Traversing the somewhat tricky balance between pure geometry and legibility, FF QType is the brainchild of Achaz Reuss. It contains a vast 20 styles comprising of five subfamilies (Compressed, Condensed, Semi Extended, Extended and Square) each with five weights.

Following firm rules, it is geometric yet optically balanced; the horizontals are thinner than the verticals. The E and C terminals are at angle giving the typeface a lively, more playful character. 

You studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating with your BFA in 2008. What did the design curriculum there look like? Did you have a lot of typography coursework?

Typography was drilled into us. Even in classes not explicitly labeled typography, good type choices and typesetting practices were stressed. At the time it felt more like boot camp, and I actually tried to distance myself from it. It took a few years of real world experience to fully appreciate and understand the value of it. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it just sort of clicked one day, and turned into an obsession.

What inspired you to start designing type? Did your client work at Scribble Tone help while you started your first typeface?

At the time, my first explorations in type design felt more like a curious exploration of letterforms, and a way to take a break from client work. I think what keeps me coming back to it is a strong desire to control every detail of a project. Type is one of the most basic building blocks of a design piece, and there’s an interesting power that comes with controlling that.

You first released FF Chartwell in 2011 under the TK Type label and it was received really well. As Chartwell was already successful in its own right, what prompted you to submit the typeface to FontFont? Do you think it fared better as a FontFont?

Releasing typefaces on your own comes with self doubt, and the nagging question of how it would fare with the feedback and marketing power of an established foundry. After the initial success of Chartwell, I started working on a few additional styles of charts and thought it would be a great opportunity to see what someone else could bring to it. I’ve always had a great admiration for FontFont, and they’ve taken on many experimental releases in the past, so it seemed like a good fit.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous about making the transition, but it has outperformed my expectations by far. FontFont has really given FF Chartwell an amazing second life. I’m also extremely happy with the team’s solution for the web version. It was a brilliant approach to break free of the font format, and instead focus on the interface.

What was the main advantage working with FontFont? Would you publish future type designs through FontFont again? If so why/if not why not?

I will definitely consider FontFont again if I have a design that fits well into the catalog. The biggest advantage is the feedback and insight from the team. It’s comforting to have experienced eyes looking over everything, and offering outside perspectives. It’s also quite apparent that they care every bit as much as you do about the work. 

The nuts and bolts of FF Chartwell’s features really push the boundaries of the OpenType format. Are you tempted to continue experimenting and pushing OpenType technology even further?

There’s a lot of opportunity to push OpenType technology further, and it’s definitely something I think about a lot. I haven’t quite found another opportunity where an OpenType solution makes sense, but I’m keeping my eyes open.

How do you spend your day? Can you carve out regular chunks of time for type design? How does your work/life balance look? 

My schedule is very erratic, and it usually comes in weeklong chunks of time being focused on one thing. A rough estimate of my time in the past year:

Chicago, New Zealand, Portland … you seem to get around a lot! Do you think that your geographic location feeds into the results of your design work?

The designers and community in each city have definitely influenced the way I think about and approach design. It brings new ideas and perspectives, but also forces you to think about where you stand on those issues.

What’s next for you? Do you think you will release another typeface in the near-future?

Type design will definitely continue to be a large part of my future. But I also really enjoy having a variety of types of projects to work on. It keeps the days interesting, but also brings new perspectives. FF Chartwell was one of those moments where two seemingly unrelated fields of design happily overlapped.

If you could offer a single piece of advice to an aspiring type designer, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Just be sure to learn from them, and keep an open ear to feedback, even after releasing.

Keen to find out what it’s like being a FontFont designer from other designers, read the FontFont stories of Hannes von Döhren, Nina Stössinger and Max Phillips.

The typography of the redesigned stern appears quite objective. A number of typefaces are used throughout its pages, but each font has a specific role to play. The magazine is printed on brilliant white paper, with most text being either black or red. Aside from FF Tundra, stern also uses Kris Sowersby’s Metric typeface. That family may be found in sub-headlines and image captions, for instance. A condensed sans serif with rounded corners, Soft Press by Patrick Griffin is used on the magazine’s cover and for the drop-caps at the start of articles. This has something of a woodtype poster feeling, but the letters’ rounded corners also tie into several currents common to contemporary digital design.

The headlines for most of articles inside the magazine are set in Nimbus Roman by URW++. Like Metric, Nimbus helps root stern’s typography in a German graphic design tradition. It calls to mind the paperback covers designed by Willy Fleckhaus for the Suhrkamp publishing house in the 1970s.

