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Friendly Roman Font

Font Id: 22113
Font Name: Friendly Roman Font
Font Format: OpenType Mac/Win
Font Family: FriendlyFriendly
Glyphs: 1096
Price: $29.00
Description: Friendly is an homage to Morris Fuller Benton’s adorable Announcement typeface. It is not a strict interpretation, digital revival or reverent reproduction of the original letterforms… but I would be remiss and shady to not acknowledge the letterforms that inspired this typeface. As stated earlier, it is an homage to the original letterforms of the typeface but takes a great bit of freedom tightening the construction up in order to loosen up the movement of the variant letterforms to allow a great deal of usable personality. I enjoy stating this dichotomy… “loosen up to tighten up the forms” and vice versa. It seems counterintuitive or silly but by allowing the letterforms to normalize, I felt more comfortable going back and adding rather indulgent personality. Infused with stylistic alternates, swashes, titling, many many contextual alternates, 9 stylistic sets and 2 stylistic sets with wordmarks, the typeface became far more ‘friendly’ for me… how could it not? With so many loops, swashes and typographic indulgences, it was bound to be fun.

The more elaborate and ‘overdone’ Friendly got, the more I wanted to slant it. Here’s where my thinking differs from MFB’s original. I like slanted romans… especially ones with long ascenders, but I do not like much of a slant. It has to be the lettering person in me. It’s hard for me to do a completely upright serif and not pair it with an angle, but I did not feel Announcement’s ‘Italic’ offered much and the actual slant needed to be far less. If it’s not an italic, I prefer the letters to slant with an angle equivalent to the thickness of the vertical stroke. The Slanted version of Friendly is set at 3.6 degrees, is quite subtle, and very fitting for me.

You will find that most characters have a contextual, stylistic, swash and titling alternate assigned to them and some have an echoed alternate to the swash and titling options if the stylistic alt has been selected in tandem. Additionally, all of these are accessible in the glyph palette directly from the base glyph typed or through selecting options through the Stylistic Sets 1–9. Stylistic Sets 10 & 11 are a little different. They are actually configured as complex majuscule ligatures… a result of me getting carried away.

Other features like a default old style numeral set and coordinating glyphs have been produced along with case support, ordinals, and more have been added to make it more relevant for contemporary use.
OpenType: Standard, Access All Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Case Sensive Forms, Discretionary Ligatures, Fractions, Standard Ligatures, Lining Figures, Ordinals, Stylistic Alternates, Scientific Inferiors, Stylistic Set 01, Stylistic Set 02, Stylistic Set 03, Stylistic Set 04, Stylistic Set 05, Stylistic Set 06, Stylistic Set 07, Stylistic Set 08, Stylistic Set 09, Stylistic Set 10, Stylistic Set 11, Subscript, Superscript, Swash, Titling Alternates
Posted by: Positype
Neil Summerour is a type designer, lettering artist, calligrapher and designer based in Georgia, USA with one foot in Takamatsu, Japan. After graduating from The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art with a BFA in Graphic Design, he soon found himself opening his own studio to deal with the flow of freelance work. This evolved into a 10-year dance in the design, web and advertising world allowing him to work with clients large and small - each time producing and developing unique creative solutions. His desire to not do the 'same-old, same-old' continues today. During this time, Neil opened his personal type foundry, Positype, in 2000 to feed his ever-growing desire for type design (something of which, oddly, he considered a hobby to keep him busy late at night). He later co-founded TypeTrust (2002) with Silas Dilworth as his addiction to type and lettering grew. All the while, Neil has continued his commitment to education and fostering young talent as an adjunct art professor at The University of Georgia in graphic design and teaching graphic design at the Governor's School for the Arts. His work spans across media types and centers on problem solving and communicating graphically (with an obvious emphasis on type and lettering), and it's this balance of educator, designer, and entrepreneur that allows him to bring a unique and practical insight to solving a client's communication needs, regardless of the medium.

As a typeface designer, he has published over 60 typeface families (that's over 500 fonts) and produced numerous custom typefaces for clients worldwide. You cannot watch TV, go online, or shop in your local grocery store without possibly seeing one of his fonts being used.
Posted on: Sep 27, 2012
Product Ranking: 17425
Highest Rank Achieved: 1948
Licensing available: Desktop & WebFont

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