Type News: No Sleep till Whitman
Through sleepless nights and interminable delays, we’re still happy to bring you the latest in type newsery! Let’s get right to it.
New Type

Taking nomenclative inspiration from the mountains and visual cues from the cultural symbolism of his native Venezuela, designer John Moore presents Tepuy. The four weight family is an evolution of his earlier Makiritare face, which also featured strong monolinear forms sliding into an consistent and precise grid. The strong, linear geometry of each character intentionally merges and flows into neighbouring glyphs, creating intensely graphic settings.

Continuing to expand his voluminous Aviano series of display faces, Jeremy Dooley has managed to find one more avenue to explore. Aviano Wedge continues the extended, pared-down lines of its predecessors — but this time sporting luxurious, Latin-esque serifs. These six new weights are designed to work alongside the rest of the Aviano clan, featuring not only swash, stylistic, and titling alternates — but several dozen “artistic” ligature treatments as well.

Mocha Script is the lively result of combining the talents of lettering whiz Charles Borges de Oliveira and veteran signage designer Bruce Bowers. This energetic, monoline script is simply packed to the gills with alternates — some characters featuring up to nine different forms — providing plenty of casual, handwritten flavour.

Quite often, a bespoke project will turn into something larger. Case in point, Jessica Hische’s elaborate and curlicue’d Minot started out as custom lettering on a certificate for last year’s SOTA Catalyst Award. The three styles — outline, fill, and box — can be used independently or applied in layers for multi-colour and other “illuminated” drop cap effects.
News items!
Loads of joy to ring in the new week:
- Joanne Meister examines the work and influence of Josef Müller-Brockmann.
- David Sudweeks wraps up his great “Type Trends” series.
- A big fan (to put it mildly) has recreated Jessica Hische’s cover for Beck’s Song Reader using cut paper.
- Isabel Urbina has released the first issue of her serial typographic novel, Rants from a Stranger.
- Florian Hardwig wonders whether we effectively use OpenType font features.
- There’s a new edition of The Elements of Typographic Style.
- The evolution of language is messy — but it makes for some interesting reading.
- Yves Peters interviews Cyrus Highsmith about Inside Paragraphs.
- Scott Berkun discusses language design.
- New York City has cleaned up its parking signs.
- Renting typefaces is now a thing.
- Adrian Curry shares his favorite movie posters of 2012.
- Thomas Phinney walks us through the importance of PANOSE for font makers.
- Preview your webfonts using Big Spaceship’s Web Font Viewer.
- Yves Peters is back with another great edition of My Type of Music.
- The Communion Arts 2013 typography annual winners have been announced.
- Sanam Petri wants to know where all the creative advertising copywriting has gone.
- Grain Edit showcases the work of Chris Burnett.
- Check out this literary graffiti.
- Michael Cina is developing the identity for TypeCon2013. No pressure.
- Make your own visual trend lists!
- The New Republic has a new logo; Roger Black reminisces.
- Rase a glass to Print magazine and its employees, whose New York office has been closed.
The year-end retrospectives and new-year plans continue:
- Typefacts has compiled picks for the best typefaces from 2012.
- MyFonts shares their most popular fonts of 2012.
- So does Linotype.
- VirusFonts looks to the new year.
Do something
For your calendars:
- Extensis is sponsoring a free symposium on font management, February 1, in New York.
- Nominations are open for the 2013 SOTA Catalyst Award. Get them in by March 1.
- Two calls for papers, at the Typographic Hub: “Travel, Topography and the Book Trade” (due January 31) and “Resurrecting the Book” (due February 1).
Done arrived
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading; see you Saturday!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for sending us four fine new typefaces.
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