artefatica

Liveblogging from the Libre Graphics 2011 meeting in Montreal! Christopher Adams presentation.

Google web fonts — Good place to learn about type on the web. Get a demo via font previewer. Creates code to embed into style sheets.

Traditionally type design very collaborative. Then got more individual. Now going back to more collaborative. Uses launchpad as bug tracker. We can file bugs (e.g. Nate ____, News Cycle).

Open Baskerville. Use github to manage and collaborate. Can view font source code. Can watch modifications in real time. Can fork the font if we want. This was not possible before: make a copy, modify. Check out license to see what is okay. Opening up and demystifying process of creating a font.

OSP Foundry. Some cool fonts. They are also running a git server where you can pull latest files. Get access to source code.

How can we help this movement?

Fabricatorz project: Open Clip Art Library. Idea of doing this for fonts.

Now re-launching….. the OPEN FONT LIBRARY. Yippeeeeee! Version 0.2

You can:

• Load font files
• See language availability/support
• Identify ways to contribute or provide feedback
• Search by license
• Take each font for a test drive
• Check out the wiki (need volunteers to edit content and move it to the guidebook)
• Submit bugs via Launchpad
• Will show version history (inspired by github)

All fonts are available under a free license (SIL Open Font, GNU, CC0), which are embedded in the metadata.

Want to get people to upload and use fonts, join community, get on mailing list, provide feedback.