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Typographica
typographica.org
43
A journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.
#31606 in All , #863 in Interests

Zizou

Roger Excoffon (1910–1983) was the most talented French type designer of the 20th century and probably the most prolific in the whole of French typographic history. Being an admirer of Excoffon’s wor...

26 jan 12

Julien

I remember the first time I saw Julien. It was in 2010, on a poster from Tipoplakat. At the time I didn’t know that the strong graphics on the poster were from an upcoming typeface by Peter Biľak. I ...

26 jan 12

Cala

William Morris’ Golden Type, inspired by the founts of Nicolas Jenson, sparked a mania for Venetian types in the 1890s that continued for nearly 30 years. But since World War I the lighter types of “...

26 jan 12

Outsiders

Somewhere between the lands of slab, sans serif, and typewriter there lives Outsiders. In the roman it appears an elegant, sartorial slab, somehow holding itself above all others of its kind, with a ...

26 jan 12

Supria Sans

Among recent Grotesque-inspired releases and Hannes von Döhren’s rapidly growing oeuvre, Supria Sans stands out to me as an especially interesting and useful addition. The design has just the r...

26 jan 12

Our Favorite Typefaces of 2011

After a long hiatus (inexcusably skipping 2009 and ’10) we’re back with our annual review of the year in type. The idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users t...

26 jan 12

Doko

Doko’s name was generated automatically. Designer Ondrej Jób was only sure of how the name should sound, and – based on a small number of variables – he wrote a Python script that finally created the...

26 jan 12

Alda

With the Alda project, Berton Hasebe took on the challenge of designing a type family whose members not only shift in weight, but also in their quality of expression. Analyzing how typefaces change t...

26 jan 12

Reina

Maximiliano Sproviero’s Reina starts with Bodoni and Didot and adds aspects of Spencerian script and the work of Herb Lubalin. The results are stunning – magnificent and graceful. Sproviero has demon...

26 jan 12

Chartwell

Chartwell is a set of three fonts that together create a remarkable set of tools for creating bar, line, and pie charts. It uses OpenType ligatures to perform its magic – a series of numbers can be t...

26 jan 12

Aria

I truly fell in love at first sight with the lowercase ‘a’ of Aria, capricious and full of happiness, and later with every letter of the roman weight. According to its designer Rui Abreu, an inscript...

26 jan 12

Sutturah

Let me get the obvious out of the way. Sutturah, Octavio Pardo’s first commercial release, isn’t versatile or a workhorse. It’s not ideal for setting small text or many of the other prized desc...

26 jan 12

My Favorite Font Sources: A Shortlist of Trusted Foundries and Retailers

Most fonts are licensed when needed, selected specifically for the job at hand. But when my (less font-addicted) friends are seeking versatile, workhorse typefaces for future use, I send them this li...

30 dec 11

Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont

Just in time for Halloween, from the depths of the Android 4.0 laboratory emerges a frightening cross-breed creature called Roboto. It was built from scratch and made specifically for high density di...

19 oct 11

The Average Font

A writer from The Atlantic Wire contacted me to get my opinion on the Average Font that’s making the internet rounds. I don’t think there’s anything worth writing about. It’s the sort of project...

29 sep 11

Explorations in Typography: Mastering the Art of Fine Typesetting

As someone who works with typography and design every day, I have a few books I turn to when I need to clear my mind of clutter. One of my favorites is Robert Bringhurst’s “The Elements of Typo...

31 may 11

The State of Webfont Quality from a Type Designer’s View

The rendering issue, at least at text sizes, is not going to go away anytime soon. As it’s been pointed out, the naivety of some designers, coupled with the marketing motivations of webfont services ...

27 apr 11

“Cure for the Common Font” — A Web Designer’s Introduction to Typeface Selectio n

Last week, I joined Frank Chimero, Tiffany Wardle, and Jason Santa Maria for a panel at the SXSW conference. Now that web designers suddenly face the challenge (and delight) of choosing fonts from an...

21 mar 11 1 person likes this

Where Are the Women in Type Design?

Being one of the rare type designers who happen to be female, I occasionally get this question from other (mostly male) designers. It’s difficult to find other female designers with whom to exc...

22 feb 11

Jan Tschichold: Master Typographer

Jan Tschichold embraced extremes. His work, most notably “Die Neue Typographie”, embraced and defined modernist typographic ideas. At his most provocative Tschichold only condoned the use...

15 jan 11

The Webfont Revolution Is Over, Let the Evolution Begin

It feels like this war has been raging for ages, but we’re still in the very early years of type on the web. When we look back on this moment — from the day the first webfont service launched to the ...

30 nov 10

Farewell, FontShop

I have some news. September 3 was my last day as Type Director at FontShop. Looking ahead, I see a lot of beautifully blank pages, waiting to be filled. But I can’t move on to the next chapter until ...

07 sep 10

Making Geometric Type Work

For graphic designers beginning to experiment in type design, a geometric or modular typeface is a natural starting point. Illustrator and other programs offer a simple collection of elements such as...

08 feb 10

Fraktur Mon Amour, 2nd Edition

Fraktur Mon Amour is the work of Judith Schalansky, written while she was a student of the Communication Design program in Potsdam. She developed a serious passion for blackletter and was disappointe...

08 feb 10

Bonesana

Special thanks to Gestalten for sponsoring the Typographica nameplate for October, 2009 with Bonesana. Gestalten is known for very contemporary designs — the modular and the post-mod — so this tribut...

08 oct 09

Audio from the Web Fonts Panel at TypeCon2009

Yesterday at TypeCon2009 in Atlanta, 11 representatives from the type community packed a stage to discuss the controversial and convoluted issue of licensing fonts for the web. I sat at the AV table ...

21 jul 09

Marlene

Marlene is an elegant, high contrast Egyptian face with a distinctive and contemporary calligraphic flourish. When I first saw it I was impressed at how incredibly crisp it was, as if drawn with a pe...

22 apr 09

Archer

A slew of slab serifs were released in 2008. Most of them continuing last year’s trend of following the cute and chunky approach, often to delicious effect. But as marvelous as so many of those slab ...

22 apr 09

Turning the Page

“How do you know you should start a blog? Because people keep telling you to shut up. You just won’t shut up about a subject.” — Merlin Mann, SXSW Interactive 2009 “Obsession times voice” is what lum...

22 apr 09

FontBook, 4th Edition

Long before there were hi-res laser printers in every design firm and PDF specimens on every foundry website, typographers discovered, compared, and selected type using specimen books. There is too m...

22 apr 09

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