Google Web Fonts is proud to announce a new funding experiment, using Kickstarter - a popular way to fund creative projects.
Each month there are many typeface designs proposed to our team for publication and financial support. But we can’t support everything! Even with the best quality proposals, it can be hard to decide about those that are quite similar to ones already published. Really the best judge of which web fonts you want to use is you!
So we invited the designers of three recent proposals to try out Kickstarter and see how it works for font projects. There are some fun rewards for pledging a contribution so click through to see the details!
First is Marcello Magalhaes’ Folk, which transforms the vernacular lettering of Sao Paulo into a font. Already popular as web font, it has been used by The Independent Film Channel and Mozilla - but it only includes an uppercase set of glyphs, and not all the symbols and accents that Google Web Fonts requires. For this project, Marcello will complete the font to the Basic Latin character set, and has designed a poster to go with the new release.
Fast Brush Script is the working name for a font by Pablo Impallari. Pablo's first font, Lobster, is one of the most popular Google Web Fonts, having been served over 2 billion times.
Pablo is offering a very unusual reward - choosing the name! Normally the name of a font is sacred to the designer, but Pablo is opening up the opportunity for corporate patronage of his work. The development name 'Fast Brush Script' reflects the core concept of the typeface. This font is currently in an early development stage with the lowercase letters now fully prototyped, as you can see above, and you can download the current develop version from the Kickstarter project page.
Montserrat is an extremely high quality sans serif text typeface by Julieta Ulanovsky. Advancing substantially during her studies at the prestigious University of Buenos Aires' Masters degree in Typeface Design, the design revives the historical type of the Montserrat neighbourhood where Julieta lives and works.
This genre of type has been a popular trend in recent years and this typeface in particular stands out with its excellent quality. Setting it apart are the set of alternative caps, which add a little fun to a very functional text typeface.
The Google Web Fonts team has already contributed directly to these Kickstarter projects, and we hope you will also become a backer for all three projects as well - let's hope the type designers will be paid far beyond their minimum funding goals!
Update: When fonts are made available in Google Web Fonts, all their source files are also available from the 'Google Font Directory' Google Code Project in a Mercurial version control system, under a free, libre and open source license - typically the SIL Open Font License.
Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts
Each month there are many typeface designs proposed to our team for publication and financial support. But we can’t support everything! Even with the best quality proposals, it can be hard to decide about those that are quite similar to ones already published. Really the best judge of which web fonts you want to use is you!
So we invited the designers of three recent proposals to try out Kickstarter and see how it works for font projects. There are some fun rewards for pledging a contribution so click through to see the details!
Folk
First is Marcello Magalhaes’ Folk, which transforms the vernacular lettering of Sao Paulo into a font. Already popular as web font, it has been used by The Independent Film Channel and Mozilla - but it only includes an uppercase set of glyphs, and not all the symbols and accents that Google Web Fonts requires. For this project, Marcello will complete the font to the Basic Latin character set, and has designed a poster to go with the new release.
Fast Brush Script
Fast Brush Script is the working name for a font by Pablo Impallari. Pablo's first font, Lobster, is one of the most popular Google Web Fonts, having been served over 2 billion times.
Pablo is offering a very unusual reward - choosing the name! Normally the name of a font is sacred to the designer, but Pablo is opening up the opportunity for corporate patronage of his work. The development name 'Fast Brush Script' reflects the core concept of the typeface. This font is currently in an early development stage with the lowercase letters now fully prototyped, as you can see above, and you can download the current develop version from the Kickstarter project page.
Montserrat
Montserrat is an extremely high quality sans serif text typeface by Julieta Ulanovsky. Advancing substantially during her studies at the prestigious University of Buenos Aires' Masters degree in Typeface Design, the design revives the historical type of the Montserrat neighbourhood where Julieta lives and works.
This genre of type has been a popular trend in recent years and this typeface in particular stands out with its excellent quality. Setting it apart are the set of alternative caps, which add a little fun to a very functional text typeface.
The Google Web Fonts team has already contributed directly to these Kickstarter projects, and we hope you will also become a backer for all three projects as well - let's hope the type designers will be paid far beyond their minimum funding goals!
Update: When fonts are made available in Google Web Fonts, all their source files are also available from the 'Google Font Directory' Google Code Project in a Mercurial version control system, under a free, libre and open source license - typically the SIL Open Font License.
Posted by Dave Crossland, Font Consultant, Google Web Fonts
