Joshua Mayfield: Roloi

Designed by Joshua Mayfield

Originally inspired by the numerals on a vintage clock face, Roloi is a layered numbers font in the deco lettering style, and includes a full set of automatic clock symbols.

District: Fair Sans Text

Designed by Galen Lawson

The natural follow-up to the popular Fair Sans — now a text family based on the calligraphic structure and casual construction of its predecessor.

Nootype: Fitigraf

Designed by Nico Inosanto

Fitigraf is a mix between a classical serif font and graffiti street art.

Atlas Font Foundry: Heimat Stencil

Designed by Christoph Dunst

Heimat Stencil is the monospaced typeface family within the Heimat Collection, also containing Heimat Sans and Heimat Mono.

Typotheque: The Lumin Family

Designed by Nikola Djurek

The Lumin Family includes slab-serif, sans-serif, condensed and display typefaces, all of which play with the idea of contradiction.

Hamilton Wood Type Foundry: HWT Unit Gothic

Designed by James Todd

The Unit Gothic series was originally released by Hamilton Manufacturing Co. in 1907. This set of 7 fonts was designed to aid in press room efficiency and its incremental variation in widths gave poster printers unprecedented flexibility in fitting copy while using consistently harmonious fonts.

DSType: Diversa

Designed by Dino dos Santos & Pedro Leal

Diversa is a typeface that takes a very different path from the most fonts, both in terms of appearance and usability. Diversa is a single typeface with 9 fonts within, containing 2760 glyphs, divide in 9 stylistic sets.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

Lineto: LL Circular

Designed by Laurenz Brunner

Strikes a balance between conceptual rigour, skilled workmanship and measured idiosyncrasy, resulting in a no-nonsense sans-serif text font with unmistakable character yet universal appeal.

Latinotype: Trend Hand Made

Designed by Daniel Hernández & Paula Nazal Selaive

A typeface made of layers — Trend is trending.

Voltage LTD: Oaf

Designed by Ray Fenwick

Painted on a wall by an eccentric Canadian with a paint roller. The result is an unusual combination of straight, evenly weighted strokes and rough, handmade charm.

Typesenses: Wishes Script

Designed by Sabrina Mariela Lopez

Wishes Script offers a complete range of possibilities: frames, ribbons, hearts, flowers, ornaments, swashes, endings, ligatures and all the alternates you need.

VirusFonts: Doctrine Sans

Designed by Jonathan Abbott, Jonathan Barnbrook, and Julián Moncada

A contemporary sans-serif typeface with an agreeable character, Doctrine Sans is the moderate comrade of the display typeface Doctrine Stencil. By blending elements of twentieth-century neo-grotesque, humanist and geometric styles, Doctrine is at once universal and idiosyncratic.

Domahoka: Uchronia

Designed by Mark Ho-Kane

A classic serif titling face ideal for setting at large sizes; slightly condensed, light, with a very fine weight on its thinnest strokes.

Wordshape: Vaud

Designed by Ian Lynam

A family of 40 weights of neutral, yet formally nuanced grotesk typefaces that takes inspiration from Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers and the original metal types from Switzerland, yet had a slightly larger x-height for more pronounced legibility.

Nootype: Selfica

Designed by Nico Inosanto

The sans-serif version of Selfico, designed by Nico Inosanto in 2013.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

I’ve always been fascinated by typefaces based on fluid handwriting, and as an amateur calligrapher of copperplate, I decided to design a display font based on this experience.

Origins and background
My first approach to this project began with the lettering I designed for BoMo, a graphic design studio, in spring 2011. It’s based on a brief: feminine, professional and sensibility. The solution came as a well-crafted series of ‘calligraphic letters’ with high contrast, the B, the M and the o, combined as two connected syllables. During the design process I discovered the significant potential that this idea could have if it were developed as a typeface. Thus, almost one year later, I began to sketch it, and two years after I released it!. It evolved from the initial three letters of the logo but with differences: slightly less condensed proportions, different designs for the two upper case letters and a new construction of the connecting strokes.

It combines a sense of script with geometric and slightly condensed structure resulting in idiosyncratic curves, yet with a retro-chic twist. These might probably be the most attractive features, because all together they give a very strong identity to words.

