Type News: Engage!
We haven’t done this since last year, so please forgive us if we’re a little rusty.
New Type
It’d been a while since we’d heard anything from the talented Sibylle Hagmann. Well, the wait was worth it. As it happens, she launched a brand new Kontour Type website and a fresh sans family in December. Axia provides four weights of sturdy text friendliness, plus a pair of stencil-ized display styles. Arguably the most distinctive feature of Axia is the way each style — regardless of the weight or italicization — maintains the exact same width and fit.
Just over a decade ago, Francisco Gálvez Pizarro’s lively hybrid Australis took the gold at the 2002 Morisawa International Type Design Competition. Ten years later, his reworked Australis Pro has been brought up to full OpenType speed. The original Roman weight has been expanded to a family of six styles, including some seriously sexy italics — and a voluptuous heavy.
Not only did Matthew Butterick release his “first new sans serif design in nearly 20 years,” he also managed to put together one of the most comprehensive and interactive type specimens we’ve ever seen. It’s quite the launch for Concourse — a clean six weight, 18 style sans that takes a fair chunk of its soul from classic 1930s geometrics. This capable companion to Butterick’s serif’d Equity is loaded with typographic niceties, including several stylistic sets that provide subtle “cultural” texture.
The latest from Switzerland’s Optimo foundry is a graphic take on the lines and aesthetics of Times New Roman. Ludovic Balland’s Stanley shares the same “excellent legibility and incredible sharpness” as its predecessor, but with sharply tailored counters and severely angular (but absolutely tidy) serifs. The five style family includes Roman and bold weights, their associated italics, a boisterously beefy poster cut, plus all of the expected OpenType-powered features you’d expect.
News
The news waits for no-one!
- See photos from the last hurrah from the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. (It’s not too late to support the Hamilton.)
- You’ve heard of crowdsourced logos, now read Paul Ford on “crowdsmashed” logos.
- David Sudweeks shares some intriguing stencil typefaces.
- Mitch Goldstein expresses what’s dangerous about focusing on kerning.
- Who doesn’t like doughnuts? Nick Sherman shares the New York Doughnut Map so we can find more.
- Meet the Codex editorial board.
- If you need placeholder text, Riker Ipsum will make it so.
- Emily Webber is documenting London shop fronts.
- Reviews for The Anatomy of Type are coming in — and it sounds like Stephen Coles nailed it.
- Seb Lester is on Tumblr.
- John Foster introduces us to the old-looking signs of Peter Vogel
- Jean François Porchez takes a look at font piracy.
- Behold: font references from MST3K.
- Manuel Corradine is profiled in the latest Creative Characters.
- The fine people at Font Bureau have open sourced some of their tools for working with RoboFont.
- Chris Hamamoto reviews FUSE 1–20.
- Maria Popova escorts us through a typographic tour of New York City at night.
- Pablo Impallari has a tool that you can use to calculate stem weights.
- Hrant Papazian wants to know: “If I upgrade to Windows 8, what kinds of font-related issues should I expect to run into?”
- Steven Heller pores over Grid magazine.
- Check out Cosmic Sans, “a series of 26 sci-fi and space themed typographic art prints.”
- Mason Currey introduces us to a project to use posters as lesson plans.
- Matthew Butterick examines the state of webfonts at the end of 2012.
- For some misguided reason, Venture Beat thinks all the best webfonts of 2012 are free.
- Marco Arment demonstrates how to dynamically load iOS fonts.
- This Emoji Cheat Sheet changes everything!
- Get yourself a 5ive Minute Logo and everything will be wonderful.
- FontShop shares its favorite new fonts and best type of 2012.
- The wooden charts from Below the Boat are amazing.
Schedule
Time keeps up its relentless march. Here are some markers to help you along the way:
- Starting January 7: learn logo and branding design from Bill Haig.
- LetterCult is seeking submissions for the Best Custom Letters of 2012; the due date is February 1.
- Get your proposals in for the TypeCon2013 Type & Design Education Forum. Proposals are due March 1.
TTFN
That’s it for the first week of January! See you again, real soon.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing us this week’s new type!
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