Type News: Soft-Serve with Bacon
What a week! We have some lip-smacking type and equally scrumptious news for you.
Let’s begin with our pal Unicode. “Canadian Syllabics sh” and “Rightwards Arrow with Loop” received new definitions in the “Curator’s Code.” It remains to be seen whether screen-readers, etc., will be able to tell the different meanings that these characters apparently now signify. (Whether you think the “Curator’s Code” is useful is another thing entirely.) Meanwhile, every character is undergoing re-definition by the Fake Unicode Consortium. Enjoy such instant classics as “Unimpressed Rabbit,” “Monocle of Disapproval,” and “Soft-Serve Ice Cream.”
With that fun out of the way, let’s serve up this week’s new type. Color us impressed — there’s no scratching words in the dirt here:
Swiss art director Juri Zaech starts off another week of new type with the charmingly decorative Frontage. A multitude of dimensional and textural effects can be created by layering and colorifying the five distinct styles — including a unique cast shadow variation. This all-caps “façade signage” sans is built to be mixed, matched, and stacked to your signmaking heart’s content. An additional sixth weight — not included in the retail collection — is also available. Frontage Outline is “free for a tweet.”
Madelinette provides a lovely, unstuffy take on early 1900s handwriting. In a style that’s considered to be “a modern alternative” to Spencerian scripts, this face is lightweight and natural — maintaining the subtle roughness produced by a steel-nibbed pen on paper. Designed by illustrator and lettering artist Crystal Kluge and brought up to OpenType speed by Stuart Sandler, Madelinette contains plenty of ligatures, beginning and ending forms, swashes, and stylistic alternates.
Peter Mohr’s second release for OurType provides a refined display counterpart to his didone-esque Fayon family. Fayon Grande is a condensed headliner of ample contrast and x-height, with uniquely leafy terminals, softened hairline serifs, and an impressive range of nineteen weights — from thin through extra black.
Max Phillips describes the inaugural release from his very own Signal foundry as “an ice cream headache of a typeface”. We can’t possibly disagree. Vibro combines strict geometry with concentric repetition to the visual extreme. Phillips has also taken pains to provide cleverly “mortised” diacritics — allowing Vibro to “trample basic standards of legibility in over 130 languages.” Following up on the award-winning ways of his FF Spinoza, Max’s stripy wonder recently nabbed a 2012 Certificate of Excellence from the Type Director Club.
Wood Type Revival’s latest typographic resuscitation is a gruff little number in an wide slab style. Trent Walton took design cues from an 8-line cut of 19th century wood type — originally part of the David Knox & Co. foundry — and digitized two styles of Grecian Light Face. Available in distressed and “clean, precise redraw” varieties.
And now: watch the water roll down from the new type to the type news. (Yes I am listening to Soul Coughing while I’m writing this, why do you ask?)
- Why not start off our list of links with a list of links to lists? That’s what you’ll find in this recent collection of “Fonts & Typography Lists and Resources” from Listgeeks.
- If you missed Robothon 2012, check out this Robothon video collection on Vimeo.
- And a hearty congratulations to Tal Leming, benevolent dictator for life of the UFO font data storage format!
- Mark Simonson has a new version of Pangrammer Helper for RoboFont.
- A new iPad is out, promising extremely crisp text, among other things. Some people believe you need a physical keyboard to get much done with one — and Andy Ihnatko has found the best one out there.
- Hasbro is ready to make a beautiful version of Scrabble.
- Break out your CSS and learn from Kyle Meyer how to center text with letter-spacing.
- Javier Garcia’s No Barcode has been around for a while, but new inspiring stuff keeps cropping up.
- Did you know that you can power a Linotype machine with a motorcycle? Several people did this.
- More social photography for your iPhone! Get yourself a copy of Fontli.
- Help the third Chicago International Poster Biennial become a reality.
- Congratulations to Typophile for finally ditching Flash!
- What will something look when it’s printed? The Print Book can probably help.
- In the US, March Madness is in full swing. If you’re not into college basketball, you might be interested in FontShop’s Faceoff.
- At this point in the news, you might feel like you know your stuff. But are you prepared to apply for the position of Leading Type Expert at Microsoft?
- A certain five-year-old might have the inside track on that job, though, so be sure to go prepared!
- Hipster branding, we’ll leave it at that.
- A fitting link to follow that one would be difficult to find if this tumblelog of cats and type weren’t handy.
- Meet Brian McMullen, art director for McSweeny’s.
Mark your calendars!
- TYPO San Francisco is almost upon us!
- There are a ton of upcoming events at the Museum of Printing.
- On March 22, head over to the TDC for Metamorphabets.
- On March 26, go back there to hear Helmut Ness discuss the history of typography at Munich Public Transport and the type design process of Vialog.
- Travel to Cologne, Germany, to hear a bunch of dudes present at Beyond Tellerand — Play, April 24 – 27.
- Between July 2 and September 30 is the submission period for the Morisawa Type Design Competition 2012.
- If you can’t make it to Hong Kong for this year’s ATypI conference, consider spending October 11 in Austin, Texas, for the inaugural Rock that Font conference.
We leave you this week with some incredible and mesmirizing Handmade Type. Have a happy St. Patrick’s Day and a great week!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for getting on the bus and delivering this week’s new type.
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