Jan Schmoeger, Paragraph: « The sans-serif typeface Frutiger was everywhere in 1980. In the late eighties it was replaced by Stone Sans, then Myriad came along in 1992. In 2008 I attempted to rejuvenate these great typefaces. I analysed the proportions and spacing of Frutiger and used the principles as a base for my own typeface, Mentone. There were only a very few kerning pairs in the original, so I thought it will be fine if I’ll do the same. By the time I added the Central European, Baltic and Turkish characters, I was way out of my depth. Eight fonts in the family, each requiring individual spacing and kerning adjustments, would have added months of work to the task. Then Igino Marini and iKern came to the rescue: the number of kerning pairs went up tenfold (from 135 to 1345), the spacing and kerning from bumpy/simplified to smooth/comprehensive. Now, I cannot imagine designing new typefaces any other way.»
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I'm Igino Marini. I was born in 1964. I attended the high school specializing in classical studies: so before handling the polytonic greek I learned to translate it! Then I graduated in Civil Engineering. In 2000 I became more involved in typography digitizing the Fell Types. Realizing that I would have never wanted to devote myself to the their letterfitting I started since 2002 to deal with spacing and kerning in an engineered way. That's how the iKern project started. In 2010, after a career in building and industrial engineering, I finally became a full-time type engineer. I abandoned columns and beams, trajectories of robots or energy flows; but I never ceased to translate reality into numbers.
address:
via Matteotti, 25
60027 Osimo (AN)
ITALIA
p.I. (V.A.T.#):
02426730426
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