Appli­ca­tions like Inde­sign and fonts in Open Type for­mat pro­vide tools for mak­ing great stuff that older gen­er­a­tions of typo­graph­i­cally inter­ested design­ers could have only dreamed about.

As we all know and can wit­ness every day, these tools, how­ever, are no guar­an­tee for great design – not even for good craft. I find it even more grat­i­fy­ing and pleas­ant to behold when I see some­one pulling all the stops to achieve typo­graphic detail even when those tools are not all available.

The van for this com­pany that sells grilled chick­ens and other good­ies on San Francisco’s Farm­ers’ Mar­ket has been care­fully let­tered, even though those let­ters may be a lit­tle worn by now. The designer had to use Frutiger for rea­sons I don’t know. But that didn’t pre­vent him or her from want­ing to apply old style fig­ures which are not avail­able for that par­tic­u­lar type­face. The sim­ple solu­tion for this prob­lem is to sim­ply move ordi­nary fig­ures down below the base­line to achieve the effect. The 1 can just be cut off at the bot­tom as long as it doesn’t have a serif to lose. Fig­ures 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 look almost like the real thing when shifted down. The only prob­lem is pre­sented by the 2, as that should be redrawn to the size of the x-height and have no ascender.

As seen in Bodoni’s Man­uale Tipografico, the mas­ter took lib­er­ties when it came to design­ing his old style fig­ures. He does draw a short 2, but doesn’t give descen­ders to 3, 4, 5 or 7.

Con­ven­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily rules, just habits.