This Week From the Desk
This Week From the Desk

Say hello to five of the more interesting typefaces you're likely to meet for a while. Released by Monotype, The Wolpe Collection is a group of five typefaces by Berthold Wolpe, revived by @toshiomagari. In true Monotype Fashion, there is a glorious-looking exhibit of original Wolpe work, specimens, and ephemera that you should check out if you have the chance. Congratulations Toshi and Monotype, the work of Berthold Wolpe is due for more exposure. 

Contemporary Design Studio Two Points has released a new side to their business this week: Type Design. The Hamburg, Germany based design studio has been creating custom typography for their branding and graphic design clients since before the studio formally started in 2007, and worked with several notable names in type to extend that catalog. Now you can purchase their collection of modern and eclectic display types through an assortment of distributors like MyFonts and FontShop. Will more design studios begin to leverage their assets by opening type shop arms of their businesses? Only time will tell. 

Find yourself with an extra 20 minutes this weekend? Get inspired to find the fun in type design with this good read from Type Thursday. Don’t be Afraid of the Ugly is an interview with Type Designer Dries Wiewauters, a Belgium Type and Graphic Designer about his typeface ‘MAD’ released by Colophon Foundry. Read the full Medium Post here. 

A stunning type family with a curious name appeared on the market this week... Dr. by Production Type is a quirky yet aggressive geometric sans serif that is thoroughly contemporary and unapologetic in style. Quirky details litter the six weights with small caps and matching italics like the arm of the lowercase r, the bar of the Capitol G, or how the capital C closes just enough to not be an O. Dr. is the kind of family that will get better and more surprising the more you use it. Frankly, it just looks fun to use. Discover and buy the eccentric Dr. family at Production Type. 

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The classic advertising magazine Advertising Age revealed a brand new look (and shortened moniker) this week, designed by Bobby C. Martin of OCD. It's quite a change, but in each of those changes you can see the reason and discussion that went into them. The most high profile change must be the beloved masthead. Bobby has designed into a graphic yet sophisticated solution. Read more on this design here. 

Studio Project Inspiration: Flokk by Heydays Olso

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Isn’t it nice when a design studio can play and experiment and have that process result in effective and original final solutions for clients? This level of play and fun is evident in this wordmark for Flokk by Heydays Oslo.  

This interview article posted on It's Nice That this week presents a great perspective on what the meaning of design could be in today’s times, from the esteemed Michael Bierut. This article labels Micahels Bierut as Design's Poet Laureate.... I think that's pretty accurate. 

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This Week From the Desk
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. 

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This Week From the Desk
This Week From the Desk

The annual ATypI Conference happened this week in Montreal. The truly international association for Typography presented talks by designers, type designers, and typographers of all kinds. If you weren’t able to make it, ATypI has graciously posted all of the talks from this year’s conference to this YouTube playlist so you can binge watch the 3 day event, Netflix-style. Thank you, ATypI. 


Here’s one to put on your calendar. TypeThursday is doing something they’ve come to be very good at: fostering a community around the design and discussion of typography; this time in the for of a Gallery show. The show features selected works from 5 type designers who are making a name for themselves with original and forward thinking designs. “What You See Is Not What You Get” is currently on display at Farmingdale State College in Long Island, NY until November 15th, with a lecture and show reception event on October 3rd. Curious what the future of type design is shaping out to be? Well, here’s a good idea. Learn More about the show and Lecture Event at TypeThursday. 

 

The Adobe company from the west, Typekit, has launched early access to its latest product: a Font ID Tool they’re calling Visual Search. It does precisely what the name implies, searching the deep Typekit catalog of web typefaces by your own uploaded image. This ability to search by found image is not exactly anything new—it’s a move to match MyFonts’ ‘What the Font’ visual search tool—but it does seem to be a helpful way to discover quality typefaces you may not have otherwise landed on. Check out the complete tool on Typekit. 

