New Type

Nick Shinn’s Richler is a highly readable book face commemorating its namesake, prodigious Canadian author and essayist Mordecai Richler. This airy, modernized antiqua comes in five styles — including a dapper highlight cut — and has been outfitted with a delightfully complete OpenType feature set and pan-European language support. Deliberately called out as being “spaced like a sans”, the recent introduction of the family on the Typophile forums has produced no shortage of discussion, debate, and huzzah … as well as the occasional brickbat.

From casual to formal. From nostalgic to contemporary. Rob Leuschke’s lively Style Script is more than just an update of an classic upright advertising script. Through the use of stylistic sets, a veritable sliding scale of typographic panache and complexity is available — making this an extremely flexible and fashionable face.

Wigrum is the first commercial typeface from Anouk Pennel and Raphaël Daudelin of Montréal’s Feed design studio. Just released through the Bureau des Affaires Typographiques foundry, this heavily geometric sans manages to add colour and personality to the otherwise rational shapes with minute optical adjustments, wedge-shaped details, and a sprinkle of refreshingly designed alternates.

Keeping the notion of “a subtly curved and slightly modulated line” in mind, Sebastian Nagel’s Canapé has been a labour of typographic love since its inception seven years ago, under the working title of “Sofa”. Although the family consists of just four styles, it encompasses an astonishing 4,200 glyphs — including small capitals, swashes, standard and discretionary ligatures, a whopping ten figure sets, and a “small sofa building kit”.

The first of many mid-century retro revivals from the Filmotype folks is the lovely Lakeside — an informal display script straight from the signpainter’s showcard arsenal. Decked out with a respectable set of alternates, ligatures, and automatic fractions, this connected brush style is ready to update all manner of storefront eyegrabbers and greengrocer flyers.

Also sporting a shopping cart full of fresh OpenType essentials is Filmotype Kellog, a slightly wider and lower contrast take on the commercial brush script style.

The final font refit is a freestyle Filmotype Parade. Originally introduced in 1955 as a standalone companion to its ever so slightly slimmer cousin Orlando, the Parade family has been expanded (literally) by type designer Charles Gibbons to include a trio each of weight and width variations.

News

From a variety of new typefaces to a variety of type-related links:

• Ed Fella has retired from the California Institute of the Arts. Michael Dooley and company send him off in style.
• Watch Dave Foster discuss typography.
• Upgrade all your Underware fonts!
• The above news means its an opportune time to link to Jens Tenhaeff’s “If Fonts Were Software,” which we missed the first time around.
• Michael Surtees covers Monotype’s Pencil to Pixel.
• The Alphabet Card looks lovely.
• Uniball has an intriguing new campaign.
• It’s never too late for a good “best of” list; the Typecache top 20 from 2012 is worth a look.
• Help create a typeface based on a city.
• Find all the Unicode.
• Steven Heller interviews Ben Barry about the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory.
• Riccardo Mori reveals one of the dangers of webfonts.
• Sign painting makes the news news!
• Is the “crank text” a thing?
• From Fabio Lopez comes “Police Raid Type.”
• If you’re still craving coverage of new type releases, check out the latest issue of This Week in Fonts.
• Type Worship takes a peek at Stephen Coles’ Geometry of Type.
• Here’s further proof that font size matters.

Events

Plan ahead and get in on these current and upcoming events:

• Text Support: A Library Exhibit about Paper takes place now through June 28 at the University of Wisconsin (Madison).
• You have an additional day to take in Word Jazz at the Mota Italic Gallery — now through June 29.
• Make your way to the University of Chichester for the Print Networks Conference, July 23–25.

Slammed

The next Type News will arrive all aflutter on Tuesday, May 28. Thanks for riding along — and covering gas.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing in all the new type!

New Type

Marconi Lima adds some panache to his tidy, transitional Adriane Text family with Adriane Swash. This single weight, italic-only counterpart provides a subtle, elegant upgrade by way of swashed capitals, lowercase initials and finials, plus a handful of custom ligature pairs.

A recent addition to the Gestalten library is an eponymous sans from Norbert Prell. Blending humanist and geometric forms with a “cheeky and flirtatious” style and unexpected details, Prell is admittedly reflective of the designer’s own personality. The family covers a five weight range — thin through bold — all of which are equipped with a vast assortment of alternates, ligatures, and other OpenType niceties.

Animated strokes and boundless energy are traits common to many of Laura Worthington’s handwritten scripts. Harlean easily proves that point — rough around the nibbed-pen edges, but with plenty of pep in its step. Naturally, like all of Worthington’s tricked out scripts, its chockablock with hundreds of unbridled swashes, tweaky alternates, and assorted ornamentals.

Typotheque pulls out all the editorial stops with Nikola Djurek’s extensive Lumin type system. Intended for use in a broad range of publication scenarios, four connected families combine subtle constrast with distinctive “chiseled” connections, producing an intriguing hybrid. The extended collection includes four weights of slab serif’d Lumin, six flavours of “straight-talking” Lumin Sans, its compact Condensed companion, and a trio of headline-savvy Display variations.

Back on the road with his Tour de Force foundry, Serbian designer Dušan Jelesijević is pumping up the scratchy jam with some Nervatica. This two weight handstyle sans bounces across the stage, bringing with it a busload of dingbats, textures, and other lively characters.

News

Lively discussions and lively characters populate our list of links this week:

• Stephen Coles wonders whether font library subscriptions are the future we really want.
• David Sudweeks shows us a thing or two about visual hierarchy.
• Ben Barrett-Forrest discusses his animated history of typography.
• Cyrus Highsmith made some great tee-shirts. (I wish we weren’t already past the funding deadline.)
• As if there weren’t enough things to covet, these Penguin Drop Cap book covers are incredible. (Especially the one for Lord of the Flies. Just look at that thing. Look at it!)
• Mike Rohde reviews different font styles in the latest episode of the Sketchnote Podcast.
• With the whole web becoming editable, the text box fades away.
• Choosing the wrong typeface can be hazardous to your health.
• Christopher DeCaro has been busy: check out his lettering experiments and other nifty things.
• There’s a brief update on Erik van Blokland’s digitisation project.
• It’s late spring: a perfect time for lovers of letterpress to make a pilgrimage to the Chapel of the Blessed Eutectic in Prescott, Arizona.
• The New Yorker doubles certain consonants — and does the Orrmulum proud.
• Robbie Manson shares his process for selecting type.
• Posters! — made with love, by a cat.
• Coming soon: sync Typekit webfonts to your desktop.
• But you can use this type kit on your desktop today!
• This shipping label is all kinds of amped up.
• Jeffrey Zeldman shows some love for Adobe.
• Our penultimate item is Ben Yagoda’s handy treatise, “7 grammar rules you really should pay attention to.”
• Unicode and skywriting: what could possibly go wrong?

Events

Float around the world for these upcoming things:

• On May 15 the Mota Italic Gallery hosts the pre-TYPO Berlin party.
• May 16 and 17, in Appleton, Wisconsin: an incredible-sounding garage / estate sale, with 10% of all proceeds going to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
• Partake of London’s diverse lettering on a walk guided by Phil Baines, May 23.
• On June 4 in London, hear Henrik Kubel discuss “New work, new fonts, New Transport.”
• Sign up to help unbox the Hamilton in June and July.

Lonely wandering

That’s it for this week — see you soon!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for gathering this week’s typefaces while I danced with daffodils, or something.

New Type

It all started with a tweet. Nina Stössinger’s Sélavy came to life after an off the cuff request by artist Paul Soulellis relating to his Library of the Printed Web project. Based on the handful of characters found on Marcel Duchamp’s famous “Green Box” — La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même (Boîte verte) — Stössinger extrapolated a complete deco-esque typeface, generously releasing it under an open font license.

With the help of James Todd’s mad digitizing skills, the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry pushed a hefty seven width sans out the factory door this week. Originally released by Hamilton in 1907, HWT Unit Gothic presaged more contemporary type “systems” (like Adrian Frutiger’s expansive Univers) by half a decade. Each style of this eccentric sans has been updated and packed to the Gothic gills with glyphs, Greek and Cyrillic language support included.

Like the name implies, DSType’s Diversa explores the diversity and contrast of styles within the constructs of a single design. Using a stocky, Latin display face as a creative foundation, designers Dino dos Santos and Pedro Leal have stuffed nearly 3,000 glyphs into the nine stylistic sets. Among the typographic flavours to be sampled are a barebones sans, a chunky slab, a bracketed serif, stencilled diversions, a whimsical “baroque”, and a hodge-podge set which mixes the whole works together in one feel swoop.

