Type News: Okay Moon
No lunacy here — it’s just the 110th anniversary of the release of Le Voyage dans la lune. Let’s go!
Les Nouvelles polices
Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińscy — otherwise known as Poland’s Hipopotam Studio — set out to give their latest face “a feeling of a primary school handwriting.” Mrs White is a happy, monolinear script with a controlled — but still casual — upright structure and a childlike casualness. And because we don’t always remember the rules, some smart automatic substitution replaces consecutively typed script capitals with much tidier (and more typographically appropriate) small caps.
Those busy kids at Bold Monday have just put the finishing touches on version 4.0 of Nitti — Pieter van Rosmalen’s grotesque-inspired monospace’r. Finally outfitted with a nifty set of italics, the five weight family has been in the shop for some detail work on the Roman styles as well.
Channeling a handful of features found in iconic display type from the 1970s, Frank Baranowski’s Journal 74 is flavourfully retro — with a few surprises. The Bookman-ish swashes and the teardrop terminals reminiscence of ITC American Typewriter mix it up with some fresh, freestyle letterforms — giving the regular and bold weights a unique, hand-inked quality. A tasteful selection of ligatures are just gravy on the cake.
Serbian foundry Tour de Force has released a tidy, semi-flared serif by Slobodan Jelesijević. The four weight Vezus features sharp, angular joinery and a number of interlocking discretionary ligatures. Feel like giving it a test drive? You can download the light weight for free.
While we’re on the topic of free … House Industries has revamped and re-released House Slant. If you set your wayback machine to party like it’s 1999, you’d find the original brushwork freebie tucked away in their popular Sign Painter collection. Sporting a fresh coat of expanded language primer and the benefit of “over 13 years of Ken Barber’s hindsight,” this face is now ready for both print and web. And speaking of the web … the live-text specimen page blew us off the scaffold. As Nick Sherman tweeted earlier in the week “I think it’s safe to say we have now entered the age of the web-based type specimen.” We’d have to agree.
Strange discoveries
We’re hurtling into the future at an alarming rate — who knows what we’ll find?
- William Allman reintroduces us to our friend, the @ symbol.
- Jason Santa Maria considers Frederic Goudy and what can happen when you try new things.
- Typecast has become a thousand times more useful, now that it supports background colors.
- The Boston Globe covers the role of Boston type foundries in designing type for digital devices.
- Back in the past, take a gander at the lovely De evangelica praeparatione.
- Art of the Title interviews David Fincher: “Titles should be engaging in a character way, it has to help set the scene.”
- While we’re on the subject of movies, check out these fantastic posters promoting La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.
- Félix Demargne discusses the creation of the specimen for Geneo.
- Create your own icon-based webfonts with Fontello.
- John Berry likes Cyrus Highsmith’s Inside Paragraphs.
- Typonine has added Cyrillic support to a number of its typefaces.
- Creative Bloq insists you follow these 20 type-related Twitter accounts.
- John Hudson asks, “Can graphic design save the world?”
- Alyson Kuhn interviews Nancy Sharon Collins about JMC Engraver, Feldman Engraver, and her new book.
- Armin Vit likes the redesigned logo for Royal Roads University. The choice of typeface? Not so much.
- Tim Brown and a host of others discuss the challenge of the infinite canvas.
Tick-tock goes the clock
Hurry! We’ll need to take some giant leaps to get to these goings-on:
- Hear Jean François Porchez speak at Antalis Art of Design 2012 awards ceremony in Johannesburg on September 6.
- On September 28, letterpress your own stationery with the Atlanta AIGA.
- Help The Newberry Library celebrate its 125th anniversary, September 6 – December 31, in Chicago.
Run away and throw a parade
That’s it for this week. Compliments? Complaints? Contempt? Let us know about it in the comments.
Merci, Grant Hutchinson, for taking us another fantastical tour of new type!
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