FF Tundra itself is a rather new creation. Designed for FontFont by Berlin-based Ludwig Übele in 2011, FF Tundra was intended for magazine-setting right from the drawing board. The principal tenant of its design is its stress on horizontal movement. FF Tundra’s letterforms are rather narrow, but their long, flat serifs seem to stretch them out somewhat. The curved elements of some letters have been simplified and flattened. This increases the size of the letters’ counterforms, which is a common method to improve legibility, as well as strengthening the horizontal-ness of the typeface. A pleasant effect of FF Tundra’s reinforcement of the horizontals is that its letters appear to push the reader’s eye forward across lines of text. 

Since FF Tundra is stern’s new text face, it appears throughout the magazine in just a single point size. The features of its family are however employed in full. FF Tundra’s Italic is used in articles when necessary, as is the Bold weight and the fonts’ oldstyle figures.

As is common for European magazines of its kind, stern is printed on gravure presses, instead of with an offset lithography technique. Gravure printing really allows colour photographs to look their best, giving them more depth than offset presses typically would. stern uses a thin coated paper stock, like that seen in many gravure-printed magazines. While the combination of gravure printing and this stock are great for images, they can really kill text; offset printing allows text to be printed much more clearly and sharply. Designers specifying typefaces for gravure printing must be extra careful, and it is here where the decision to apply FF Tundra to the redesign really pays off. Despite all of the little dots that appear around each letter – a typical hallmark of gravure printing – the images of FF Tundra’s letters remain clean and readable.

This redesign of stern was coordinated by the magazine’s editorial team and supported by the art director, Johannes Erler (a FontFont-designer in his own right), as well as by Luke Hayman from Pentagram’s New York office. Ludwig Übele also revised the new logotype for stern. We’d like to congratulate the stern design team on the successful stern redesign, and for selecting FF Tundra in the process.

Learn more about the redesign process on Pentagram’s website.

Whilst at TYPO San Francisco, we were delighted to be able to spend time with one of our FontFont designers and founder of independent foundry Typotheque, Peter Biľak.

In our third Talking Types, we spoke to Peter about how he manages to work on such a vast range of projects, what it’s like teaching at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague and about his newest typefaces.

Listen to the podcast now and subscribe to Talking Types on iTunes.

Would you like to win a ticket to TYPO Berlin?

As proud sponsors of this year’s TYPO Berlin, we are delighted to give away three tickets to the conference. With an all-star lineup including Ken Garland, Kate Moross, Jessica Walsh, Anthony Burrill and Albert-Jan Pool (designer of FF DIN), it is simply too good to miss!

How to enter

Just send us an example of FontFonts in use from a project that you have worked on recently and you will automatically be entered into our draw. Please send a link to your website or a PDF of your project with a brief description to news@fontfont.com.

Closing date 

11.00 (CET) Tuesday 30 April. We will announce the winners shortly after the closing date.

Good Luck!

*Please note the prize is just the ticket for the conference and not travel to Berlin, so you’ll have to make your own way there ;-)

For the first time in its history, members of the FontFont TypeBoard will be let loose on stage at TYPO Berlin to critique, commend and appraise typefaces in public. In the inaugural FontFont TypeReview, you have the chance to get your work judged by the likes of Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland, Stephen Coles, Andreas Frohloff, Jürgen Siebert and Ivo Gabrowitsch.

In a fun and fast-paced hour, members of the official FontFont TypeBoard will assess and review entries. It’s a golden opportunity to gain invaluable advice, tips and feedback as to how to develop your typeface further and to hear from some typographic heroes.

So, if you are attending TYPO Berlin or are in Berlin on Friday 17 May and would like your typeface to be judged in front of a live audience, make sure you attend FontFont’s first TypeReview.

How it works

On Friday 17 May at 13.00 in the Nest at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland, Stephen Coles, Andreas Frohloff, Jürgen Siebert and Ivo Gabrowitsch will take to the stage to consider, review and criticize your entry in front of an audience.

How do I enter?

If you would like for your typeface to be publically judged at TYPO Berlin, please come along to the Info Counter on Thursday 16 May with a sample/specimen of your typeface to hand it in. The FontFont TypeReview will then take place the following day, Friday 17 May at 13.00 in the Nest. Due to time constraints, although we’d love to see a full family (if you have one) you can also just enter one weight and style. 

FAQs

I’d really like to enter my typeface to FontFont TypeReview but I don’t have a ticket to TYPO, does this matter?

No, you don’t need a TYPO ticket. This session is open to everyone; just make sure you inform the door staff that you are attending FontFont’s TypeReview. 