Kyle Steed’s eponymous Steedicons is the latest addition to the growing Symbolset stable. The pitch is “243 Symbols, 370 Keywords, 1 Mustache” drawn in a loose, sketchy style — a welcome change from the usual hypertidy geometry found in most icon font collections.

News

No witty transition: we begin with the sad news that Joseph Churchward has passed away. Here are a couple noteworthy tributes (there are probably others):

• A loving tribute from the Museum of New Zealand.
• Heath Killen bids farewell.

Feel free to peruse Churchward’s work in greater depth. It’s well worth your time.

And now, on with our regularly-scheduled programming:

• Glory be, 8 Faces #6 is out!
• Congratulations to the winners of the Fine Press Book Association’s Student Design Competition.
• Steven Heller exposes us to Robert Hunter Middleton’s Eden typeface — and is not ashamed.
• This old chest contains some amazing treasures.
• David Sudweeks elaborates on appropriate typographic scale.
• David Demaree walks us through the world of high-DPI web typography.
• Hoefler & Frere-Jones supports the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. You should, too!
• Peter Biľak guest stars in the latest Talking Types podcast.
• Chris Petrillo has a new pet project: Bikes and Type on Bikes.
• Ben Barrett Forrest has animated a history of typography.
• Enjoy another great installment of ScreenFonts.
• Love type? Love type releases? Then you’ll dig the latest installment of This Week in Fonts.
• Tim Brown reminds us that progressive enhancement is part of web typography.
• Erik Spiekermann walks us through printing a poster.
• Adobe has contributed font rasterizer technology to FreeType.
• Download Google webfonts, thanks to Monotype.
• Speaking of Google, their webfont service got a facelift.
• Speaking of Monotype, they have a new “Master Subscription,” which costs a bunch but promises to give you loads in return.
• Justice! Anne Brontë has a new gravestone.
• This is an impressive animal alphabet.
• More ASCII, more emotion.
• Happy Cog designers discuss readability in design.
• In the grand tradition of “realign, don’t redesign”: Instagram has a new logo.
• Learn about the art of designing cattle brands.
• Not safe for work: calligraphy on girls.
• Handy: the Karl Gerstner design archive
• Apparently the best way to design a typeface is to lift it from the work of Peter Biľak.
• Roar through the 1920s with The Great Gatsby.
• Tim Brown’s webfont specimen is now available in Cyrillic, thanks to Dimo Buko.
• Dan Hoopert designs letters made of wire
• Gavin Lucas takes a closer look at Doctrine.
• Jonathan Barnbrook talks about his work for David Bowie.
• Bees!

Events

Swarm to some of these upcoming events:

• Learn Robofont with Frederik Berlaen, June 1–2, at the Cooper Union.
• Andy Clymer continues our Cooper Union blitz with a June 3 workshop on interpolation
• Stic k around and learn about kerning with Ben Keil, June 4 at the Cooper Union.
• Come to Eventbrite in San Francisco for a screening of Sign Painters on June 26.

Farewell!

That’s it for this week. We’ll get back to our regular schedule as soon as possible!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for finding all the finds this week!

New Type

Shamelessly uninhibited. Neil Summerour’s Shameless makes no excuses for its unabashedly feisty behaviour. An angular handwritten script with a relentless motion — like the teeth of a reciprocating saw — produced through the smart application of a seemingly endless supply of contextual variations. Multiple stylistic sorts, swashes, flyaways, and “responsive titling alts” prove just how unencumbered this design really is, with over 2,200 glyphs in the “standard” version alone. As if that number wasn’t audacious enough, the “deluxe” variation sports a couple hundred more — plus Summerour’s promise of future additions and upgrades.

With a sophistication uncommon to many of Virus’ more idiosyncratic typefaces, Doctrine provides a large family that deftly blends mid-century neo-grotesque, humanist, and geometric sans influences. Throughout the five weight range, the typographic tag team of Jonathan Abbott, Jonathan Barnbrook, and Julián Moncada apply consistency (and unorthodox charm) with an ample helping of those trademark Virus alternates, an voluminous selection of ligatures, and numerous figure sets.

Bringing a bit more muscle to the table is Doctrine Stencil, a “utilitarian” display version based on the same sans frame. Taking inspiration from the wordmark of North Korea’s rather iffy national airline, this five weight family features four stylistic sets, incorporating both the alternate letterforms found in the text styles and various stencil cut options.

Lev Berry’s Monstre brings a quaint set of dimensional characters out of the realm of French ephemera and up to OpenType speed. Five carefully prepared layers — retaining the “slight imperfections” of the hand-painted orginal — can be manipulated for limitless lighting and shading effects. Try it out for yourself. It’s a free download under Creative Commons licensing.

The latest release from Fontsmith is Phil Garnham’s impressive (and expansive) FS Emeric. Covering an eleven-weight range, the entire family maintains a clean, sharp aesthetic — open counters, chiselled terminals, subtle “micro-modulations”, and an overall textual warmth. Tying together the ideals and the design of Garnham’s glyphic progeny, a series of limited edition screenprinted posters were created specifically for the launch — one celebrating each weight in the family.

If ever there was a perfect name to apply to a geometric sans, Lineto’s Circular might well be it. This is the second release from Berlin’s Laurenz Brunner after his acclaimed, Swiss-flavoured Akkurat. The functional book, medium, bold, and black weights — along with their tidy italic mates — maintain a balance between what Brunner refers to in Squaring the Circle as “conceptual rigour, skilled workmanship, and measured idiosyncrasy.”

Ulrike Wilhelm’s LiebeRuth mixes the mojo found in chewy, retro headliners like ITC American Typewriter with the welcoming, organic handstyle we’ve come to know and love. The four slabby weights are simply jam-packed full of quirky curlycues, loopy swashes, ball terminalia, and more alternates than you can shake a stick at.

Designed by Mark and Doris Ho-Kane, Uchronia takes its name from a term coined by French philosopher Charles Bernard Renouvier in 1876, referring to a fictional — often utopian — version of history. This is a classic titling face befitting the idyls of the definition — with graceful lines, minimal adornment, and a modicum of alternates, including inscriptional and calligraphic punctuation.

News

• Laura Meseguer writes about the creation of Magasin.
• Get yourself a copy of Tim Brown’s Pocket Guide to Combining Typefaces. £2 — cheap!
• Spice up your sheet music with some advice from Mayene de Leon.
• Sibylle Hagmann appears in this month’s Creative Characters.
• Meet Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones (again, for the first time!) in a short video from the presentation of the 2013 AIGA Medal.
• Travel back to 1944 and check out some type for advertising and architecture.
• Or only go back to 1996 and find out what Roger Black has to say about web design.
• Bless the buh-buh sound of letter ‘B’. (This ‘A’ is pretty nice, too.)
• The people behind KALQ think you need a new keyboard layout for your touchscreen device.
• Learn about working with right-to-left scripts in HTML.
• Every day in November 2012, Michael Crowe and Lenka Clayton used typewriters to draw things they’d seen that day.
• Chris Clark and James Dempsey discuss using beautiful text on iOS.
• The latest FontFont newsletter is out.
• Monotype is looking to hire a type director for its Noida, India operations. Be glad it’s not a posting for ClearType hinter.
• The UK has a nifty Government Service Design Manual to help government agencies meet a new Digital by Default Service Standard.
• So much chrome type, so little time.
• Romesh Naik has uploaded a specimen for Granby to Flickr.
• Listen to and watch Mandy Brown speak on editing.
• Ralf Herrmann finds instances of the capital sharp ‘S’ in use.
• Someone should typeset this blog comment spammer’s source template.
• Many of these vintage designs have lovely letters.
• Behold: the last poster printed at the orignal Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
• The Lord’s Prayer on a 12-point square piece of type is quite the achievement — and a true “marvel of modern punch-cutting,” courtesy Dan Rhatigan and Monotype.
• Fabio Haag recounts some of the happenings at TPC10.
• Bernie Quah’s sketchnotes from TYPO San Francisco are available as a PDF.
• Fonts in Use has a whole section dedicated to type and typography conferences. Which is a perfect lead-in to …

Events

Segue, this way:

• See and hear Tim Brown on “Universal Typography,” at Adobe MAX, May 4–8 in Los Angeles.
• ISType 2013 takes place June 13–16, in Istanbul; there’s a “pre-event” with Alejandro Paul on May 7.
• Also May 7: walk Tribeca with Paul Shaw.

Shake out those shoes

It’s time to go home! See you next week.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for risking life and limb to lead this week’s new type into our little oasis.

New Type

Got asterisk? You’ll have no shortage of stars when you nab the Font Aid VI: Aster Affects typeface from the Society of Typographic Aficionados. Created to raise funds after the events of Hurricane Sandy, over 250 designers from around the globe contributed star-inspired glyphs to the project. All proceeds from the sale of the font go directly to Red Cross relief efforts.

