Font Bakery — Dave Crossland
Channel: TypeCon
Date: 2022-06-27

Recorded during TypeCon2018: Xx in Portland, Oregon

Quality assurance of fonts is a constant requirement for font publishers, foundries and type designers. Every foundry has their own set of tools to ensure that the fonts they publish are in a good condition. Font Bakery is a new checking tool that comes with checks for OpenType, UFO, Glyphs and TFont files, at 3 levels: Format specifications, distributor requirements, and custom checks. The project was initiated by Dave Crossland in 2013 to accelerate the onboarding process for Google Fonts. In 2017 Lasse Fister rewrote it into a modern, modular architecture with a web dashboard suitable for both individuals and large distributors. It now has an active community of contributors from foundries around the world. This talk introduces Font Bakery, unpacks the opportunity for designers and foundries to collaborate on font quality assurance, and demonstrates how it improves font production and publishing workflows.