Type News, Eh?
Happy Canada Day! Get yourself some poutine and settle in for this week’s news, beginning with some grand new type.
Sergei Egorov’s Neacademia is the first of two new families from Rosetta, a foundry specializing in multiscript typography. A Latin and Cyrillic serif with a deep and seasoned background — touching on multiple typefaces by 15th century Italian punchcutter, Francesco Griffo da Bologna. Perhaps its most interesting feature is the scarcity of kerning pairs. Instead, Sergei made clever use of contextual alternate forms to improve overall letterspacing.
Also from Rosetta is Nassim, a contemporary text face in four weights by Titus Nemeth. Both the Latin and Arabic versions of Nassim were developed in tandem, producing authentic designs which aren’t necessarily influenced by each other.
The Sorkin Type Co. has popped a quartet of display faces into the Google Web Fonts directory, each inspired by a familiar source. Nicole Fally’s Hammersmith One is a low contrast sans, with brush lettering undertones and whispers of Johnston and Gill. Riccardo De Franceschi provides a trio of faces, starting with Goblin One, a wide Latin based on a hand-painted pub sign. Riccardo’s Asset is an extended fat face similar to the heavy, engraved serifs found on American currency and Gravitas One is a UK-flavoured, Bodoni-esque advertising type.
Facetype has added the vivacious Marlowe Escapade to their “rat pack” of linear, Art Deco display fonts. The delightful doodads and accoutrements of Escapade join the existing regular, “Swirl”, and “Cocktail” styles — providing a decadent selection of alternates and ligatures.
Brighton’s StudioMakgill created the quaintly industrial Central Avenue as part of a modern identity for an exhibition celebrating a distinctly Victorian-era event. The awkward charm of the original handpainted sans remains, enhanced with a set of superscript capitals.
Madita is a cheery upright script by Hubert Jocham. Each of the six weights — light through bold — combine the characteristics of a highly legible sans serif, a flowing script, and a loopy italic.
The latest release from Éditions 205 is steeped in publishing (and biblical) history. Alcala is based on a typeface dating back to the 16th century and used to print the first polyglot bible, Biblia Poliglota Complutense. First drawn by designers Damien Gautier and Quentin Margat in 1995, this freshly revised family consists of roman, italic, and bold styles.
And now for a heaping helping of news, best served with backbacon and brown bread.
- TypeCon is almost upon us! Are you going? Don’t let Louisiana’s intense humidex get you down. Grab a freezie and plan your time with the mobile web app.
- While you’re exploring TypeCon-related goodies, check out this exercise in alternate branding.
- Savour the lovely new interface for Google’s webfont service.
- Sean McBride provides some great guidance for working with Typekit fonts in CSS.
- The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum has a beautiful new website.
- Patrick Clair combines information, type, and design in videos even more stimulating than a triple-triple.
- The Hyphen Press journal now has a handy index.
- Colossal has collected some fascinating experiments in lettering and design, including “Micro Type” and these illusory block letters.
- Not into blocks? How about balloons instead? The Animal Font iPhone app has you covered.
- If you want to learn more about typography and have some spare time this summer, enrol in this promising course at New York University.
- Or if you feel alone and are more into web typography, you should head over to Web Typography for the Lonely.
- Ben Archer reviews Joep Pohlen’s Letter Fountain.
- Kurt Edelbrock discusses the role of type and typography in minimalist web design.
- Yves Peters writes up the Ampersand Conference.
- What are your favourite Unicode characters?
- Become more worldly and interesting by acquiring a copy of the world scripts poster from the Rosetta type foundry. The poster also ships free with any font order from their shop (until 30 September).
- These Layer Books are perfect for designing type with pencil crayons or any other drawing implement of your choice.
- No Canada Day would be complete without a link to 10four Design Group’s Adanac.
That’s it for this week. Too many mistakes? Not enough Canada? Let us know what you think in the comments, you hosers.
A tip of the toque to Grant Hutchinson for covering this week’s new type. Have a great Fête du Canada, Grant!
Comments are closed on this entry.