Type News: Unicornucopia
It’s that time of year again, when sugar plums spin their dreidels. Or something like that. Anyway, we have some treats for you! Let’s start with some new type.
No question about it, ’tis the season of giving. And to prove that point, here are three very generous foundries giving away tasty samples of their typographic wares.
TypeTogether’s Veronika Burian and José Scaglione have boxed up a single weight serif companion to their popular Bree family. Bree Serif exudes the same versatile charm of the original upright italic sans. We can’t wait to see this teaser typeface developed into a full range of styles in the new year. (Hint, hint.)
It may be named Briarwood, but Chank Diesel’s latest freebie is decidedly less bramble and branch—and more cardboard and craft. Constructed as part of an experimental “fontmaking” workshop at the Minnesota State University Moorhead, each character was built from paper and then photographed, outlined, and stuffed into a typeface. By layering the uppercase “shapes” and lowercase “shadows”, an intriguing duotone dimensionality can be produced. To see where the typeface started, check out Chank’s photos of the original alphabet objects on Flickr.
The final gift of the week comes from from Typedepot’s Alexander Nedelev and Veronika Slavova. Corki is simple, display slab in four styles—including rounded and Tuscan-inspired bifurcated variations. A selection of manicules and arrows are tossed in with (very) basic Latin and Cyrillic uppercase character sets.
Barely a month after releasing the voluminous Air, Neil Summerour has inflated his sans superfamily with Air Soft. The design takes a “subtle and very intentional” approach to softening the forms throughout each face. As Neil puts it: “I wanted to show that you could put a radius on a corner without rounding it to oblivion.” He’s also hidden something extra special amidst the nine weights, three widths, 81 fonts, and tens of thousands of glyphs—a magical, Unicode easter egg.
James Montalbano’s take on the vertical script was originally conceived and delivered as a single face for Vanity Fair over twelve years ago. Based on the lettering found on a French automotive poster from the 1920s, Insouciant has been expanded, preened, and subjected to a thorough rejig to “sort out the problem of the connection logic” without resorting to multiple, esoteric ligatures. Ten weights from extra thin through heavy provide a nice range of feminine, but not girly display type.
“I started out to do an OpenType upgrade to Panoptica, but got distracted.” That’s how Nick Shinn’s Parity came about. This two weight, oldstyle biform was specifically designed and optimized for a single task—setting unicase text in a most classy manner.
Taking cues from the early 20th century work of Dutch designer Dirk Hart, PintassilgoPrints’ energetic, hand-lettered Melkslijter is an face with split Art Deco personality. The regular weight is thin, monolinear, and feminine. The black weight is complementary, but graphically testosteronic—counters and curves abstracted through obfuscation. Both weights feature decoratively organic swashes, stylistic alternates and terminal forms, plus an array of wiry ornaments.
Freshly harvested from the Fontfarm is Gedau Gothic. An interpretation of the structure and appearance of the Americanized gothic sans from the likes of Morris Fuller Benton or Jackson Burke, it sports tighter counters, space-saving metrics, and squarer “newschool” details.
It looks like Alejandro Paul managed to squeeze out one final update to his Bluemlein scripts before the end of the year. The delicate hand of Miss Fajardose Pro is even more refined with an impressive number of alternates, including stylistically appropriate swashes and suitably restrained filigree.
Let’s wash those delectables down with some news:
- Matthew Butterick eloquently explains the value of investing in type.
- Richard Rutter boldly kerns on the web.
- Nick Cox introduces us to Gesta.
- Yves Peters came a cross a lovely clip of Dan Madsen’s sign painting.
- Meet kizuna, the kanji character of 2011.
- Rick Poynor has come across typographic fragments in Saul Leiter’s photography.
- On the evening of January 12 is The Judges Night: TDC Typeface Design Competition 2012. “If you need to know anything else you probably shouldn’t be there.”
- That same night, but at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, hear Chank Diesel and Craig Eliason present “CrossTalk: What Fonts Say.”
- Andrew Haslam explains how letters for large signs are made.
- Meet Myriad again for the first time.
- Are you using Identifont on sans-serif faces? You are not alone.
- If you prefer serifs, here’s a bit about FF Tundra on Typography Served.
- Are you an “extreme” typesetter? Think again.
- There are more Typekit webfont views than Flintstone Kids.
- The Typecast beta has received a significant upgrade.
- TypeTogether has a preview of Tablet Gothic up on Flickr.
- Why, hello, Bodoni girl.
- ’Tis the season for careful apostrophe use.
- Adobe’s type team wishes you a Happy holidays.
- So does Monotype.
And so do we. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Thanks to Grant Hutchinson for the Yule Log decorated with new type!
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