Mark van Bronkhorst, MVB Fonts: «Igino handled the spacing and kerning of the Sweet® Sans familiy for me. His iKern service meant that I could focus on design. There was a bit of back-and-forth to get settings just right, a process I found positive, as I could guide how the spacing and kerning were applied. Once the settings were in order, large character sets fell into place quickly. His method applies remarkably consistent sidebearings (not just kerning). Instead of manually applying sidebearings, then kerning by hand for days on end, one gets to a place that’s 90-percent-something “done”, the focus shifted from doing drudgery to making adjustments. I’ve always felt that font metrics could be automated, particularly with fairly regular typefaces. Finally someone has figured out how to get it right. Igino works fast, and I appreciate that his fees are affordable.»

Angus R. Shamal, ARS Type: «Most people who use high quality typefaces in their profession choose them because they know they can rely on them to perform effortlessly and consistently well in the tasks they were designed for. An important factor in building such trust in a typeface, is good letter spacing and kerning.My collaboration with Igino Marini and his iKern system started at the last stages of my redesign of ARS Maquette Pro. Early on I knew this will be a complex project that involves not only over 1200 characters per style, but also many alternates and a Display cuts, which would require different types of spacing — all coexisting within each single style of the family. This proved to be a challenging process to both myself and the iKern system. In order for this to work well, it needed a good grasp of the design and its theories — something that mathematics alone would not achieve. Igino understands this — and thanks to his true professional and hands-on approach in this project, we were able to pull it off in a reasonable amount of time avoiding undesirable compromises. The iKern system excelled as an invaluable and flexible tool that is able to adapt even to the most complex of tasks. Hopefully the results speak for themselves.»

Another is the realization of Sole serif, the new typeface for il Sole 24 Ore, the leading Italian financial daily, that actually debuted on the sunday cultural supplement Domenica. http://www.molotro.com/sole.html .

In photo from left: Dave Crossland, now at the Google Font Directory, come in Urbino to visit Luciano for his http://www.campivisivi.net/titillium/ fame, me, Paolo Mazzetti (among the collaborators for the Sole serif project) and Luciano Perondi (april 2010).

In photo from left: Giò Fuga, me, Michele Patané, Marta Bernstein and Paolo Mazzetti.

Thomas Schostok & Stefan Claudius, Cape Arcona Type Foundry: «We at the Cape have a wonderful life. Half of the day we are lying at the pool and drinking cocktails and the other half we work on typefaces. We love working on fonts, but love cocktails a little bit more. Everyone will understand, that each hour that we could spare of working on spacing and kerning is of great value and can be invested into “action at pool”. Igino’s iKern was the solution to our problem! iKern did a wonderful job and is surly the proof that machines can take on man made work. We love iKern and the professional results it creates. Before iKern we thought of this part of font production as somehow old-fashioned. You see, human mankind shot rockets to faraway planets; probes land on asteroids and came back to earth, but type designers still doing spacing and kerning by hand. For Cape Arcona, iKern is the NASA of kerning.»