What about this typeface says “open-ness” or “free-as-in-freedom-ness?”

[bjornmeansbear]

And Does that matter?

Also, for the sake of proper F/LOS protocols, are the images we're including in the inspiration folder safe to gather and potentially share/disseminate with others that might come across this repository?

[Lloyd-Braun]

John and I haven't had a chance to talk about this much so John, if I say anything you disagree with or want to add anything please do.

We briefly talked about the idea of designing and mono-spaced typeface but currently (and perhaps never) there isn't a strong concept that connect the design of the letters to "open-ness" of "free as in freedom-ness"

I feel like the only things that will make it open are

1. we're going to use open source software to draw the letterforms
2. all of our progress will be posted on git-hub for others to review (if they want to)
3. once the work is done the finished type will be available for anyone to download/edit.

Does that matter? Good question. For me, not so much.

For your second question, can you elaborate on "safe". Do we need to own the rights to the images to post them here / how could inspiration photos be "unsafe"? Perhaps I am unfamiliar with certain F/LOS protocols.

[johnvetter]

Very good to consider all of this, and I was hoping to start to nail some of these decisions down during this next class. I'm also not rooted to any concept or style, I'm just excited to jump in and start figuring this stuff out.

For the images I uploaded, they are all from sources that offered a free downloadable PDF sample (from the KABK site). I'm assuming that they offer the free pdf samples for people to download and share, but I really am not familiar enough with github etiquette to know if that's okay or not. I can also provide the links if you need them.

Also, everything Lloyd said is how I understood it as well.

I guess to explain my image choices further, I just selected some of my favorite visually experimental typefaces. None of them are mono-spaced, but I like the idea of doing something really strange and unique. I guess 'open source' feels experimental to me, so my mind associated that with unfamiliar and experimental letterforms, if that makes sense. (Potentially sacrificing some legibility could reference the obtuse and unfamiliar nature of open source software?) As far as the mono-spacing goes, I thought that it 1. Referenced code and the programing heavy nature of open source designing, and 2. Would allow us to design it in Font Forge if we can't figure out how to use spacing within it.

[bjornmeansbear]

Remember Free as in price ≠ Free as in freedom

And, this isn't just an open source issue, its a general copyright issue period. Its generally not okay to just grab images and throw them into something else …

• just because images are downloadable from somewhere for free doesn't mean it is okay to redistribute them;
• can the images be credited to where they came from;
• maybe there should be a note that anything in the inspiration folder isn't the font; its reference for where the font has come from?
• maybe its better to just link to those things out on the internet where they lived originally rather than include them in the repository?

Hopefully that is clearer?

[bjornmeansbear]

Re: my aesthetic questions, those aren't important to have answers necessarily, but in general I'd like us all to consider that what something looks like has semiotic value. Our visual choices have meaning. So, are there ways that things look or work or whatever that better convey “freedom to do what you choose with this” or that this is potentially an alternative to “proprietary” fonts???

This is important in that it has a definitive answer; but I just want choices that are made (not just for this class, but everyone's design choices always) to mean something!

[Lloyd-Braun]

I like the idea that we focus more on sharing links to images and type specimens vs. the actual files. If we only have images we could also just hold off on sharing until we get into class (if we stumble across an image and can't figure out where it originally came from)

I agree with your thoughts about our aesthetic choices. We can discuss this further in class when we start defining our goals for this typeface.