 Hello. So I'm Simon, and I'm Nicola. And we're going to show you Metapolator in the next 20 minutes. So we need fonts. We are all using typography as a way to distinguish from each other. People are using typefaces to show who they are, their identities, their culture, background, and nationalities. And today these people need the font that are custom-design it for themselves, the business. And Metapolator would involve anybody, like from children to professional type designers, to create unique typfaces within large range of families, just like the universe. So we came up with the idea of what's already existing to create, I mean, to extend font family. And we came up with the fact that while actual tool allows to interact only with outlines by mixing from one to one font, like with, for instance, super-polator, or such tools, Metapolator would explore the initial definition of letters, which is a skeleton. So how does this work? We need tools. Type designers need a toolbox to build a single typeface out into a family of styles. And Metapolator provides this initial set of tools. So we have spacing, changing weight, changing width, changing excite, or other any vertical metrics. Type designers need a tool that snaps into their existing workflow, so we can load any existing font. We are using the text-based and interchangeable UFO source format, which has become a standard in the font industry. The curve and parameter calculation we're using is based on MetaFont, another standard since the 70s in mathematical typesetting. And the tech and late tech environment. And as a web application, Metapolator is also built with another standard with AngularJS. So yeah, what's the super-family? So I guess you already know, but it's something we come up with the computer ages. It's more like a font-family, which composed with bold, regular light, condensed, like every sort of font possible, even serif. So should we talk about it? So when I met Dave Crossland at last year's LGM in Madrid, we discussed the idea to use Metafont for a new kind of font editor. And he asked me to come up with an entire font family with 10 different weights. And so how would it be possible for me to do this within two months? Because normally you use these two months for one single cut if you would do it traditionally. So I needed a tool who would help me to achieve such a task. I knew Metafont from my former project Metaflop.com, where we already proved web-based user interface for Metafont and where we illustrated also the power of parametric type design. And I also knew Metafont from this very first project I did at school, was trying to turn the Polaranger plaque font into Metafont so I can generate my home regular light, bold or whatever cut. And it was possible thanks to Simon as well. And from these very two beginning ideas, we come up with the idea to draw like a skeleton from the UEFA file. This is like a snapshot where it's explained that the stroke goes from one point to one point using tension curve. And that's the main idea of the skeleton of the letter. So what is a parameter? Everything can be a parameter. We can define this person here, Nicholas, and apply a parameter arm. And by increasing the value of arm, yeah. So a typeface can also be seen as a system made out of parts and therefore these parts can be parameterized. We added more and more parameters to the code and it got more and more complicated. Donald Knuz, computer modern has 62 parameters. You can define, it's a fantastic example of parameterized fonts. But one of the failure of computer modern it was too complex and intricate. So we had approached exactly the same problem. As soon as we wanted to add a new parameter, it would affect the former one. And so we had to switch on and off certain functions for certain parameters, which made it even more complicated. So how is it possible to keep clear view of a parameterized letter shape? And we came up with the solution to make a clone of the original meta font and only add a very specific parameter for each. And then instead of constantly turning on enough parameter values for one single font, we just defined a set for two fonts and invented the metapolation parameter, which would simply travel in between the set of font A and font B. Who's an insider? Yeah. Yeah, we come up with the idea because some production tools already use this notion, like for example the mix table in the DJing music field or even synthesizer. Like you go from one to B to different preset, but you can mix it in between. That has to turn to a museum. OK. So we could now duplicate our master font and metapolate it within different clones to create new fonts with all the specific features. And also in the early prototype, in the interface we had like the turntable left and the right and in the middle our instance. To program a meta font, it takes approximately the same time as to draw a font by hand. Of course, we can play around later with these parameters, but who knows what the results will be? For instance, on the next slide, which one is the program version and which one is the original version of the font? There was no difference. So we believe type design should always be in the hand of the designer. Metapolator is not drawing you a shape out of nothing. We can think of fonts in Metapolator as a collection of parts, and we want to bring them alive. Thanks to Frank for this extra add of P. Can I kill? Yeah. And we can say that Metapolator is not the P itself, but the man with the hat in his hands, like putting parts together. Yeah, type design is a system of shapes and term, which are in a width from history. But they can be all set as parameters every term, which are in a width can be turned into parameters, actually. Because it's also interesting in this process, because we come back to the skeleton idea. Like, first, when we draw a letter, we add a stick in the sand drawing letters. And then we are writing on the works, then on paper, then on portion papers. But it was always using the skeleton thing with the nib. It was making the outline and everything. But then when we went to the type, metal type HGs, we went to our outline. We were not using any more the skeleton, but we wanted to come back to decide your skeleton. I hope I'm clear enough for you. So control points and therefore outlines and skeletons can be accessed and interpolated in meta-operator, same as composites, anchor points, and kerning values. Yeah, can you go back on this? Like, yeah, on the left is actual curve, outline curves. On the right side is like you have a skeleton, and the outline without the skeleton, which can be parametered. So