Typewriter fonts have certainly found an audience in the last few years. Typefaces for coding, for display, historical accuracy, or just nostalgia. This week, Feliciano Type Foundry released the newest addition to the Typewriter genre with Marcin Typewriter: a 6 weight family with italics designed to sit with the rest of Feliciano’s Marcin Families. They’re edgy, and a little crude at times, but provide a certain air of authenticity when set in long text. It feels like a typewriter typeface. See more about the family here. 

In a follow-up to her successful Font Purchasing Habits Survey, Mary Catherine Pflug is dipping back into the world for more data with the Type Designer Survey. Pflug states in her description of the project, “If you’re a type designer, I invite you to share your thoughts on the hard-hitting topics facing type designers and the type industry today like discounting, plagiarism, challenges of selling, and threats to our industry.” This kind of data is essential, and so needed in our industry. If you are a type designer, please make your way over to the Type Designer Survey to lend your answers. 

The typographic gymnastics performed by Herburg Weiland are something to take notice of. His work—comprised of zines, editorial designs, posters, and experimental pieces—is profiled by It’s Nice That. It’s certainly worth a minute or two. 

P22 has been creating historically inspired typefaces for well over 20 years. Their latest release is Aetna, a [type description here in 4 widths]. If the name sounds familiar, you’re not alone, go into how its a revival. Designed by Aaron Bell, this type is wily, thorough, and perfect for your wood type project needs as it packs in so much of the useability of the original wood type into this digital package. Did you see the family includes a ‘Streamer’ collection for full chromatic type capabilities on this thing?

The real value here, aside from buying a quality typeface, is that 100% of each purchase benefits the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI. Read more about Aetna and buy it here. Also, don’t forget to check out the physical font cut into wood type for the museum by Virgin Wood Type. Incredible.

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum, favorite mecca for the Wood Type aficionados among us, has announced dates for their 2017 Wayzgoose. “Now in its ninth year, the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum annual Wayzgoose Type Conference hosts designers, printers, typographers and letter geeks of all stripes from across the globe.” The conference will take place November 3, 4 and 5 and has lined up some can’t miss speakers, including Gail Anderson, Jonathan Hoefler, Brian & Kim French, Brad Vetter, Carolyn Porter, Julie Sola, Jenny Wilkson, Patterson Clark and more. Check here for the Wayzgoose schedule and see more about the speakers here. 

Inspirational printed matter this week comes from Blok Design and their catalog for the Toronto International Film Festival. If anyone knows how to get your hands on this catalog, let us know, we certainly wouldn’t mind a copy floating around the office. 

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This Week From the Desk
This Week From the Desk

This week, we find our desk in a different location. We have moved our office from the trees and rocks of Denver, Colorado to the palms and sands to San Diego, California. We’re happy to have moved to the West Coast, and can’t wait to continue to bring the world of type to you from a new perspective. 

This week, however, has been distracting for several reasons besides our move west. With hills and mountains from LA to Colorado engulfed in several wild fires, an earthquake off the coast of Mexico, devastating floods in India, Hurricane Harvey having drowned out lower Texas and another hurricane, Irma, leveling the Caribbean Islands and gunning for Florida and the southern US... it seems like the world is quite literally out to get us. It’s been hard to focus on the importance of fonts and the business of making letters. But there has been a lot to celebrate this week in the world of typography, and that’s part of what this briefing is here for: to bring a bit of calm and interest amidst weeks of distracting news and heartbreaking events. 

Be sure to sign up for the email dispatch of This Week From the Desk, where you’ll find even more insight and news form the world of type. Have a great weekend everyone, and good luck. 

Klim Releases National 2

Building on top of what was already a momentous design, Kris Sowersby of Klim Type Foundry has updated his National Type Family in almost every way, and expanded it's ability and scope. Now containing 64 fonts over 4 widths, National 2 is a “comprehensive expansion of National’s original aesthetic concept.” As is the case with most Klim releases, you can get a more insightful read into the origins and details of the complete project on the Klim Blog. 

