Laurence Penney

@lorp@typo.social
564 Followers
343 Following
225 Posts
Font hacker. I made Axis-Praxis and Samsa, and am helping to get the OpenType enhancements avar2 and COLRv1 off the ground. I co-produced MyFonts and FauxFoundry, and currently co-organize Letter Luvvers. I like trains, cars, book cataloguing, one-dimensional maps and Claudius Ptolemy.
webhttps://www.lorp.org
GitHubhttps://github.com/Lorp
Letter Luvvershttps://www.instagram.com/letterluvvers/
emaillorp@lorp.org
Laurence PenneyDec 20, 2022
Finally got a copy of Marie Neurath’s “Railways Under London” (1948). Cheapest available seems to be £1500… mine was orders of magnitude less!
Laurence PenneyNov 26, 2022
Do you like my new Motorail poster?
[BRB double royal sized coloured map poster ‘Easy Guide to Motorail’ showing the routes of the services. Dated 1979. Folded.]
Laurence PenneyNov 14, 2022
Is there a word for books that are difficult to catalogue because of divergent titles on cover, title page and spine, and titles that differ between editions?
Laurence PenneyNov 13, 2022
Is this T design common in Russia or only Ukraine? (Kherson, earlier today)
Laurence PenneyNov 11, 2022
One of the joys of running your own server is the power to create your own emojis. @scott runs toot.typetura.com and has made emojis for each of his cats. Adorbs!
Show threadLaurence PenneyNov 8, 2022
And also none of that ?s=…t=… rubbish that you get when you copy a Twitter link (remarkably, @jack@twitter.com has only just noticed this)
Laurence PenneyNov 7, 2022
The slides deck of my ATypI talk is here. It’s all about the OpenType avar table, version 2. (With speaker notes too, so you get almost all that I said!) #avar2 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jLiUvh4PoYz2sw0T0Fygj2HoMrBhmJQuGgAmoMc_Sns/
avar2 for ATypI October 2022

Mom, You Sure Can Rehydrate a Pizza (or: avar table version 2.0) Upgrading the ‘avar’ table so Variable Fonts can: Distort the designspace Blend parametric axes Sync HOI axes Get even smaller Thanks to ATypI for putting this conference together and for the opportunity to show this work. This talk...

Google Docs
Laurence PenneyNov 7, 2022
At Carters Steam Fair with Sara Chapman, a Scammell ShowTrac (1948) and a lovely handpainted Scammell sign.
Show threadLaurence PenneyNov 7, 2022
And here’s the railway guide from London to Southampton (1845) with a 1:12.4 aspect ratio.
Laurence PenneyNov 7, 2022
Let’s see how this thing deals with extreme aspect ratios. Here’s the 88:1 Bayeux Tapestry.
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Laurence PenneyNov 13, 2022
Is this T design common in Russia or only Ukraine? (Kherson, earlier today)
Show threadTiro TypeworksNov 13, 2022

@lorp It is a traditional variant form that is probably familiar to most Cyrillic readers. Just think of it as Т with really long serifs on the end of the bar.

The same construction sometimes occurs in lowercase even when the uppercase is the more famliar Т shape, as in Gabriola (below), and is what leads in cursive to the lowercase italic т looking like a Latin m.

Show threadTiro TypeworksNov 13, 2022

@lorp Fontfabric’s introductory article on the origins and development of Cyrillic script shows some examples of this form in use in poluustav (semi-uncial) and early cusive styles.

https://www.fontfabric.com/blog/cyrillic-tradition-origins-and-inception/

Cyrillic Tradition: Origins and Inception - Fontfabric™ Blog

Among the myriad of national holidays celebrated by the Slavic community, one date stands out for reasons of historical significance and cultural synthesis.

Fontfabric™ Blog
Show threadTiro TypeworksNov 13, 2022
@lorp This form is also common in poluustav, which suggests how the three-legged version evolved.
Show threadLaurence PenneyNov 13, 2022
@TiroTypeworks Thanks, indeed I know the ‘m’ form well from handwriting and Bulgarian lowercase — nice to see it in chunky form in Gabriola and Poluustav. Luc(as) de Groot reminisced to me the other day about the eye-opening variety of forms in Crimea, which made we wonder about vernacular use of this uppercase form.
Show thread    n8   Doesn't follow you 🇺🇦Nov 13, 2022
@lorp @TiroTypeworks I've seen it on official buildings and large-scale signage, so it's not relegated to informality/"handmade look" styles, at least.
Show threadPschulzDec 14, 2022
@lorp I have no idea but there was a talk on Granshan about Ukrainian forms of letters. I believe some of it is now on YouTube.