Week 36, 2021
A Weekly Review of the World of Typography
Releases:
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Colophon Foundry released Auguste Sans and Auguste Serif this week — one family of two fundamentally different styles in a sans and serif, united by their presentation as stencils. Inspired by an old ceramic bottle, both Auguste Sans and Serif have an authentic and cheerful disposition while retaining an edge. Both families arrive as a set of 4 roman fonts a piece.
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JTD Foundry has released Symposium on Future Fonts. Symposium is a text typeface with roman proportions answering the question "What if Roman inscriptional lettering had a lowercase?" Its got a rather beautiful texture in running text and starts v0.1 with three weights and one italic.
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Smoosh is the latest from Type Supply, and it is indeed quite delightfully smooshy. Originally designed for Wired Magazine, Smoosh is the public release described as "a really condensed, extremely high contrast, barely legible typeface for when you want text to look important but not necessarily be read." With 5 optical sizes, Smoosh is the editorial typeface you want when legibility may not be the top priority. 😉
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Paratype has released Bodoni PT, a clean digital take on an all time classic. Bodoni PT puts a flexible, more applicable spin on a printer's classic not known for handling running text well. Overall, there are 15 upright styles and 15 corresponding italics as well as a special ornamental style, all making the modern-day case for this classic historical style.
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Gil Modern (Not to be confused with the well-established Gill Modern) is a "distinctive low-contrast display typeface featuring Lombardic capitals and rounded lowercase letters." Designed by Valerio Monopoli for the foundry's incubator lab program CAST Studies, Gil Modern's inspiration came from "a medieval parody developed within the context of the Catalan Art Nouveau movement."
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Kotei Condensed was released this week by KOBU Foundry through Type Department. Kotei Condensed is a super condensed display sans serif family of six weights. Designed for stark display headlines, Kotei arrived fully baked for purpose with lots of contextual alternates and expressive letterform constructions.
Font Updates:
Feliciano Type has updated their Rotep Bornes family (another family with two names, gotta love it!) with two additional fonts: Stencil and Shaded. These more expressive renditions of the rather clean cut art-deco-y sans serif bring some life and fun to the table, especially the shaded—subtle, finessed, and enviable.
Links:
Custom Fonts:
Schick Toikka has updated their web home, putting their custom font work on high display.
Books:
I may or may not have just immediately put Typographic Knitting: From Pixel to Pattern into my cart.
Apps:
Are you familiar with Typeface App? Looks like its got potential to be a helpful font manager.
Quiz:
Martina Flor posted a fun little lettering quiz on her instagram that you can now take online.
Articles:
Fontstand News puts together Three Business Outfits.
Fascinating:
A deep dive into Moire Dots, and how to handle them.
Newsletter:
Are you subscribed to Matthew Butterick's email newsletter Tiny Letters yet? You should!
Article:
A thorough dive into the design evolution and narrative perspective of publishers Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers, via ReadyMag Stories.