Bela­fonte was only a student’s attempt to give a second breath to one of the most strange and amu­sing type­faces desi­gned by Roger Excof­fon, Calypso. Some have tried revi­vals, some­times wan­ting to be accu­rate, but never in a convin­cing way. Per­so­nally, I find the dot­ted grays­cale bears too much of an ending-fifties nos­tal­gia I’m not com­for­table with, that’s why I deci­ded to try and extract the visual spi­rit of the type­face in order to offer some­thing that would be more of an homage than a revi­val. This is what explains the use of ano­ther name.

Spe­ci­men of the Olive foun­dry from which I drew the pri­mary shapes.

The prin­ciple I chose is quite simple. I use ano­ther expres­sion of opti­cal grays­cale that seems less out-of-date aiming to give the type­face a new appea­rance while conser­ving its dyna­mic spe­ci­fi­ci­ties and the vision of volume expres­sed by the let­ter­forms and gra­dients. After some wan­de­ring, I ended up using a gra­dient shape tool, com­mon in Adobe Illus­tra­tor, in order to obtain opti­cal grays­cales that could be easily twea­ked. The final goal was to find a sys­tem that would allow for the crea­tion of a ‘nor­mal’ font file.

Various attempts to ren­der the gra­dients pro­perly in grayscale.

Even­tually, I didn’t find the time (or patience ?) to deve­lop the font seriously, but the basic work having been done and the use of it being pos­sible to a cer­tain extent, I ima­gi­ned relea­sing my wor­king files and the few achie­ve­ments as an open-source bundle for the plea­sure of some friendly nerds. What had stayed in the domi­nion of ima­gi­na­tion now becomes real through the com­pres­sed file I pro­vide today, contai­ning a very basic font and some vec­tor files that will allow enthu­siasts to play around with what I’ve done this far, even modify, expand or improve…

It is to be noted that this crea­tion (ori­gi­nally Calypso) was never meant to be a com­plete type­face, merely a gathe­ring of drop­ped caps or swash let­ters inten­ded for tit­ling uses. This is why I didn’t try to deve­lop a com­plete type­face, as some have tried, for I would consi­der this enter­prise quite absurd. I took the time though, to draw num­bers and an amper­sand, as well as accents (for capi­tals are meant to be accen­ted, yes).

This work is relea­sed under the terms of the Crea­tive Com­mons license allo­wing any com­mer­cial or non-commercial use and any modi­fi­ca­tion as long as the result remains under the terms of the license, i.e. sha­red freely (I might add, free of charge). Men­tio­ning me as the pri­mary author would also be nice, or let me put it this way, the license requires it. This being, I have bet­ter things to do than to sue you if you don’t.

For the record, and for the newly come audience, the name Bela­fonte is a direct refe­rence to Steve Zissou’s ship in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aqua­tic. The ship itself refers to Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s boat, the Calypso. As for the link bet­ween the two names, I leave this riddle to your good sol­ving care, there’s enough info about that on the internet.

[Down­load Belafonte.zip]

Bela­fonte by Loïc San­der is relea­sed under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Crea­tive Com­mons license. Autho­ri­sa­tions excee­ding this license can be dis­cus­sed at this adress: loic (at) aka­lol­lip (dot) com

‡To conlude this post, if you’re inter­es­ted in the work of Roger Excof­fon, I can only recom­mend you read the well-written and richly docu­men­ted book publi­shed by Ypsi­lon Édi­teur in novem­ber 2010, Roger Excof­fon and the Olive foun­dry (the book is bilin­gual, french-english, fore­word by Gerard Unger).

Yes­te­ryear, on the matter:

bel.bir (Bela­fonte birn­baum)
Bela­fonte: encore
Paperk­nack (birth of Belafonte)

The digi­tal ‘revo­lu­tion’, with all the prac­ti­cal bene­fits it brought, mel­ted down some pieces of typo­gra­phic culture and prac­tice that favo­red a stron­ger fee­ling of exper­tise. The punches, that had to be cut at the actual scale of the point-size desi­red for the future font, requi­red a lot of wor­king time, an expert’s eye and a highly trai­ned hand. Cut­ting at the actual size pro­vides the advan­tage of being quite sure (depen­ding on the punchcutter’s abi­lity) that the font is fit for the inten­ded pur­pose, i.e. text, title or even big­ger dis­play type. This type­face qua­lity has vani­shed through the various tech­ni­cal evo­lu­tions even­tually tur­ning into a ghost when pho­to­ty­pe­set­ting, and later digi­tal type­set­ting, were intro­du­ced. We were so ama­zed by the sim­pli­city with which one could freely resize a single let­ter dra­wing that we partly for­got that the ori­gi­nal scale has a great effect on the print qua­lity at a cho­sen size. There have been, and still are, some digi­tal type­faces built on this prin­ciple of defi­ned scale dra­wings — the so-called opti­cal sizes — but this kind of desi­gns, because they require more time and are more constrai­ning to use, have remain mar­gi­nal. To be true, in most cases, desi­gning opti­cal sizes would be too much work for too poor a bene­fit, and one can work without it often enough not to regret the rarity of such products.

