Benjamin

Benjamin is based on ``Ben Franklin,'' a nineteenth-century wood-type face that imitates eighteenth-century hand-set type, as in ``Poor Richard's Almanack'' (yes, I guess they were nostalgic a hundred years ago too). It's deliberately rough and whimsical--sort of a cross between Windsor and Caslon Antique, if you know those two typefaces. I found the original in ``Wood Type Alphabets: 100 Fonts,'' edited by Rob Roy Kelly and published by Dover in 1977 (I recommend it if you're interested in this stuff). Kelly's collection of wood type inspired Adobe's two ``Wood Type'' collections, but this font isn't in either of them. I scanned ``Ben Franklin'' and made a Type 1 font of it with Altsys' Fontographer 3.1. I made a few alterations to the original typeface, as well as created a number of necessary characters missing from the book--the percent sign, the parentheses, the number 2, and a few others. I also gave it over 100 kerning pairs. This font is most definitely a display face that looks best in small amounts and at 18 points and larger. There's only a 24-point bitmap; I assume that if you're into fonts you use Adobe Type Manager. Font Formats: - Adobe (Type 1 [pfa & pfb], Type 3, Bitmap) - DMF (+ bitmap) - Bitmap (Black&White) - IntelliFont Font ID: 8497 Directory: Sans Serif/Benjamin Since it seems that most shareware font-makers never make much money from their fonts anyway, and since I did most of the work on this font when I was too sick to go to work but well enough to sit huddled at my Mac, sniffling and coughing (which also may explain why the font looks like it does), it's freeware. Enjoy it. I do, however, REQUIRE that anyone who distributes this set of files keep this ``Read Me'' message with the font, and that anyone who is not a users group and sells it on a disk (floppy, CD-ROM, or whatever) send me a free copy of that disk as well. Thanks, or as we font people say, 10-Q! Walter Kafton-Minkel c/o Portland Macintosh Users Group PO Box 8949 Portland, OR 97207-8949 USA This is how it looks like: Black&White Medium