After the iconic Jim Rimmer passed away in 2010, Canada Type began the process of “repatriating” and updating Jim’s voluminous body of work. This past week saw the rerelease of three popular Rimmer type families — newly remastered, expanded, and buffed up right.

Rimmer’s Albertan was his first face to make the shift from metal to digital in the early 1980s. Albertan Pro — and it’s distinctive “almost-slab” serifs — expands the original calligraphic Roman into a robust 14 style family that deftly covers a six weight range. A vast amount of ligatures, alternates, figural sets, and a tasty inline variation are just some of the updated components under the newly polished hood.

The second Rimmer face to receive a typographic tune up is Isabelle Pro — a calligraphic Roman and arguably “one of the most beautiful italics ever made.” Among the OpenType-powered additions are proper small caps; an expanded set of ligatures; plus stylistic alternates offering options for lowercase serif angle and looped ascenders and descenders.

Drawn by Jim just before his passing, the charming Loxley gets the final revamp nod. Glyphs that flowed from the master’s hand have been modernized with care and attention, painstakingly fleshed out and subtly improved through the inclusion of copious ligatures, alternates, and historical forms.

The folks behind the counter at the Lost Type Co-op have certainly been busy stocking the shelves with fresh produce lately. Following up on the release of Mission Gothic earlier this month, the co-operative has just put another pair of faces on the aisle end. For example, Dai Foldes’ Cylburn takes structural cues from elegant roundhand scripts, but mixes it up with some casual, semi-connected brushwork.

The second face from the Co-op is a straight-up, single weight sans by the name of Fairview. Designer Riley Cran has placed stripped-down, geometric forms on a condensed linear frame, successfully echoing a familiar 20th century industrial vernacular.

Roman Shchyukin’s Delgado Sans shares the same whisper thin frame and playful attitude as his beautifully ball-terminal’d Delgado. Although lacking serif accoutrements, this stand-alone sans is fully outfitted with display-savvy features … including plenty of Latin and Cyrillic ligatures, oldstyle figures, and more.

The outlook from Symbolset is clear with a 100% chance of usefulness. Especially since their latest release is Jory Raphael’s meteorologically focused SS Forecast — a simply designed symbol font for all seasons.

News

Partly steamy, but still a great weekend to grill some links:

• Paul Robert Lloyd has released Bradshaw’s Guide, “based on the 1866 edition of George Bradshaw’s handbook for tourists using Britain’s nascent railway network.”
• Tiffany Wardle de Sousa and Shelley Gruendler discuss type lock-up aesthetic.
• Jordan Moore discusses “Fallback Fonts on Mobile Devices” and created a mobile system font incompatibility table to go along with it.
• [Cue classic movie preview voice] “In a world … where bookstores are no more”: watch The Last Bookshop.
• Not safe for work but worth your time: The Kama Sutra Project, an erotic conceptual alphabet, with each letter available as a limited-edititon print. The alphabet’s creator, Malika Favre, is interviewed by Glenn Garriock for FormFiftyFive.
• Safe for work — safe for kids, even! — is this whimsical Creature Alphabet from Cuddlefish Press.
• Kent Anderson interviews Michael Bierut about type and communication.
• This is an impressive hand-painted saw by Zachary Smith.
• The Starshaped Press shows off work made with typefaces from the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry.
• Sean Mitchell shares a bunch of beautiful typefaces released last month.
• If you missed TYPO San Francisco, you can still watch some of the talks. Or at least check out some of Bernie Quah’s sketchnotes.

Events

Now that we’re done reviewing what is and was, let’s take a look at what is yet to come:

• Through April 27, at the Ginza Graphic Gallery, check out the Tokyo TDC Award 2013 exhibition.
• Yves Peters previews the Kerning typography conference, which takes place May 2–3 in Faenza, Italy.
• Attend Moving Type Festival review and symposium at the National Museum in Warsaw and the Polish Japanese Institute of Information Technology, May 27–29.
• Text Support: A Library Exhibit About Paper runs through June at the libraries of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• Coming in September: Keith Houston’s Shady Characters book!

Brisk

And with that, this week’s breezy jaunt through news and new type comes to an end. Is our forecasting model off? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for finding all the finds.

New Type

Aethereal calligraphic strokes and nuanced motion come together in Maximiliano Sproviero’s Bird Script — his latest handiwork for Lián Types. There’s a subtle rhythm whispering throughout the loose — but absolutely controlled — hand-drawn forms and swashes. Two breezy weights include an assortment of multi-glyph ligatures, flowing alternates, and stylistically appropriate ornaments.

One more time for effect. Jeremy Dooley has managed to find something else to explore amidst his already voluminous Aviano überfamily. Aviano Sans Layers consists of no less than 21 styles of inline, outline, dimensional, and textural options that can be mixed, matched, and layered (naturally) into all manner of marquee-esque headlines.

Following up on Mission Script — his other San Francisco–flavoured face — James T. Edmondson collaborated with Brooklyn’s Trevor Baum on the nostalgic Mission Gothic. Inspired by the hand-painted signs scattered throughout the city’s Mission District, this five weight sans features an intriguing backstory and a set of italics matching the angularity of its cousin script.

We don’t often feature vector format fonts, but we simply couldn’t resist this huggibly hirsute handset by Thailand’s Ukkrid “Lambda” Tosak. Created exclusively for YouWorkForThem, YWFT Lotes is a charming, chubby cartoon character of a face that “came from an egg that Dr. Seuss laid and Terry Gilliam hatched.”

Still legible after all these years … more so, even. Adrian Frutiger’s eponymous humanist sans gets an upgrade from Linotype, specifically complying with a new German DIN standard for public signage systems. Neue Frutiger 1450 provides the correct character proportions, line thickness, and letter spacing required for adherence to the standard, along with modified versions of the ‘0’ and ‘1’ and lowercase ‘l’ — characters which are often confused because of their similarity to other characters.

Something from the orchard this way comes. Linotype paints the town a fresh shade of Fruitygreen with an “idiosyncratic but appealing” display face by Indonesia’s Andi AW. Masry. This three weight display family is an interesting combination of organic brush lettering, calligraphic flow, and unconventional “fructiform” details. Each style includes true italics, swash capitals, and a set of distinctive ligatures.

Hannes von Döhren’s Mikado is a casual sans family that covers a bouncy seven weight range — from light to ultra. With its tight, headline-savvy letterspacing and loose, sign-painterly approachability, we can see why von Döhren describes it as face “for kids, games, and ice cream.” A nicely detailed set of italics and pan-European language support is icing on the cake.

If wishes were scripts, perhaps Wishes Script would grant them. Designed by Sabrina Mariela Lopez as a multifunctional script system, a trio of light-hearted, modulated faces include dozens of spirited OpenType alternates, swashes, endings, and ligatures. As if that wasn’t enough, Lopez has also provided both display and “text” variations of each weight, matching Roman titling capitals, plus an impressive number of calligraphic ornaments, frames, and other typographic accoutrements.

News

Let’s move on from wishing to a long line of links!

• Improve your online typography by experimenting with Tommi Kaikkonen’s Interactive Guide to Blog Typography.
• You may have heard of Daily Drop Cap; meet the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, 500 years its senior — and help solve a manuscript mystery in the process!
• Billy Whited identifies “Three Exemplary Typefaces for User Interfaces.”
• Over on TypeDrawers, Jan Schmoeger instigates a lively discussion on removing junk from character sets.
• The third and final installment of LetterCult’s best custom letters of 2012 is out. You can also also read all three installments at once.
• Matt Stevens “explodes” a popular technology.
• John Berry examines the work of Ivan Federov.
• Make your writing less mephitine with this list of animal adjectives.
• John Pavlus praises JAF Facit Web as “a massage chair for your eyeballs.”
• Erik Spiekermann teases us with a new typeface.
• Imagine a geometrically-constructed Fraktur.
• Ulrich Planer is “a passionate typography hunter.”
• Eye magazine interviews Dan Rhatigan.
• Gestalten.tv interviews Jessica Hische.
• Typecast interviews Steve Matteson.
• “How exactly does the technology we use to read change the way we read?”
• John Nack shares some of Aaron Draplin’s favorite signs.
• Get your hands on Letter Fountain’s Calypso PF (and learn about how they made it).
• If you’re too cheap to license certain typefaces for the web, here are rough equivalents from Google’s free webfont service (apparently there’s a shortage of apostrophes).
• Amperbranch prints are still available.
• Julius Hui considers the 2-Lines English Egyptian by William Caslon IV.
• Dalton Maag is hiring.
• Collaboratively-designed typefaces? Fontyou.
• Need another round-up of new typefaces? Head over to I Love Typography for the latest “This Week in Fonts.”
• Enjoy a new number for each day of the year.
• The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum has joined Instagram.
• You can get the Talking Types podcast on iTunes.
• TYPO San Francisco has wrapped for this year. See what you missed!
• One of these signs is not like the others …

Scheduling

There’s a lot going on; try not to get overwhelmed:

• On April 18, log on for a seminar with Richard Rutter on typography in responsive design.
• Learn about Cyrillic type design in a workshop with Alexei Vanyashin, April 20–21, in Berlin.
• Brace yourselves, 8 Faces #6 is coming.
• On May 7, Paul Shaw leads a type walk through Tribeca.
• As a part of TYPO Berlin, on May 17 the FontFont TypeBoard inaugurates the FontFont TypeReview.
• Get your tickets for Beyond Tellerand, which takes place May 27–28 in Düsseldorf.
• Apply for the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique — the deadline is May 31.
• Ampersand 2013 takes place on June 28 in Brighton.

