Week 38, 2021
A Weekly Review of the World of Typography
Releases:
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The Commercial Type Vault has added a few more tyefaces to the slate, including Duplex Sans & Serif: a type duo originally drawn for a newspaper group in Sweden, Viktor Serif: a barely-seriffed display face, and Advocat: a fun typewriter face originally found on the IBM Selectric "golfball".
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Fabular by Tour de Force Foundry is a display serif family of 12 fonts (6 weights of roman and italic styles) launched this week on Fontspring. Fabular has a wider proportion than most and is certainly quirky, which is perhaps due to odd placement of extraneous serifs.
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Klim Type Foundry has released a new Collection of Fonts entitled Epicene. The Epicene Collection is two families — Epicene Text and Epicene Display — both inspired by legendary type design figureheads F-F Rosart and J.M. Fleishmann. The foundry points out Epicene's "exaggerated details [that] add rigor at small sizes and vigor at large sizes." The foundry also has a point to prove with this family: "typefaces have no gender." Read more about the concept and process here.
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Xanti Typewriter was released this week by CAST Foundry — a monospaced type family of strong and geometric construction, based on the logo designed in the mid-1930s for Olivetti by Xanti Schawinsky, a Bauhaus disciple and a pioneer of what later became the Swiss Style. Xanti Typewriter arrives as a family of four fonts of two weights with roman and italics.
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LaFarge by Typetanic Fonts is a family of 15 fonts (7 weights of roman and italics, plus a dingbat set) in true homage to the historic mosaic titling capitals found in the New York City Subway, designed by architect Squire J. Vickers and his staff between 1915-1927. Its a rather remarkable likeness and an excellent capture of the very familiar and recognizeable letterforms.
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Kadabra by Victoria Rushton, started by Dai Foldes, was released this week on Future Fonts. Kadabra is a rather beautiful font born out of tragic and unfortunate circumstances. Kadabra is a flourished script font featuring extreme swashes and flowing strokes across a basic character set. To learn more about this incredibly personal project, do read the font release notes.
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Formulate from Alanna Munro is a type family with a purpose. Based on research of how children are taught to write and how the examples and references given to them can help or hinder this milestone, Formulate weighs in at 17 styles of regular sans letterforms in several weights, as well as additional dot, inline, and outline styles to round out the full set of instructional fonts.
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Stellage from Soft Machine is "a compact but versatile geometric serif, inspired by the visual culture of postmodern architecture where modern and classical shapes meet. The result is a sharp serif that offers great legibility in small sizes, with interesting details as a display typeface." Nab the full collection of 5 fonts including Regular, Display, Constructed, Italic, and Constructed Italic.
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Gaya from Out of the Dark is a rather globby affair that looks like a cut of Cooper Black got a personal trainer at the gym. The foundry states that "Gaya follows the structure of highly legible roman typefaces but takes another turn with its intriguing flowing shapes — pushing it to the limit within the Italic." Gaya cites influences from a plethora of type genres that amount to an original and spirited expression of typographic style.
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Civil from Superior Type is a modern workhorse sans family claiming to be "a crossover between static and dynamic sans-serif styles." Civil is a clean and crisp sans cut of 9 weights with italics billed to be released soon. Superior Type prescribes Civil to be used when you're looking for a "clean but not cold" design language.
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Mortier from Coppers & Brasses is really just fun: being inspired by old hand-painted 'ghost sign' advertisements on brick walls. "This unique style of lettering was influenced by pre-computer techniques wherein sign painters would use the brick wall on which they were painting as a reference for laying out their text." For being a family of just two fonts inspired by sign painting on brick, Mortier is an incredibly expressive font with a cheeky personality.
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Hoodzpah Design released Chapman Ave. — a layered sans family of four fonts bringing retro-inpired dimensional chrome and drop shadow looks to your desktop. Hot off the release of Santa Ana Sans, Hoodzpah takes the sign painted aesthetic a step further with shadow and chrome texture fonts for you to layer to your heart's content.
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Gela is the latest from Polytype Foundry, a font of mixed contrast approaches that honestly looks like it would bite your fingers off if you got too close. Gela was inspired by the funk and flair of 70's typography, bringing together "naive blobby forms and confident incised details with a laid-back attitude." Gela is released as a standalone font.
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Meet Brier, a debut font release from Sudanese designer Fatima Abbas on Type Department. "Brier is a serif display typeface inspired mostly by nature. Its design features stem from botanical influences, shown in the tiny broken strokes in the crossbars and the elegant humanist letterforms, giving it a classic yet fresh feel." Brier comes in 2 weights — Regular and Bold.
Links:
Goods:
Another shoutout to these increible Muir McNeil posters.
Article:
This profile on Edomoji, the expressive style of Japanese typography and lettering of the Edo period, is a refreshing and insightful read. (via A is for Fonts)
Conferences:
TYPWKND is back this year for another digital type gathering. Check out their events and talks here.
Redesign:
PRINT Magazine Online has had another facelift, and its worth checking out if not only for its renewed focus on articles about Type.
Books:
Pre-Order Let's Make Letters! — a new book about lettering for beginners from Kelcey Gray, out Oct. 26th from Princeton Architectural Press.
New Website:
Pangram Pangram has an all new (rather impressive and flashy) website for their foundry offerings.
Goods:
Production Type has a new cap that's all about Modern Typefaces.
In-Progress:
It seems the Commercial Type Vault is inspiring other foundries to do something about the stockpile of in-progress fonts that are stuttering to get out of the gate. Type Supply has announced an R&D department!
Digital Tools:
Dalton Maag published information about their new beyond-hinting tool PixelFix.
Article:
Behold, the Book Blob via PRINT Mag.
Fonts By Request:
Feliciano Type Foundry has been busy updating its own vault of sorts with a wide variety of beautifully crafted and aesthetically diverse fonts.