Type News: Ayran
O tryptophan, o tryptophan! How mellowing your impact! It’s Thanksgiving weekend in the United States. Let’s kick back and enjoy the company of old friends and new type.
Christoph “Typefacts” Koeberlin kicks things off with Libero—his free, numerals-only face that’s perfectly suited for Fußball jerseys (or whatever those other sports are wearing these days).
Still hot on the Nebiolo trail, Canada Type resurrects yet another classic. This time around they’ve tackled Paganini, Alessandro Butti’s 1928 Italianate display face. Old style text forms meet ornamented titling type—including a “super-seductive” engraved style.
What would happen if a gothic fraktur hooked up with some sexy, ultra black display type? You might just end up with a jovially plump, brush-ish script like Sutturah. This surprising departure from Rosetta is pleasantly packed full of delicious alternates and swashes.
The Lost Type Co-op is pleased to proffer James Edmondson’s third contribution to their communal foundry. Lavanderia is based on the hand-lettered Laundromat windows spotted in and around San Francisco’s Mission District. With a trio of weights, this delicately condensed script features hundreds of ligatures and an impressive number of OpenType features. Frankly, it’s an unexpectedly high quality package for what’s essentially a “name your own price” typeface. Mr Edmondson also takes us on a tour of Lavanderia’s roots and his creative process.
We simply can’t classify Wolfgang Homola’s Soleil as just another clean, static sans. Asymmetrical counters, a robust x-height, and subtle optical adjustments amidst the geometry provide a certain freshness and fluidity throughout the six weights.
Starting with a Speedball nib, Laura Worthington fashioned Shelby—a natural, monoline script with just a hint of modulation. The semi-connected forms and a bouncy, natural lilt are friendly and approachable. Toss in some OpenType sass and a handful of handcrafted ornaments, and dear Ms Worthington has another unassuming hit on her hands.
Elegant, clean, refined. Vanitas has it covered—with the contrast and chiseled detailing of a didone, the structure of a titling sans, and nary a hairline serif in sight. This four style fashion plate from Reserves is couture, without being cloying.
By his own admission, Dan Sayer is “not a type designer” — however, he is an experimentalist. It was this noodling around and his inherent fascination with typography that lead him to create Avería — The Average Font. By visually interpolating over 700 typefaces that were installed on his laptop, Dan squeezed out a series of multi-style families that are “just your average fonts” — literally and stylistically. Even though the process behind its development is far more interesting than its contrived aesthetic, Sayer recently updated his original project with sans and serif subfamilies.
Scrumptious! For dessert, how about a fat slice of this week’s news:
- Did you miss this year’s Wayzgoose in Two Rivers, Wisconsin? Felt & Wire has a great recap with plenty of pictures.
- Jeffrey Veen shares the origins of Typekit.
- You may have heard that there’s a new movie starring the Muppets. In honor of that event, David Vordtriede has created his own Muppabet.
- Watch Jonathan Hoefler discuss “Type at the Crossroads.”
- Joe Clark provides guidance for journalists using Unicode.
- Sam Berlow’s tumblelog Staked&Justified is a delight on the eyes. The archive is especially nice.
- FontShop San Francisco shared some type-related things people are thankful for this year.
- Typeradio has received a lovely facelift.
- The latest issue of “Creative Characters” features the work of PintassilgoPrints.
- Congratulations to the the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication at the University of Reading for winning the Queen’s Anniversary Prize.
- Starting December 1, submit your writing for Typodarium 2013.
- 2012 is going to be the year of wood type (at least at the Genesee Center for the Arts).
It’s almost December. Apparently people like to buy things around this time of year; here are a few type-related things that might make it onto your list:
- Studio Neat has released two add-ons for its Glif tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4 (and 4S): the Serif and the Ligature.
- Send someone a typewritten letter without typing it yourself.
- Where are you going on the typeface express? Find out with your very own typeface bus destination roll.
- Celebrate a not-quite-white Christmas with “EEEEEE”, a limited-edition print by Cyrus Highsmith.
- On Wednesday, November 30, at 4:00 p.m. (GMT), the fourth issue of 8 Faces will be available for order.
Finally, we are saddened by the unexpected death of Hans Reichel. He’ll be missed.
And that brings us to the end of ths week’s Type News. Don’t be a stranger!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for carving this week’s new type.
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