This Week From the Desk
The magnitude of this week’s release of the complete Graphik Collection is almost too big for words, but there are several places we can point you to to see what this release really means. Commercial Type released Graphik, a sleek and elegantly neutral sans type family, nearly ten years ago. This week, the foundry released the full circle completion of the original vision for Graphik: a deep super-family of multiple condensed widths that keep the tame spirit of the original types while supplying an unthinkably expressive new future of editorial and text uses. It’s large, it’s well documented, and it’s available now. Get acquainted with the new Graphik, as it will undoubtedly be popping up in award catalogs and best-of lists for 2017 and beyond.
Take a quick jaunt over to the new website for Signal Type which was published this week. The new site is a handsome new home for the quality typography and lettering created by Max Phillips, who operates out of Dublin, Ireland. The new website comes with a new release as well: Pressio. An edgy condensed slab with plenty of straight lines and aggressive character. Check out Pressio while it’s on introductory sale.
James Puckett, the man at the helm of Dunwich Type Founders, has had a few successes in his career already, but he's certainly not resting on his laurels. His latest release is Antarctican, released this week through Fontspring. Antarctican leans into the Display Sans genre with gusto, featuring 10 weights of the Display Style, and 8 weights of a Monospace translation. The types do a fantastic job of marrying the strength of typical workhorse sans faces with the style and elegance of something designed more for editorial and screen graphics. You can buy all 18 styles of Antarctican through Fontspring.
It's been in the works for a long time, and finally here. MCKL Type, run by the talented Mr. Jeremy Mickel, has relaunched their web home with stunning grandeur. Color, interaction, and of course, the highest quality typefaces. There's so much to explore on the new site, including an all new family release: Specter. Stunning, fun, and here to stay. Congratulations, Jeremy.
Learn more about the design of this site with this talk by Quinn Keaveny given at ATypI Montreal this year.
Take a moment’s break with this visual presentation of the history and evolution of the Forbes Logo with Roger Black. I wish some of the images were better quality, but its still a great visual treat.
Release: A Stylistic Pair... Centra No. 1 & 2 by Sharp Type
Lucas Sharp has had a busy 2017—working from his Brooklyn type office to bring new releases to his foundry Sharp Type. This week, Sharp Type released Centra No 1 and Centra No. 2; typographic step-sisters designed by Josh Finklea. In releasing Centra as two separate styles, Sharp Type is trying to say something about the nature of sans serif types, dropping us into a conversation already in progress between stylistic origins and what makes a sans a sans. Discover the interesting things going on with Centra and more about the pair of type families at Sharp Type.
Michael Cina has long been a design icon working away on the periphery of the typical media fervor, but with his latest monograph “A Century of Artifice” he steps into the spotlight. Published in conjunction with VSCO Artist Initiative, the book features 100 album covers designed by Michael Cina and the accompanying concept art he has created over the years for the record label Ghostly International. It’s a beautiful deep dive into the seldom seen archives of Cina Associates over 240 pages, and available now through the Cina Associates website.
Steven Heller and Angela Riechers with SVA have brought together an incredible group of type designers and practitioners in a new kind of type education online: a course called The Complete Typographer. It looks like it will teach lettering, type history, and the basics of typography in its design AND use, which is something the world could use more of. With folks like Tobias Frere-Jones, Victoria Rushton, Claudia de Almeida, and Richard Kegler, learning typography has never been easier to start, or more appealing. Learn more at the course’s host, Kadenze.