Type News: Base!
It’s issue 64. Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Preto Sans is the first completed family in Jan Filipek’s planned Preto type system. While the sans will form the “skeleton” for the other styles, it still displays a number of distinctive qualities. Tapered stroke endings, unexpected angles, plus a selection of tasteful alternates. The ampersands are particularly fun.
There a didone hiding under there somewhere. Brazilian graphic designer Eduilson Wessler Coan’s Encorpada takes inspiration from classic, contrasty slabs and then flaunts its very generous, feminine form. The abnormally deep ink traps and uniformly curvaceous endings pack a lot of detail into this already personable display face.
No one would blame Dino dos Santos or Pedro Leal if they bragged a bit about Braga, their exuberantly layered font family. Taking its name from the city known as the “baroque capital of Portugal”, this textural typographic toy features nearly two dozen decorative variations that can be clamped onto the base weight. Mix and match swashes, patterns, floral motifs, and more.
Colour me chromatic. DeLittle Chromatic, that is. Wood Type Revival’s latest release breathes new life into a century old British display face. The modulated capitals and swooping strokes liven up this otherwise rigid sans. Distressed and smoothified styles with outline and inlay variations are included.
It’s been a while since we’ve perused what’s happening over in the Google Web Fonts directory. Recently, there’s been a pile of extensions and updates to existing fonts, but a pair of newbies caught our attention. John Vargas Beltrán says that his Salsa was inspired by “old album covers from the 1970s”—but there’s definitely something else mixed in. This is a fluid, calligraphic display face that maintains a softness without resorting to disco-era puffiness.
Also intriguing us this week is Sancreek by the seemingly bottomless Vernon Adams. Designed primarily as a contemporary woodtypesque display face, this condensed bifurcate successfully bridges the old school with the new tools.
Hitting the new type circuit this week, too: Roboto, set to be the system face for Android 4 “Ice Cream Sandwich.” Stephen Coles called it a “four-headed Frankenfont,” a melange of Helvetica, Myriad, Univers, FF DIN, and Ronnia. Michael Degusta also noticed Roboto’s similarity to Helvetica. And John Gruber responds to claims that this is just Apple fans looking down on Android. There is plenty more to read, I’m sure, but there’s a start.
Let’s head away from future Android text to the much wider and more delightful realm of webfonts. Typekit has given its font browser a very welcome overhaul. Even more amazing: fonts.com has finally gotten around to providing operating system and browser previews for its webfont service. Finally, head over Co.Design, where John Pavlus interviews Mandy Brown about Typekit, “cloud” computing, and (of course!) Typekit’s recent acquisition by Adobe.
The big thing this weekend is TYPO London. Here’s Yves Peters’ account of day one. Eva-Lotta Lamm has some sketch notes. And follow along yourself with the video feed.
And now for the rest of the week’s news:
- Let’s begin by pointing you to an incredible collection of pixels in the wild, curated by Nina Stössinger.
- Head to Tokyo for an upcoming House Industries exhibition, on October 27.
- Decisions, decisions. Also on October 27: make your way to New York for a holiday postcard letterpress workshop.
- Charles Kostelnick’s 1990 article “The Rhetoric of Text Design in Professional Communication” has surfaced on the internet as a PDF.
- In more recent publication news, Type News favorite Shady Characters has received a book deal! We can’t wait.
- The Letter.2 competition winners were announced this week. There’s some beautiful stuff in there.
- Can you create an image out of a word by using only elements from the word itself?
- Here’s some type made using magnets and iron filings.
- Nick Sherman compares the update process for different font editors.
- Stephen Coles explores how a typeface is like a chair.
- The Eye blog shares Matthew Carter’s masthead for Private Eye magazine.
- Learn about our friend Verlag.
- The Ministry of Type is back from a brief hiatus—and brought us this awesome music typewriter.
- Speaking of music and typewriters, check out the history of the typewriter, recited by Michael Winslow
- HAPPY CAPS LOCK DAY.
- Who knew, Ryan Gosling is a typographer. Steamy!
Finally, we’re officially moving the Type News to Saturdays. To the weekend!
Dōmo arigatō, Grant Hutchinson, for bringing us this week’s new type.
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