Three Decades of “Getting Better” — David Lemon
Channel: TypeCon
Date: 2022-07-01

Recorded during TypeCon2014: Capitolized in Washington, DC

Thirty years ago Adobe introduced the first scalable fonts normal people could buy and use, helping to launch the “desktop publishing revolution” and transforming the world of font development. The first “PostScript” fonts offered important new capabilities, but also had many technical and aesthetic problems. Over the years Adobe has kept trying to find ways to do better, to help advance the accompanying technology and keep improving the fonts people use. Naturally each step forward presented its own problems and learning curve, which have kept things interesting. David Lemon will look back at three decades of issues and solutions, exploring incidents in the evolution of font formats, approaches to resolution limits, non-Latin challenges, usability, and accessibility.