
One man's obsession with rediscovering the Doves typeface - tankenmate
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-31534032
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lindig
The Doves Type font can be seen at this site [http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-
type/](http://www.typespec.co.uk/doves-type/), which als tells the story how
it was recovered.

~~~
vortico
Why doesn't BBC have even a single link to the project page? Do they assume
nobody actually cares about the news they read on their website? The entire
point of the WWW is to make a network of information with hyperlinks
connecting them.

~~~
Zikes
I find a lot of online news publications still write as though they're dealing
with print.

NYT has made huge strides with this, greatly increasing the amount of
visualization and interactivity in their articles.

~~~
Vexs
Some bloomberg articles are downright gorgeous to look at, this brilliant
minimalist gradient design.

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evolve2k
If you enjoyed reading about the quirky history of different typefaces, like
this one, I can reccomend the book 'Just My Type' by Simon Garfield. Each
chapter introduces a bit quirky of history of a type face designer along with
details of the type they cremated and what it's good for.

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1592407463](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1592407463)

~~~
Daneel_
Thanks for the recommendation!

A related book would be 'Type Matters!' by Jim Williams - it's actually
suggested for me at the bottom of the 'Just my Type' page. It's a fantastic
book on typography, layout, font detail and suggested practices for
legibility. I own it and would highly recommend it, especially at the price on
Amazon (it's over $60 in Australia).

[http://www.amazon.com/Type-Matters-Jim-
Williams/dp/185894567...](http://www.amazon.com/Type-Matters-Jim-
Williams/dp/1858945674)

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tinco
I remember there being an article about this font a few years back, perhaps
2010. I, like most would, fantasised about what it would be like if someone
actually retrieved the type. Crazy idea that perhaps this Mr Green also read
that article and actually got a mudlarkers permit to (literally) get to the
bottom of it.

The article doesn't mention if the 150 retrieved pieces together actually
constitute a useable font or if there's any essential letters missing or
damage from being underwater for almost a hundred years.

~~~
noir_lord
[http://www.typespec.co.uk/recovering-the-doves-
type/](http://www.typespec.co.uk/recovering-the-doves-type/) better pictures
of recovered type here.

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cschmidt
The Economist had a good article about this in their 2013 Christmas special:

[http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21591793-le...](http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21591793-legendary-typeface-gets-second-life-fight-over-doves)

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wodenokoto
Why couldn't the font be reproduced from printed sources? Seems much easier
than to try and fish old, rusty typefaces out of a river and then try to
reconstruct them.

~~~
gpvos
That is how he started, but it does not give completely satisfactory results.
The article in the Economist addresses this:

 _> That sounds simple—yet the uneven printing that letterpress-lovers cherish
made tracing the type impossible. Once ink hits paper, no single letter is
reproduced identically. Guessing the shape of the metal that made the marks
takes time and patience. Guess wrong, and the error is imperceptible at first;
but lined up in text the letter looks awkward, the typeface distracting._

[http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21591793-le...](http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-
specials/21591793-legendary-typeface-gets-second-life-fight-over-doves)

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Animats
It's not clear that this font, as a replication of a work out of copyright, is
copyrightable in the US. See Bridgeman vs. Corel.

~~~
jahewson
True, though if the hinting was done manually or the outlines adjusted for the
screen, that's plausibly a new creative work.

~~~
dovestype
The outlines were redrawn manually because there were no drawn outlines as
such in existence. It is a new creative work, in that it's my interpretation
of the Doves type which only ever existed in metal. It was never redrawn for
filmsetting or digital by its original creators because they disposed of it
before these technologies came into existence. So the final typeface was never
drawn as such, as would have been necessary for adapting it (as so many other
types have been) for new reproduction techniques.

The original drawings for the type, by Percy Tiffin, are more like sketches or
visuals – guidelines to give the punchcutter a direction rather than precise
instructions. They bear little relation to the end product, so they are not
the typeface in & of themselves. (I initially tried to use these as reference
& after a couple of hours realised that they were pretty useless, containing
no uniform measures, proportions or elements). The final 'outlines' for the
type were created in the metal itself by the punchcutter, Edward Prince. He is
responsible for drawing, or rather carving the form of the type straight onto
the steel punches from which the final type moulds (matrices) were cast.

The name Doves Type® is copyrighted to protect my drawings. But if someone
wants to go ahead and do what I did and recreate the type from the original
printed sources there's nothing to stop them, as long as they do not use my
font data as a basis for their font. It took me 5 years, on-&-off, to reach
the stage where I was satisfied that I had captured the overall essence of the
original. Though one can never recreate the patina of a letterpress type – the
appearance of each glyph varies from word to word, line to line, page to page.
That's why I prefer to call my digital type a facsimile.

~~~
asjo
From what are you protecting your drawings/recreation?

~~~
dovestype
Anyone taking repackaging and selling as theirs. It's my research & work. This
is what I do for a living.

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DiThi
Sorry for the off topic but.... F*CK autoplay videos! Couldn't they at least
use the page visibility API (or even just requestAnimationFrame) so it doesn't
start playing after I've opened a dozen tabs?

Is there a Firefox add-on that enables audio/video and flash only when you see
the page?

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the8472
flash: enable "ask to activate" in the extension settings

<video>: set media.autoplay.enabled = false

you could have googled that instead of whining.

~~~
nekkoru
Or it could have been set as a sensible default, since an overwhelming
majority of users despise autoplaying videos on sites other than Youtube?