During my research I review a lot of previous & excellent typefaces sharing a similar idea, but any of them had this sense of a connected and upright script. Somehow, Magasin explores and pays tribute to the charm and playness of typefaces that were designed during the 1930s. Some inspiring references are Corvinus, released by Bauer in 1935 (designed by Imre Reiner in 1934), Quirinus (Alessandro Butti,1939) and Fluidum (1951), a kind of non-connected script version of Quirinus, also designed by Butti for the Nebiolo foundry.*

Left: Cover of a catalogue published by Nebiolo in the 1950s; top: Cover of a catalogue and a Qurinus specimen, a typeface designed by Alessandro Butti in 1939. Both published by Nebiolo in the 1950s; bottom: Detail of the cover of a catalogue published by Nebiolo in the 1950s; below: Detail of a catalogue published by Nebiolo in the 1950. It shows Fluidum, a typeface designed by Alessandro Butti in 1951.

The design principle
Magasin is based on the idea of designing a display typeface inspired by the pointed pen calligraphy with geometric, upright and connected construction and high contrast. What I wanted to show is the obvious accuracy that can be seen in any calligraphic work, but with a close attention to the creative combination of linked letters when creating words, bringing a lettering flavor.

Construction principles:

1. the wavy shapes to emphasize the rhythm
2. four different ways of linking letters, always merging at half of the x-height
3. loops and drops reminiscent of pointed pen calligraphy
4. the angled ending stroke

The process
The first versions of Magasin were more experimental; I gave an extraordinary leadership to the connection strokes, and characters as ‘m’ and ‘n’, had a different starting stroke, but soon I found it problematic.The following versions were based on the exploration and refinement of some characters and the different connection possibilities, with the goal of balancing the spacing, a process that also led to the design of alternative glyphs.

Early versions of Magasin shown in black; final solution(s) in color

At a certain point, I was not sure if it could become something usable or just a personal amusement; some connections were looking really weird but others just came automatically and in a very beautiful way. So I wrote a list of necessary ligatures to balance the text flow, and another of the non-convenient combinations that later became ‘exceptions’ in the programming. I also designed a reduced set of secondary alternates (ss02) and an out-strokes version of the ‘c’, ‘ç’, ‘e’ and ‘q’, to gave a better ending to sentences or words. Therefore, it implied a bunch of OT programming for a correct use and performance. I’ve explained this all in more detail in the PDF specimen I designed.

Top: Magasin, regular lowercase character set; bottom left: Magasin, lowercase contextual alternates (ss01); bottom right: Magasin, lowercase contextual alternates (ss02)

Capital and Swashes
The capital letters appeared much later, they are a bit experimental and very much inspired by the copperplate calligraphy mixed with some cancelleresca features.

While testing it, I discovered that Magasin could be very useful in a lot of applications, and for many various moods; moreover, the swash capitals were intentionally designed to ‘pimp’ words and provide many possibilities, but regular capitals can also perform better in certain situations.

And finally… why this name?
I only chose the name at the end of the process. It sounds like ‘magazine’ in English, but actually Magasin is the word for ‘store’ in French, because I always imagined Magasin used in magazine headlines, but also for brands and packaging. I’ve enjoyed working on Magasin immensely, and I have learned a lot, as always happens with every typeface I design. Because I love and collect old specimens, my typeface and the specimen are also a celebration and a tribute to all those works of art and their designers.

*See more specimen images on the flickr collections by Indra Kupferschmid, or see also the special Corvinus set from the Herb Lubalin Study Center, and the ‘caratteri nebiolo’ set by :nike

Author: Laura Meseguer

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Making waves with Magasin

Typofonderie: Mislab

Designed by Xavier Dupré

With Mislab, Xavier Dupré has designed a brighter and more legible slab serif than most. Mislab aptly combines the strength of a slab serif with the lightness of a sans serif.

Typonine: Audree

Designed by Nikola Djurek with Marko Hrastovec

A type system with several hundred styles. Choosing between fifteen different serif shapes, two construction models, high or low contrast, and adding stencil or inline effects results in unique, expressive variations of Audree’s letterforms.

