TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Nov 20 12:03:46 EST 2024

FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

OSP Foundry

Belgian type foundry established in 2006 that tries to promote libre fonts. They explain and motivate their approach nicely:

Here you find all fonts produced by OSP. Some of them are complete typefaces, others works in progress. They are all Libre Fonts, meaning they are released under libre software licenses that allow modification, re-distribution and use.

For us, typography is more than the work of solitary masters passing on their secret trade to devoted pupils, committed as they are to a specialist work overlooked by most common people. This image that is carefully preserved in the closed world of type design, obscures the fact that typography today is lightweight and widespread. It certainly contrasts with the invitation of Free Software to anyone to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve.

Could the production and distribution of Libre Fonts turn this patriarchal system inside out? What if expert and amateur users work together and make improvements to the typefaces they use, what if they share these fixes with others? What if the design of a typeface would benefit from the many eyes of designers working around the world? What if a typeface was not a fixed entity, but a networked set of elements, responding to context and types of use?

At OSP we feel typography is inherently generative, especially since digital files have everything to gain from being copied and re-mixed. We would rather work with their constraints and affordances, than rely on a contradictory business model that invests more in copyright enforcement than in creative development itself. Typographers forge by nature and (sadly often without credit) appropriate the ideas and designs of their colleagues. We prefer to be explicit about the provenance of our glyphs and curves and hope you enjoy the result as much as we do.

The OSP members, also called the caravan include Colm O'Neill, Sarah Magnan, Gijs De Heij, Eric Schrijver, John Haltiwanger, Seb Sanfilipo, Stephanie Vilaphiou, Alexandre Leray, Pierre Marchand, Ludivine Loiseau, Ivan Monroy Lopez, Yi Jiang, Pierre Huyghebaert, Nicolas Maleve, Harrison, and Femke Snelting.

EXTERNAL LINKS
OSP Foundry
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Sites with only a few free fonts ⦿ The Belgian type scene ⦿ Open source fonts ⦿