Aida Sakkal Aida Sakkal is Lead Developer at Sakkal Design, and has been designing font tools since 2001 after receiving a B.S. in Computing and Software Systems from the University of Washington, Bothell. She works primarily in determining undefined mark placements in large fonts, and has improved many design processes through automation. Her tools focus on simplifying the font development process to allow more time for glyph and system designs, while automating more redundant tasks in order to ensure consistency and accuracy. Mrs. Sakkal continues to develop tools that push the boundaries of automation, enhancing font development from all angles. Automation in Font Development With font technology improving, so should our approach to creating new fonts. We have a variety of tools to help improve the development process. Additionally, we have easy access to various resources to customize the way we work. OpenType allows us greater control over a font’s behavior, and while each font will have its own unique characteristics, there are aspects which should be common across different fonts. In these cases, having a set of tools to automate these processes saves us time, and also helps maintain accuracy and consistency. Tools can range from full programs to simple scripts. Recognizing what makes a good tool requires us to look at our development process closely. While computer programming knowledge is helpful, only a basic understanding is required to create useful tools. This lecture will discuss the benefits of developing and using automation as a way to keep our fonts accurate, consistent, and high quality, as well as reducing time spent on technicalities to allow more time for design. Listeners will also gain an understanding of how to recognize what types of processes can be automated. Sample tools will be shown and explained, with an emphasis on an auto-marker developed for Sakkal Design. Arabic OpenType font production workshop: In this two-part workshop, AdamTwardoch of Fontlab Ltd. and Aida Sakkal of Sakkal Design will guide prospective Arabic type designers through the process of designing and producing Arabic OpenType fonts using FontLab Studio 5 and Microsoft VOLT. First, participants will learn FontLab Studio's user interface, will learn how to draw glyphs, arrange and encode them and to do basic letterspacing. Later, the users will learn how to work with Microsoft VOLT to add OpenType layout features that will select the initial, medial and final Arabic glyphs, will substitute ligatures and will perform mark placement. |
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