Dave Crossland Fontforge

In Dave Crosslands crafting type workshop he uses the fontforge free software application to construct and create new and user friendly fonts.

Moving away from using adobe softwares who are manipulative and controlling, Dave Crossland urged us to use free softwares like inkscape and fontforge as it gives the users more control. With using the user friendly softwares like inkscape and fontforge, we do not necessarily need and experience on crafting fonts. We just need the basics.

During the workshop we were asked to sketch our ideal font and experiment and explore with Font forge. Once we have calibrated/designed and finished our fonts we have then the option to post it online or use it freely as we may.

By putting together curve points and corner points, my fonts slowly takes its form. For doing this I look at the sketch of my ideal font and its just basically, using font forge to imitate that sketch.

This window shows the collection of characters you have edited. You simply just double click each of the designated boxes and start editing and repeating the process I went through (above).

After going through the long and patient process of editing the characters, you can then further recalibrate each letter. You can now edit the spacing between each letter and the spacing for each sentence. Once your happy with your characters you can then save them and upload them.

Richard Stallman the founder of GNU is a Free software activist who believes that free softwares are the future of the creative culture.

During his talks Richard Stallman often describes laws, corporation and softwares out there today to be malicious. They harm society with their advertising and they impose to be "free" even though they do the entire opposite. Softwares out there today often 'limits' users on what they can do. Stallman also believes that these softwares are used by the government to spy on people. He often quoted, George Orwell's novel "1984" where he believes that "Big Brother" as the government uses phones and other softwares as platform for spying and surveillance.

As a past career of hacking who expertise in coding, he ought to believe that collaborative work and producing softwares that everyone can use freely without bugs and spies, can help push our creative richness further forward in the future. Maybe we might even get better as a economy.

Who is Dave Crossland?

Why do they do Type Workshops?

Dave Crossland is a Type Designer. He graduated at Ravensbourne University and also did a MA course in Typography at University of Reading. He had success in typography design by designing the typeface for 'Gnome3' creating the 'Cantarell typeface'. Dave Crossland is very intrigued with creating type, one day he told his professor that he is keen on designing his own type and his professors ridiculed him about his idea. He was told that it was very hard and he should not do it, and so that is why Dave did it. In the past have always used Adobe softwares with his projects, until one day he found himself limited and belittled by the very own software he uses. So he discovered Richard Stallman and the 'Free software movement'. Moving from there he became a type instructor and started working with crafting type workshops, using free softwares like Fontforge and Inkscape.

Founder of the "Free Software" movement

In the beginning of the workshop Dave asked us to sketch our ideal Font. Keeping in mind the properties of a font Dave shared some technique that can help us develop our designed fonts. Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proportion (C.R.A.P)