At the time of lead type­set­ting, prin­ters had less font point-sizes to choose from, as the models they were foun­ded from had to be cut one by one, whe­reas a com­pu­ter allows  to choose from an theo­re­ti­cal infi­nity of sizes, up to impro­bable and deci­mal point values. Today, naming a point-size other­wise than by its nume­ric value would make lit­tle sense as this value has an infi­nite varia­bi­lity, but in the past, each usual size had its lit­tle name. I found a list of these names (in french) in the Traité de la Typo­gra­phie prin­ted by Henri Four­nier (a pupil of Fir­min Didot) in the 1820s. As this treaty is one of the rea­sons why I star­ted wor­king on a didone, and the lat­ter is the rea­son why I got inter­es­ted in opti­cal sizes, I have set this list anew with the men­tio­ned typeface.

This list brings up ques­tions as some of these equi­va­lences aren’t confir­med on all accounts, nota­bly the ‘Tris­mé­giste’ which stands for the 33 points size in this list although it is gene­rally refer­ring to the 36 points size. Ano­ther incon­sis­tency is visible on the ‘Cicero’ name that usually refers to 12 points, but stands for 11 in this list. I won­de­red if those were mis­takes but it is unli­kely as later edi­tions show the same figures. I’d rather be prone to think these dif­fe­rences rely on the various mea­su­ring sys­tems (Didot, Four­nier, etc.) which where deve­lo­ped few decades before this publi­ca­tion, thus I guess, the irre­gu­la­ri­ties. Any­way, to me this list can more sim­ply serve as a remin­der of the fact that our recent free­dom to set type at any size is not neces­sa­rily bene­fi­cial, and that wor­king on com­po­si­tions with fixed-sizes ratios* can some­times be of inter­est, would it be for the sole plea­sure of exercise.

*I men­tion ‘ratios’ because the various type mea­su­re­ment sys­tems express dis­tinct phy­si­cal sizes for the same nume­ric values.

‡Bela­fonte sleeps quietly in a com­pu­ter dra­wer, wai­ting for an end that could make it use­ful to  someone else than me, but for now, I have other prio­ri­ties. Still, along with neces­sary fel­lows, I took time to go to the wood as win­ter asks, with stri­ped gra­dient dra­wings in my pocket. Those are a very per­fec­tible first trial, enjoi­ning us to make it bet­ter the next time. The glyphs will require some cor­rec­tions to allow for a pro­per prin­ting use. These prints are stam­ped, with the accor­ding stamp ink.

‡Anat.w.i.p, among others.

‡I might have found a pro­per solu­tion to design a font that would pay the right homage to R. Excoffon’s Calypso.

On-going expe­riment.

So Far From Your Wea­pon – The Dead Wea­ther
[Dzr]

‡I’m a vic­tim of librus eter­nus, the syn­drome of the unfi­ni­shed sketch­book, the one that sees the others being star­ted when he has met no end.

‡To put it sim­ply, I have at least three serious (but not too much) typo­gra­phic pro­jects on the go, inclu­ding Fen­gardo obviously. I haven’t the time now to pur­sue them as I’m busy with ‘real’ work (i.e. paid one), which isn’t a bad thing. This being, I still mana­ged to find some time to plant a new idea in my spare hours, the idea of an exer­cise around my inter­est for the twen­tieth century’s adver­ti­se­ment typo­gra­phy, huge and brutal.

‡As biting at any hook of my ins­pi­ra­tions of very une­ven qua­li­ties would be dan­ge­rous for my men­tal health, I chose to limit the exer­cise in time.

‡In doing such, I would fol­low the path of the guy (or girl) who inven­ted the chea­pest pres­su­ri­zed blow­gun ever, made from a scho­lar ink era­ser and the top, trans­pa­rent, part of a ball point pen (to which you had to asso­ciate a brush handle for the pushing action, paper and your saliva for the pro­duc­tion of ammo). The idea was extre­mely simple but very effi­cient, and soon was to serve the class­room cause of maxi­mum disor­der. Loads of secon­dary school fell for it.

‡Far from me the idea of pro­mo­ting disor­der, nor inven­ting any­thing, I’m sim­ply thin­king of these exer­cises as an ephe­me­ral ground for expe­ri­men­ta­tion which might, at occa­sion, pro­duce some­thing useful.

‡The idea is expres­sed, I’m eager to see if it’ll hold.

‡I wrote quite a lot for such a tiny inten­tion. In fact I was sim­ply willing to intro­duce my new typo­gra­phic attempt, simple, fat and capi­tal. It cost about 6 hours this far (over 5 days), and I’m not plan­ning to lend it more than 4 to declare the expe­riment over.

Ok, I must admit.

I drew those let­ters for a neighbour-cursing purpose.