Shantih

That’s it for this week — don’t be cruel, and see you soon.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for another great week of new type!

New Type

Embracing all manner of parameter, Typonine’s Audree doesn’t suffer from multiple personalities — it embodies them. With the help of Marko Hrastovec, designer Nikola Djurek has produced a bogglingly flexible type system consisting of no less than fifteen serif styles, two “construction models”, high and low contrast forms, plus user-selectable options for stencil and inline variations. Using Typonine’s Audree App, you’re able to adjust and tweak to your heart’s content — producing just the right permutation. And how can you possibly go wrong with vintage blinkenlights, toggleswitchings, and clickybuttons promoting your absurdly configurable typeface? You can’t.

Rolling out yet another digital update from it’s seemingly endless inventory, the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry has just released HWT Republic Gothic — one the last original wood type designs to be manufactured in Two Rivers. This modified sans serif, with brush-lettering bones and signpainterly naïveté, sports solid and (rather beefy) outline styles designed to be used as a two-colour chromatic set.

Accompanying the aforementioned headline face is Hamilton’s HWT Star Ornaments — a font that pretty much describes exactly what it is. Nearly 100 variations on the five point motif, a smattering of other stylistically suitable symbols, and two sets of configurable border elements — with updated “connection options” — provide plenty of peripheral possibilities.

The nicely balanced Quant in the latest from Dieter Hofrichter’s eponymous Hoftype foundry. Contrasted and clean across a quartet of weights, Quant is classically structured without feeling stuffy. Graceful italics, sensible small caps, multiple figure sets, and extended language support are all part of the package. By the way, the light weight is free.

We completely understand the tendancy to scoff at deliberately labelled discount products. But every once in a while we stumble across a low-cost gem that deserves some attention. Claus Grünstäudl’s Tau is a deceptively simple, two weight sans that contains some attractive details that belie its Ten Dollar Fonts home. Yes, the character sets are minimal and the metrics could use some love, but it’s things like Grünstäudl’s intriguing lowercase-only, hybrid italic “serif” style that have us looking forward to more.

João Henrique Lopes refers to Lucca as “a lovely humanist sans” … and it’s hard to argue with such a forthright assertion. Regular, bold, and italic styles are enriched with classic Italian Renaissance flavours. Each is accompanied by small cap versions, a handful of tasteful alternates, and thorough pan-European language support.

It’s always a treat when a new typeface appears in the Emigre quiver and this week provided a very tasty morsel. Zuzana Licko’s Program is billed as the “type designer's typeface” … featuring elements that are close to the heart of designers and typographers alike. Rounded elements and ink trap allusions remind us of the deteriorative effects of traditional printing and production techniques, whereas brush-influenced details bring out a humanist and craftsman-worthy warmth.

To wrap up this week’s new type, Typofonderie presents Mislab — Xavier Dupré’s continuing exploration of his “slab crush”. This time around, Dupré has produced a clearly slab family that features a number of sans (or “missing” serif) attributes throughout its voluminous range. Covering 32 styles and three widths, Mislab combines strength with a bright legibility.

News

No fooling: we have a metric ton of links for you this week.

• Tina Essmaker interviews Louise Fili for The Great Discontent.
• Dan Reynolds and Christoph Koeberlin share the rescue of Axel Bertram’s Videtur.
• “There is hope in a comma.”
• Vicente Lamónaca’s Tipografía Latinoamericana features a collection of of forty Latin American designers, typographers, researchers, and educators narrating their experiences, reflections, process, and results. (This is a big deal.)
• Neenah Paper has launched “The Beauty of Letterpress,” whose goal should be self-evident — but the site is also a way to support the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
• Rembert Browne laments the demise of the sitcom logos of the 1990s.
• Nick Sherman asserts that responsive typography should be a physical discipline.
• Conor Muirhead reveals how to combine icon font characters on the web to create some impressive complex icons.
• Justin Knopp shows off some type specimens from the Vincent Figgins Type Foundry.
• Enjoy part two of LetterCult’s best custom letters of 2012.
• And congratulations to this year’s TDC Typeface Design winners!
• Watch out for these over-the-top letters.
• David Sudweeks shows off the pairing of Malabar and Versa Sans.
• Ponder some “serendipitous poetry from The New York Times.” (And then find out how it works.)
• Happy fifth birthday to FontStruct!
• It sounds like the Adobe workshop at Typofonderie was a success.
• Glory goes to Elena for winning this year’s “March Madness” competition.
• Best wishes to André Mora on his next adventure.
• If you like hinting and have some free time, get in touch with James Puckett of Dunwich Type.
• Take a gander at the changing faces of David Bowie.
• Monotype has released a series of eText fonts to “provide quality e-reading experiences.” eGoody!
• Caitlin Dempsey looks at the typography of National Geographic maps.
• Many Indian scripts are fading away thanks to poorly designed digital versions.
• Even Sam Clemens enjoyed type.
• TypographyShop has announced the George Lois Poster Project and unveiled the first poster, “Work Is Worship,” by Massimo Vignelli.
• If I used a skateboard, I’d probably want one of these.
• I also kinda covet Helveticat. So cute!
• What could be better than Ed Benguiat and Pam Grier?
• Adobe has released some impressive new type specimens (that are unfortunately only available as PDFs).
• Nick Sherman traveled to São Paulo for the Tipocracia conference — and took some fine photos.
• If you have some cash lying around and know Swedish, you might want this signed first edition specimen of Berling Antikva.
• See what happens when code and type converge.
• Create erasures on the web using the erase_mark bookmarklet.

Fake News

So, April 1 happened this week, too. Some clever folks in the type world participated:

• David Sudweeks showed how to add flair to Word documents.
• Neil Summerour released Hobo Grunge.
• P22 announced that it will only be releasing typefaces in two formats.
• FontShop published a very special newsletter and announced that Frederic Goudy would speak at TYPO San Francisco.
• Yves Peters had fun with his “My Type of Music” series.
• This unicorn typeface is all too real.

Events

From the fake back to the real — and in some cases, the really soon:

• If you can, try to catch The National Poster Retrospectus, on tour now.
• Join José Scaglione as he discusses how to understand and analyze type on April 11 in Barcelona.
• Yves Peters has additional information on the TYPO SF Type Track on April 12.
• Apply for Open Set 2013, an intensive series of workshops August 19–31 in Breda, The Netherlands. The application deadline is June 15.
• Design Werkstatt has a new workshop on Tactile Systems with Lupi Asensio and Martin Lorenz — May 13–15 in Berlin. (There’s a discount if you’re going to be at TYPO Berlin.)

That’s it for this week.

Did we miss anything incredible (or incredibly silly)? Let us know in the comments.

We’ll leave you with this decidedly not safe for work Russian erotic alphabet book. Have a great week!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for making this week’s new type plausible, er, possible.

New Type

Rodrigo Saiani’s Guanabara Sans is only the third release from Plau (the foundry formerly known as Niramekko), and a very sophisticated one at that. Orginally designed as a personable wayfinding face fitting the flavour (and winding streets) of Rio de Janeiro, this flexible “typeface from Ipanema” sports eight weights of distinctive details, calligraphic flourishes, and fresh-faced italics.

Unexpected angles and notches, asymmetrical serifs, and intentionally “broken” strokes give Mateusz Machalski’s Korpo Serif an atypical feel when compared to other Egyptian-esque slabs. Two weights of low contrast, deliberately constructed forms are supported by italic, alternate, and small cap’d variations.

The prolific pen of young Swedish designer Måns Grebäck has produced yet another bouncy, brush script. With “headline” written all over it, Remachine Script is loose, lively, and literally popping with exaggerated cap action.