Typotheque released a set of Devanagari companion fonts to their seminal Greta Type system this week, in explosive fashion. “Greta Sans Devanagari is the largest typeface system of interrelated styles produced for any Indic language, suitable for small text and headlines.” says Typotheque. The family consists of 80 styles for Devanagari, which aids in Greta's far reaching language representation. Read more about what Greta Sans Devanagari has to offer and explore the colorful specimens (designed by Shiva Nalluperumal) at Typotheque. 

Production Type released a type family this week that has been in the works for a long time, and springs from fashionable roots. Antique Gothic is Production Type's commercial offering of a private type system created for Louis Vuitton back in 2014. This new expression of Antique Gothic is delivered with three light weights, a regular, and medium weight. The lack of bolder weights is a tasteful choice here, honoring the origin of the types themselves. Buy and discover more about Antique Gothic at Production Type. 

It looks like our friends from Across the Atlantic are headed this way for a whirlwind trip through Canada and the USA, bringing goodies and toys for us all. Their Roller Coaster Tour is bringing 5 lectures and 2 workshops to 4 cities in 6 days in the month of September. A roller coaster indeed. Learn how you can get connected to all the tour's events on their own event page. 

Optimo Type Foundry released a sturdy condensed Sans this week called Next. On first look, it seems rather devoid of anything worth writing home about, however the character does start to emerge with a little time spent. The turned out flares, of the lowercase a, the strange cuts on c's and g's, and then the alternates which seem to have no restraint when it comes to the rules set by the other glyphs.... Interesting things happening here. See the full family on the Optimo site. 

The home to display fonts both famous and infamous, Virus Fonts, has a new site, and a fresh take on their deep catalog of display and text typefaces. Perfect for the rebel, protest sign maker, or counter-culturalist in you, the work of Barnbrook Studio has got you covered. See all the Virus Fonts in a new light on their redesigned site. 

Type Network announced this week that it has partnered with Garage Fonts to bring the famed type family Freight to it’s ever-growing collection. Freight is a design produced by Darden Studio that has found success in wide distribution through Garage Fonts. Garage Fonts’ partnership with TN means that the 4 style family can reach an even larger audience. Freight is a masterstroke of type design (we use it on this site). Check it out for yourself at Type Network.

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This Week From the Desk
This Week From the Desk

Having been in the works for few years now, Positype has finally released Scotch, a slender and wily Scotch Roman in 3 varieties. Neil Summerour has injected a bit of a new wind to this genre—populated with other well known families like Miller or Harriet—by adding a “Deck” expression to the family... something between Text and Display. Its handsome, expressive, and reminiscent of a bygone era of mid-mod furniture and weekend drives in the Cadillac. Scotch is available through MyFonts. 

It’s rare on this platform that we would talk about something before it is officially released, but this is just too exciting to leave unmentioned. Bethany Heck has been working away at creating a platform for intelligent discourse on quality fonts since she saw a need after attending the Typographics Conference this year:

“We need more discourse and analysis around the usages of typefaces by designers, for designers. So, I’m going to start the Font Review Journal, where I will be talking about the general aesthetics and historic influences of typefaces while spotlighting unique letterforms or characters and breaking down what a font excels at and what it has a harder time with.” —Bethany Heck

The Font Review Journal will launch next week, and you can be sure we’ll be sharing it here. For now, see a few previews of what the FRJ could be on Bethany’s Dribbble.

 

Creative Mornings has always been a source of inspiration. This list of 12 Talks from Founders on Big Ideas and Humble Beginnings is a great resource to help you recharge this weekend. 

Online publishing platform Medium has done another about-face on their logo, to lukewarm reception. It's easy to see why when you examine the reasons or needs for this change. Medium has always had a fantastic eye for typography on the web, making it a central part of their product. Perhaps this new wordmark shift is in homage to that, but it's unlikely. Read more about Medium’s change on Brand New, or see how the new identity plays out on the redesigned site itself.

The annual typography conference put on by SoTA is happening right now (Aug 23-27) in Boston. Of course, nothing beats actually attending this conference, but if you’re not able to be there this year you can follow along on twitter and instagram under the hashtags #typecon and #typecon2017. 

