Type News: Got Route?
Happy November! Let’s get our kicks with this week’s news and begin by taking the scenic route through some new type:
Design by committee is not always a bad thing. The first typeface by Proyecto Demo is a good example. This collaborative project began several years ago and features a veritable who’s who of Chilean and Argentine type designers, including: Alejandro Paul, Alejandro Lo Celso, Eduardo Manso, Eduardo Tunni, Jose Scaglione, Pablo Cosgaya, Francisco Galvez, Rodrigo Ramirez, Tono Rojas, Kote Soto, Luciano Vergara, and Felipe Caceres. Clara is the end result—a sophisticated, unconnected display script packed full of alternates, ligatures, display caps, fancy fractions, and other OpenType wonderfulness. This open source typeface project was originally coordinated by Cristian Gonzalez Saiz, Daniel Berczeller, and Andreu Balius.
Another free face that caught our attention is Eduardo Tunni’s Mate. This highly readable, three-style text family features sharp, angular details and slightly calligraphic colour. All we need is for Eduardo to add some weight in the emboldened department.
Another type from the chisel, anyone? This week’s majestic majuscule comes courtesy of Photo-Lettering—those headmasters of the headline. Copeland Trillium is a multi-part play on the Romanesque titling face. Incise, tone, and shade to your Trajanic heart’s content.
Now this is something that was well worth the wait. Process Type Foundry has released Nicole Dotin’s Elena as their very first text family. It radiates “warmth with a crisp, tailored tone” through subtle brush-like terminals, strong horizontals, and restrained forms.
“A new release from Michael Doret is like a new flavor of ice cream.” We couldn’t possibly agree more with Mr. Coles. A streamlined, top-heavy display face with a dual personality, Dynascript shifts from hooked-up forms to non-connecting italics—with a flick of the stylistic switch.
Paula Nazal Selaive’s delightfully wispy Dulce is one of a pair of fresh display faces from Latinotype. Don’t let the slightly swollen terminals throw you for a loop—Dulce is sweet, swashy, and oozing with ligature-rific allure.
Also from the Chilean foundry comes Mija, Miguel Hernández’s “vernacular” grotesk. This four-style sans is inspired by the handpainted signs of South America and their beautiful imperfections. The voluptuous curves and ink-trappy details are perfect for headlines, but work surprisingly well in text settings.
The mind-bogglingly prolific Ray Larabie created his infamous Blue Highway font over fifteen years ago. A popular freebie — but plagued with technical problems — it was discontinued and replaced with the more aesthetically robust (and commercial) Expressway family several years later. But go figure … Ray has reintroduced the venerable roadside sans as Blue Highway 5.0—replete with all the “clunkiness” and “goofy charm” of the original.
We love the way Alex Varanese describes Antechamber. From its “unremarkable condensed sans” foundation to the “exaggerated ink traps of dubious functional value” and “haphazardly designed” clogged-counter alternates. Even though the designer downplays the aesthetics, this is still a rather attractive display face. And don’t you dare miss this free font strut its stuff in its very own promotional video.
And now, let’s peel out and race through this week’s news …
- beginning with The Ministry of Type on “The Typography of Speed.”
- On our way, let’s take in some sights, including TYPO London 2011.
- Tiffany Wardle reintroduces us to Robert Slimbach’s lovely Caflisch Script.
- Do you use news headlines to preview fonts at MyFonts? Here are some amusing and horrifying results.
- Richard Rutter explains “The Trouble with Font Classificiations.”
- Jessica Karle Heltzel discusses the uncanny valley as it relates to type design.
- Help FontShop identify the best new fonts of 2011.
- Speaking of FontShop, the San Francisco office is hiring.
- Kristy Stewart reviews Richard Lipton’s Canto.
- Fred Smeijers introduces the work of Matthew Carter.
- Adobe is updating how it identifies font versions.
- Paul Shaw reviews the Kerning Game.
- Google has released the sfntly font programming language as open source.
- Tim Brown has tracked down an interesting discussion on Unicode, webfonts, and icons, among other things.
- Meanwhile, Tim Ahrens continues his series on optimizing fonts for the web, this time on Unicode values and glyph sets.
- The new DSType website is lovely.
- CopyPasteCharacter is getting an upgrade.
- Fontsmith is ten!
- There’s some very special type coming from China’s Founder Electronics.
- SOTA’s Font Aid V: Made For Japan charity typeface is now available through MyFonts and Veer.
- The “giving season,” or whatever we’re calling it now, is almost upon us. Consider a Hamilton gift certificate, a pair of scare quote mittens, or this lovely wood ampersand.
- There’s also About More Alphabets, a new book about Herman Zapf’s type designs from after 1970.
- Learn a little more about Rosetta Type Foundry (also available in Czech).
- Learn about “Post Typography’s Greatest Misses”: Wednesday, November 9, in Boston, and Tuesday, November 15, in Newark, Delaware.
- Also mark your calendars for a hand-lettering workshop with Ken Barber, hosted by the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, on Saturday, November 19.
- Finally: since 2005, Patric King has been entertaining and informing us through his “Obsessions” column for Print Magazine, and now he’s decided that it’s time to be done. What a run!
Thanks for riding along with us this week. See you next Saturday!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for picking a grand route through this week’s new type.
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Grant Hutchinson Nov 05, 2011
Extra! Extra! Photos from last night’s opening party for Motaitalics’ Blacklecker: Tasty Fraktur exhibition in Berlin.
The show features blackletterish awesomeness from talented folk such Corey Holms, Dan Rhatigan, Frank Grießhammer, František Štorm, Jonathan Barnbrook, Just van Rossum, Ken Barber, Miles Newlyn, Tim Ahrens, Underware, Veronika Burian, Zuzana Ličko, and others.
Tip o’ the typo tuque to Rob Keller for the link.