- Specimen book for Buddy August 24, 2010
- New release! Buddy: the sans companion to Contenu August 24, 2010
- Classes mess up Opentype Glyph generation August 9, 2010
- A history of the alphabet August 9, 2010
- Going after the look of old fonts? Not likely August 7, 2010
This is an excerpt from my new book, “Finding the Power to Believe”.
Philippians Verse 2:12
“Therefore, as you have always obeyed, not only when I was there but also now that I am not, work out your salvation in deep reverence and careful caution” [MVP]
This is serious stuff. You need to be on guard, watching and cooperating with the Lord. It is a work—it doesn’t just happen magically overnight. It will take you the rest of your time here on the planet.
One of the major things you need to understand is that your salvation is a process. While it is true that people who accept Jesus on their death bed will make it to heaven. It is equally true that they will make it by the skin of their teeth and have no rewards built up.
Now these rewards are not something we earn. They are something we allow Jesus to do in us. Nevertheless they are real. Jesus explained this in the parable of the talents (among other places). You know the story. A man went on a trip (like the one Jesus is on now, seated at the right hand of the Father waiting for the time to bring us home with Him). Before he left, he gave each of his servants different talents.
This is like what we have been given when we are born.
We all have different talents. And we are all expected to do something with those talents. When the master came back he demanded an accounting.
The man with many talents had doubled his wealth. The master praised him and said, “you have been faithful in much and I will put you in charge of many things.
The slave who had been given few was told, “You Ave been faithful in few things. I will put you in charge of many things.” In other words, this slave had few talents, but he got the same reward as the slave with many talents. The goal was not how much wealth you acquire, but how faithful you were to be a good steward of what you were given.
However, for the slave with very few talents, who became terrified of the master and buried his talent (seemingly so he wouldn’t loose it) incurred the wrath of the master. He was told that just putting it in the bank to earn interest would have been acceptable.
But because he was too afraid to do anything and showed his lack of trust in the master (no faith), the following was told to him. Matthew 25: 28–30
“Then the master ordered, ‘Take the talent from this servant, and give it to the one with the ten talents. To those who are faithful in what they are given (db: whether they are given a little or a lot), even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away. Now throw this useless slave into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” [MVP]
It certainly looks like this is serious. Hiding your talents in fear—not working on your salvation—never doing what is necessary to grow in wisdom and stature in the Lord is an attitude showing lack of faith and can forfeit your salvation. I certainly do not want to be labeled a useless servant tossed out of the master’s household. Of course, this is a radical interpretation on my part. But how else can we read this? Working out your salvation is a serious and fearful (reverent) thing.
Announcing this all over
You may have seen this already, but it is a major piece of work and probably my most mature and sophisticated set of font designs yet. I finally broke down and spaced them for body copy—so they will work well at text sizes [from 9-point to 12-point] without the need to fiddle with the spacing. The design is a contemporary take on oldstyle serif typefaces using Jenson as the mask. The roots of this design go back to Minister which Monotype says has Garalde influence.
It is very conservative for me. I even went to a small bowl on the lowercase a. What’s the world coming to?
One of the interesting things about the new paradigm of publishing is the lack of exclusivity. As I publish works for Radiqx and clients, I am continually struck by how many places I normally release things. My norm now is to start with Lulu, then do a Createspace version, then make an html version for Kindle, then a Word version for Smashwords, an ePUB version on Lulu for iPad, a PDF of one of the versions for Scribd, and others yet to be discovered.
Part of this is to see what sells and who checks it out, and what action develops. This is all in flux as far as I can see. So far, Amazon are doing the best [both CreateSpace, and Kindle], closely followed by Lulu—but these results are changing weekly. As far as traffic is concerned, Scribd seems to do the best. But, Smashwords has more people checking out samples. It is a real interesting mix. As far as I am concerned, it is much more interesting than my old relationships with a giant publisher back East somewhere.
It takes constant redesigning
This is where InDesign and the Creative Suite 5 in general, really shine. InDesign CS5 has really helped out the workflow. Some sites require separate insides and covers (Lulu & CreateSpace), some require HTML (Kindle), some require ePUB (iPad), some require Word (Smashwords), some work best with PDF (Scribd). They all take specialized designs. However, with layout adjustment turned on and a complete set of styles (paragraph and character) set up, all of this goes relatively quickly.
Of course, “they” all say you must get into the code. But you should know of my code challenge by now. If it requires code [beyond HTML and CSS], I’m not going to do it. My hope (and constant feature request) is that some app in CS6 will enable me to drop the need to be constantly playing with HTML and CSS also. Already, I am using Dreamweaver CS5′s CSS dialog boxes to edit my CSS—even for my WordPress templates.
It’s a brave new world
I’m really having fun learning to work in this new world. I’m gradually finding friends and sources of help. Liz Castro and Joel Friedlander regularly offer good advice on their blogs, for example. It’s really going to be interesting to see where it all goes from here.
Hackberry Font Foundry has released three fonts since the first of the year. They’ve all had a good response, and they’re all on sale until the early April.
Acadami is working well as a book font and on sale until April 2 for $9. It’s up to 38 on the Starlets list of the old site, and 58th on the hot new fonts list on the new site.
Cutlass is just fun and up to 26 on the Starlets list of the old site, and 68th on the hot new fonts list on the new site. It’s on sale until April 16 for $9.
Chunkie is just released today and it goes on sale from tomorrow until early May.
All available on Myfonts.
Practical Font Design: Parts #1-3 Proof by David Bergsland (Book) in Arts & Photography.
We just published a beta proof of the first three parts of the upcoming book called, “Practical Font Design”. It’s a guide to using FontLab to make fonts for yourself as a graphic designer who loves type.
It will also be used as a sourcebook for apprentices of Hackberry Fonts.
Their hope is that by providing the proof at the heavily discounted price of $11.50 for the perfect bound version and $5 for the downloadable version, you will buy the proof to use, and send in typos and suggestions for the completion of the book. people who participate in the proofing will receive a free copy of the downloadable version when it is finally published.