Type News: Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid
This week we bring you beginnings and resurrections — along with new type and the rest of the news.
What once was lost has now been found! Meet the Lost Type Co-Op, a pay-what-you-want type foundry. Any and all money goes directly to the type designers. Be sure to check out the lovely stuff on display.
And with that, prepare yourself for the typocalypse — the new type is near!
A fine way to start off the new release dance is with an a couple of updates to some old favourites.
Type Together’s Veronika Burian has improved her mildly calligraphic text face Maiola with the addition of book and book italic styles, complementing the existing regular and bold. An integrated set of symbols rounds out this revision.
One of the most popular families from YouWorkForThem has been expanded, quite literally. YWFT Ultramagnetic Expanded brings a dozen wider styles to Michael Cina’s original soft-focus gothic sans.
In its continuing effort to make the web a more legible place to live in, FontShop AG brings us Azuro, a tidy sans family by Georg Seifert and Jens Kutilek. Available in both office flavour for use on the desktop and popular webfont formats, Azuro is currently priced at a mind-boggling 90% discount. I suppose that’s one way to get the word out. The FontBlog also features a not insignificant backstory on the development of Azuro.
On the subject of not insignificant, Kris Sowersby has produced a double shot of sans serif awesome sauce with the release of Calibre and Metric. Both faces share a “fundamental geometry” — but where Metric is definitely a humanist, Calibre is sporting a neo-grotesque skin. Kris describes this relationship as “starting from a similar line but finishing in very different places.” Each family consists of seven weights ranging from thin to black, plus the expected italics.
Moving from one hemisphere to another we find Nordic Narrow, René Verkaart’s lightly condensed, fresh-faced sans. The distinctive diagonal strokes imply ancient runic alphabets, and although it adheres to a modern geometric structure, Nordic Narrow still embodies a “warm analogue touch.”
Stevens Titling is the culmination of a calligraphic collaboration between John Stevens and Ryuichi Tateno. Perhaps the best part about this typeface is the wonderfully appropriate naming of the four increasingly unrestrained variations: Sable Brush, Badger Brush, Boar Brush, and Wolf Brush.
Excitable handset forms move to an unexpected OpenType groove. The lively YWFT Coltrane is the latest typographic jam session by YouWorkForThem designers Eric Carlson, Taechit Jiropaskosol, and Michael Paul Young.
Not only is it hip to be square, it’s apparently sweet as well — Sweet Square that is. Hot on the heels of his epic Sweet Sans, Mark van Bronkhorst has released yet another 54 style überfamily based on antique engraver’s lettering.
When we came across Elementar, Gustavo Ferreira’s “parametric” pixel font, we were simply blown away by its comprehensiveness and execution. Elementar brings unheard of flexibility to screen fonts by allowing the user to explore and choose amongst height, weight, width, style, contrast, and curious element parameters. And we weren’t kidding about comprehensive … this type system is comprised of a whopping 420 fonts in all.
With this incessant deluge of new typefaces, it’s always more difficult to settle on the perfect type for a project. Dan Mall has some great advice in this regard. To find related typefaces, you might use Veer’s new font finder. And to get a better sense of a typeface for your own purposes, you could try out the beta of FontShop’s new custom sample toolbar. When you’re all ready to print or otherwise publish your work, it would probably be wise to consult this handy new typographic checklist from the Type Studio.
Blissed out yet? Well, then, be sure to check out the rest of this week’s news:
- TYPO Berlin 2011 ends tomorrow. To catch up with what’s been happening, be sure to check out Dan Reynolds’ coverage.
- Do you know where you’re going? These East German traffic sign typefaces can help point the way.
- With this ring, I thee lead! Underware has launched TypeRings.
- Waiting for something? Card games help pass the time, and now you can do it in Swiss style with Helveticards.
- Kristyan Sarkis discusses the intricacies of Arabic calligraphy and type design.
- Heavier and far less portable is this TV-based typeface by Jack Archer.
- Fontdeck explains how to use media queries with webfonts.
- In the unlikely event that your Typekit-related world seems to come crashing down, be sure to check the new Typekit status site.
- Blair Thomson interviews Phil Garnham for Typetoken.
- Norman Hathaway reviews Roger Black’s work for Rolling Stone.
- Paul Shaw introduces us to Kai Bernau and Nikola Djurek.
- Robert Bringhurst’s Solid Form of Language is now available in French.
- Michael Deal and Juan Carlos Pagan discuss the design of the Pinterest logo.
- The Type Studio has released the May issue of All Things Typographic.
- Meet Greg Hitchcock, one of the people behind font technology at Microsoft.
- Not type, but typewriters: here are some lovely photographs of famous writers and their ostensible tools of choice.
- If letterpress interests you, be sure to check out this video by Naomi Ross.
- In related news, Earl Kallemeyn is putting on a two-part workshop on letterpress business cards, June 15 and 25, in New York City.
- SOTA has published the schedule for the sixth annual Type & Design Education Forum, held on July 7 as a part of TypeCon2011 in New Orleans.
- On May 25 WebINK is hosting a meetup in Portland, Oregon.
- Have you kickstarted anything lately? You might be interested in supporting Type Porn a typography magazine that Sean Christensen would like to bring into existence.
- And in the “Kickstarter projects that refuse to quit or die” category, Scott Hutcheson is once more trying to get his Comic Sans documentary off the ground. Maybe the second time is the charm.
That brings us to the end … of this week’s news. Which really just marks the beginning of our work to bring you next week’s news. Are there any signs we should be paying close attention to? Let us know in the comments!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for braving rivers of blood and swarms of locusts to bring us this week’s new typefaces.
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