Introduction
Google is … 🤔
Okay, we’ll save you some time reading. You surely already know who Google is. For this reason, we are extra proud that to date we have already had the privilege of executing seven projects for this Internet giant.
To be precise, Kabisa is a major contributor to the Google Fonts Team. This is the department of Google that develops fonts and makes them available for free. This assignment involves a combination of design and development that contributes to the automation of the font compilation process. The collaboration grew out of this first project. Currently, Kabisa has made significant contributions to seven Google projects.
1. Noto Emoji Artwork Production
The number of available emoji is growing rapidly. Every year the emoji collection is expanded and it is up to Google to integrate the new emoji designs into all their systems (such as the Android OS on smartphones). Kabisa contributes to the development of Google’s new emoji sets by providing tools that partially automate and validate the design process. This results in significant time and cost savings!
2. Wakamai Fondue
Wakamai Fondue (“What can my font do?”). Is a tool that allows web developers to see exactly what a font can do. What characters it contains, its special features and how it can be used in web projects. The automatic font analysis and specialized tools in Wakamai Fondue were developed by Kabisa.
3. Specimen Minisites: Arapey and Fraunces
Specimen sites are websites where you demonstrate how a font works. This project brings together web technology and font technology. On behalf of Google, Kabisa designs and creates the Arapay specimen minisite and the Fraunces specimen minisite.
4. Specimen Skeleton
When developing high-quality sites that use state-of-the-art Web technology, it’s smart not to reinvent the wheel every time. That’s why Kabisa created the Specimen Skeleton framework: a tool for modern websites with variable fonts, which can be used to quickly set up a standard specimen website. The framework is Open Source, so anyone can benefit from it – not just Google!
5. Type-X browser extension
The fifth project Kabisa was allowed to work on is a Chrome browser extension called Type-X, which allows anyone to try out their own fonts on any site.
6. Web development docs
When you spend so much time on web technology and fonts, you gain a lot of knowledge. Kabisaan Roel was asked to share his knowledge of variable fonts on Google’s developer platform, web.dev.
7. Tools for Emoji Kitchen
Emoji Kitchen is part of Gboard, the official Google keyboard for Android devices. Emoji Kitchen is similar to the sticker functionality in other messaging apps. It offers the ability to combine different emoji into new ones. Kabisa has created tools to ensure the quality of these new features on an ongoing basis. Do you have an Android device and use emoji? Then you’ve probably already discovered Emoji Kitchen!
Collaboration 🤝
Despite Google team members being scattered around the world, communication has been excellent and we have achieved great milestones. For example, the automation of Quality Assurance (QA) has resulted in significant time savings and cost savings for the customer. Our ongoing work on Font Quality Assurance Tooling helps improve the quality of the Google Fonts library.
By developing new tools and gaining new insights, the scope of projects has grown and our collaboration with Google has intensified. Kabisa is very excited about working with Google and is happy to make an active contribution in the field of fonts and emojis.
Our developers are constantly looking for new challenges. We are confident that we can also support your business with our software solutions. Interested in a meeting to speak about your needs?
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