Type News: From Street to Web
This week: new type, new foundries, and a (ginned-up) controversy.
Thanks in part to a misleading headline in the New York Post, street signs and the typeface Clearview are a hot topic in the news. New York City has been mandated to update its street signs, which the state estimates will cost $27.6 million over the next eight years. This is part of the routine, safety-related replacement of road signs, whose reflective coating degrades over time.
From degradation to variation and the world of webfonts! MyFonts has begun licensing type for the web, at pretty reasonable prices. The Process Type Foundry has also begun licensing some of its more popular faces for use on the web; you can host them yourself or serve them through Typekit.
With the continued growth of webfont services and an arsenal of new type to play with, it is important to understand how type renders on the screen. Over at the Typekit blog, Tim Brown has announced a new series about that very subject.
»Tervetuloa!» to the Finnish foundry Typolar, whose website launched this week. They also released two new typefaces. Which brings us to new type:
Vinkel is a lovely sans from Typolar, a family that “would be powered by windmills rather than diesel.”
Calypso E is the other new release from Typolar, a highly readable slab serif.
From p.s.type comes Neplus Ultra, an extremely slabby but somehow still legible face.
Virus Fonts has released Regime, a peculiar slab serif that feels like it would fit in well with a Steampunk aesthetic.
Also of interest:
- Yves Peters has a thought-provoking account of the ATypI 2010 keynote addresses.
- On October 17, join Paul Shaw for the TDC Urban Lettering Tour of the Battery and Staten Island.
- Ellen Shapiro profiles “La Bottega del Marmoraro, where Enrico Fiorentini and his son Sandro carve typographic aphorisms in marble.”
- Fred Smeijers has announced a second edition of Counterpunch, to be published by Hyphen Press in 2011.
- FontFont has updated Martin Majoor’s Scala and Scala Sans.
That’s what we uncovered this week. What else happened? Let us know in the comments.
Correction: Neplus Ultra is from p.s.type, not from Cargo Collective as we originally reported. We regret the error.
Comments are closed on this entry.
1.
andremora Oct 08, 2010
Heads up: Cargo Collective is a CMS platform. Neplus Ultra is from psType.
2.
Erik Vorhes Oct 08, 2010
Whoops! Thanks for the correction.