Type News: Cave Canem
Proceed with caution: grotesque pirates, type thieves, the news, and other scoundrels await you!
The third issue of 8 Faces came out on Wednesday. If you want a copy in print, you’ll need to act quickly: only a handful of copies are still available. Do you want to know what typefaces this issue’s interviewees picked? Check out “Fonts from Issue 3” on the 8 Faces blog. And over at Typotheque, you can also read Peter Biľak’s thoughtful and provocative preface, “We Don’t Need New Fonts.”
Wait, no new fonts? What are these, then!
Named for an 18th century female pirate, Melle Diete’s Anne Bonny is a charming — yet sturdy — “Bodoni-inspired” display face. Scattered amidst the seven weights (and their appropriately playful italics) are plenty of swashes, alternates, ligatures, and ornaments to chew on.
With a dynamism and flavour reminiscent of classic French advertising scripts, Elena Albertoni’s Nouvelle Vague reflects a period-specific æsthetic, rather than any direct association to its cinematic namesake. It’s graphic and angular, with a slightly broken rhythm and an energetic uppercase.
Now for something completely grotesque. Silas Dilworth has managed to squeeze even more space-saving features into his already epic sans family with the release of Heroic Compressed Pro. Fourteen additional styles of ultra compact, super clean, and headline-savvy type. Calling all movie poster designers! Now you’ve got something new to use for your squishy film credits and fiddly mouseprint.
Like the name suggests, Oksana Text Narrow is the more compact version of Andrij Shevchenko’s Oksana Text. This lively serif covers the same six weight range as its predecessor — from thin through heavy — including Cyrillic support and true italics with some seriously sexy swash initials.
Laura Worthington does it again. Samantha Script is beautiful, versatile, and — dare we say — timeless. Both upright and italic variations of this contrasty script feature connected and unconnected forms, swashes galore, stylistically matched ornaments, and a selection of nifty “catchwords” … over 2,700 glyphs in all.
We separate the wheat from the chaff, so you don’t have to. Our Google Web Fonts pick of the week is Days One. This no-nonsense, rounded display face started out as a simple, typographic experiment in 2008 by the Russian trio of Alexander Kalachev, Ivan Gladkikh, and Alexei Maslov. Recently revamped and released by Jovanny Lemonad, it features a wide stance, strokes as thick as a wrestler’s neck, and an “all you can eat” attitude.
And now for the rest of this week’s news, gluten free:
- Linotype: The Film is heading into post-production and needs your help.
- Dan Reynolds interviews director Doug Wilson about the Linotype machine and Linotype: The Film.
- Speaking of Doug Wilson, a few people have recently rediscovered his Vernacular Typography Polaroids set on Flickr.
- Julien Breton and David Gallard have produced some amazing light-caligraphy.
- In the latest Communication Arts column, Thomas Phinney tells us “How to Explain Why Typography Matters.”
- Yves Peters introduces us to “Type High,” a stop-motion video that introduces typographic vocabulary.
- Rick Santorum’s name is smeared across headlines this week, and not in a way he’d like, I’m sure. (No, not that.) It appears that the agency that designed his campaign website illegally used Peter Biľak’s Fedra.
- Grain Edit shows off some spreads from Function, Restraint, and Subversion in Typography.
- The seventh book from A Book Apart has been announced: On Web Typography, by Jason Santa Maria. How long is it until 2012?
- While we wait, we can enjoy Jason’s “About Face” column on the Typekit blog. This week he covers Chaparral. Jason’s discussion sparked a friendly discussion on Typophile.
- Jan Fromm has a new website that includes a section featuring his fonts in use.
- Meet David Sudweeks, who recently joined FontShop.
- Do you want to use hyphens on the web? The Fontdeck blog reports that CSS3 hyphenation is now supported in Firefox and Safari.
- Test your installed fonts on the web by using Font Dragr
- Opinionated Type dislikes Gill Sans and suggests some alternates.
- If you think you know the history of Times New Roman, think again.
- Extensis is offering a free font management forum on August 24, in Saint Louis, Missouri.
- Finally, on the Linotype blog, learn about the creation of type for An-Nahar.
That’s it for this week. Did we miss anything? Growl at us in the comments.
Yay, Grant Hutchinson is back from a week away to bring us this week’s new type!
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1.
Jewel Jubic Sep 07, 2011
The Oksana text is beautiful and in italic form they look good.