Post #2546665

2026-05-13 08:30 UTC

NO Adobe used! This zine is a milestone in my quest to make a book where I design *everything* myself: 1. The font is made with my Hershey font editor. It&#39;s actually not an outline font at all, but single stroke lettershapes rendered with SVG! The curves are made with G-conics. 2. The paragraph engine is also custom, and it uses my semi-justified text algorithm. It&#39;s like greedy justification but with bounded word spaces (lines that would stretch or shrink too much fall back to ragged). 3. The page layout is pure HTML! I made a script that flows the paragraphs automatically through specified divs. The text itself is fed as a simple .txt file (the text is my old essay on ASCII art). I added a bbcode-like syntax for text effects like stroke width, skewing, etc.

Replies (7)

@gdc@typo.social 2026-05-13 08:31

4. The layout is done with my Grid Drawing Club -editor. Each page is a CSS grid (24x41), and I can easily resize and reposition the text frames on the page. But basically, the zine is a *static HTML webpage*, so I can also hand-code it. 5. PDF is generated by the browser, using @media print rules for CSS. In Firefox I just go File->Print->Save to PDF. 6. Page imposition is made with a small utility I made specifically for my own inkjet printer (using pdf-lib) to get the right page order and orientation. 7. Printed on paper I found from a second hand store, bound by hand. So, overall, every single step in the process from design to print is fully custom, made with my own tools. This is just a test zine, but the eventual goal is to make a whole book!

Open ##2950464
@gdc@typo.social 2026-05-13 08:51

Here's a detail view of the letter "a". Zoomed in it looks strange, but when I make the font size small, stroke it, then print it with an inkjet (and the ink spreads a bit), the result is very readable!

Open ##2950465
@QuentinJuhel@post.lurk.org 2026-05-13 08:58

@gdc@typo.social Hey @prepostprint@post.lurk.org have you seen !

Open ##2950480
@QuentinJuhel@post.lurk.org 2026-05-13 09:04

@gdc@typo.social We maintain a web to print archive at https://2print.org , We’re interrested to add this one to our collection !

Open ##2950481
@raphael@post.lurk.org 2026-05-13 09:04

@gdc@typo.social This is gorgeous!

Open ##2950483
@xaxalxe@sunny.garden 2026-05-17 14:09

@gdc@typo.social amazing work as always

Open ##2950484
@iko@mastodon.design 2026-05-17 18:35

@gdc@typo.social Hey this looks fantastic! Working on a paginating engine (paragraphs still rely on CSS native rendering, I'm just taking care of the pagination, also looks ugly was focused mainly on speed). Which language are you coding this into? BBS-like codes is a great idea https://mastodon.design/@iko/116573519567552988

Open ##2950485