Fontographer 5 Updated for Modern Systems, Needs
Press Release
Fontlab Ltd. announced the release of Fontographer 5, a brand-new version of the classic font editing application for Mac OS X and Windows.This release is specifically designed for busy desktop publishers who need fast, efficient solutions to font problems.
After more than a decade in limbo, Fontographer, the font editor on which many a budding type designer cut their teeth, has been rereleased by Fontlab Ltd. Fontographer was originally introduced in 1985 and quickly became the star of font editors in the brave new world of digital type design. Type luminaries such as Matthew Carter, Gerard Unger and Sumner Stone used it to create some of the most widely used typefaces today. In 2006, Fontlab Ltd. acquired Fontographer from Macromedia and has developed the new, vastly improved, Fontographer 5.
“We’ve created Fontographer 5 with the designer in mind,” said Ted Harrison, president of Fontlab Ltd. “FOG 5 provides the designer with easy, intuitive and very efficient Bézier drawing tools. It is powered by Fontlab Ltd.’s mature, state-of-the-art font creation technology, packaged in a simple, efficient interface,” Harrison continued.
“Our work on Fontographer 5 was like a restoration of a classic car. We’ve kept the familiar, elegant body that users love, giving it just a subtle facelift. And then, we’ve replaced the old inefficient engine by modern cutting-edge technology. FOG 5 looks smooth and simple, but it rocks hard,” said Adam Twardoch, Fontlab Ltd.’s product and marketing manager.
Twardoch went on to say: “The beauty of Fontographer is that it allows you to concentrate on the creative process of designing a typeface, without being distracted by the technical aspects of font making. FOG users always appreciated the speed, ease and precision in which they could draw Bézier outlines in the product — so we’ve kept the drawing tools and implemented some long-standing feature requests such as a larger zoom level or outline antialiasing. On the other hand, setting technical font parameters such as font naming or linespacing in Fontographer used to be cumbersome and did not consider recent developments such as OpenType — so we’ve redesigned those aspects from scratch with the goal of making them as easy to use as the rest of the product.”
In addition to the previously supported formats such as Type 1, Type 3, Multiple Master and TrueType, Fontographer 5 can now read and generate OpenType fonts in both PostScript (.otf) and TrueType (.ttf) flavors. Combined with greatly improved Unicode compatibility, this makes Fontographer 5 an easy but powerful font editor for the 21st century.
Fonts generated with Fontographer 5 are automatically optimized for the screen using sophisticated “autohinting” algorithms developed by Adobe Systems and Fontlab Ltd. Users can define OpenType Layout features using the Adobe FDK for OpenType syntax, version 2.5.
Harrison explained the relationship between the company’s two major font editing products — Fontographer and FontLab Studio — as follows: “Any designer who can draw Bézier outlines can make a high-quality font using Fontographer. The software will optimize it for you. But if you’re a professional type designer, FontLab Studio gives you the ultimate control over all aspects of the font. With FOG 5’s ability to read and export FontLab VFB files, you can easily move your projects back and forth between both applications.”
Twardoch added: “When it comes to modifying and extending fonts, using Fontographer is more like bringing it to a garage: your font will be taken apart by a skilled mechanic, some things will be fixed, and the font will be assembled back together. The result will be rebuilt and optimized, so it might not be a 100% match to the original. Using FontLab Studio is more like operating with a surgical laser knife: the tool will make minimal changes and won’t touch anything it does not need to. This means that you, the user, need to know what to fix.”
The new, improved Fontographer is available now from Fontlab Ltd. The suggested retail price is US$399. Upgrade for version 4.7 users is US$149 and for version 3.x and 4.1 users is US$199. Free demo versions are available. Please browse to the Fontographer web page for details.
