Type News: Ghostface Cruller
Don’t be scared away by the phantasmal pastries — it’s just the Type News! But this week’s new type might send a chill down your spine (in a good way):
Who’s been busy? Fontsmith’s been busy. Very busy in fact, having released a trio of new families this week. A “strong corporate design built on a sturdy skeleton” — FS Truman started as an original design for a broadcast industry client. Designers Jason Smith and Fernando Mello have discretely pushed this lightly condensed, three weight humanist sans directly into the commercial realm.
Eleni Beveratou’s pretty and “poetic” FS Olivia is the second face added to the Fontsmith quiver. This textural — yet very personable — two weight family takes both inspiration and flavour from the calligrapher’s pen. Typographically finessed, quirkily detailed, and unquestionably charming.
Wrapping up Fontsmith’s typographic trifecta is FS Elliot — an engagingly tidy geometric sans, if ever there was one. Nick Job has created a extremely clean, modern and (arguably) British design with open forms and an “optimistic bounce”. Elliot spans five weights from thin through heavy.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the kids over at the Lost Type Co-op, but it’s always worth the wait. For example, take a peek at James T. Edmondson’s signage-inspired Mission Script. Taking its name from San Francisco’s Mission district, this condensed, casual, and connected script certainly brings on some serious brushwork to the co-operative’s “pay what you want” storefront.
Also found amidst the “lost” type is a fresh set of three lighter weights for Joe Prince’s Maven Pro freeware family. Building off the original heavier styles, Prince has added thin, thinner, and hairline variations to his ultraclean geometric sans.
The inaugural release from designer (and “bespoke tailor”) James Todd has arrived. Garvis Pro is Todd’s gently beefed-up take on neoclassical and traditional Dutch serif type. This simple set of roman, italic, semibold, and bold styles gets an immense language workout — covering all contemporary (and many historic) Latin orthographies — as well as providing full International Phonetic Alphabet support.
Wash those down with this week’s news items, ghoul to the last drop:
- The Hamilton has a blog!
- Jérémy Landes-Nones interviews Stéphane Elbaz for I Love Typography.
- CSS
font-sizeand responsive design are in the news again with two new essays from the Filament Group: “How we learned to leave default font-size alone and embrace the em” and “On ems and rems.” - You’ve heard about wood type being digitized. But the other way around? Crazy town!
- Mary Norris writes a love letter to the semicolon.
- Elen Shapiro shows us what’s happening at the Cooper Union.
- Corey Holms has some fascinating typographic explorations.
- Not new, but awesome: take a tour of the White House Calligraphy Office.
- Speaking of older, wonderful things, check out these scans of a 1768 type specimen by J. F. Rosart.
- Yves Peters asks, “What’s the difference between a dentist and a type conference organizer?” Um, better-typeset magazines?
- The latest newsletter from P22 is out and features Torleiv Sverdrup.
- Typekit has a new, improved embed code.
- Digital Arts catalogues some of this year’s type trends.
- Is your logo hardcore?
- Jessica Love writes about learning words.
- Take a closer look at Inside Paragraphs.
- Jennifer Kennard tracked down a copy of The Golden Alphabet.
- Goodness. NBC Universal sure seems to have trouble with font licenses.
- PBS is back with another installment of Off Book, this time on “The Art of Logo Design.”
- Take a look at Michael Harvey’s Adventures with Letters.
- FontShop catalogues some wearable type on Pinterest. (In related news, I kinda like this Ampertastic Mr. Fox shirt.)
- Spooky, maybe: Ghostfaces!
- Let’s not forget about typewriters! Back the Kickstarter project for The Typewriter: a Graphic History of the Beloved Machine. Then get anachronistic with typewriter sounds for your computer.
We found only one new event to report this week, but you should still be sure to join Lars Harmsen for “Shortcut Babylon,” August 16, in New York City.
And with that, you know the drill: let us know what we missed — and we’ll see you next week.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for scaring up this week’s new type!
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