Rosetta Type: Huronia

Designed by Ross Mills

A text face with flavour, suitable for recording oral literature and for extended reading in books and academic texts.

Rosetta Type: Eskorte

Designed by Elena Schneider

A hardworking Latin-Arabic type family with an uncomplicated, regular appearance that conveys a crisp, businesslike tone.

HVD Fonts: Mikado

Designed by Hannes von Döhren

A friendly, casual type family intended to be used where a pleasant feeling should be conveyed. Mikado has a positive “out-of-the-box-appearance” in big sizes, but because of its straight architecture the fonts are also very legible in smaller sizes and longer texts in print or on screen.

Lost Type Co-op: Mission Gothic

Designed by James T. Edmondson and Trevor Baum

A relic; a ghost from an era where letters were hand-painted on wood and glass. Made up of five weights and two styles, Mission Gothic is one of the most expansive type families available from Lost Type Co-op.

Emigre: Program

Designed by Zuzana Licko

A type designer’s typeface. It’s about the craft of typeface design and the particular details and effects that type designers fret over.

Fountain: Taca

Designed by Rúben Dias

A typeface built around a shape that Portuguese designer Rúben Dias calls a “squircle” — neither square nor circle. Taca is warm and rugged, as if it was molded from clay or carved from stone.

The Northern Block: Hapna

Designed by Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya

A geometric slab serif designed as an alternative to other slab style fonts available on the market. Hapna was inspired by the baseball culture and the graphic language of the early 1950s.

Atlas: Novel Sans Office Pro

Designed by Christoph Dunst

The humanist grotesque typeface family optimized for office environments within the largely extended award winning Novel Collection.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

In the 1980s, the German Democratic Republic’s state television broadcasting service commissioned Axel Bertram to develop a custom typeface. The result was “Videtur,” a remarkably independent serif design that was intended to define the on-screen graphics of East German television for years to come. But by the beginning of the 1990s, the GDR no longer existed. With it went its state broadcasting service – and Videtur, too. Another 20 years in the now reunified Germany would have to pass by before Andreas Frohloff could finally help bring a modernized FF Videtur to market.

Original Videtur onscreen

Whenever a particularly unique type design challenge arose in the eastern half of divided Germany, it wasn’t long before eyes began to fall on Axel Bertram. Already when it had come to the design of magazines and book covers, he had refused to be satisfied with the limited range of typefaces available in the socialist state. Unlike many of his colleagues, who simply copied western models, he drew new type and lettering commissions according to his own ideas:

“The typefaces that came from the west were often photographed; then their letters would be rearranged. I always drew everything myself, however. The results looked more original that way. All that practice made my letter-drawing skills better.”

The requirements for Videtur were very specific. In order to meet the medium’s needs, Axel Bertram initiated a broad series of experiments with the 625-line television screen’s display conditions. He summarizes his findings into three points:

1. Serif letterforms are easier to recognize than those in monolinear sans serif typefaces.
2. Compact serifs stabilize letterforms and improve the reading movement along a line of text.
3.An alternating stroke contrast leads to easier differentiation between letters.

During Videtur’s design phase, all three findings were kept in mind and refined with the most advanced technology available at the time. After the typeface had been precisely drawn in four different sizes, it was photographed with an electronic camera and projected onto the screen.

“The letters’ height was adapted to the number of lines on the television screen and were justified pixel by pixel with the Chyron font generator. The point size was practically determined by the number of lines available. I experimented with the serif-forms a lot; the result was something that I named the ‘balled knot’ at the time.”

Aside from electronic display technology, text for television graphics in the 1980s was often set with rub-down letters. In East Germany, these sheets were produced a by company named Typofix. Both of these typesetting methods (electronic on-screen typesetting and rub-down letters) were technologies that – at least in his GDR days – Axel Bertram only had access to during his work on the Videtur project.

