Type News: Undead Again
Has the Type News risen from the grave? It may seem that way after our rather dysrhythmic schedule of late. However, rather than mourning over missed deadlines and linkrot, let’s dig right into some bloody good type.
New Type
The recent tasty revamp of the Village site also brought a pair of smashing, new display faces along for the ride. First up is Ondrej Jób’s Odesta — a stencil-esque, seven weight script packed with tweaky typographic features that include alternate cuts, small and “short” capitals, plus some sweet ball-tipped initials and finials.
Likewise added to the Village roster, Jeremy Mickel’s Superior Title provides “a kind of missing link between Bodoni and Times” in a transitional vein. Mickel is currently working on Superior Deck and Superior Text — companion families to work alongside this pentad of contrasty headliners.
From the multiscript Rosetta foundry comes a titling-focused extension to Sergei Egorov’s 15th century Italian revival Neacademia. The aptly named Neacademia Display returns to its calligraphic roots, rather than relying exclusively on the optimized typographic structure of its text sibling.
Lydia is Benjamin Critton’s updated take on Lydian, Warren Chappell’s famous calligraphic sans for American Type Founders. Emboldened and condensed, the upright and italic variations still manage to embrace the drafted and crafted sensibilities of the 1938 original.
Typonine’s Nocturno is a complex typeface. With both text and headline varieties, this calligraphic face features a large x-height, stubby ascenders and descenders, and an intriguing oblique axis. The “rather hefty” slabs of the text weights are replaced by sharpened and honed serifs and strokes on the dramatically detailed Nocturno Display.
In what seems to be a recurrent theme this week, Fountain also released a stylistic adjunct to Rui Abreu’s romantic Aria family. The more subdued Aria Text was designed for use in book publishing, but maintains most of decorative mannerisms and attributes of its display-savvy sister across six styles and three optical ranges.
Denis Serebryakov’s distinctively graphic Displace Cut is a more pronounced stencil edition of Displace — his calligraphic, humanist sans released earlier this year.
Peter Biľak initially designed Lava specifically for use in his Works That Work periodical. A “no-nonsense workhorse” meant to be applied liberally to all manner of publication situations, the four weight family is outfitted with symbolic ligatures, multiple numeral sets, and comprehensive language support — including a Cyrillic script designed by Ilya Ruderman. Diving deeper, Biľak relates the initial inklings and subsequent development of the typeface for I Love Typography in Lava — Voice of a Magazine.
News
They’re not dead yet! (The links, that is.)
- While we were out of commission, I Love Typography sallied forth with this week in fonts and this other week in fonts.
- Version 6.3 of the Unicode Standard has been released, with “significantly improved bidirectional behavior.” Ladies.
- Speaking of Unicode, it’s a miracle that it even exists … at least according to Tom Scott.
- However, The Register maintains a slightly different opinion.
- Chrome DevTools knows a bit more about fonts than it used to.
- Tim Arhens uncovers what exactly makes Lucida Grande “Retina-optimized” for OS X Mavericks.
- Glyphs.app users rejoice! FontStruct can now export all the things.
- Underware has a suggestion for Adobe about that little thing.
- Meanwhile, Adobe has been tinkering with SVG in OpenType.
- They also reveal the true story behind The Type 42 Font Format.
- Who knew that diacritics and birth certificates could be so complicated? Peter Biľak certainly does.
- Gerry Leonidas comments on The Last Decade in Multi-Script Type Design for Typographica.
- Maria Popova shares a brief history of the irony mark.
- Dive deep into the backstory of the commercial at with James Mosley.
- “By popular demand, we’re going to remove the hyphen from e-mail.”
- Ann Bessemans discusses her research into type design for children with low vision and her Matilda typeface.
- In related news, can coloured text improve readability?
- Ever wanted to paint signs and influence people? Colt Bowden’s new book has you covered.
- Columbia University’s digitized version of Wm. H. Page & Co.’s Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, &c. is simply a beautiful thing.
- Adobe’s Miguel Sousa took a sabbatical and helped the Hamilton.
- A Typographic Refactoring is a thoughtful piece on web typography by Edwin Morris.
- Typerepublic founder Andreu Balius gets interviewed by Designboom.
- MyFonts interviews the ubiquitous Matthew Carter for Creative Characters.
- Slanted takes a look at Codex #3.
- Make your own typography pendants … jewelry designer Lindsay Saunders shows you how.
- Would you rather make a font instead? David Sudweeks provides a little guidance.
- After all that making, play a game of Type:Rider.
- It’s a conspiracy! Web sites use fonts to track users.
- Damien Hirst’s ABC book shows off his multidisciplinary work (and a fine selection of typefaces).
- Quick sketches, lettering, and works in progress from Colin Tierney (and others) in a brush.
- Brian Warren waxes on weights and styles for the Typekit blog.
- Laura Worthington and the TypeCamp kids had a wonderful time in Calgary putting on a script lettering workshop.
- The nifty Typekit pop-up library made its inaugural appearance at Brooklyn Beta.
- While we’re in Brooklyn, you still have a few days to help kickstart Cameron Moll’s letterpress bridgework.
- Ali Eteraz laments The Death of the Urdu Script.
- Observe how Cristina Vanko corresponds via Modern Day Snail Mail.
- Get off my lawn! Words are for old people.
- Some of the tidbits that followed the recent ATypI festivities in Amsterdam included Yves Peters’ report on Non-Latin & Technology, the awarding of the TDC Medal to Gerrit Noordzij, and something found only at ATypI…
- Lastly, we were saddened to hear that the extraordinarily talented Michael Harvey had passed away.
Events
Save the date! Don’t be late!
- Join San Francisco’s Alphabetic Order for The Doodlefest, an informal meet and greet on November 8th.
- Also on November 8th, Julian Waters will be speaking on Hermann Zapf at The Washington Calligraphers Guild in Bethesda, Maryland.
- Shortly after they open the doors at their new location, The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum will be collaborating with Erik Spiekermann on something new during Wayzgoose 2013, November 8th to 10th.
- Tickling Béziers is a new workshop series presented by the Society of Typographic Aficionados. The first workshop, headed up by lettering artist and type designer Neil Summerour, takes place November 9th and 10th in Winter Park, Florida.
- Giuseppe Salerno and Paco González will be offering a brush pen workshop geared towards beginners, November 23rd and 24th in London.
- An online introduction to lettering course with Jessica Hische? Yes please!
- If you’re lucky enough to be in New York on November 16th, Ms Hische will also presenting a two-day Letter Together Workshop.
Have mercy on our souls
Your patience is appreciated while we dust ourselves off and pump some life back into our publishing schedule. Suffice it to say, we’re back from the dead.
Thanks to Erik Vorhes for letting me drive the ambulance this week.
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