Type News: Represent
It’s the middle of April. We’re not growing lilacs, but it looks like the west wind has brought some wonderful things our way. On to Canterbury! — er, yeah …
New Type
Aethereal calligraphic strokes and nuanced motion come together in Maximiliano Sproviero’s Bird Script — his latest handiwork for Lián Types. There’s a subtle rhythm whispering throughout the loose — but absolutely controlled — hand-drawn forms and swashes. Two breezy weights include an assortment of multi-glyph ligatures, flowing alternates, and stylistically appropriate ornaments.
One more time for effect. Jeremy Dooley has managed to find something else to explore amidst his already voluminous Aviano überfamily. Aviano Sans Layers consists of no less than 21 styles of inline, outline, dimensional, and textural options that can be mixed, matched, and layered (naturally) into all manner of marquee-esque headlines.
Following up on Mission Script — his other San Francisco–flavoured face — James T. Edmondson collaborated with Brooklyn’s Trevor Baum on the nostalgic Mission Gothic. Inspired by the hand-painted signs scattered throughout the city’s Mission District, this five weight sans features an intriguing backstory and a set of italics matching the angularity of its cousin script.
We don’t often feature vector format fonts, but we simply couldn’t resist this huggibly hirsute handset by Thailand’s Ukkrid “Lambda” Tosak. Created exclusively for YouWorkForThem, YWFT Lotes is a charming, chubby cartoon character of a face that “came from an egg that Dr. Seuss laid and Terry Gilliam hatched.”
Still legible after all these years … more so, even. Adrian Frutiger’s eponymous humanist sans gets an upgrade from Linotype, specifically complying with a new German DIN standard for public signage systems. Neue Frutiger 1450 provides the correct character proportions, line thickness, and letter spacing required for adherence to the standard, along with modified versions of the ‘0’ and ‘1’ and lowercase ‘l’ — characters which are often confused because of their similarity to other characters.
Something from the orchard this way comes. Linotype paints the town a fresh shade of Fruitygreen with an “idiosyncratic but appealing” display face by Indonesia’s Andi AW. Masry. This three weight display family is an interesting combination of organic brush lettering, calligraphic flow, and unconventional “fructiform” details. Each style includes true italics, swash capitals, and a set of distinctive ligatures.
Hannes von Döhren’s Mikado is a casual sans family that covers a bouncy seven weight range — from light to ultra. With its tight, headline-savvy letterspacing and loose, sign-painterly approachability, we can see why von Döhren describes it as face “for kids, games, and ice cream.” A nicely detailed set of italics and pan-European language support is icing on the cake.
If wishes were scripts, perhaps Wishes Script would grant them. Designed by Sabrina Mariela Lopez as a multifunctional script system, a trio of light-hearted, modulated faces include dozens of spirited OpenType alternates, swashes, endings, and ligatures. As if that wasn’t enough, Lopez has also provided both display and “text” variations of each weight, matching Roman titling capitals, plus an impressive number of calligraphic ornaments, frames, and other typographic accoutrements.
News
Let’s move on from wishing to a long line of links!
- Improve your online typography by experimenting with Tommi Kaikkonen’s Interactive Guide to Blog Typography.
- You may have heard of Daily Drop Cap; meet the Macclesfield Alphabet Book, 500 years its senior — and help solve a manuscript mystery in the process!
- Billy Whited identifies “Three Exemplary Typefaces for User Interfaces.”
- Over on TypeDrawers, Jan Schmoeger instigates a lively discussion on removing junk from character sets.
- The third and final installment of LetterCult’s best custom letters of 2012 is out. You can also also read all three installments at once.
- Matt Stevens “explodes” a popular technology.
- John Berry examines the work of Ivan Federov.
- Make your writing less mephitine with this list of animal adjectives.
- John Pavlus praises JAF Facit Web as “a massage chair for your eyeballs.”
- Erik Spiekermann teases us with a new typeface.
- Imagine a geometrically-constructed Fraktur.
- Ulrich Planer is “a passionate typography hunter.”
- Eye magazine interviews Dan Rhatigan.
- Gestalten.tv interviews Jessica Hische.
- Typecast interviews Steve Matteson.
- “How exactly does the technology we use to read change the way we read?”
- John Nack shares some of Aaron Draplin’s favorite signs.
- Get your hands on Letter Fountain’s Calypso PF (and learn about how they made it).
- If you’re too cheap to license certain typefaces for the web, here are rough equivalents from Google’s free webfont service (apparently there’s a shortage of apostrophes).
- Amperbranch prints are still available.
- Julius Hui considers the 2-Lines English Egyptian by William Caslon IV.
- Dalton Maag is hiring.
- Collaboratively-designed typefaces? Fontyou.
- Need another round-up of new typefaces? Head over to I Love Typography for the latest “This Week in Fonts.”
- Enjoy a new number for each day of the year.
- The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum has joined Instagram.
- You can get the Talking Types podcast on iTunes.
- TYPO San Francisco has wrapped for this year. See what you missed!
- One of these signs is not like the others …
Scheduling
There’s a lot going on; try not to get overwhelmed:
- On April 18, log on for a seminar with Richard Rutter on typography in responsive design.
- Learn about Cyrillic type design in a workshop with Alexei Vanyashin, April 20–21, in Berlin.
- Brace yourselves, 8 Faces #6 is coming.
- On May 7, Paul Shaw leads a type walk through Tribeca.
- As a part of TYPO Berlin, on May 17 the FontFont TypeBoard inaugurates the FontFont TypeReview.
- Get your tickets for Beyond Tellerand, which takes place May 27–28 in Düsseldorf.
- Apply for the Atelier National de Recherche Typographique — the deadline is May 31.
- Ampersand 2013 takes place on June 28 in Brighton.
Shantih
That’s it for this week — don’t be cruel, and see you soon.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for another great week of new type!
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