Type News: Gag Order
What happens when we inadvertently take a week off? News and new type accumulate at the same mindbending rate — which gives us too much to bite off this week. But no matter: we’re biting it all off anyway. Commence chewing!
New Type
The Hamilton Wood Type Foundry recently pushed out some seriously beefy type by way of the aptly named HWT Slab. Consisting of two chunky styles — an extra bold Clarendon featuring bracketed serifs and an equally buff Antique with more squarish attributes — this robust 19th century revival sports an updated character set and extended language support.
Daniel Justi’s delightful Darling is a lively display face with soft forms, casual flow, and a calligraphic soul. Extensive alternates and a parade of OpenType features provide a versatile foundation for illustrated headlines or running text.
Symbolset’s SS Junior is a restrained, rounded collection of imagery by Jory “Year of Icons” Raphael. Precise and proportioned like Raphael’s previous Block, Line, and Forecast offerings, this font features the same accessible, keyword-powered substitution magic found in all Symbolset faces.
Daniel Pelavin admits to finding beauty and inspiration in the “utilitarian industrial objects” around New York City. Forgia is the typographic embodiment of that fascination — constructed through the industrious application of dimensional layers and virtual “rivets” on top of a sturdy, “gaspipe” sans.
Not to be outdone in the glyphic diversification department, designer Luke Lisi presents Summit — a monumental 50 font family. Starting off as a straightforward and slightly extended geometric sans, Summit quickly expands into a five weight, ten style opus of epic permutations. Not only can solid, inline, and a trio of “segmented” flavours from each weight be combined and layered — but every single style is also equipped with four variations of most letterforms.
Letters from Sweden manages to put a few more of their typographic ducks in a row with Trim Mono. Designer Göran Söderström adds an appropriate amount of fixed-width flavour to his uniquely truncated Trim series.
Is it hot in here or is it just you? Neil Summerour cranks up the summer heat with Lust Script — the curvaceous “older sister” in his ridiculously sexy Lust family. Regular and display variations of this contrasty, cursive headliner are pleasantly packed with energetic alternates and wanton swashiness.
Speaking of extensions … Eduilson Wessler Coan’s delightfully feminine Encorpada Pro gains a elegant and somewhat button-downed companion. Encorpada Classic covers the same flexible range of weights as its fanciful cousin, but stylishly follows a more traditional Didone path.
Christian Thalmann’s Maestrale doesn’t break existing paradigms, as much as it blends them together. Calligraphic forms with uncial undertones are paired with “outrageously long, flamboyant extenders”, oodles of alternates, unicase variations, and some masterfully executed OpenType programming. A trio of subdued text styles — a serif’d Roman, an upright cursive, and a “tilted” italic — are also included.
News
Take a deep breath. You won’t be coming up for a while:
- Jamie Clarke took part in a short course in type design at Reading University. Immerse yourself days two, three, four, and five, as well.
- Ashley Hefnawy marks Ramadan with a brief guide to Arabic scripts and calligraphy.
- Sometimes hyphens cause trouble.
- David Sudweeks helps us differentiate among hyphen, en dash, em dash, and minus.
- Mr. Sudweeks also shows us the invisible.
- Smooth fonts are for the weak!
- But these wrappers are smooth as butter.
- These tea tags are quite lovely.
- Dan Rhatigan and students at the University of Reading explore Gill Sans.
- Tomás García interviews Alejandro Paul.
- Compare two typefaces using Tiff.
- Rutger Paulusse not-so-anonymously revels in type through Typejunkies Anonymous.
- Meet the Ipsums. Or get Laura Mipsum on a shirt.
- Congratulations to Tabac Slab and Tablet Gothic for winning gold and silver at the European Design Awards 2013.
- Typeface, why are you so animated?
- Kevin Cornell sketches a mean title.
- Stuart Brown discusses the art of sign writing.
- See, for example, the work of Joby Carter.
- Ludwig Übele reveals the origins of FF Tundra.
- Florian Hardwig digs up some Designscheiß.
- Some things are just plain harder to type.
- Kenji Nakayama and Christopher Hope are raising awareness through Homeless Signs.
- Check out this acceptance speech from the TDC Communication Design competition.
- You can never have too much ScreenFonts: may your backup woes be over, Yves!
- Unit Editions celebrates type unsupported by photos or illustrations.
- If this dose of type-related fun isn’t enough for you, get more from the latest installment of This Week in Fonts.
- CSS Fonts Module Level 3 has entered “last call.”
- This just in: a new webfont service from Indian Type Foundry.
- Join Apple as a “Font Development Engineer”!
- Use GitHub to get your hands on RoboFab.
- I want this shirt.
Events
We’re not done, oh no. Break out your day planners!
- Now through August 3: Mastering Type 13 at the Mota Italic Gallery.
- Starting August 7, learn from Sean McCabe how to create a vector file from a hand-lettered sketch.
- August 22 at TypeCon2013: Portl&, be sure to check out the presentation of Type Eh: A History of Canada in Type.
- Head to New York, October 18–19, for the 38th annual conference of the American Printing History Association.
- But be sure to make your way to Two Rivers, Wisconsin, for Wayzgoose 2013, November 8–10.
Wrap it up
Even more good stuff? Probably — but let’s save it for next week!
Thanks, Grant Hutchinson, for braving the legion of new typefaces these past two weeks!
Comments are closed on this entry.
1.
Luke Dorny Jul 23, 2013
Awesome week, this time around!
Mmm, I’m laughing that you posted those churned dairy wrappers.
2.
Grant Hutchinson Jul 25, 2013
Laugh it up, butterball.
3.
Erik Vorhes Jul 30, 2013
Butter.