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.

The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.