Type News: *ologies
It’s another big week. We’ve been studying hard, and here’s what we’ve learned in the world of news and new type!
A new week deserves a new face from a new foundry. Letters from Sweden — a collaborative effort by Fredrik Andersson and Göran Söderström — has just released their first typeface. Siri is a practical, lightly condensed sans named for Göran’s daughter. Sixteen styles of Swedish love and attention.
Speaking of typographic duos. Most typefaces by Angel Koziupa and Alejandro Paul are specifically designed for use on product packaging. The elegant Kozmetica Script is certainly no exception — but its slender, fluid forms can’t possibly be limited to that narrow category. With hairline swashes, carefully controlled strokes, and ample alternates — there’s plenty of flexible headline punch in this face.
The Indian Type Foundry have a pair of non-Latin lovelies to share this week. The clean lines and minimal contrast of Satya Rajpurohit’s multi-weight Kohinoor Gurmukhi adds to the impressive Kohinoor Multiscript superfamily, which previously offered support for Devanagari, Tamil, and Latin.
ITF’s second release is also from Rajpurohit. The classically proportioned and calligraphically inclined ITF Devanagari features five weights, sharper strokes, and higher contrast — making it suitable for pairing with serif’d counterparts of the Latin persuasion.
When Dave Rowland took to creating Brag Stencil, it wasn’t a matter of simply “cutting out bits” from his beefy Brag original. This variation has been carefully adjusted to compensate for any uneven color introduced by the stencil cuts. A smattering of alternates and clever ornaments put some additional oomph in the mix as well.
Even the name sounds experimental. TJ Evolette A explores both geometric construction and the abstraction of character shapes. Using a deco-inspired, monoline sans as the backbone, German designers Timo Titzmann and Jakob Runge added two “extravagant” stylistic layers across all seven weights. This typeface seems to morph from regular to “runes”. Experience it yourself — Evolette Light is currently free for personal use.
The unassuming “old style construction” of Mike Beens’ P22 Mackinac Pro bridges centuries of type history. The four purposeful weights sport corresponding italics, modest contrast, subtle diagonal stress, and a full roster of OpenType niceties.
Intellecta Design’s appropriately named Van den Velde Script is billed as a “free interpretation” of the penwork of 17th century Dutch master, Jan van den Velde. Uninhibited ligatures, calligraphic fleurons, numerous stylistic glyph variations, and wild calligraphic swashes all contribute to a suitably over the top script.
Paula Nazal Selaive’s eponymous Selaive is a somewhat “rebellious” geometric sans with an assortment of quirky (and optional) flourishes. If you can imagine a font both sassy and sedate, this might be it.
How about we finish off with just a Smidgen of new type from House Industries? Ken Barber has produced two weights of voluptuously chubby headline type — including a dropshadow-tastic option — each with just a sliver of whitespace peeking between the curves. Smidgen is also available as a “settable” face over at the Photo-Lettering factory outlet.
And now for the rest of this week’s news, in the tried-and-true list format:
- Beautiful lettering awaits you at The Phraseology Project.
- Matthew Butterick shares his experience in making the Kindle version of Typography for Lawyers.
- With great care, Elliot Jay Stocks covers many of the questions a good designer should ask while choosing webfonts.
- Fonts in Use explores the eclectic web typography of GOOD/Corps.
- Seth Godin has a few thoughts about the power of good typography.
- Web designers who use Photoshop, rejoice! WebINK is planning to release a plugin that will let you use that service’s webfonts in your designs.
- Ephemeral typefaces seem to be all the rage. Here’s one that won’t disappoint.
- David Watson reviews Typography Sketchbooks.
- It sounds like last Friday’s Now We Are Talking Festival was incredible.
- David Croy is enamored with the Bryson Apartments sign in Los Angeles.
- This is some amazing paper lettering.
- The American Psychological Association profiles (no, not that way!) Dawn Shaikh, who is helping Google improve its webfont service.
- Speaking of Google’s webfonts, Ralf Herrmann shares what he considers the service’s ten best.
- Steven Heller reviews the first four volumes in the “I Love Type” book series.
- When would you want to use a display face? Jason Santa Maria answers that question and covers more ground in writing about Ratio Display for the Typekit blog.
- While there’s no guarantee that higher quality e-ink displays will improve the typography of e-books, it certainly can’t hurt.
- The first issue of Codex is still available for purchase. If you haven’t decided to order it yet, maybe these lovely spreads at Typetoken will seal the deal.
Finally, a few things for your schedule:
- Travel to the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp for a showcase of Belgian type design, which runs through October 2.
- Or learn to make your own lovely letters by traveling to Berlin, where you can take part in a workshop on hand-lettering in graphic design, led by Ken Barber of House Industries. The workshop takes place October 3–4.
- While you’re in the area, stay for TypeAmsterdam, which takes place on October 6.
- Get a proposal in for “Variations on a Typographer,” an upcoming day-long symposium in Birmingham, England. The deadline is November 1.
- Thomas Phinney is hosting a free webcast series on “Best Practices for Web Typography.” The first part is over, but part two takes place on September 21, with part three to follow on October 5.
That’s it for this week. Yay, knowledge acquisition! We’re already at work to bring you next week’s ample dissonance of the cognitive and typographic sorts.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for hitting the books for this week’s new type.
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