Type News: Momotuhi
It’s another big week of type and news! OK, we’ve kept you waiting long enough, so let’s dive in:
New Type
It all started with a tweet. Nina Stössinger’s Sélavy came to life after an off the cuff request by artist Paul Soulellis relating to his Library of the Printed Web project. Based on the handful of characters found on Marcel Duchamp’s famous “Green Box” — La Mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires même (Boîte verte) — Stössinger extrapolated a complete deco-esque typeface, generously releasing it under an open font license.
With the help of James Todd’s mad digitizing skills, the Hamilton Wood Type Foundry pushed a hefty seven width sans out the factory door this week. Originally released by Hamilton in 1907, HWT Unit Gothic presaged more contemporary type “systems” (like Adrian Frutiger’s expansive Univers) by half a decade. Each style of this eccentric sans has been updated and packed to the Gothic gills with glyphs, Greek and Cyrillic language support included.
Like the name implies, DSType’s Diversa explores the diversity and contrast of styles within the constructs of a single design. Using a stocky, Latin display face as a creative foundation, designers Dino dos Santos and Pedro Leal have stuffed nearly 3,000 glyphs into the nine stylistic sets. Among the typographic flavours to be sampled are a barebones sans, a chunky slab, a bracketed serif, stencilled diversions, a whimsical “baroque”, and a hodge-podge set which mixes the whole works together in one feel swoop.
Kyle Steed’s eponymous Steedicons is the latest addition to the growing Symbolset stable. The pitch is “243 Symbols, 370 Keywords, 1 Mustache” drawn in a loose, sketchy style — a welcome change from the usual hypertidy geometry found in most icon font collections.
News
No witty transition: we begin with the sad news that Joseph Churchward has passed away. Here are a couple noteworthy tributes (there are probably others):
- A loving tribute from the Museum of New Zealand.
- Heath Killen bids farewell.
Feel free to peruse Churchward’s work in greater depth. It’s well worth your time.
And now, on with our regularly-scheduled programming:
- Glory be, 8 Faces #6 is out!
- Congratulations to the winners of the Fine Press Book Association’s Student Design Competition.
- Steven Heller exposes us to Robert Hunter Middleton’s Eden typeface — and is not ashamed.
- This old chest contains some amazing treasures.
- David Sudweeks elaborates on appropriate typographic scale.
- David Demaree walks us through the world of high-DPI web typography.
- Hoefler & Frere-Jones supports the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. You should, too!
- Peter Biľak guest stars in the latest Talking Types podcast.
- Chris Petrillo has a new pet project: Bikes and Type on Bikes.
- Ben Barrett Forrest has animated a history of typography.
- Enjoy another great installment of ScreenFonts.
- Love type? Love type releases? Then you’ll dig the latest installment of This Week in Fonts.
- Tim Brown reminds us that progressive enhancement is part of web typography.
- Erik Spiekermann walks us through printing a poster.
- Adobe has contributed font rasterizer technology to FreeType.
- Download Google webfonts, thanks to Monotype.
- Speaking of Google, their webfont service got a facelift.
- Speaking of Monotype, they have a new “Master Subscription,” which costs a bunch but promises to give you loads in return.
- Justice! Anne Brontë has a new gravestone.
- This is an impressive animal alphabet.
- More ASCII, more emotion.
- Happy Cog designers discuss readability in design.
- In the grand tradition of “realign, don’t redesign”: Instagram has a new logo.
- Learn about the art of designing cattle brands.
- Not safe for work: calligraphy on girls.
- Handy: the Karl Gerstner design archive
- Apparently the best way to design a typeface is to lift it from the work of Peter Biľak.
- Roar through the 1920s with The Great Gatsby.
- Tim Brown’s webfont specimen is now available in Cyrillic, thanks to Dimo Buko.
- Dan Hoopert designs letters made of wire
- Gavin Lucas takes a closer look at Doctrine.
- Jonathan Barnbrook talks about his work for David Bowie.
- Bees!
Events
Swarm to some of these upcoming events:
- Learn Robofont with Frederik Berlaen, June 1–2, at the Cooper Union.
- Andy Clymer continues our Cooper Union blitz with a June 3 workshop on interpolation
- Stic k around and learn about kerning with Ben Keil, June 4 at the Cooper Union.
- Come to Eventbrite in San Francisco for a screening of Sign Painters on June 26.
Farewell!
That’s it for this week. We’ll get back to our regular schedule as soon as possible!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for finding all the finds this week!
Comments are closed on this entry.