Type News: Genuine Craft
Elemental, effervescent, and well-poured? Dive into this week’s news and new type and judge for yourself!
The latest release from Bureau des Affaires Typographiques builds on the common perception that thickness implies slowness and the thinner seems speedier. Jérôme Knebusch’s Instant “shifts gears” during its progression from the cursively-influenced lighter weight to the rigid geometry of the heaviest style. Combining and contrasting the different “speeds” of this five weight sans provides some surprisingly expressive results. If this concept doesn’t quite jell for you, perhaps Knebusch’s video explanation will help.
Last fall, we stumbled across Eduilson Wessler Coan’s delightfully didone-flavoured Encorpada Black. It was a design that left us longing for more of the generous, feminine forms and exaggerated ink-trappy details. Well, our collective prayers have been answered. Coan is back with the revamped and expanded Encorpada Pro — now featuring seven complete weights with true italics. There’s also plenty of flexible OpenType features and swoopy, swashy goodness to go around.
Neil Summerour describes Halogen — his contemporary, extended sans — as having “a sense of style and swagger.” Avoiding the traditional geometric construction found in similar sans families, the characters are directly influenced by Summerour’s “lettering tendencies” rather than pure, mechanical drafting. Some of the lowercase details — particularly the pinched transitions in the alternate glyphs — are unique and quite masterful. Weights range from hairline through black and include a full complement of case sensitive features and numeric options to tinker with.
Type-Ø-Tones may have one the most typographically awkward foundry names around, but they do release some charming typefaces. Speaking of which, fresh from the charm farm is Laura Meseguer’s Guapa. Beginning its life as an experimental “postmodern deco” design, this simple monoline sans manages to pack a few surprises — curlicue swashes, playful initial caps, and unexpected ligatures.
Kristyan Sarkis’ Greta Arabic is a clean, calligraphic face designed specifically to tackle the demands of newspaper publishing — just like its Latin counterpart, Peter Biľak’s popular Greta Text. Each of the four weights sports a trio of “grades” — allowing the publication designer to choose the ideal heaviness or “colour” to suit the situation. Additional background on Sarkis’ research behind this new typeface can be found in her article entitled The Influences of Greta Arabic.
Finland’s Mika Melvas brings comfortable, casual style to the condensed, connected script. Alina has an effortless, handlettered vibe and comes equipped with a load of ligatures, including one for every repeating lowercase letter.
The first thing you notice about Gestalten’s Canary is the backslant. Designer Mark Froemberg’s hybrid approach to the semi-script combines a dynamic, reverse italic antiqua with an illustrative brush script. A boggling number of ligatures, swashes, titling caps, and other glyphic alternates accompany each of the six weights. Peruse the extensive (and beautifully produced) PDF specimen for examples of all these typographic treats.
From new type to the news, which might be greater than the sum of its parts:
- Part three of LetterCult’s best custom letters of 2011 is up!
- MyFonts is looking for a lead graphic designer.
- Gustavo Ferreira reviews OpenType features defined in the CSS Fonts Module and their support in modern web browsers.
- And David Sudweeks shows off using OpenType on the web.
- Unit Editions have announced a numbered, limited edition, deluxe monograph of Herb Lubalin.
- Is J. M. Mosley looking at a portrait of Giambattista Bodoni?
- Smashapp reveals some of Jürgen Siebert’s favorite iOS apps.
- Javier García shows off some lovely Inked Ribbon packaging.
- Ambroise is lovely. Find out some faces to pair with it.
- The work of Mads Burcharth is featured on Grain Edit.
- Enjoy watching Pablo Delkan’s hand-drawn lettering portfolio on Vimeo.
- Meet the winners of the AW Conqueror typographic games.
- Bill Davis discusses finding high-quality webfonts.
- The schedule for TypeCon2012: MKE SHIFT is up!
Speaking of schedules, here are some more things for you to track.
- On Monday, June 18, head to the Cooper Union for Wicked Problems in Type Design
- Starting on July 11, head to Advanced Graphics London for “Mr. Kitching’s London.” The exhibition runs until August 11.
- Paul Shaw features two New York exhibitions this summer: “Gorey Preserved,” through July 27, and the “Tony and Gerry Show,” through August 9.
And with that, we’ve breezed through another week of news and new type. Thanks for joining us!
Grant Hutchinson has once again found some of the finest new typefaces around.
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