Did you see that? It was a complete specimen of Adobe Blank, a typeface designed to cover all Unicode points — with each point rendered by a non-spacing and non-marking glyph. Wait, what? We had the same reaction — so we’ll let Ken Lunde explain why Adobe Blank is useful.

News

From real insubstantiality to items of substance we go:

• Mark Simonson reveals the origin of Proxima Nova. Search your feelings: you know it to be true.
• John Berry wrote “Unbound Pages” for The Magazine. (He also discusses The Magazine itself on his blog.)
• Visit Casa do Conto and enjoy letters embedded in concrete.
• Read it and weep: an OurType email conversation with a customer.
• Part one of LetterCult’s best custom letters of 2012 is out. (You’re welcome!)
• The Herald Times Reporter reports on the relocation of the Hamilton Wood Type & Print Museum. (While we’re on the subject of the Hamilton, the museum could still use your support.)
• Matthew Young reviews Codex 2.
• Maykel Loomans reveals a different way to create pullquotes on the web.
• Stewart Curry shares what he has learned dealing with type on ePub, Mobi, and the web.
• Billy Whited explains some of the considerations that go into “Setting Type for User Interfaces.”
• See what Sean Mitchell has stumbled upon in the latest installation of “This Week in Fonts.”
• In a web “reprint” of an article in Emigre 18, Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum ask, “Is Best Really Better”?
• Hannes Famira explores what happens when two typefaces have the same name.
• Set aside 12 minutes and watch “The Film Before the Film,” an exploration of the history of opening movie titles.
• 52faces is Jack Clarke’s attempt to create a new typeface each week of the year.
• Check out the construction at 24 Georgia Street.
• Bruno Maag advocates for better design education.
• Trevor Baum discusses the origins of his Mission Gothic typeface.
• Set aside a few hours and immerse yourself in the Flickr photostream of the Penn Provenance Project.
• Coverjunkie has quite the collection of typographic magazine covers.
• Meet Type-Ø-Tones in the latest Creative Characters.
• Triangle Man wins in David MacKenzie’s “Word Frequencies in They Might Be Giants Lyrics.”
• David Sudweeks shows us how to use InDesign’s tabs and nested styles.
• Yves Peters and any other movie poster buffs out there will get a kick out of Adrian Curry’s Movie Poster of the Day.
• Aha! Neko Font: most lucky happy font cat.
• This third-party font bug in Word for Mac is all kinds of sad.
• “What Is the Business of Literature?”

Events

Make some of these time-sensitive items your business:

• Minneapolis-based Chowgirls Killer Catering presents “a unique, hands-on food and font experience” with Chank Diesel on April 1 — for serious.
• Dado Queiroz examines the development of lettering design in “False Volumes, Real Letters,” April 4 at the Type Directors Club in New York.
• On April 8, Peter Biľak speaks on “Depth & Width” as a part of the Emily Carr Speaker Series in Vancouver, BC.
• You have until May 8 to back the Sigmund Freud typeface project on Kickstarter.
• Enter your work in the Canberra Centenary Typeface Design Competition: the deadline is July 14.

Valete

We’ll be back next week. Until then: be excellent to each other.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for unearthing some great new type!

New Type

Angling for some new type? Type Together’s largest family just doubled in size (and usefulness) with the addition of a complete set of obliques. Tablet Gothic Oblique adds six widths worth of slanted companions to Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s sturdy, grotesque sans — now consisting of seven dozen individual styles.

Inspired by a handful of characters spotted in a vintage pajama advertisement (you can’t make these things up), Harold’s Fonts has pulled out a pair of textural inline headliners. The smooth as silk Penstripe and its sketchier Pencilstripe cousin both feature five lanes of funky linear strokage — in a trio of weights.

David James and Gareth Hague have been busy finishing up several new releases for their Alias foundry. Noah Text and Noah Bold feature sharp angles and connections reminiscent of incised forms, brushed with just a touch of modernized blackletter. Three styles of each weight include a unicase variation, as well as something called “upper lower” — where the traditional uppercase has been replaced with stretched and modified lowercase characters.

Also out the Alias shop are two takes on minimalist stencils. The serif stylings of Grist are constructed (and implied) through the subtle placement of circles, simplified stems, and other “curvaceous, dramatic shapes.”

Glue is a companion design to Grist, abstracting the already stark forms into even simpler and more graphic components. Both stencils feature several alternate characters that can be easily accessed by changing case.

Canada Type’s Patrick Griffin has again done a bang up job reinvigorating the once film-bound faces of the Filmotype collection. Filmotype Keynote is a bold, mid-century advertising face — substantially updated with extended language support, alternates, and handy OpenType goodness.

The informal, monolinear appearance of Filmotype LaCrosse comes from the world of luxury goods and high-end catalogues. Once again, the casual 1950s aesthetic has been amped up with a significant set of alternates, contextual ending characters, and “flawless” ligatures.

The latest face from Argentina’s Sudtipos foundry has been described as “Pretty, edgy, and pretty edgy.” Heráldica Script is easily one of the most expressive and ornamented scripts produced by the typographic tag team of Angel Koziupa and Alejandro Paul. Contrasting and “conjoined” calligraphic strokes provide an engraved flavour. The flourishes and swashes take it right over the top.

News

After such a glowing batch of reviews, there’s only one way to begin this week’s round of type-related links:

• Brighten your evenings by reading about a New York lit by gaslight signs.
• You know “Responsive Design” has made the big-time when it appears in Wired — and author Paul McKeever advocates beginning with type.
• Matt Griffin explores different type sizing for different screen sizes.
• Roman Rudenko reveals other uses for the CSS root em unit than font size.
• Mark Simonson found this lovely 1957 brochure for the creepy-looking Vari-Typer Model 160.
• J.M. Mosley looks at fragments of engraved slate headstones.
• This is a promising beginning to an illustrated alphabet of rock bands.
• Nick Sherman presents highlights from a 1979 book showing Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces, including Hobo, Mistral, and Signal.
• Janine Vangool documents the kerning of Canada … er, Can ada … um, Canad a.
• Bitmapped blackletter works better than you might think.
• Hubert Jocham has a lovely redesigned website.
• Creative Bloq compiled their list of “the top 25 movie posters of all time.” Of all time!
• While we’re on the topic of movie posters, be sure to check out Yves Peters’ most recent “ScreenFonts.”
• Get inspired with Typespire.
• Ronit Bigal calligraphically covers her models with quotes from the Bible.
• Incrementally resize type in InDesign thanks to a handy plugin from LettError.
• Buy a copy of Worn Gothic, and you could win a painting.
• Get another fix of new type with the latest issue of “This Week in Fonts.”
• MPQD features artwork comprised of iOS icons and strategic letter- and word-placement.
• Jon Parker shows that C.S. “Hotes” Houghtaling knew his stuff.
• Who wouldn’t like a neat Scotch-inspired typeface?

Events

Write these down before the lights go out:

• Enroll by March 30 to study type design at the Siena Art Insititute in Italy, June 15–28.
• Get in on the TYPO San Francisco “Type Track,” April 11.
• Help fund Nancy Sharon Collins’ west coast book tour on Kickstarter; you have until April 13.
• On April 18 travel through the vast series of tubes on the internet to learn about typography in responsive web design with Richard Rutter.
• The Gutenberg Museum in Mainz has an open call for type through May 5. Participation is free, and winners will be presented as a part of the “Call for Type” exhibition, June 6 – September 8.
• Pae White’s Too Much Night, Again features words made from 48 kilometers of string and is at the South London Gallery through May 12.

Whoosh

And with that, it’s time to put out the light and put out the light. Have a great (and not at all ominous) week!

Thanks, Grant for guiding us through type (previously) unknown!

Bread and butter type

The experimental nature of Felix Braden’s Rollmops throws buckets of water in the face of traditional handwritten (or constructed) scripts. Playing with the concept of a strip of paper that has been folded to create a continuous series of characters, this heavily stylized display face gives a sharp, linear twist to common calligraphic principals.

Viktoriya Grabowska’s lively lettering can be found alive and well in a pair of recent releases through Sorkin Type and the Google Web Fonts juggernaut. Fruktur mixes an upright, blackletter-esque structure with some playfully modulated — almost cartoonish — strokes.

The second fresh number from Grabowska is the energetically named Kavoon — a single weight experimental display face. Although it shares the same lighthearted “brushiness” and condensed stance as Fruktur, it definitely crossed over from the serif side of the street.

Also showing up in the Google showroom this week was Eben Sorkin’s latest extension to his extremely readable and screen-savvy Merriweather family. More than two years after announcing the original project and releasing the inaugural Roman style, Merriweather Sans adds four low-contrast, comfortable text weights.

