Type News: Slammer
It never ceases to blow my mind how quickly a week passes. In any case: slow down and enjoy the latest round-up of new type, news, events, and kin.
New Type
Nick Shinn’s Richler is a highly readable book face commemorating its namesake, prodigious Canadian author and essayist Mordecai Richler. This airy, modernized antiqua comes in five styles — including a dapper highlight cut — and has been outfitted with a delightfully complete OpenType feature set and pan-European language support. Deliberately called out as being “spaced like a sans”, the recent introduction of the family on the Typophile forums has produced no shortage of discussion, debate, and huzzah … as well as the occasional brickbat.
From casual to formal. From nostalgic to contemporary. Rob Leuschke’s lively Style Script is more than just an update of an classic upright advertising script. Through the use of stylistic sets, a veritable sliding scale of typographic panache and complexity is available — making this an extremely flexible and fashionable face.
Wigrum is the first commercial typeface from Anouk Pennel and Raphaël Daudelin of Montréal’s Feed design studio. Just released through the Bureau des Affaires Typographiques foundry, this heavily geometric sans manages to add colour and personality to the otherwise rational shapes with minute optical adjustments, wedge-shaped details, and a sprinkle of refreshingly designed alternates.
Keeping the notion of “a subtly curved and slightly modulated line” in mind, Sebastian Nagel’s Canapé has been a labour of typographic love since its inception seven years ago, under the working title of “Sofa”. Although the family consists of just four styles, it encompasses an astonishing 4,200 glyphs — including small capitals, swashes, standard and discretionary ligatures, a whopping ten figure sets, and a “small sofa building kit”.
The first of many mid-century retro revivals from the Filmotype folks is the lovely Lakeside — an informal display script straight from the signpainter’s showcard arsenal. Decked out with a respectable set of alternates, ligatures, and automatic fractions, this connected brush style is ready to update all manner of storefront eyegrabbers and greengrocer flyers.
Also sporting a shopping cart full of fresh OpenType essentials is Filmotype Kellog, a slightly wider and lower contrast take on the commercial brush script style.
The final font refit is a freestyle Filmotype Parade. Originally introduced in 1955 as a standalone companion to its ever so slightly slimmer cousin Orlando, the Parade family has been expanded (literally) by type designer Charles Gibbons to include a trio each of weight and width variations.
News
From a variety of new typefaces to a variety of type-related links:
- Ed Fella has retired from the California Institute of the Arts. Michael Dooley and company send him off in style.
- Watch Dave Foster discuss typography.
- Upgrade all your Underware fonts!
- The above news means its an opportune time to link to Jens Tenhaeff’s “If Fonts Were Software,” which we missed the first time around.
- Michael Surtees covers Monotype’s Pencil to Pixel.
- The Alphabet Card looks lovely.
- Uniball has an intriguing new campaign.
- It’s never too late for a good “best of” list; the Typecache top 20 from 2012 is worth a look.
- Help create a typeface based on a city.
- Find all the Unicode.
- Steven Heller interviews Ben Barry about the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory.
- Riccardo Mori reveals one of the dangers of webfonts.
- Sign painting makes the news news!
- Is the “crank text” a thing?
- From Fabio Lopez comes “Police Raid Type.”
- If you’re still craving coverage of new type releases, check out the latest issue of This Week in Fonts.
- Type Worship takes a peek at Stephen Coles’ Geometry of Type.
- Here’s further proof that font size matters.
Events
Plan ahead and get in on these current and upcoming events:
- Text Support: A Library Exhibit about Paper takes place now through June 28 at the University of Wisconsin (Madison).
- You have an additional day to take in Word Jazz at the Mota Italic Gallery — now through June 29.
- Make your way to the University of Chichester for the Print Networks Conference, July 23–25.
Slammed
The next Type News will arrive all aflutter on Tuesday, May 28. Thanks for riding along — and covering gas.
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for bringing in all the new type!
Comments are closed on this entry.
1.
Luke Dorny May 21, 2013
Nice wrap-up! Love these posts.
2.
Erik Vorhes May 21, 2013
And we love you, Mr. Dorny!
What.