here we used Pablo Impallari's encode and interpolated his original files with our new command line tool, which or to prove the accuracy in our interpolation calculation. And for this one, we only used control points. But if we instead read the points of an outline in pairs, means always left and right, left and the right point, then we have control over the stroke and skeleton, means we don't need to define control points. That is an order. It is the only use outline shapes. So it can be really useful to make components and move them around. But now it would be like the skeleton, which is a component itself. So now we have total control over shapes and can easily change, for example, excite of an existing font by just changing one parameter. Like you can see here, the two differences. Like the grayish one is the one using the skeleton, and the white one is using the outline version. Well, the white one is just stretched without. It's just stretched. So now let's combine the two methods of control points and pen strokes. If you look at this G, we can select only the tail. And we already have pairs at the extremas. And a pen point can be a center point and left and right. We can also change the curvature of that tail. But let's start again and show a typical workflow within the middle floor later from the beginning. Let's say you draw a font in your sketchbook, and then you digitize it, and you always take care to have two left and right points of your skeleton. Then you draw your skeleton in a way. And you can have the parameters to explain what the curves are, and the top points, and every parameter, actually. The metrics. So far, our font only knows the stroke width, glyph width, vertical metrics, like excited ass center, et cetera, which is already quite a lot. But if you might want to change other or stuff like directions or the curvatures, you need to tag specific parameters. So we can create a whole typeface within different weights and styles. Like the regular, the bold, condensed, like icon translation, like condensation, thin, and with lower excited, with serif, and so on. So how can you get one font in the whole family? It's too minute. When you start using one single font, you can extrapolate to a second replica by calculating a skeleton from the glyph outline, from that skeleton to the original outline. We can create new inter and extrapolations. So we create new instances from masters. An instance is the position between two or many new masters. We can create new masters from an instance any time. And so. Please, Simon, can you show us how to get a tag point to make a video? Please. Yes. How do you achieve such a task? So here we see our latest user interface for a manipulator. And you can see how you just click on one of these pair points and assign a parameter. In this case, it's ascender. And if you change the global parameter ascender, you change that one of to be as well of all of the others. So you have the full control on everything, just like modular synthesizers, for instance, from that side. So the modular design of a manipulator allows to add unlimited amount of access and masters to create very complex interpolation environments. So can you see something? Yeah, this is a very minimal setup of only two axes. But we could also recreate design spaces such as the Northside Cube. So we know already that interpolating in manipulator is accurate. But what about these metaphone curves? So metaphone is drawing curves also based on Bezier algorithm. But it comes with some handy tools. For example, if you describe curve retention, we don't need to worry about the control points and curves. So we can. You can also say that we want to have two different outline curves, like the left side is still a cycle, but the inner curve can be straight line changing the tension. Oh, that's a really cool thing. So we did a Pepsi challenge test with the cabin. We took cabin, another front from Pablo, and redrew its curves in metapolite only using pen stroke and tension. So which one is the one made with metapolite, for instance? Actually, it's the one at the bottom. The one lower is the one with the metapolite. Actually, I can't tell. I don't remember. So charged by the font design community, it was first very hard to make a difference. And second, the metaphone copy was more precise and sleek. So if this was also the intention of the original, I don't know, but adding irregularity is also something metaphone is very capable of. This is from letter R. Yeah, B-Wolf. So we tried the same with the metapolite. And not affecting the outline of the shape of the letter, but the skater. And so the effect is both on both outline. So it's always in a way to, well, affecting the outline is something pretty bad, but affecting the skater is pretty awesome. So can we parameterize the garment? Yes, we can, but. Maybe this is the very last slide. So here we used the EB garment for another experiment. And for this typeface called Sean, we didn't even use outlines, only certain pair of points, which were often at the extremis in the original garment. So to our surprise, the rendered sheet on the right was quite beautiful, which has many to do with the proportion, good proportion of the original garment. And then we changed some parameters like excite. The lower case, eh? Yeah. And the first version has nine weights illustrated with number P on the right. Although it's not finetuned yet, it shows already a pleasant reading and legibility. And then we tested exo from not done all gamma in manipulator. So I changed the draw commands for the control points. Instead of using the BESI algorithms, I choose straight lines. It ended up with two different cuts. Yeah. So we can think a lot more of such special effects, like rounded corners, outlines, engraved effects. And also here, the effect is raring on the skeleton of the letters. And then we can show, like a preview of the interface, how it will look. So this is the specimen card, because if you use manipulator, you come up with hundreds of fonts and you have to deal with them and compare them and also be able to edit them on location and re-compare it. So how can manipulator be used in the real world? You can imagine how you want to design a font, starting by creating a lot of different ends. Or, OK, the end, you can prepare a lot of different combinations and explore them. Or you can extend a family or whatever you want. On this project that I did for a fashion brand in New York, I created a tie face out of a logo. And I used manipulator to make sure that all the curves are consistent within the glyphs. I can extend them. You can easily adjust.