Oldstyle-inspired letterforms, short ascenders and descenders, low stroke contrast and the “balled knots” form the basis of this extraordinary typeface’s design. In order to transfer these characteristics into the new millennium in a contemporary way, it was necessary for Axel Bertram to find a competent helping hand; someone with a particular attention to detail. He found the man he was looking for in Andreas Frohloff, a former student and now Head of the Type Department at FontFont. Or rather, Frohloff found him. Frohloff proved to be the impetus for redesigning Videtur in the first place, as Bertram had long considered a Videtur-revival to be out of the question. Frohloff managed to change Bertram’s mind through something of a “pirate” method:

“I told him that I’d really like to have an image of the old Videtur typeface. After he found one for me, I scanned it in and made a pretty raw digital version of my own. I changed the proportions a little bit, too. My results managed to convince him, and our collaboration really took off.”

More original screenshots of Videtur

It was clear to both of them that, in the age of HD-TV and retina displays, Videtur couldn’t be re-digitized as is. Even the old serif-form would appear quaint in a high-resolution environment. The “balled knots” were gently and prudently modeled into a triangular form – more pointy, but still rounded. Adjustments were also made to the vertical proportions; shorter ascenders and descenders were adequate for old television graphics, but needed to be extended a bit for optimal comfort in today’s reading conditions. Of course, the two designers also revised the basic shapes of the letters – when returning to a typeface after such a long time, it is only natural to take advantage of the opportunity to incorporate lessons learned. More subtleties are possible today, as Andreas Frohloff explains with the example of one detail:

“We tempered the rather oblique diagonal stroke on the lowercase ‘e.’ In the original Videtur, the diagonal was so extreme because its angle could minimize flickering on the screens of the time – the so-called ‘St. Elmo’s fire’ on corners and edges appeared less frequently this way. Now the bar appears softer, and it fits into a contemporary text typeface better.”

Left: Original ‘e’ versus new ‘e’; right: Venezia by Axel Bertram

Although the letters were revised, particular attention was paid to keep the stroke contrast moderate but still noticeable – less than is usual in humanist typefaces – in order to retain the design’s original vigor.

Because of its television screen background, FF Videtur remains a technical typeface, but it does have recognizable humanist features in its blood. This isn’t surprising, as both of the typeface’s creators are calligraphers. Already in the design for an earlier custom typeface for the high-circulation weekly magazine NBI-Wochenzeitschrift (Neue Berliner Illustrierte, 1963), the influence of Eric Gill and Edward Johnston on Axel Bertram is quite recognizable. After so many years, his opinion on the humanist letterform remains unchanged:

“The highest development for typefaces, in terms of legibility, was reached during the Renaissance. It doesn’t get any better than that!”

Left: Rabenau by Axel Bertram & Andreas Frohloff; right: Lutezia by Axel Bertram

Salomo by Axel Bertram

In comparison with the typefaces from the last decade, FF Videtur stands out. Similarities are more likely to be found in printing types from the 1980s, such as Karl-Heinz Lange’s Minima, or ITC Weidemann, whose similarity stunned Axel Bertram’s former student Andreas Frohloff:

“We were talking about Videtur one day while I was in design school, and I happened to have an issue of Graphics magazine with me. ITC Weidemann was presented in that issue; although at the time, the typeface was still called ‘Biblica.’ I couldn’t believe the resemblance at first, but a closer inspection allowed us to breathe easy again. This was one of those famous coincidences: a similar task – good legibility, little space available – and at that time, one apparently had similar conceptions of design.”

At the same time, Videtur’s humanist approach also managed to help distinguish GDR-TV from competing West German television channels. During the 1980s, on-screen graphics from ‘that other side of the Wall’ were more often set with neoclassical-style typefaces.

Thanks to its 21st century revision, FF Videtur isn’t limited to the television screen or to just four point sizes. Numerous tests prove that it easily fits into any media. Today, FontFont typefaces are used in more environments than ever before – in print, on websites, with mobile devices, etc. – and Axel Bertram is thrilled to see how designers will use his modernized typeface:

“I work with the fonts myself. I love writing with them, and I’ve tried the typeface out in my own correspondence. The design is objective and has an attitude.”

Andreas Frohloff especially appreciates FF Videtur’s warmth: “Its objectivity, combined with its rather warm humanist forms, gives the typeface an impressive range of possibilities. I’m not surprised that it works well on-screen. It has a static quality that combines well with the dynamic of the moving image, even under adverse conditions.”

