Nikola Djurek, Typonine: «The font projects we’re involved in become more complex every day. Even if the technological progress is here to help, we’re mainly asked to have ideas and let them become curves and spaces. And then typefaces. The iKern service helped us to make this path an effective and controllable process and we’re satisfied.»

Derek Kim, Network Osaka: «My experience with Igino has been exceptional. I chose his service due to the fact that adjusting metrics and kerning has taken a lot of my time when trying to release typefaces, and with Igino’s assistance, I was able to save a considerable amount of time spent on adjusting kerning pairs. Of course, designers should always be aware that automatic kerning does have its ups and downs. Fine tuning kerning after the automatic values have been set is a critical point during the process. This is one of the reasons why Igino excels at what he does since he directly collaborated with me to create adjustments based upon my feedback with regards to certain kerning pairs. I recommend Igino to any aspiring or professional typographer.»

Lasko Dzurovski, Totem design+print: «My collaboration with Igino started when i found myself overwhelmed with the big volume and short deadline of my most recent project, which included creation of fonts with over 15000 characters. The kerning, personally the most difficult part for me, took me a lot of time and I wouldn’t have done it as perfectly as Igino with the iKern. A little twist in the glass was added when Igino had to deal with all the specific Cyrillic characters which have different kerning features, and he made it all work. iKern will definitely be an important part of my future projects.»

Hannes von Döhren: «The work with Igino was a nice cooperation. I had to kern a 12 font family and in this case I hadn’t a multiple master as a basis. Although you can interpolate some steps it would have been still a huge effort of time to space and kern these family members perfectly. So I decided to give the files to Igino. I think he and his iKern program did a great job.»

Peter Biľak, Typotheque: «Our fonts grew overtime from 200+ glyphs to 2000+ glyphs. This brings a new level of complexity for font development, and it is no longer possible to create by hand thousands of metric data. iKern helped us especially with expansions of character sets.»

Giangiorgio Fuga, Giò Fuga Type: «I’m drawing and then digitizing fonts from many years. The most difficult step, but also the more boring because it takes much time, has always been the control of the metrics and the optical balance of kerning pairs. The advent of OpenType format, with its endless possibilities including the management of several enconding and therefore a much increased number of glyphs, made the kerning production a mammoth task. The various autokern functions already present in Fontographer or FontLab kerning assistance are not able to well and completely operate.
In my last work I found myself designing a custom font in three variables for Yamaha Motor, which included nearly 1200 glyphs each for the presence, besides the Latin alphabet, of Cyrillic and also Extended Greek. A manual optimization of kerning, especially for italic, would have been costly in time and certainly without harmonious and complete results.
Well, Igino’s Ikern “Type Design Service” has proved to be essential for a definitive fine tuning of the font family. I’m going to take advantage of his valuable service for all my fonts I’m upgrading to OpenType version. Thanks Igino!»

Michele Patanè, Cinetype, tutor at the Corso di Alta Formazione in Type Design, POLI.design, Consorzio del Politecnico di Milano: «Font design must regard idea and development, two essential aspects of the design process, both necessary and with different time implications. How many typefaces will never be used because designer don’t have enough time to develop them? We can’t forget how important is spacing and kerning correctly a font, and how much time it requires. In my recent experience with iKern I can say without any rhetoric that this a turning point of the typeface design process. Now we can test different spacing, quickly, for different application or any kind of use dimension; we can save time and be sure that we won’t occur in errors caused by repetitive operations. I believe blindly in eye function as a meter of judgement, but I am sure that my eye need time to understand things and to refresh attention. With iKern now I can pay more attention to the little shades and be sure that everything is going for the best result.
And I’d like to focus again on the design process because I think It is necessary for typeface design to find the right way to produce high quality font at the right price. If we save time we can cut costs increasing quality because we can pass most of the time on designing and testing the font instead of on repetitive jobs that a computer can do better than us.»

Rob Keller, Mota Italic: «Ever since meeting Igino in 2007 and seeing iKern work its magic first hand I have been an impressed fan. iKern’s headache-inducingly-complex algorithms assure consistent and even spacing; and the results are always fine-tuned exactly to the designer requests. Its strength and usefulness comes not only from the fine spacing and kerning it creates for thousands of glyphs, but it is flexible in handling special exceptions. For us, it easily accommodated an intricate system of alternates – integrating the hundreds of substitutions seamlessly while respecting the way they function. This agility, and the fact it is fully customizable, means that iKern can adapt to nearly any set of problems or needs. iKern certainly has our recommendation!»

Patrick Griffin, Canada Type: «Igino Marini’s iKern system trumps every other font metrics method I’ve seen. Its advantage points over other fitting and kerning systems range from exception-aware mathematical modules to speedy global counterspace tweaking precision. It’s one of those things where the fonts you send in are all out of whack, and when you get them back they slap you awake with how much sense they make. And there’s a cherry on top: This great system couldn’t have been developed by a nicer or more accommodating guy. Igino truly is the Walter Tracy of the digital type era. Type designers who have worked with him know for a fact that we are very lucky to have him.»