Suitcase Fusion 2 Promo Not So Brave

  • Fonts in Use
Fonts in Use, Oops! | Yves Peters | October 6, 2008

The people at Extensis are launching the “better, faster, funner (?)” Suitcase Fusion, featuring “all new architecture, all new open source technology, all new UI”. From the Extensis Community Blog:

The new back-end means this is not just your average upgrade with some new features. The SQL-database makes it very stable with (much) faster searching, browsing and activation. In addition, a new component – the “core” – is always running in the background – ensuring consistent font management even if you don’t launch the UI. This saves you a LOT of system resources.

Plus, it was built specifically for Leopard and as a result can take advantage of all the whiz-bang capabilities of Leopard: smoother display and high-quality rendering makes the previews truly awesome.

The all-new auto-activation plug-ins are the stars of the production. These are completely re-built as well. Yes, they still leverage FontSense for precise matching and yes, they will auto-activate fonts in linked and embedded objects. But they now also communicate with the core meaning you are have 24/7 activation and deactivation (why would you not put away your toys to keep the room available for others?).

To announce this new version Extensis have produced a spoof trailer for the imaginary movie Bravefont. It begins with the archetypal menacing voice-over thundering “In a world torn apart by so many typefaces, only one tool could keep them together.” and then continues with piling up movie clichés. Alas, the fake promo is far less clever nor funny than it pretends to be, as it doesn’t really gel and comes across as merely a bunch of disparate elements. Furthermore the production values look a bit cheap. Fair enough, it’s just a self-produced spoof video, but it really falls short when compared to similar efforts like the gleeful type comedy Font Conference at College Humor. And if you want to see really funny movie preview humour, you should definitely check Pablo Francisco who met the movie previews guy in real life. But I digress.

And then there’s also that one embarrassing detail, at 0:43–0:44. As the voice-over announces “Bravefont, starring Stone Serif, Lucida Blackletter, Gill Sans…” the featured fonts zoom towards you. Except, that’s not Gill Sans. That’s Myriad. Yup, the substitute font that is inserted when the selected font is not properly loaded. In a promo for font management software?

Ouch…

:: U P D A T E ::

I just found out on Jim Kidwell’s blog that “[i]t’s a funny little piece that was mostly created for the Press. We dropped a bit of audio at the end about calling our PR person for interviews, and thought that it would be fun for everyone else to see.” So I shouldn’t be too harsh on the overall look of the piece. After all it is what it is. ;)

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5 Comments:

  1. Huh? I don’t understand this post’s update :( Does that mean that they never intended their potential customers (people like us…) to see the ad? Does that make the short-comings of the clip better? I’m so confused!

    Extensis has done better, like their Valentine’s Day Font Dating site. I’m afraid that this just reach the bar set by all the great recent type videos.

    Posted by Dan Reynolds on Oct. 7, 2008

  2. Well, I think they consider that a promo specifically aimed at the press doesn’t need to be that well-produced, as it wasn’t originally intended to be seen by the general public.

    Posted by Yves Peters on Oct. 7, 2008

  3. Dear Eagle Eye,

    Good Catch! (and on zooming text no less!) We owe you one. In final production we never noticed an earlier version was rendered.

    We have now uploaded the proper version of the movie to our Suitcase Fusion 2 preview site.

    While it is an interesting theory… no, we would certainly not sacrifice quality for the press or anyone else. While just a quick parody, we do want it to be right.

    Many thanks,
    The Extensis team

    Posted by Jim Kidwell on Oct. 8, 2008

  4. Hey, Jim, thanks for chiming in. Well, I feel good I helped you get the proper version online. As it says on the About page, my talent for being able to identify most typefaces on sight may be utterly useless in daily life, but at least in this case it served some purpose.

    Posted by Yves Peters on Oct. 8, 2008

  5. Stone Seriff is misspelled in the first paragraph after the head “About the Movie.”

    As for the cheesy SFX (like the meteorite impact), I took that to be hyperbolic parody. But I didn’t get the purpose of the rose petals (an allusion to “American Beauty,” I suppose).

    Posted by Michael Brady on Oct. 9, 2008

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