I don’t want to enter a typeface but I’d still like to watch, is that possible?

Yes, you can still watch. As places are limited, please make sure you arrive on time.

This sounds like a great idea but I’d much prefer to submit my typeface to the official TypeBoard, how do I do so?

The official TypeBoard takes place on 15 May. All details as to how to submit your typeface can be found on our Become a FontFont Designer page.

Can I submit my typeface to the official TypeBoard AND TypeReview?

Yes, of course you can, please just inform us clearly that you would also like your submission to be considered at the TypeReview as well as TypeBoard when you send it. Please note, you will need to be able to attend on the day if you wish to enter TypeReview. All details as to how to submit your typeface to the official TypeBoard can be found on our Become a FontFont Designer page. 

Last year in our inaugural FontFont newsletter, we launched Talking Types – a regular podcast where we step outside our typographic box and speak to designers, makers, disrupters, and interesting types from across the world to hear their stories and discuss design.

In the first Talking Types, our founder Erik Spiekermann spoke to Hamish Muir and Paul McNeil about their newest typeface, FF ThreeSix and discussed bending the rules, geometric typefaces and the relationship between visual and transmitted language. In the second edition, we caught up with Kai Brach, founder and editor of Offscreen Magazine, to find out what it was like starting Offscreen, the lessons he learnt and hear what he does to step away from the distractions of the screen.

Subscribe now to hear all episodes and be one of the first to hear the next one.

There is a fascinating article about the history and story behind FF Videtur – our newest FontFont by Axel Bertram and Andreas Frohloff – over on I Love Typography. 

Read the article in full.

About FF Videtur

FF Videtur is based on bitmap fonts that were created by Axel Bertram, one of East Germany’s most legendary designers, for the state television broadcaster GDR-TV. Bertram spent a great deal of time researching and testing the display conditions of 625-line television screens. His findings prompted the creation of Videtur, a functional open serif with moderate contrast and a highly unique shape. Fast forward two decades later and with a helping hand from FontFont’s Head of Type, Andreas Frohloff, the whole character set has been completely re-drawn and reinvigorated. The best characteristics of the earlier forms were kept but the typeface’s vertical proportions, serif shape, and stroke contrast have been carefully reconsidered.

FF Polymorph

Images: used in background fStop/Patrick Strattner 1149.055 used on poster fStop/Lothar Schulz 1073.009

FF Fudoni

Image on poster: fStop/Dual Dual (1121.001)

FF Jigger

FF Noni and FF Gothic

FF Outlander

FF You Can Read Me and FF Pop

Image on poster: fStop/Tobias Titz (1065.074)

Despite their tremendous size, posters and billboards are typically viewed from a distance, and often only seen for a single moment. As a result, they rarely have much on them, in terms of text. But the text has to be memorable for the work to do its job. 

Popular typefaces for these super-sized applications tend to be heavy and narrow. In larger families, the Bold Condensed weights are going to be the area to look. Make sure to pack your letters together tight while you’re setting your type – whatever typeface you pick.

Sans serif typefaces are far and away the variety most often used on posters and billboards. Instantaneous legibility plays much less of a role in poster design than on billboards, however. Posters function almost like canvases for graphic designers; they present an opportunity to let creativity run wild. For either kind of application, though, a family with multiple weights or styles is still good start.

Catch up on our previous intended use posts:

• Best Collection FontFonts for editorial and publishing
• Best Collection FontFonts for music and nightlife
• Best Collection FontFonts for sports
• Best Collection FontFonts for book text
• Best Collection FontFonts for logo, branding and corporate identity
• Best Collection FontFonts for advertising and packaging
• Best Collection FontFonts for festive occasions
• Best Collection FontFonts for small text

Typografie.info — FF Ernestine

Typografie.info is the largest German-speaking online design platform all about type and typography and is set in Nina Stössinger’s delightfully feminine yet serious, FF Ernestine. Founded in 2001 by Ralf Herrmann, it’s a really active community with news articles and opportunities to share work and opinions.

Dave Dawson — FF Tisa and FF Tisa Sans

Dave Dawson is a Graphic Designer from Brooklyn in New York. His lovely site features Mitja Miklavčič’s versatile and super web-friendly FF Tisa Web and FF Tisa Sans Web in the body copy.

AQQ — FF Spinoza

The design collective AQQ sets their website in Max Phillips’ beautiful and sturdy workhorse, FF Spinoza. They make mainly furniture and are based in California. AQQ stands for “al que quiere” which when roughly translated from latin means “for he who wants it.”