A similar idea, but executed in an even more interesting way can be found in the typeface Priori Acute, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook and released by Emigré in 2010. I urge you to check it out: http://www.virusfonts.com/fonts/priori-acute
And for additional information, he does not have the ability to make that restriction (in the US).
Typefaces can not be copyrighted. (The actual font file can be, but not the shape of the letters.)
This is a slightly edge case since the letters have considerably more art to them than the typical letter, but they are still letters, and he has no legal ability to restrict what people do with how they look.
If calligraphy can not be copyrighted (and it can not), then this can't be either. So his license does not have any force of law behind it.
Well, the actual font files themselves are copyrighted, and can be distributed under whatever license he wants. It's just the shapes that are not. So you can't take the font files, add or tweak a letter, and redistribute them. But you can go through, manually trace each letter, add or tweak some, and distribute that.
I suspect that most people who would want to create a derivative work would want to reuse the existing files. Manually re-creating a font is quite a bit of work. Finding just the right control points to get the curves perfect is tough. And no, you can't just dump the control points out of the original file; that would be creating a derivative work.
Edit to add: And actually, I believe that the copyright notice on that page is for that sample, displaying how the font is constructed. This is something that is copyrightable. The actual font file doesn't seem to have been released.
What does this mean about fonts like Helvetica? Are they typically protected by design patents? If not, could someone take a bitmap screenshot of Helvetica, product a font from it, and distribute that font?
To me, many of them are not what I would call impossible. Looking them over I think I could recreate many of them in a 3D program easily enough. The only ones that fit that name seem to be the ones with a horizontal element connecting two vertical elements. Even then many of those where the horizontal is on the bottom or top, like T, U, V, W, seem to work. I wouldn't call this a collection of "impossible" letters but a nice typeface inspired by an impossible object, just like it says next to the name.
I think you could make an object like that, but you'd need to take a rectangular prism and bend it - the top and bottom of the I look like they are receding from you.
Frustro, sounds like a lot of the fonts on blogs and websites designed by people who only test on Macbooks these days. I wish people focused less on how pretty their custom font was and more on its readability.
Right on! ... Quote: The man who invented the Macintosh and misnamed what should be the “typefaces” menu the “fonts” menu. He never forgave himself for his incorrect usage of English. ~ Aza Rasking (source: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/my-father-final-gift/)
Typeface design is as much art as it is anything else, and this is firmly in the art camp and not concerned primarily with legibility (kinda like an issue of Raygun). I like it, it made me smile.
I think the others who replied to this are missing the point -- he's complaining about the number of sites with fonts that look blurry, jagged, or just plain hideous on many text rendering engines (especially, but by no means limited to, Windows).
One could argue this is Microsoft's fault, and there's probably some credence to that, but it's kind of beside the point. Far too many sites seem to have been designed on OS X and not tested anywhere else, and it's an obnoxious, lazy, and frankly elitist practice that needs to end.
Another related syndrome are sites designed on professional-grade monitors, with no thought given to how they're going to look on the other 95% of screens. This kind of shit is like engineering a car in California and just assuming it will work well in February in Montreal.
Not having pretty font rendering must be so hard on the poor Windows minority, suffering under the stifling oppression of the Mac OS majority... Oh wait...
Seriously, if you want pretty font rendering, complain to Microsoft. The problem isn't that the sites are designed on Mac OS, it's just that Windows' font rendering sucks. It's horrific. We can't fix that. What is it you want us to do, put all text in images? That's been the traditional response to your platform's horrific font rendering.
Pragmatically-speaking, image rendering or choosing another font are the only way your site is going to look good on a Windows (or other, non-OSX) machine. You're correct in that the font-rendering used on Windows machines is geared toward different goals that that on Macs, but that fact doesn't make the web page look any better to the user using a PC.
And they're going to blame you for using a custom font, not Microsoft.
I don't understand the point of your sarcasm in the first line. The idea is that Mac users are overrepresented in the web-designer community vs. the user community. So in essence, there exist a significant number of websites that appear to have never been tested in non-OSX browsers, for it they were, it would be apparent to the designer that they look like shit in those environments.
The font rendering dysfunction on Windows is not limited to "custom" fonts, the fonts Microsoft includes with Windows look just as awful. If you think they look good, I submit that you're probably suffering from a bad case of Stockholm syndrome.
The point of my sarcasm is that Mac users were mocked for years by the Windows crowd when they complained about major compatibility problems and were entirely ignored by most of the tech industry.
I can't help but revel in the poetic justice, and note with great hostility the dichotomy. We're now called "obnoxious", "lazy", and "elitist" because we don't waste time working around Microsoft's dysfunction just so things that work perfectly will look exactly as Windows users wish they would.
I think properly-hinted fonts look better (or at least more readable) than OS X, and I did even when I used a MacBook as my primary machine from 2007-2010. It's not Stockholm syndrome, it's a different preference.
But to your "poetic justice" point, is this about revenge for perceived injustices, or about providing the best experience for users? Because the fact is that most sites are overwhelmingly viewed by Windows users. When it comes to professional work, you can't be making decisions with huge UX implications out of spite. Most people haven't even heard of ClearType, and shouldn't be caught in the crossfire of your bizarre crusade against it.
If you're unknowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you're not testing, you're (at best) lazy and unprofessional. If you're knowingly using fonts that look like shit in Windows because you harbor a decade-old grudge, you're an childish asshole who should be out of work.
You can't have it both ways -- either the quality of font rendering is a matter of preference, or we're "childish assholes" because we refuse to meet some objective standard. Which is it? And if it's the latter, where can I find this objective standard?
My point of contention isn't which style of rendering you or I prefer, it's whether or not you're justified in ignoring (if not intentionally sabotaging) the UX of the vast majority of users because of said preference.
I never claimed there was any objective standard -- you did.
Elijah Madden: I hope there's a fixed-width version so I can use it for coding.