FF Videtur is already the second collaboration between these two type designers. Rabenau, their neoclassical serif family, also had a long development process before it was finally published by Linotype in 2011. Axel Bertram and Andreas Frohloff each work with precision and share a common attention to detail, as Frohloff emphasizes:

“It’s nice when two designers can work on the same wavelength. I studied under Axel Bertram, but I don’t feel occupied by his opinions. In between our frequent meetings, we often came to similar conclusions in our work. Afterwards, we could constructively continue down the same path.”

With the release of FF Videtur, their cooperation hasn’t reached its end. Each of them has ideas as to how the never-before-designed italic for FF Videtur could look. While Axel Bertram isn’t even sure if an italic is necessary, Andreas Frohloff already has a vague concept for the extension:

“If it comes to that, the italic should have a dynamic form that would combine with the very objective-natured upright members of the family. I think that the contrast between these two styles would be charming.”

We’re sure he’ll find the right way to convince Axel Bertram this time, too!

Authors: Dan Reynolds and Christoph Koeberlin.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Socialist TV Typeface Videtur Finally Freed

DSType: Ines

A new book typeface, seven weights with italics & small capitals.

Sudtipos: Heraldica Script

Attains the very definition of deluxe by conjoining the classic thin-and-thick script treatment with thin-only counterpart strokes, then it goes the extra mile with a varied complement of overlaid flourishes.

Optimo: Hermes Condensed

Perfect for dealing with dense graphic environments. The compact forms of this savvy typeface recall simple geometrical shapes and low contrasted strokes from its original design.

Rene Bieder: Quadon

A modern, clear and infinitely flexible interpretation of slab serif fonts. Designed to fill the gap between traditional serifs and the lasting trend of using sans serif fonts for contemporary design.

Hold Fast Foundry: Bourbon & Bourbon Rough

A condensed display typeface inspired by the likes of whiskey bottles and vintage serifs. It likes to take long walks with subtle, distressed textures or a nice, good-ole script.

Plau: Guanabara Sans

A classic, timeless look, swinging elegance, and joyful attitude.

Gestalten: Prell

The fine curves show a poetic and artful approach whereas the classic proportion of the character is a telltale of constructive thinking.

Borutta: Korpo Serif

A serif type family with a friendly feel. The low contrast and high x-height is perfect for longer text and headlines.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

Scribble Tone: Analog

This new take on industrial sans serifs embodies the spirit of the solid state electronics revolution. Its energetic, generously wide proportions are balanced by confident, efficient strokes with minimal contrast.

ReType: Medusa

Ramiro Espinoza’s homage to one of the most renowned masters of Spanish calligraphy, Ramón Stirling, who was active in Barcelona during the 19th century.

Typetanic: Transat

A geometric sans serif typeface, with caps inspired by Art Deco signage found inside the “Gare Maritime” ocean liner terminals in both Le Havre and Cherbourg, France, in the early 1930s.

Symbolset: Gizmo

Balances professional, technical, and user interface needs with fun icons for food, weather, and coffee among other areas. Its lines begin and end in unexpected, yet well considered ways resulting in a fresh, unique take on the established outline icon style archetype.

Outras Fontes: Directa Serif

A text type family designed to save space with the maximum redability. Because of its general forms and proportions (a little bit condensed, big x-height, low contrast) it can be used in smaller sizes than usual for body text.

Kyle Wayne Benson: Tide’s In!

Inspired by the hand painted art born during the golden days of surf. Tide’s In!’s fresh, carefree, look makes you almost forget that you are staring at a monitor and not on the beach.

Type-Ø-Tones: Magasin

A high contrast display typeface inspired by the pointed pen calligraphy, yet with a retro-chic twist. It combines a sense of script with geometric and slightly condensed structure resulting in idiosyncratic curves softly connecting the vertical elegance of its forms.

The Northern Block: Corbert

A geometric sans serif typeface influenced by Bauhaus and the early modernist era. Precise circles are optically adjusted to create a clear, natural typeface with great legibility.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

In 2013 to mark the bicentenary of Bodoni’s death, designers Riccardo Olocco and Jonathan Pierini will publish the Parmigiano Typographic System which has the ambition of being the most extended family of fonts ever to have been inspired by the great punchcutter and printer who spent most of his life in Parma. Compulsive Bodoni is the name of the project designed to communicate the Parmigiano Typographic System. It introduces the font and follows its development with a series of multidisciplinary events.

