Type News: Rolled
Happy Saturday! We have news and new type, but first let’s wander here, there, and everywhere for a bit.
Make sure your passports are in order, and book your flights to Hong Kong! Next year, ATypI goes to Asia for the first time. While you’re preparing for international travel, you might want to consider making your way to Bombay, India, March 1-3, for Typography Day 2012. If you have your papers in order, you could travel to London for next week’s TYPO conference—but if that doesn’t work for you, Type Worship will blog about it. Then take the Chunnel on your way to Nancy, France, for Nouvelle création typographique en France, which runs from November 17 until December 30. Hop across the pond, to New York, for John Downer’s “Think Big, Think Small,” November 12 and 13 at the Cooper Union. Call (212) 353-4195 for registration information. Global but not travel-related: CitID is a project to give “a (type)face to every city worldwide.”
Now that we’ve toured the globe, let’s peruse this week’s new type.
The recent - and rather substantial - update to Verena Gerlach’s FF Karbid goes beyond adjusting contrast and expanding the number of weights. Feast your eyes on this pair of new subfamilies. FF Karbid Text simplifies some of the swashier forms of the original, creating a very pleasant and readable face—without losing any of its charm. FF Karbid Slab is a balanced, “sure-footed” serif that is equally comfortable in headlines and text settings.
Go big or go bigger. Austin Hairline is Commercial Type’s “loose revival” based on the work of 18th century trade engraver Richard Austin. The single weight Roman and accompanying italic are extremely contrasty, yet maintain a remarkable balance. But heed the recommendation of designers Paul Barnes and Berton Hasebe … only use this face at 100pt or larger sizes.
Dieter Hofrichter’s Cassia is a fresh take on what he calls a “dynamic Egyptienne.” The light variations of this classical slab are friendly and open, whereas the bold styles are all about making sure that you are indeed reading those headlines. Five weights, lovely italics, and plenty of OpenType features complete the set.
The latest release from the Gestalten studio is Julian Hansen’s Zimmer. More condensed and economical than your average neo-grotesque sans, this five weight family sports some subtly stylish humanist details.
Feminine, fanciful, and flourished. Pauline Didone combines clean, Art Deco-inspired geometry with the drama of swashy, retro brush scripts. Weights range from a minimalist, monolinear thin to a high contrast, “ostentatious” black—each with a playfully appropriate italic.
Completely rebuilt with more in mind. The prolific Neil Summerour has expanded, tweaked, and otherwise preened his already impressive Akagi family—originally designed back in 2007. Akagi Pro features more characters, more ligatures, more alternates, and more styles.
[Insert groan-worthy transition here. (sic)] And now for the rest of this week’s news:
- Oliver Reichenstein has put his slides for “Reading Typography—Writing Typography,” a talk he gave at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change conference.
- Cole Peters takes a closer look at font-size and readability on the web.
- If you need to serve webfonts from Typekit over SSL, now you can do that on any plan.
- Speaking of webfonts, Ryan DeBeasi works through how to troubleshoot some common issues.
- More broadly digitial, watch this discussion between Erik Spiekermann and Elliot Jay Stocks.
- Richard Turgeon profiles Jean François Porchez on the WebINK blog.
- Kern, baby, kern! with this fun little game. Wait, kerning is serious business. Ahem.
- Learn more about type and typography by reading along with upcoming courses taught by Dan Reynolds.
- On that list is the corrected and revised edition of Fred Smeijers’ Counterpunch.
- Vikki Quick writes about the relationship between Steve Jobs and type for the fonts.com blog.
- Are you excited about Type Camp yet? You should be.
- I love Joe Newton’s specimen for Samantha Script.
- Also impressive is Sveinn Davíðsson’s Times New Rope.
- Some great collections of lettering have cropped up recently. Christian Annyas tracks down some hand-lettered logos from defunct department stores. And if you love comics, you’ll probably enjoy Supertype!
- Good luck reading this edition of Frankenstein.
- I covet this Typographic World Map with Watercolor on Etsy.
- &, &, &: “A Visual Guide to the Ampersand.”
Finally, we are sad to report that Corbis is closing Veer’s Calgary office. What a downer.
That’s it for this week. What does the next week have in store? We can’t wait to find out.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing us this week’s new type!
Comments are closed on this entry.