This electronic specimen book illustrates most of the typefaces in the CD-ROM, Font Pro Vol 2, Types of Distinction, published by Wayzata Technology. The typefaces were designed by Robert Schenk of Ingrimayne Software. They are provided in four formats: PostScript Type 1 and True Type for the Macintosh, and the same for PCs running Microsoft Windows 3.1 or higher.
Font Pro Vol 2 features original type designs. It is intended to fill a gap in the type market. On one end are the public domain and shareware typefaces. For very little one can buy a CD with hundreds of them (though if one actually pays shareware fees, these typefaces are not cheap.) On the other end are the very impressive collections of the major type houses, which cost hundreds and thousands of dollars. Font Pro Vol 2 sits between them.
If a collection of public-domain and shareware faces does not satisfy all your type needs, where do you go next? Some people need those impressive collections published by the major type houses, and they should buy them because in the type market, as in many other markets, one tends to get what one pays for. However, those who put out occasional newsletters or print occasional posters, may find Font Pro Vol 2, with its reasonable price and large diversity of type designs, ideal.
Using CD-ROM to store your typefaces has several advantages. In Font Pro Vol 2 all the typefaces you see in this specimen book are grouped together in one suitcase (actually two, one in TrueType format and one in Type 1 format) so that you can access the entire collection with minimal effort and without filling up your hard drive. Simply use a font utility such as Suitcase or Font Juggler, and you can open these typefaces without the bother of installing them into your System file. Storing your fonts on your hard disk eats up a lot of space, and most people never have enough hard disk space. (Just as work expands to fill available time, files expand to fill available hard disk space.) Keeping typefaces on floppies is inconvenient and results in boxes and boxes of them sitting around. If you do not already use CD-ROM for your font collections, give it try.
The examples shown in this program are illustrated at 72 dpi, which is the resolution of a Macintosh screen. All specimens are illustrated at 32 point. The examples were formed using Adobe's Type Manager from the Type 1 fonts. Since most people using these typefaces will print at 300 dpi or greater, printed results should be much more attractive than the samples here.
I must mention that there is a Font Pro Vol 3 which is very similar to Font Pro Vol 2 (after all, I designed the typefaces in both). I think that overall the average quality of typefaces is a bit higher in Vol 3, but the diversity is less. The more I design, the harder it is to do the really wacko things I did a few years ago. The other advantage of Font Pro Vol 2 is that it has more typefaces than Font Pro Vol 3. Vol 2 has more than 175, while Vol 3 has about 140. Only about 15 to 20 typefaces are duplicated on both, so there is very little overlap between volumes. I would like you buy both CDs (after all, I get a royalty from every copy Wayzata sells), but if you only can afford one, I have prepared a specimen book for Font Pro Vol 3 as well, so you can compare.
The retail price of Font Pro Vol 2 is $29 as I write this, with a street price of about $20.00. Price may be different by the time you read this. The address and phone number of Wayzata are shown on the start-up screen. (Ingrimayne Software has left the distribution side of the business to focus on development.)
