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It’s almost spring! Time to get ready for sweet showers and all that. But first, a preemptive pilgrimage to some astounding new type!

In the 1930s and 1940s, masterful sign painter Alf Becker produced dozens of handcrafted type styles. Alejandro Paul used one of Becker’s incomplete sample alphabets as the basis for Storefront. True to form, Alejandro’s “overdose of alternates and swashes” is evident in this energetic script — balancing historical forms with the lettering artist’s improvised brushwork. Be sure to peruse the PDF specimen featuring some stunning dimensional work by Dado Queiroz.

Some people might refer to this face as having an oval structure, but Eric Olson prefers to call his Chrono a “nearly geometric” sans serif. This minimalist, six weight family has a subtly-played geometry that pairs well with the “adjusted oblique” italics. A single alternate ‘J’ and a series of directional arrows accompany each and every style.

The digital version of Vojtěch Preissig’s iconic Czech typeface began in the summer of 1998. After nearly fifteen years, František Štorm (along with Otakar Karlas) have finally released the revised and extended Preissig Antikva Pro. Previous interations of Antikva mistakenly construct the glyphs using nothing but straight lines. The accuracy of this revivial takes that into account, basing the design on a very specific version of the 1925 original and developing a set of custom-tuned italics. The entire family consists of twelve styles, partnered with a lovingly prepared set of Preissig’s original ornaments.

Sascha Timplan’s Florence for Stereotypes is loose, fluid, and — in his own words — “not perfect.” This condensed sans family was inspired by the designer’s poster lettering for the villaWuller dance club in Trier, Germany. With a casual softness, expressive swashes, and loads of OpenType options, Florence provides a lot of flexibility — perfect or not. And if you need yet another nudge, the regular weight can be nabbed for free at MyFonts.

Gestalten is on the scene again with Lektura — a modernized blackletter by Berlin-based Martin Guder. Two weights of organically grown, handcrafted flavour — straddling the line between interpretive antiqua and stripped-down textura.

The Lost Type Co-op released a pair of condensed, vintage serif faces this past week. Frances Macleod’s Abraham Lincoln is a tall drink of water — like its presidential namesake. Echoes of 19th century playbills are evident in this bracketed headliner of moderate contrast, friendly demeanor, and quirky woodtypish consistency.

Also from the “name your price” co-operative comes Ben Dalrymple’s four speed Geared — a compact, no-nonsense face with an industrial attitude. Although pitched as a “slab” design, the substantial serifs have a oddly attractive bracketed-hybrid vibe.

User is DSType’s take on a clean, squarish monospaced sans. This extensive family consists of regular, stencil, and “upright” styles across five weights — thin through bold — all with rather clever “cameo” variations. Despite being a monospaced design, it’s both versatile and extremely comfortable to read.

And now, feel free to get comfortable and read the rest of this week’s news:

• The FontShop blog features the work of Nina Stössinger, Veronika Burian, and Nicole Dotin.
• Naomi Chapple interviews letter cutter Fergus Wessel for I Love Typography.
• On March 15, head over to the Type Directors Club for a TDC Salon on Arabic Typography with Nadine Chahine and Tarek Atrissi.
• Speaking of the TDC, you might be interested in the upcoming Greek non-Latin intensive weekend, April 20–22, with Gerry Leonidas.
• Shoko Mugikura explores the beautiful complexity of Japanese writing for Smashing Magazine.
• There appear to be a few tickets left for the 2012 edition of the Ampersand conference, which takes place on June 15 in Brighton. Act quickly!
• Type Camp: Templeton, June 3–8, looks to be amazing.
• The fourth annual SXSW Found Type Photowalk takes place on Sunday.
• The Rosetta type foundry now has webfonts available for self-hosting or through Fontdeck.
• Jason Kottke has redesigned kottke.org and uses a screen-optimized version of Whitney.
• Marco Arment has learned from the competition and is looking to expand Instapaper’s typographic palette.
• So, The Artist won an Oscar for best picture. But how is the film’s use of type? Neither Fontcraft nor Mark Simonson remain silent!
• lettermodel.org is a new blog with a humdinger of a title: Harmonics, Patterns, and Dynamics in Formal Typographic Representations of the Latin Script.
• Max Wheeler shares his approach to loading Typekit asynchronously.
• Meet Font Awesome, an icon set for use with Twitter Bootstrap.
• Viljami Salminen revisits the power of scaling with em units.
• Not unrelated, Andy Clarke has started a collection of responsive type references.
• And John Berry considers adaptive book layouts.
• Erik Loehfelm reminds us to view type choices in context.
• It’s amazing what some bright colors and typography can do
• The first issue of The Shelf is available, and despite its Byzantine site layout, appears to be a print journal worth the effort.
• Typeboard is trying to offer some competition for the venerable Typophile.
• David Pogue notices that typographic emphasis can matter a lot.
• RoboFont 1.2 is out.
• Tim Ahrens has released Freemix Tools for FontLab.
• Frank Greißhammer writes about different keyboard layouts.
• The Waste Land as an iPad app? Why not!
• Turkey has a new symbol for the lira.
• Ros Hodgekiss explores whether there is a right way to format plain-text email.
• We Love Typography introduces an impressive world view. Help make it even better!
• This is a font.
• And this is one way to explain styles of sans serif typefaces.

It’s been another huge week in the world of type — see you next week for another!

Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for helping this week’s new type look its best!

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