In the middle of 2010 I started taking macro photographs of original copies of Bodoni’s 1818 Manuale Tipografico. My purpose was to analyse Bodoni’s roman types in order to develop some fonts inspired by his work.

Without any previous experience in ‘modern’ typeface design, shortly before the bicentenary of his death I made the decision to study the work of Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813).

Bodoni’s roman types adhere to the so-called ‘modern’ trend of his time, initiated in the late 18th century by his main competitors, the Didot family in Paris. Thin, horizontal serifs, vertical axes, high contrast between thick and thin strokes and round terminations on certain lowercase letters are the main features of these faces.

The most prolific punchcutter in history
To my knowledge no one has ever fully investigated the many typefaces contained in Bodoni’s Manuale Tipografico. There has been no classification of Bodoni’s roman and italic types, and it seems that nobody has ever catalogued the punches and matrices preserved in the Bodoni Museum in Parma – one of the most important collections of its kind in the world.

The Manuale Tipografico displays 142 sets of romans arranged by type-size, from the smallest to the biggest. Bodoni experimented with colour, proportion and detail. Many of the characters show differences that are almost undetectable to the naked eye, but with macro photography we can identify dozens of different shapes of the main letters a, b, e, g…

The problem in analyzing Bodoni’s faces is that the Manuale never displays the whole set of letters of a typeface, but just some of them. Indeed among the characters with bigger type-sizes only a few letters are shown. For instance the letter g, which carries a lot of information about the morphology of the alphabet, disappears at the 95th roman: the Manuale does not display any g bigger than ‘Parangone’, which is equivalent to about 17 points.

These investigations led me to design three typefaces in the style of Bodoni. I followed a philological approach in two of them (one for continuous text and one for titling) while the third face was a condensed display roman rather than a revival. However, I was not satisfied with the philological approach. Following some trial offset prints I came to the conclusion that the proportions were too far-removed from contemporary tastes. The faces looked weak.

Many of Bodoni’s alphabets have extravagant proportions: some letters are too narrow, others too wide. These do not seem to be the products of contemplated design decisions and it appears that Bodoni was not following any particular scheme. For example: in the ‘Albano’ roman (Sopracanoncino 1, about 28 points, Manuale p. 127) the letter n is considerably narrower than o, while in Tolentino (Canoncino 6, about 26 points, p. 125) n is wider than o. These differences of proportions occur throughout the Manuale. My opinion is that Bodoni was following neither traditional schemes (neoclassical or earlier proportions) nor establishing his own proportions. His experimentation was compulsive. He kept on changing proportions as though he was never satisfied.

The initial idea of designing a vast family of ‘Bodonian’ fonts came from a brief conversation with Albert Pinggera, in march 2012, on the way back from Robothon. We tried to imagine how to adapt Bodoni’s work to our times. How would Bodoni have acted if he were living and working in the early 21st century? What would his approach to type-design have been?

As a Jansenist, Bodoni was convinced of human depravity: a man must spend his life in hard work and obedience to wash away original sin. He was a teetotaller, and he was completely obsessed with his work. Besides being a formidable compositor, printer and publisher (he was the Director of the Royal Printing House of Parma from 1768 until the end of his life), Bodoni was also the most prolific punchcutter in the history of printing. In the 1840 inventory compiled by his widow, his typographic material comprised 25,491 punches and 50,283 matrices. Such a number of steel punches cut by hand represents a truly colossal effort and to say that Bodoni was an obsessive-compulsive punchcutter is no exaggeration.

Parmigiano first steps
Early in 2012 I reworked the Bodonian romans trying to find a way to make a system of serifed families – without the necessity for decades of work. I found a good solution working with four master designs, each with different proportions and details. Mixing the four masters I could produce variations among different styles which were not only optical – such as can be found in many large font families – but morphological too.

