Dr. Jürgen Willrodt URW++ Design & Development GmbH Play (68min) Download: FLV | MOV | OGV | MP3

This presentation will summarize the status of OpenType support in different applications and on different platforms. It will give an overview of the OT Layout features support, the existing bugs, problems and shortcomings related to OpenType fonts.

Dr. Jürgen Willrodt studied Physics and Mathematics and got a PhD in theoretical particle physics in 1976. Jürgen joined URW Software & Type GmbH in 1983 as a software developer. His first major development project was the porting of the IKARUS font production system from DEC to Sun Unix. He has been the main developer of the IKARUS system since 1985, developing interpolation, auto-tracing and hinting algorithms as well as special algorithms for Kanji separation. Since 1995 Jürgen is managing director at URW++ Design & Development GmbH and responsible for font production and font tools development, amongst which IKARUS and DTL FontMaster.

Frank E. Blokland Dutch Type Library Play (52min) Download: FLV | MOV | OGV | MP3

Not only font production processes can be automated (with DTL FontMaster); to a certain extend also the type design process can be done by software itself. Blokland will give an introduction on the (possible) automation of type design processes and a presentation of the most recent version of the DTL LetterModeller application.

This presentation is partly based on the PhD research on Harmonic Systems in the Latin Script, which the speaker is currently doing at Leiden University.
 
Frank E. Blokland is type designer (of, amongst others, DTL Documenta and DTL Haarlemmer), Senior Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague since 1987 and Professor at the Plantin Society in Antwerp since 1995. Frank founded the Dutch Type Library in 1990. A couple of years later he initiated and supervised the development of DTL FontMaster, a set of tools for the professional font production, developed together with URW++ Design & Development GmbH.

Currently Frank is doing a PhD study at Leiden University, in which harmonic systems in type and music and the automation of type design processes play a central role.