Harris, Stefan Hattenbach, Magnus Hearn, Marissa Heiken, Georg Herold-Wildfellner, Jamie Homer, Ed Hoskin, Dav[id Hubner], Jonathan Hughes, Rian Hughes, Grant Hutchinson, Xerxes Irani, Masayuki Izumi, Jan Janeček, Hyun Kyung Jang, Julien Janiszewski, Dušan Jelesijevic, Cal Jepps, Meghan Jossick, Evamaria Judkins, July Twenty Fourth, Erica Jung, William K, Claes Källarsson, Kapitza, Asutosh Kar, Arno Kathollnig, Sami Kaunisvirta, Hajime Kawakami, Scott Kaye, Richard Kegler, Anna Keroullé, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Lara Assouad Khoury, Ilona Kincses, Becky King, Sean King, Megan Kirby, Max Kisman, Keith Kitz, Romy Klessen, Akira Kobayashi, Kokin, Kozyndan & Silas Dilworth, Atushi Kunimune, Andreas Kuschner, John Langdon, Ray Larabie, Jess Latham, Kelly D Lawrence, Matic Leban, Chien-Hao Lee, Bryan Levay, Enrico Limcaco, Andreas Lindholm, Andrew Loschiavo, Chris Lozos, Ian Lynam, John Lyttle, Gustavo Machado, Jonathan Mak, Ricardo Marcin, Jeannie Mecorney, Steve Mehallo, Cristina Melo, Martin Mendelsberg, The Midnight Umbrella Studio, Goro Mihok, Ojasvi Mohanty, Ahmed Mohtadi, Alixe Monteil, Veronica Monterosso, Dani Montesinos, Masanobu Moriyama, Misa Moriyama, Pedro Moura, John Moy Jr, Marc Marius Mueller, Shoko Mugikura, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Diane Myers, John Nahmias, Yoshihisa Nakai, Hiroshi Nakayama, Reiko Nara, Nathoo, Titus Nemeth, Nathanael Ng, Ngoc Ngo, Antoninus Niemiec, James Ockelford, Kunihiko Okano, Naotatsu Okuda, Toshi Omagari, Onikeiji, Ozlem Ozkal, Jason Pagura, Hrant Papazian, Brian Jongseong Park, John Passafiume, Patrick Griffin, Alejandro Paul, Vian Peanu, Dylan Pech, Rebecca Penmore, Peter Brugger, Jean François Porchez, Carolyn Porter, Andrew Pothecary, James Puckett, Rachel Hernández Pumarejo, James Random, Liam Roberts, Tom Rogers, David Jonathan Ross, Sumio Sakai, Sana, Stuart Sandler, Rafael Saraiva, Riccardo Sartori, Ai Sasaki, Yee Wen Sat, Agnes Schlenke, Giovanna Scolaro, Roland Scriver, Alessandro Segalini, Shawn Semmes, Jane Sheppard, Josh Sherwood, Paulo Silva, Mark Simonson, Luis Siquot, Greg Smith, Owen Song, James L. Stirling, Nina Stössinger, Tanya Turipamwe Stroh, Kevin Strzelczyk, Neil Summerour, Superfried, Shiho Takahashi, Shuji Takahashi, Yusuke Takeda, Naoyuki Takeshita, Bruno Tenan, Chung-Deh Tien, Tom, Ryoichi Tsunekawa, Alex Tye, Matthew Tyndall, TypoVar, Virginia Valdez, Beatriz Valerio, Tom Varisco, Brayden Varr, Catarina Vaz, Andy Veale, Yvette Claudia Velez, Marie-Anne Verougstraete, Abbie Vickress, Ray Villarreal, Pat Vining, Courtney Waite, Hoyle Wang, Viola Wang, Jim Ward, Grace Watling, Terrance Weinzierl, Robert Weiss, Stuart Weston, Kevin Wijaya, Dave Williams, Beau Williamson, Delve Withrington, Katherine Wood, Neil Woodyatt, Jesvin Yeo, Yokokaku, Kazuhi Yoshikawa, YouWorkForThem, Matt Yow, Charlton Yu, Yuriko, Ron Za, Jayson Zaleski, Víctor Zúñiga

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul