Type News: Lunch & Rockets
It’s another jam-packed week of new type and news. Commencing countdown; may God’s love be with you.
New Type

We begin with a Typotheque-shaped boom. After more than two years of labor, Martina Flor has released Supernova, a script face designed to work at text sizes as well as in headlines, and the results are as glorious as the name suggests. Learn more about the process of bringing Supernova by reading “Taking Script Typefaces to the Next Level.” It’s well worth your time.

From systematic script to massive type system. DSType has released the Prumo family, which can fit just about any use you can imagine. What can be said except that you should drop everything — as long as you promise to return — and take a closer look at the text, slab, “poster,” display, “deck,” and “banner” varieties — not to mention the playfully polychromatic Prumo Poster. Whew!

The cure for such intense variety may very well be Manvel Shmavonyan’s Vaccine. Beguiling in its cleanness, this “semi semi slab serif” should prove especially useful in challenging printing environs.

Let’s twirl away and be frivolous again, this time with Richard Lipton’s Savanna Script. Undeniably calligraphic in origin, Savanna Script feels at once a paragon of restraint and uninhibited. There’s no telling where this typeface will take you — just take care to catch your breath.

Sánchez Slab has understates the friendliness that seems to be all the rage among its contemporary slab serifs. Clean and Rockwellian in its origins, Daniel Hernández’ Sánchez nonetheless lets loose, most notably in its italics, but also with a peculiar and delightful letter K.

Anton Koovit takes us past the substrate with his U8 sans serif, which takes its inspiration from the Berliner U-Bahn and its signage. Trial versions and full licenses are for the taking from Fatype.

Jackson Alves’ Bispo Pro is an extension of his lovely year-old chancery script, Bispo Nova. The update includes random lowercase alternates and a delightful number of swashes.

Let’s wrap up this week’s typefaces with a script face that will hit you both coming and going. Aloha Script is a collaboration between sign painter Pierre Tardif and lettering artist Charles Borges. Capital variants and alternate characters galore fill Aloha Script with the kind of play you’d expect from your friendly neighborhood team or shop.
News
No clever transition this week (is there ever?) — let’s get right to the linkfest:
- Nick Sherman kicks off a promising new column on typography with “Font Hinting and the Future of Responsive Typography.”
- David Friedman recounts a story about “The Gutenberg Eyebrow.”
- Michael Hayward profiles Crispin and Jan Elsted of Barbarian Press.
- David Sudweeks instructs us in the use of contextual alternates and ligatures.
- Mike Trapp introduces “Eight New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need.” Many should quickly prove indispensable.
- Seb Lester shows off some of his work on a set of Blackletter capitals.
- Abdullah Shakur interviews Ale Paul.
- Learn “The Grammar of (Newspaper) Headlines.”
- Find out who won Valentype 2013.
- Matthew Rechs lets us know what’s up with Monotype fonts on Typekit.
- Lovely work on Ten by Bunch.
- Joe Clark opens up the New York City MTA Graphic Standards Manual.
- John Berry shares his photos from ATypI Hong Kong.
- The FontShop Plugin for Adobe Creative Suite now works with Fireworks.
- Learn which type foundries permit embedding fonts in applications as a part of a standard EULA.
- Buy stuff from Jessica Hische.
- See Christopher Labrooy fuse architecture and typography.
- Help this guy get to TypeCon.
- If you haven’t seen the specimen site for Jackson Cavanaugh’s Harriet Series lately, witness it in its freshly-minted webfont glory.
Events
We have innumerable events to cover this week; fortunately for us, most of them can be in digest form.
- Check out this incredible set of classes and workshops from the Society of Scribes in New York City.
- Crafting Type takes place in Chicago, March 8–10, and in Portland, March 15–17.
- On March 16, make your way to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to help create a typeface!
Kaboom!
That’s it this time around. No going out with a bang — nor a whimper — because we’ll see you next week!
Grant Hutchinson is floating in a tin can this week. We miss you, Grant!
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