Type News: Systemic
Type and method are in store. Let’s align our horizon of expectations with this week’s news — but only after this week’s new type.
Svet Simov’s Intro family for Fontfabric takes a slightly fanciful approach to the geometric sans genre. Swoopy tails, unexpected curviness, teardrop’d alternates, and a solid set of headlining caps — plenty of features that push this approachable text face over the display fence. Take advantage of Fontfabric’s renowned generosity by downloading the free demo version of Intro, which includes nearly complete versions of the Black Caps and Black Inline Caps weights.
Elegant. Hairline. Sans. Mike Jarboe’s Memoire is all that. Sinuous monolinear forms were based on the stripped down structure from Vanitas, Mike’s popular serifless didone. An optically-tuned, non-cursive italic accompanies the regular weight — along with an extended set of ligatures, numeric sets, and case-sensitive punctuation.
Typotheque’s voluminous Greta Sans is definitely not just another large type family. It’s a “continuous optical size system” covering ten weights and four widths. Designed by Peter Biľak in partnership with Typonine’s Nikola Djurek, this sans companion to the existing Greta Text (and its other serif’d variations) provides a huge range of typographic tools for text and displays settings. Using Greta as a talking point, Biľak’s Designing type systems article for I Love Typography goes into even more detail on the process and consideration of building a large family. And don’t miss the introductory promotional video, featuring animation by Amsterdam’s Addikt and namesake Greta Fischer’s adorable voiceover.
Not only did Typotheque produce one massive type system, they also delivered ten weights worth of Greta Symbol. This complementary collection of pictographic fonts features a whopping 1,200 glyphs per style — including all the requisite arrows, icons, geometrics, and alphanumeric shapes you’d expect. Typotheque has also prepared an instructional video showing some of the clever OpenType substitution features built into these faces.
It’s getting kinda slab in here. Foro is a humanistic serif fresh from the Hoftype hopper. Dieter Hofrichter has provided sixteen subdued styles with even colour and subtle detailing — managing to remove much of the chunk and abruptness found in many slab families.
More slab? We’ve got it. Stepping up to the plate is Regan Slab, a ten weight family from The Northern Block. UK-based Jonathan Hill has created a deliberately graphic face with a headline-friendly and somewhat photoset feel.
From slab serifs to a pile of news that despite its quantity shouldn’t land like a brick:
- Hoefler & Frere-Jones are looking for web developers!
- Frank Grießhammer recaps the premiere of TYPO SF.
- Meet Lewis Mitchell, typecaster for Arion Press.
- Instagram made the news this week. Apartment Therapy features We Love Typography’s WLT World.
- Ralf Herrmann questions some assumptions about large x-heights and legibility.
- Florian Hardwig shares the connection between a custom slab serif and the Danish Theater.
- Paul Hunt writes about his recent type tour in India.
- Forensics specialists were able to recover 26 pages of text written by a pen without ink.
- Jérémy Landes-Nones introduces us to The Shelf
- If you know Japanese, you might enjoy this interview with Craig Mod.
- Ben Yagoda writes about the comma.
- Everyone seems to be making a plug-in. Monotype has created FontGazer for previewing typefaces in Adobe InDesign CS5 or later.
- Fresh from 1956 are these words from Bradbury Thompson, quoted by Tiffany Wardle.
- Find out what it’s like spending six weeks at the John Stevens Shop.
- Balloons never looked as good as they do in “Inflated/Deflated.”
- Check out these photos from Buchstaben Museum Berlin.
- Print spends some time with Cyrus Highsmith.
- Fire up Firefox or Chrome, and drag your TrueType, OpenType, or WOFF files where the Font Testing Page tells you to, so you can view them in-browser.
- Looking for the right webfont? Harrison Weber thinks Typekit Lists can help.
- Stephen Coles came across a handy tool for making type specimens.
- Laura Meseguer has a lovely new site design. And she’s profiled on Grain Edit.
- Meet Title Case, the new office of Jessica Hische and Erik Marinovich.
- Laura Franz shares approaches for creating drop caps with CSS.
- Catch up on Emigre type specimens.
- Here are some beautiful vintage price stickers on Flickr.
- This is fancy way of displaying the alphabet.
Looking for something to do? We’ve got you covered:
- On April 16, head to Madison, Wisconsin, for “Designing Type for the Next Screen,” with Chank Diesel.
- The Hyperstudio at MIT is hosting “Visualizing Interpretation,” a workshop and series of conversations with Johanna Drucker, April 23 – 28, 2012.
- The TDC is hosting “Lucille Tenazas — Insistent Typographer” on April 26.
- Or if you’re in Berlin on April 26, consider taking part in the 30th Berliner Typostammtisch.
- Are you still waffling whether you ought to attend TypeCon2012: MKE SHFT, a preliminary schedule and additional registration information have been posted.
And with those enticements, we bid you farewell until next week. Thanks for riding along!
And thanks to Grant Hutchinson for collecting this week’s new type!
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