Monotype’s trade publication The Monotype Recorder has been a cornerstone of the company’s outreach and education initiatives for a few years now. The publication has been filled with everything from typographic eye candy to thought provoking long form articles on type history. This week, Monotype opened up the Monotype Recorder Issue #5 for sale—to be shipped August 25th. Grab a copy here. 

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This Week From the Desk
This Week From the Desk

It’s certainly been a week. This is the first This Week From the Desk post that coincides with the new email dispatch published at the same time. For this week, and all the weeks in September, we'll be publishing full edition TWFTD posts here on the Blog in concurrence with the inbox dispatch. However, once October hits, the blog edition of TWFTD will become the abridged version! We would love for you to sign up now to get our beloved weekly review in your inbox every Friday to make sure you get ALL the news and stay connected to the latest in the world of typography.

Louise Fili announced her latest type release at the beginning of this week: Marseille. Louise Fili's lauded studio has been able to bring true international design style to her work, and lately to type design. Fresh off the heels of the Italian delicacy Montecatini, Marseille takes us to France with its traditionally French Art-Deco character and alternates that practically put the croissants and chocolates in front of you. You can buy Marseille on MyFonts. 

Since releasing the “Untitleds”, Klim Type Foundry has been on a tear of making type real for so many. This week we saw this taken to the extreme in a stroke of brilliance for a gallery show of the types and related works at Object Space in New Zealand. It’s hard to argue that the most enticing parts of the exhibition are the sculptural periods, or full stops, from Untitled Sans and Untitled Serif. Original, and beautiful. If you find yourself on that side of the globe, stop and see the show soon; it runs until September 17th. 

Pelago. It’s Crystal Clear. 

The Adobe Originals Team has released their latest lab creation—Pelago—to Typekit. Adobe describes the new family as this: “Pelago is a semi-formal sans-serif type family by Adobe Principal Designer Robert Slimbach. The family has a crisp contemporary appearance and an understated elegance.” No kidding. We’d like to translate this into easier language... It’s clear as hell. Pelago is absolutely at the top of the digital readability game, and I hope to see this design become well used and well loved out over the coming decades. See for yourself at the full Typekit specimen page. 

The work of Studio Panorama blitzed across the desk this week in a streak inspirational flash, fresh with posters and experimental graphic design to keep the conversation going for a while. The work is a glimpse of the future, while bringing a note or two in from the past, culminating in a statement of where the studio thinks the world of graphic design is headed. We're inclined to start listening. Read more about their studio feature on It's Nice That. 

Landa is the latest release from prolific type foundry Sudtipos billed as “A rendez-vous between Nicolas Jenson, Oldrich Menhart, and nature itself”. Although the foundry is usually known for well crafted and inventive script fonts, you would be foolish to forget their ability to create a text face that will knock your socks off. Landa is filled with quirks, breaks, angles, and corners. The italic looks like still photos of someone with a snake in their suit. But terrible similes aside, Landa is a masterfully fun text family from a master of type design. Landa is available now at MyFonts.

Norwegian graphic designer Johanne Lian Olsen’s Due Display type popped up this week as the latest addition to the tall sans for editorial trend, and it's worth a deeper look. Olsen injects subtle quirks into this design to break out of what most of the tall sans projects inevitably end up being. The real spark in this typeface comes out in the specimen she designed to promote Due. See the full specimen Johanne Lian Olsen’s website. 

It was announced this week that global type company Monotype’s recent type project ‘72’ for SAP was awarded a Red Dot Award. After looking up what a Red Dot Award is, and reading up on the design process for this custom type family, it’s safe to say that this award is well deserved. The evidence is in the details of this design. Sometimes corporate level font projects can be rushed or turn out to more thumbs down than up, but designer Terrance Weinzierl designed a sturdy product for SAP here. Congrats on your Red Dot, Monotype. Read about the entire 72 Project here. 

The instagram account @thecheesefanman (Anthony Millard) flew by the desk this week with some colorful and cheerful vintage type eye candy. Vintage Cheese Labels. Enjoy. 

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