Welcome to September’s typeface round-up. The month that just ended gave me a lot of headache, and its closure leaves me with many things to ponder. Last night, I figured one of them should be new type, so I came up with the idea of making a monthly special post with newly launched typefaces. I hope, as more visitors come by, to get comments on this sort of decisions.
September brought some interesting typefaces; while surfing away amongst the many, I could distinguish two trends, one of which is headline/body text type and the subject of this first round-up post here on t.a.t (the other trend being scripts/handwritten). I found some rather nice fonts which may become your next selection if you have a magazine or newspaper to work on.
HirukoThinkDust
Hiruko original posterHiruko is a complete family of rounded characters fit for both headlines and body text. It has four weights, a rather nifty Oblique Light, an Alternates version and a very nice looking Outline, with Alternates. It took 6 weeks to design and it’s available through
MyFonts, T26 and YWFT. The designer, London-based Alex Haigh, worked for several of the top international brands, mostly through his one-man show (as far as I can tell) Thinkdust type foundry.
The uniform peace of all caps.I find the typeface to be quite pleasing, it’s monotonous forms helping the eye to read. I like how everything looks in all caps, especially when
set in Light weight: everything looks so compact and uniform, there is nothing to disturb the peace. Via.
Platten Neu P22
Early this September, P22 announced the arrival of Colin Kahn’s Platten Neu: a revisited, extended version of the foundry’s ink-pen rounded Platten typeface. Inspired by 1920s fountain pen practice books and very
similar to early-age alphabet books, Platten is now Neu and ready to kick: it includes 6 Pro weights, amongst which lies a wonderful Demibold, plenty of characters, alternates and ligatures, making it a delicious treat for any headline or logo.
Love the cap G.
Again, I like the Light version, I might have a knack for these things. The Demi is skilfully made, with a playful attitude, but the Light seems more serious. And that uppercase G is fantastic. In fact, you gotta love all the small caps, they look so real and the strokes are kept in perfect
harmony. Another thing to note, at least in my book, is how the Italic loses the rounded aspect at the tip of the strokes (Light weight especially), but how it compensates by adding more arcs to the forms. Notice the amazing impact this trait has in the case of the letters Mm and Nn.
Caput FontFarm
Just now I found the FontFarm, a german design shop focusing on type, amongst others. Their newest release, a typeface that’s been in the works since 2006, is named Caput and got out the workshop late last month. Caput is a contemporary sans serif and is made out of a very interesting blend. The uppers seem set in their place, although they do have a few interesting twists, while the lowers are a little more special, with slight
variations in stroke width, just enough to make heads turn. This combination between stiff uppercase and smoother lowercase is tied though an interesting x-height, that gives a slight square aspect to most of the characters. The typeface comes in four weights with accompanying stand-alone small caps, plus a lot of alternates and form variations, and its designer, Natasha Kai Oetzbach, is very proud of it at the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach am Main, near Frankfurt.
Taz 3 LucasFonts
LucasFonts, the home of prestigious type designer and teacher Luc de Groot, who authored fonts such as Thesis, TheSans and TheSerif, offers a new and (greatly) improved version of the Taz font. Reaching a staggering 15 weights - all with extended European set, nice ligatures
and two sets of figures -, the family makes the perfect arsenal for newspaper publishing. And one more thing - which might be an emerging trend for today’s round-up: the Light weights were carefully readjusted for better readability, making a big family happier, even at smaller sizes.
Benton Modern Display Font Bureau
Last month seemed to be a good time for revisits. Font Bureau recently announced theirs. Calligrapher Richard Lipton revisited his Century Schoolbook Italic revival, Benton Modern Text, which he did together with Christian Schwartz (who added Bold weights later) during 1997-2001, a typeface made for Boston Globe and the Detroit Free
Press (Tobias Frere-Jones having drawn the regular). Now, Dyana Weissman joined Lipton in making the result, Benton Modern Display, a true classic. The family features six weights, ranging from Light to Ultra, plus Italics, Condensed and Compressed versions, making for a total of 36 styles and a family worth considering.
Klavika Process
Eric Olson from Process designed Klavika during 2003-04 as a strong, editorial sans with four weights, accompanying
italics, small caps, and a total of six figure sets (including small caps figures). It features ligatures, alternates and pre-built fractions.
Type designer Eric Olson taught typography at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and later established Process Type Foundry as a contemporary typeface design studio. His colleague, fellow designer Nicole Dotin holds a MA from the University of Reading
in typeface design and was also a teacher of typography and web design at the MACD. She’s just about to finish a very intriguing typeface named Elena, due to release in late 2008. Will definitely keep you updated.
Bulldog Club Type
Note the heightened ear on that g, looks great!My cat is going wild right now, so I’m going to cover one last typeface and then call it quits. This is Bulldog, from the now well-established foundry Club Type, of UK designer Adrian Williams. Bulldog is a nice little family of six, numbering three weights and featured on Faces.co.uk. It’s a great tall grotesque fit for both running text and headlines. The stems are a little
curved at the end, which works remarkably well for such a tall x-height. Williams founded Club Type back in 1985 offering type for pre-PostScript systems. Adrian started digitizing original designs from as early as 1990, succeeding in being one of the popular foundries of today’s world. Bulldog was designed in 1989 to celebrate 100 years of sans-serif modern type, and is now out in the spotlight and offered through Faces, amongst others.
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