Chilean newcomer Paty Bean presents Handy Cut — a spontaneous and charming display type based on hand-torn paper. The design is childlike, naïve, and full of typographic whimsy — including dozens of alternates and a set of matching dingbats.

Kicking out some serious headline jam, Rui Abreu’s Azo Sans Uber is the newest addition to his popular geometric family. Featuring exaggerated optical adjustments and a handful of “flary” alternates, this beefy single weight adds quite a bass-line to the baseline.

Wrapping up this week’s new type is Steven Bonner’s Langdon. Commissioned as a free download for one of his client’s customers, this straight-up, condensed industrial sans comes with a limited, but flexible contingent of characters. Solid and shadow variations of the uppercase and numerals are accompanied by a basic set of punctuation and other glyphs — sporting several unique details.

Brined news

These links will keep longer when heavily salted. Trust us, you’ll need that extra preserving power.

• Behold, from Typographica: “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2012.” Go on, read about some great type — just come back when you’re done. (See you in a few weeks.)
• Stephen Coles has been busy, because he also took the time to uncover “The Other Times Modern” (now with the correct link).
• Tiffany Wardle de Sousa and Dr Shelley Gruendler kick off a grand discussion on “Modern Type Trends.”
• Gerry Leonidas charts the explosion of typographic awareness and its future.
• Mark Simonson is on a tear. He uncovered a 40-year-old issue of Industrial Art Methods. And check out the original artwork for his Felt Tip Roman typeface. Please keep sharing, Mark!
• Peter Biľak discusses bookbinding methods.
• Brian Suda declares this “The Era of Symbol Fonts.”
• And — conveniently — Symbolset now offers hosting.
• Take note: Eric Meyer has learned that “in Windows, Helvetica is not Helvetica: it’s Arial.”
• Firefox now makes it easier to inspect webfonts.
• Meanwhile, the “compatibility modes” in Internet Explorer 9 and 10 lie about webfont rendering.
• Do you use RoboFont? Give yourself to-do items directly in the app!
• Glory be, Marian Bantjes has prints for sale.
• Mario Livio explores the origins of the symbols for plus and minus.
• Fresh from House Industries: the Photolettering iOS app.
• Christopher Murphy and Chris Shiflett have created Glyph, a “tiny tome on typography” for Little Printer. A mobile version is forthcoming.
• Decide for yourself whether “Everything is beautiful in Bodoni.”
• Letters and signs dance in Husbands’ “Dream.”
• Ampergram seems like a fun way to spell things with Instagram photos. (They could make it more obvious for people to retrieve their own creations, however.)
• Mark Boulton considers (in)visible type.
• Kai Brach, founder of Offscreen magazine, is the guest on the latest episode of Talking Types.
• Riccardo Olocco reviews “Compulsive Bodoni.”
• Read Indra Kupferschmid on discounts.
• Baseline magazine can be had at a discount (ahem).
• Monotype has announced its fourth quarter and full 2012 results. “Creative Professionals” account for 25% of sales.
• Learn about the “Making of Franziska.” (Also available in English.)
• Among the lousy webtrends making a comeback: images-as-text and tiny type (the list itself suffers from the latter problem). Come on, people!
• See which typefaces were used on posters for Oscar-winning movies.
• “Can anyone design type?”
• Learn to create logos from type.
• Erik van Blokland and Paul van der Laan will again offer their Type Cooker workshop at TYPO Berlin.
• If you’re smart, you’ll apply for this summer internship at Typefounding.
• What an impressive collection of beer coasters, just in time for St. Patrick’s day!
• Tyler Etters designed his UTF-8 tattoo in BBEdit. His UTF-8 tattoo. In BBEdit.
• Finally, have your mind potentially blown by Zach Whalen’s “Videogame Typography and Its Antecedents.”

Dill events

A special delivery from the scheduling stork!

• Kerning, an international conference on typography, takes place May 2–3 in Faenza, Italy.
• Then make haste across the Atlantic for Pencil to Pixel, an exhibition of work for Monotype in New York, May 3–9.
• While you’re in New York, learn about web typography with a crash course on May 4.
• Meander back east to Cardiff for HybridConf, August 14–16.

Gherkin you later!

Wait, what?

We’re done for this week. Until next time, have fun chasing grasshoppers out of Finland.

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for all his type-canning this week!

Type

Best. Five. Ever. Clement Numbers is Pablo Impallari’s revival of some handsomely expressive, 19th century “French” numerals originally produced by the Fonderie Clement. This tidy handful of digits won’t leave you hanging — basic puncutation and math symbols are also included.

For such an aggressively named face, the latest release from Berlin’s Type Department sports a sedate charm. Crocodile Brokenscript combines multiple historical influences and typographic elements into a modernized, handwritten blackletter. Adding to this face’s distinctiveness — and versatility — are the inclusion of old style figures and small caps.

The newest confection from Fenotype is Emil Karl Bertell’s Bonbon — a tasty, condensed script in three weights. Deliciously flexible, each style provides at least four glyph variations for each primary character, including swash and titling alternates, plus a set of bouncy small caps.

We’ll admit that we love the optic dazzle of “neon” typefaces. And why settle for a geometric triline when Stereotypes’ Prism pulls off some seriously sexy, four-lane action inspired by Prisma — Rudolf Koch’s inline display version of Kabel. For graphic impact and colour, each of the ten weights in the range — from extra light through black — share the same proportions and widths.

Ramiro Espinoza’s Medusa pays homage to the masterful work of 19th century Spanish calligrapher, Ramón Stirling. Drawn with sensitivity to the source, the swash capitals are wonderfully ornate, but delicately balanced. The face avoids the common “artificial” practice of connecting roundhand forms in the middle of each glyph, instead creating a more realistic baseline flow. An unexpected set of serif’d small caps is also included, along with numerous “modular” swashes and cartouches. Summing up what makes Medusa work so well, Nick Shinn expounds, “It’s good to see [Espinoza’s] own historically informed penmanship expressed in these letters and flourishes, providing a rare degree of authenticity.” We’d have to agree.

In the midst of relocating their massive working museum in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry is still managing to crank out an impressive number of revivals. The first of three new releases is HWT Arabesque, an eccentrically organic (and arguably groovy) Art Nouveau headliner.

Next out of the Hamilton chute is a mid-century script originally designed for the Morgan Sign Machine Company. HWT Bon Air features exaggerated contrast, playfully odd forms, and a somewhat “exotic” feel. A number of alternates and ligatures supply just enough variation (and personable quirkiness) to simulate a signpainter’s whimsy.

“Words to punctuate wood type inspired layouts.” That’s how the folks at Hamilton describe the decorative typographic add-ons in their HWT Catchwords collection. This eclectic set of preformatted words, phrases, and abbreviations sports a variety of 19th and early 20th century vernacular styles and treatments.

News

Say good-bye to some time; several of this week’s links are truly engrossing.

• If our weekly round-up of new typefaces isn’t satisfying on its own, you might want to check out Sean Mitchell’s new “This Week in Fonts,” over at I Love Typography.
• Mark Simonson has a lovely new website.
• David Sudweeks continues his quest to justify type; be sure to read the lively discussion in the comments.
• Enjoy a random Font Bureau glyph each day, courtesy David Jonathan Ross.
• Linotype is now Monotype.
• Jessica Hische shares how to create quotes, dashes, and accents on a Mac.
• Learn “how emoji conquered the world.”
• Do you wonder about Unicode private-use characters, noncharacters, and sentinels? You’re apparently not alone!
• Use Fontastic and Processing to create fonts.
• Faythe Levine and Sam Macon have released a trailer for the Sign Painters documentary.
• Tampa Press has published Richard Hopkins’ Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype: The Origin of Digital Typesetting.
• Who knew that an interrobang could be so delicious‽
• Thanks to signs with the wrong typeface, thousands of speeding convictions may be overturned.
• The folks at Typofonderie review several recent books that amplify their content.
• Stephen Coles has updated his list of typography as furniture.
• It looks like the Vatican sent Pope Benedict XVI out in style.

Headings

Deadlines approach. Command?

• View this year’s Film Design Awards finalists, which will also be screened on March 11 at South by Southwest.
• March 15 is the deadline for programming submissions for TypeCon2013: Portl&.
• Head to São Paulo, March 19–25, for TPC10.
• Get tickets for Ampersand NYC, which takes place November 2.

