Font Collecting

Fonts and More Font Related Information
1

In the thread http://forum.high-logic.com:9080/t/free-funky-font/1914/1 Dave Crosby wrote as follows.

Many collectors have over 300,000 fonts!

I am wondering whether font collectors collect associated items as well.

For example, Linotype produce some rather nice square illustrations to accompany fonts.

For example, if one goes to the following page, searching for Palatino produces a display of five such square illustrations.

http://www.linotype.com/

Moving the mouse pointer over the picture produces a larger display of the same picture.

The pictures can be saved to local storage and thus collected.

Those five illustrations are each 200 pixels by 200 pixels in gif format.

However, searching for Goudy produces some more pictures, yet at least one is not 200 by 200 pixels.

Do font collectors collect such pictures as well as the font files themselves?

Another potential collectible item are Type Trading Cards.

http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/4012/TTC15.htm

http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/TypeTradingCards/index.htm

Do font collectors collect such cards as well as the font files themselves?

While researching this post I happened to notice the rather nice illustration on the following page, so I thought that I would mention it.

http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/HiddenGems/ITCChivalry.htm

I am thinking that the 200 pixel by 200 pixel gif is a nice size for the illustrations.

I am thinking of trying to produce some such illustrations for my own fonts. If people are going to collect them, then that is an additional reason for me to try to produce some.

I am thinking that an electronic collection case could be produced, perhaps as an HTML file, perhaps otherwise, where the 200 pixel by 200 pixel gifs are set out in an array and each picture has a link to the font file. Thus someone using a PC running Windows could look at the display produced by the collection case and clicking on a picture would display the font in fontviewer and thus temporarily install the font for use.

William Overington

25 January 2008

2

No. Collecting (searching for new items) takes too much time in itself and the urge to hoard is satisfied.

If you make symbol fonts, you do look at collections of things (more than 30?), such as coins, pitchers, pictures, song or movie covers, Japanese family crests, printers ornaments, Mayan or Egyptian hieroglyphics, Modern art paintings, Floral designs, Western cowboys and scenes, fantasy butterflies, US Presidents’ portraits and signatures, Australian aborigine art, or whatever. These groups can be turned into just another font with Font Creator.

ps. We don’t look at or use the fonts collected otherwise we’d throw half of them away more than likely.

3

Collectors are a funny bunch. We may be similar, but no two the same.

:OT Most String Collectors have ZERO interest in thread or rope.

:OT Most Stamp Collectors are only interested in a particular country, but will branch out when all else fails.

I guess I fall in that latter branching out group, but only with fonts.
Specifically alphanumeric fonts, but I want them properly Panosed.

Sadly there are only a few tens of thousands in that group so I have to branch out, even make my own, to get my font fix.