Call for Foundation of a Sir Francis Drake Society

It’s high time to establish a ‘Sir Francis Drake Society’. A contemporary of Claude Garamond, Sir Francis Drake lived from 1540 to 1596. He already has many devoted followers and admirers in the graphics industry. Large software companies and type designers in the digital era will welcome Sir Francis Drake as their patron. In 1581 Queen Elizabeth knighted him for his achievements and later he was elected a member of Parliament. · · · Let’s bring Sir Francis Drake’s life back to the minds of those not familiar with his daring deeds. In the 16th century, Francis Drake was a relentless pirate who took everything he desired. Aren’t we—living in the 20th century—confronted with similar actions in the field of type design, owing to the fact that type designers in all countries suffer from a lack of copyright protection for their work and their property? There are a number of pirates raising the Jolly Roger everywhere, but when ashore they attend large-scale conferences where they claim to devote themselves to the colours of honourable shipping companies. Something happened in September 1993 in the harbour city of Antwerp. The Association Typographique Internationale held a conference and talked about an ‘Anti-Piracy Campaign’. Some firms had become angry about the illegal copies of their software; a loss of income of millions. Mac and PC users should buy only original software and not cheap copies. Such software fonts are alphabets, which means the creative work of type designers. These designers also feel that originals should be sold, and not copies. Recently, in addition to the other existing copies of my Palatino font sold under obscure names, a new copy was made, named ‘Book Antiqua’ and sold to a software firm. They used their own copyright on the diskettes and claimed ‘All rights reserved’. What rights are left to the originator? The designer had no information, no possibility to make corrections, and of course he received not a cent for royalties. Software companies should have the best Palatino for their customers; not a copy. The firm producing this ‘Book Antiqua’ was a speaker of the ‘Anti-Piracy Campaign’. This caused me to resign in Antwerp as a founding member of ATypI after 36 years. This organization was established in 1957 by Charles Peignot to protect internationally the creative work of type designers and type founders. Great names had been connected with ATypI in its history—personalities like Beatrice Warde, Stanley Morison, Giovanni Mardersteig, Willem Ovink, Roger Excoffon, Georg Trump, etc.