Are fun

Another week blew by. See you again before we know it!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing us this week in fonts. ;)

Lucky new type

Rian Hughes tries to “manage one major release of new fonts per year”, but admits to a “slip” in 2012. The latest batch of faces for his Device Collection more than makes up for the unintended hiatus — with plenty of the distinctive, neo-retro display type we’ve come to expect from Hughes. Shall we take a peruse through the ten new families? Why not.

Armstrong is a strong, geometric script channelling some serious streamline vibe. The two weights are furnished with smart beginning and ending characters, swash capitals, and a handful of ligatures.

Taking a more freeform approach, Cadogan is also a connected script with avintage flair. Aggressively italic with accentuated caps, this high-style display face also features beginning and ending glyph variants, plus a tricky “extendable t-bar” that has been designed not to collide with subsequent ascenders.

Join the Clique — with an arguably elegant, subtly flared sans in three weights.

Chiselled terminals, Deco-inspired geometry, and a condensed stance provide Galleria with some graphic oomph.

Get your Glimmer on with two styles of slick, backslanted disco action.

Based on a variation of the Batman logo, the aptly named Kane comes boldly equipped in a pair of comic book styles.

Following in the trenches of 2011’s siginificant Korolev family, Korolev Military Stencil is a sectionalized display variation of the condensed grotesque sans.

Distilled from basic geometric shapes, State is a graphic display face with “futurist” leanings. Both solid and “rough” versions contain different cuts for each uppercase and lowercase character.

The deliciously mod, Avengers-inspired Steed covers two widths, with natty italics.

Last, but not least, the energetic Whiphand shows off some of Rian’s trusty (and rustic) handstyle.

After navigating that truckload of display type, why not rest your eyes on the softened edges of Hoftype’s Foro Rounded. Sixteen styles of relaxing sans echo the humanist structure of the slab serif’d Foro, but with added headline appeal.

Laura Worthington’s retro-flavoured “baseball” script may be named “Number Five”, but that’s not just what it wears on its jersey (it’s actually Laura’s favourite “lucky” number). Bold and blazing like the boys of summer, the smooth and slightly rough versions of this sign-painterly script include a concession stand’s worth of alternates, ornaments, and other extras.

Designed for the Bauer foundry by Henrich Jost during the first half of the 20th century, Beton Open has been revitalized by David Tucker from a print of the original foundry type. Nothing extrapolated or assumed — this is a display face straight from the source. David has also made the font available as a series of high resolution scans.

Wrapping up this huge slice of typographic pie is something fresh from Type-Ø-Tones fridge. Laura Meseguer’s Magasin is a quirky, upright script that combines copperplate calligraphy, draughtsman’s precision, and moderne elegance. High-contrast with an experimental edge, Magasin’s charming fluidity is enhanced by the inclusion of several swash and stylistic alternates.

Nota bene

Whew! I hope you’re rested up, because the next fun slog begins now:

• Fresh on the heels of Blokk comes Christian Naths’ Redacted, a set of three lorem-replacing typefaces. All are welcome companions to Patrick Lauke’s Greeked font utility.
• The Guardian-style comment generator could also prove useful for those moments when you need filler text.
• Sing along with “The Printing Press Song”!
• Viljami Salminen shares his thoughts on “Prototyping Responsive Typography.”
• If you missed Jon Tan’s talk on reading and the web from An Event Apart Atlanta, you can at least read Jeremy Keith’s handy notes.
• Typeplate attempts to address common typographic patterns for and the technical implementation of setting type on the web.
• Help Erik van Blokland with an intriguing digitization experiment.
• The FontFont year-in-review is informative, lovely, and voluminous.
• Learn about the fine print you find in a movie poster’s billing block.
• Thomas Phinney celebrates the Crafting Type workshops.
• David Sudweeks justifies justified text.
• Liz Galle discusses how Typekit adds new fonts.
• Speaking of Typekit, you can now use the service in French!
• Language support galore — from Greenlandic to Cyrillic — is a new way to search for FontFonts.
• Dave Rowland is this month’s addition to Creative Characters.
• Josh Emerson’s “Asset Fonts” presentation contains some handy webfont-icon tricks.
• Yves Peters is back with a vengeance! — or rather, with another great edition of ScreenFonts.
• Consider Kickstarting the Phantom Open Emoji project.
• Read Dustin Senos, “On dashes, hyphens, and other important aspects of life.”
• Join The Every Letter Project and help a good cause!
• Iain Reid expresses concern over spoilers and book subtitles.
• Help clean the wood type of the Cary Collection.
• If you enjoy Edward Gorey illustrations, morbid humor, and video games, you might love “The Game Over Tinies,” (in)conveniently spread over several pages: A–F, G–J, K–N, O–R, S–V, & U–Z.
• Find out how Adobe’s fundraiser for the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum went. (You can still support the Hamilton!)

Calendaria

Now that you’ve burned through your free time, be sure to check out these upcoming events:

• The Tournament of Books begins on March 4.
• On March 14, head to New York City and celebrate the release of Thomas Rinaldi’s New York Neon.
• Join John Downer at the Type Directors Club for “Proportions and Hierarchies,” April 20–21.
• Hurry to Takamatsu, Japan, May 12–17 for Type Camp with Shelley Gruendler and Neil Summerour.

Sigh

How better to end such a huge week than with a simple “See you next time”?

Thanks to a well-rested Grant Hutchinson for the insane number of new typefaces!

New Type

We begin with a Typotheque-shaped boom. After more than two years of labor, Martina Flor has released Supernova, a script face designed to work at text sizes as well as in headlines, and the results are as glorious as the name suggests. Learn more about the process of bringing Supernova by reading “Taking Script Typefaces to the Next Level.” It’s well worth your time.

From systematic script to massive type system. DSType has released the Prumo family, which can fit just about any use you can imagine. What can be said except that you should drop everything — as long as you promise to return — and take a closer look at the text, slab, “poster,” display, “deck,” and “banner” varieties — not to mention the playfully polychromatic Prumo Poster. Whew!

The cure for such intense variety may very well be Manvel Shmavonyan’s Vaccine. Beguiling in its cleanness, this “semi semi slab serif” should prove especially useful in challenging printing environs.

Let’s twirl away and be frivolous again, this time with Richard Lipton’s Savanna Script. Undeniably calligraphic in origin, Savanna Script feels at once a paragon of restraint and uninhibited. There’s no telling where this typeface will take you — just take care to catch your breath.

Sánchez Slab has understates the friendliness that seems to be all the rage among its contemporary slab serifs. Clean and Rockwellian in its origins, Daniel Hernández’ Sánchez nonetheless lets loose, most notably in its italics, but also with a peculiar and delightful letter K.

Anton Koovit takes us past the substrate with his U8 sans serif, which takes its inspiration from the Berliner U-Bahn and its signage. Trial versions and full licenses are for the taking from Fatype.

Jackson Alves’ Bispo Pro is an extension of his lovely year-old chancery script, Bispo Nova. The update includes random lowercase alternates and a delightful number of swashes.

Let’s wrap up this week’s typefaces with a script face that will hit you both coming and going. Aloha Script is a collaboration between sign painter Pierre Tardif and lettering artist Charles Borges. Capital variants and alternate characters galore fill Aloha Script with the kind of play you’d expect from your friendly neighborhood team or shop.

News

No clever transition this week (is there ever?) — let’s get right to the linkfest:

• Nick Sherman kicks off a promising new column on typography with “Font Hinting and the Future of Responsive Typography.”
• David Friedman recounts a story about “The Gutenberg Eyebrow.”
• Michael Hayward profiles Crispin and Jan Elsted of Barbarian Press.
• David Sudweeks instructs us in the use of contextual alternates and ligatures.
• Mike Trapp introduces “Eight New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need.” Many should quickly prove indispensable.
• Seb Lester shows off some of his work on a set of Blackletter capitals.
• Abdullah Shakur interviews Ale Paul.
• Learn “The Grammar of (Newspaper) Headlines.”
• Find out who won Valentype 2013.
• Matthew Rechs lets us know what’s up with Monotype fonts on Typekit.
• Lovely work on Ten by Bunch.
• Joe Clark opens up the New York City MTA Graphic Standards Manual.
• John Berry shares his photos from ATypI Hong Kong.
• The FontShop Plugin for Adobe Creative Suite now works with Fireworks.
• Learn which type foundries permit embedding fonts in applications as a part of a standard EULA.
• Buy stuff from Jessica Hische.
• See Christopher Labrooy fuse architecture and typography.
• Help this guy get to TypeCon.
• If you haven’t seen the specimen site for Jackson Cavanaugh’s Harriet Series lately, witness it in its freshly-minted webfont glory.

Events

We have innumerable events to cover this week; fortunately for us, most of them can be in digest form.

