Thomas Phinney Leaves Adobe
Oy! Sadly, we have to add our friend, Thomas Phinney, to the list of newly ex-Adobe staffers (see our post about the Dec. 3 layoffs here). Tom’s most recent official title at Adobe was Product Manager for Fonts & Global Typography. Many InDesign users, though, assumed his position was Source For All Good Things OpenType-Related in InDesign. His seminar on Fonts & Typography at the recent InDesign Conference Master Class was standing-room only.
Thomas’s most recent contribution to InDesign users is probably most tangible in the 3,000-glyph typeface he designed, Hypatia Sans Pro, which CS3 or CS4 users can download freely as a registration premium. Tom wrote about the development of Hypatia Sans in his Adobe blog, Typoblography, the Phinney-Us Blog. (And, coincidentally, it was the face I used for the table heads in the Guide to Special Characters PDF I posted last week.)
Thomas publicly announced his departure on his blog (buried in his last post, “Text Framework rasterization – and good-bye”) and on Facebook, where he changed his status to “Thomas Phinney is newly job-free” on December 11.
In this thread at Typophile.com (where Thomas is a frequent poster) about his parting ways with Adobe, he says, “I have every intention of remaining involved in the type community.”
We certainly hope so! And we all wish you the best of everything, Thomas, in whatever new adventure awaits you.
That is sad indeed, as that guy sure knows his type stuff. Do you know whether he was “let go” — as part of the recent mass extinction — or if he chose to leave for more tightly-kerned pastures?
On a MUCH more happy note, for me, at least: today I took and passed my InDesign ACE exam! It was rather gruelling, with much nitty-gritty-itty-bitty stuff, some of dubious value to know, to say the least — but alt least the questions were not outright bizarre and senseless, like the first batch was last January (when I flunked by a few points, but Adobe very decently gave me a voucher to retake the exam for free, due to the lousy quality of the questions).
Where can we download Hypatia Sans from? The link has a lot of great info in it, but I can’t seem to find where to download it.
After you register CS3 or CS4, they’ll send you an email with link to their “Registration Premiums” page. You can choose which premium you want — a 30-day subscription to Lynda.com, magazine subscriptions, etc. One of the premiums is the Hypatia Sans typeface. If you choose it, you’re sent to a page where you can download the font.
I recently got CS4 and my “registration premium” didn’t offer Hypatia Sans Pro… but instead Sanvito Pro… perhaps because I’m in Europe and not the US?
Bummer, David. I really don’t know how they come up with the registration incentives/premiums. Was it the CS4 Design Suite?
Or maybe as you said, it’s a geographic thing? Though that doesn’t make much sense to me. Hrm.
Did you upgrade from CS3? Maybe they figured you must have Hypatia already.
The individual CS4 apps got Hypatia and the Suites got Sanvito…at least those were the offers I got.
But doesn’t registering an app in the Suite register the whole suite? I have the suite and registered something in CS4 and got the Hypatia offer.
Actually, I was looking at an old email…CS4 is all Sanvito. CS3 was Hypatia.
@Bob Levine: phew thanks for confirming that. I was getting worried Adobe was getting even cheaper by rehashing old registration bonuses.
I love the free Hypatia font, use it quite often. I also use the Brioso Pro font somewhat frequently (if I can). I believe that came as the registration bonus for CS1 or CS2.
The fonts are the first registration bonuses I take, as they’re the most useful IMO, but I tend to get a second email when I install on my home computer, and then usually take a magazine trial too :D
How long does it normally take for Adobe to get back to you about the Registration.
I registered in the summer, and haven’t heard back. Does it make a difference that I upgraded?
If you want the reward for registering CS4, you need to register it. So, if that was what you upgraded to, your previous registration is not enough to trigger the e-mail.
Dave
Well, I have registered my CS3 serial number in my Adobe account, back when it came out, and now CS4, just a few days ago. But I’ve never received any emails from Adobe acknowledging my registrations — and hence I have never received those very neat fonts which I was looking forward to getting. So I’m not so impressed with this “registration incentive” stuff: they got my registrations — but I never got what they advertised I would get. I contacted the so-called “customer support” about this matter regarding the CS3 no-show, but got some kind of unfathomable response, wrapped in the usual over-polite gobbledgook they use — but no fonts — hence I won’t even waste my time trying the “customer support” route regarding the CS4 fonts.
Klaus, when you install the software and launch it for the first time, a registration screen comes up. You can either dismiss it for the time being (so you’ll get bugged again later), register the software, or permanently dismiss it.
By registering through the in-program registration dialog have I received emails giving me those registration bonuses to choose from.
My CS3.3 upgrade gives me the same stupid font as I got for CS3, so I never did do the registration there, no matter how often Acrobat 9 wants to bug me, but I also don’t want to permanently dismiss the registration… just in case, you know? :)
Found an Adobe Registration FAQ that may help some people:
https://www.adobe.com/ap/support/registrationfaq.html
Roland and Anne-Marie, thanks for your info.
I didn’t use built-in registration app, as that has previously given me woes: it didn’t register in my existing Adobe account, but created a whole new one, requiring more pain with the support folks to merge the accounts, etc. So I used the “Online registration from Adobe.com at the Customer Service page” method which that info-page clearly states is also a valid form of registering — but that gave me nada emails and nada fonts.
I think that pretty much just about anything at Adobe which involves installations, registrations & activations is . . . well, not very competently engineered and managed?
Can someone tell me if Hypatia Sans Pro is available to purchase? I’ve been searching around the web for awhile, but I can’t seem to find it available anywhere. Does it come as a registration reward only?