• Check out this incredible set of classes and workshops from the Society of Scribes in New York City.
• Crafting Type takes place in Chicago, March 8–10, and in Portland, March 15–17.
• On March 16, make your way to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to help create a typeface!

Kaboom!

That’s it this time around. No going out with a bang — nor a whimper — because we’ll see you next week!

Grant Hutchinson is floating in a tin can this week. We miss you, Grant!

A week of love and Lent and type and news: it’s all here!

New Type

Chester Jenkins’ architecturally inspired Brooklyn and its subdivided sibling Brooklyn Stencil have finally hit the streets after years of client exclusivity. Each variation of this “octagonal sans” consists of five rigidly constructed weights, along with properly tweaked obliques and a handful of alternate forms.

Expanding on his modernized majuscule script Rieven Uncial, Steven Skaggs has released the complementary Rieven Roman. Favouring Venetian style over uncial form, the Roman and italic can sit nicely alongside their predecessor. This is partly due to the sharing of several glyphs between the two families, but there’s also a similar application of calligraphic modulation and detail.

We love the fact that Wood Type Revival’s name says exactly what they do. They revive wood type. To that point, their latest revival is Cosmopolitan — a bold, connected script that’s trying really hard to look more sophisticated than it really is. This charmingly irregular display face originated with the Morgans & Wilcox Manufacturing Co. in the late 1800s. As with all WTR faces, you can choose between a lovingly redrawn regular style or a distressed version, with a century’s worth of replicated bumps and bruises.

Elena Schneider’s multiscript Eskorte is a workhorse text face focused on clarity and “a crisp, businesslike tone.” With Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and comprehensive Latin support, this family covers a huge range of languages out of the box — with a stylistic cohesiveness across the flexible four weight range. The Latin italics possess a liveliness and fluidity, reflecting the graceful dance of the Arabic forms.

News

Have you ever really, really really read these links?

• The FontShop blog steams things up with its “Typographic Turn-On” series: “Contextual Alternate Lifestyles,” “Sexy Swashes,” “Baby I’m Kerning,” “The Language of Love,” and “The DL.”
• If you have a webcam and a recent version of Opera, Chrome, or another browser that supports getUserMedia, you’ll get a kick out of Marko Dugonjić’s demonstration of real-time responsive typography.
• Robert Hooman documents the NYC DOT sign shop team.
• Take a few minutes to watch The Alphabet, a short film by David Lynch.
• I Love Typography features Martina Flor and Giuseppe Salerno’s Lettering vs. Calligraphy.
• Erik van Blokland calculates the number of photons reflecting off a letterform.
• Learn jobs and letters with this Occupational Alphabet.
• Kevin Cocquio celebrates letters on Club Lettreurs.
• Sarah Pavis shows us how to add some vinegar to your love(less) life.
• Relive the feast day of Saints Cyril and Methodius by learning to differentiate localized Cyrillic forms.
• Provide editorial feedback in plain text using Critic Markup Language.
• Nick Sherman presents a list of less-prestigious work of credible type designers.
• One of those works is Comic Sans, defended by Michael Stevens.
• Debbie Millman counts the ways.
• Play with and learn about Bézier curves.
• Meet Costa again, for the first time.
• Dan Eden takes a look at some famous type twins.
• Björk and Woody Guthrie won Grammy Awards for album packaging.
• Sean Mitchell shares his list of beautiful typefaces released in January.
• Get a load of Sharp Sans, coming soon from Pagan and Sharp.
• See what Adobe has been up to in an effort to support the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.
• If you love ampersands as much as I do, you’ll love the TypeCon2013 conference theme.

Events

We’ve got it going on!

• February 23–24 is the last opportunity to help the Hamilton move.
• Join Charles Nix for “Your First (Typographic) eBook,” March 22 at the Type Directors Club.
• Elena Veguillas shares plenty more opportunities to enjoy type.

Kiss & tell

Smooches and all that. See you next week!

Big hugs to Grant Hutchinson for bringing us some lovely typefaces this week.

New Type

Born of the lettering found on New York City’s innovative Lever House, Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Landmark takes a fresh and thoughtful look at geometric architectural type. Four striking variations on the clean sans theme include inline, shadow, and dimensional styles. Pay particular attention to sweat-stained details such as perceptual shading and dynamic capitals.

The cats at Canada Type have given Martin Wilke’s “underrated, yet influential” Wilke Kursiv a welcome multi-weight overhaul. Blending a calligraphic hand with subtly geometric forms, Wilke’s italicized script now sports two additional weights, a full complement of swash and small caps, and an array of figure sets.

Galen Lawson’s Hoban seems comfortable channeling its split personality. Consisting of two sexy, display-savvy serifs — one is lithe and sinewy, while the other bold and ballsy. Both are meant to be set big as you please and are packed plenty of alternate swashiness and ornamental character.

The aptly named Stately is the first of a pair of special purpose fonts making an appearance this week. Pitched as a “simple map font,” this is actually a surprisingly sophisticated cartographic visualization tool. Glyphs representing each of the 50 states (and the District of Columbia, natch) can be independently styled using nothing more than some reasonably straightforward HTML and CSS. Creator Ben Markowitz has even included some clever discretionary ligature action — typing a standard state abbreviation will substitute the appropriate image.

Tired of lorem ipsum-ing placeholder text in your wireframes? Blokk is the new kid on the text block. Developed using Rob Meek’s incredible Fontstruct tool, this utterly simple idea provides unobtrusive chunks of “text” to generically simulate headlines and paragraphs.

On the heels of last year’s heavy duty Valuco, Aesthetic Apparatus have busted the sophomore blues with the release of Brass Rule Script. Solid, geometric, and upright — this semi-connected display script is reminiscent of mid-century chrome, meticulously drafted blueprints, and industrial vernacular lettering.

Skol is the second release from Michael Cina’s recently launched Associated Typographics foundry. This robustly constructed, stenciled sans spans eight widths — rather than weights — providing a flexible range of headline styles. Also included are “a number of extra treats”, including small capitals, alternate forms, and numeric variations.

Although the matrices for the original metal design were destroyed years ago, a series of original drawings unearthed by historian Rich Hopkins helped bring Lanston Type Company’s LTC Athena back to life. The rediscovery and subsequent digital rebirth of this “lost” face is a curious tale, nearly as fascinating as the design itself. A tall drink of “deco-flavoured” water, Athena features an ultra-narrow stance and curious lack of straight lines.

News

Let’s be clear — there’s no fine print or subtext — we have some links to share.

• Asterisks kick off our linkfest. Read John Gruber’s “Rise of Bounding Asterisks in Lieu of Italicization for Styling Text” and Ben Zimmer’s great follow-up, “The cyberpragmatics of bounding asterisks.” Gruber responds by wondering whether type designers need to revisit the asterisk.
• Brent Jackson is “sick* of your tiny, tiny type.”
• Watch Tim Brown’s talk from Ready to Inspire 2012, “Universal Typography.”
• Maurice Meilleur reviews the fourth edition of The Elements of Typographic Style.
• Yves** is back with a brand new edition … of ScreenFonts.
• Congratulations to Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones for winning the 2013 AIGA Medal!
• Paul Shaw discusses the second issue of Codex.
• The Typo Talks blog interviews Travis Kochel.
• Get your fill*** of “Best of 2012” type lists.
• Toby Hancock has an impressive collection of Hollywood signs.
• Matt Malinoski reviews changes in lettering on Boston Red Sox jerseys.
• Dalton Maag is looking to add new Font Engineers to its London office.
• Kickstart Touch, the Vista Sans Wood Type Project book.
• Check out this illustrated archive of French type design from the Lyon printing museum.****
• Typekit has improved its JavaScript font events.
• Get yourself some love in block form, courtesy House Industries. ♥!
• Pantone chips + music: why not?
• Cory Say designs some lovely, text-heavy posters.
• Need some jargon? Justin Feinstein and Visakh Menon are here to help.
• MyFonts is***** on Tumblr.

* Figuratively sick. I hope.
** Yves Peters, if there were any doubt.
*** Is that even possible?
**** Thanks, Jean-Baptiste Levée!
***** “Are”?

Deadlines

• You have until February 14 to get in on this year’s Valentype contest. If you’re the jealous type, you can even scope out the competition.
• Type by Hand returns to Sydney, February 16 and 17.
• Help the Hamilton Wood Type & Print Museum move each weekend in February. If you can’t make it to Two Rivers, consider sending some cash their way.
• The Fine Press Book Association has announced its latest Student Type Design Competition. Entries are due March 15.
• Typofonderie is hosting an Adobe Font Development Kit workshop, March 26–28 at their offices in Clamart, France.

Notes

That’s it for this week — no more surprises until next week. See you then!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing us another tremendous round of typefaces!