Given the variety of typefaces Bodoni cut (142 series of romans in his 1818 Manuale) it is illusory to talk of a single Bodoni roman. The idea most designers have of Bodoni is based on the Bodoni designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF (American Type Founders) in 1910 – the first face to take the name of Bodoni and still the most important revival with that name. Benton was inspired by the original types but he also had to meet financial and mechanical limitations Bodoni would never have accepted. The result is a masterful synthesis which is more vigorous, although less modulated and less ‘organic’ than any of Bodoni’s romans.

Reworking the Bodonian romans I eschewed a philological approach and kept a distance from Benton’s and other 20th century designs. My intention was to interpret Bodoni according to contemporary taste. As Bodoni spent most of his life in Parma I called them Parmigiano (i.e. Parmesan or ‘coming from Parma’).

In the Spring of 2012 I talked about the project with Jonathan Pierini, a friend and colleague at the Free University of Bolzano. He seemed very interested: Jonathan had been previously involved in other type design projects following his MA in Type and Media at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK). A skilled and enthusiastic type designer, he seemed to be just the right partner for the crazy project I had in mind. Together we set up a development plan and the Parmigiano Typographic System took on its current configuration.

The Parmigiano Typographic System
Our aim was to produce contemporary designs that aspire to be the ‘irreverent descendants’ of Bodoni’s letterforms. We decided to add other roman styles to the serifed ones. Although we certainly cannot deny the influence of Bodoni’s work in our project, Bodoni never cut sans or slab serifs (these styles came in a few years after his death); neither did he cut stencil or typewriter styles, which were introduced many decades later. Slab serifs were distant from the grace and grandeur that Bodoni strived for. Parmigiano Rough, among the serif styles – with its rather clumsy proportions – belongs to that same period; it is a parody of 19th-century typefaces, a gross and ungraceful workhorse. Bodoni never cut such shapes and we can presume that he would feel offended by our choices.

However, we felt that this was not enough to celebrate the spirit of Giambattista Bodoni at the bicentenary of his death. Bodoni is also famous for his many non-Latin faces which he displayed in the second volume of his 1818 Manuale. Not just Greek and Cyrillic scripts, but also many Hebrews, Arabics, Armenians, an Ethiopian, a Tibetan etc., etc. Bodoni was very proud of this part of his work (quite uncommon at the time), which he called – in a rather ‘eurocentric’ perspective – “exotic alphabets”. So, with due consideration given to the growing request for non-Latin typefaces, and not content with limiting our efforts to various styles of the Latin alphabet, we embarked on non-Latin scripts, involving designers from all over the word. The Parmigiano Typosystem became a group project.

The Compulsive Bodoni Project
In September 2012 the ‘Unibz Design Festival’ took place at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bolzano where Jonathan and I are currently working as lecturers. We were invited to contribute to the Festival by setting up an exhibition and we took the opportunity to launch the Parmigiano Typosystem. Besides that, we started to think about a project which could celebrate Bodoni’s work in an unconventional manner and could accompany the development of the Parmigiano family.

Giambattista Bodoni perfectly is suited this kind of project: he was the friend of kings, ministers and many powerful people an indeed he was dubbed “Re dei tipografi, tipografo dei re” – king of typographers, typographer of kings. His popularity was great and he received an endless list of the highest honors; his utter devotion to his work was unequaled.

The exhibition – a preview of the Parmigiano Typosystem in the shape of a typographic manual, texts, maps and wall hangings – was introduced by a short theatrical piece dedicated to Giambattista Bodoni, written and interpreted by the authors and actors Matteo Carlomagno and Mirco Ciorciari. Compulsive Bodoni was the title of this little play which dramatizes certain aspects of Bodoni’s personality.

Compulsive Bodoni also became the name of the project designed to communicate the Parmigiano Typographic System: in the run-up to the release of Parmigiano, from early 2013, the project introduces the font and follows its development with a series of multi-media events such as short clips, musical compositions and graphic exhibitions.

Thanks to the contribution and the consultancy of many friends and designers it was possible to display a first preview of both the Latin styles and the non-Latin scripts we had in mind.

Most of the scripts were designed by Jonathan Pierini and myself in order to display the potential of the project but these will be subject to reworking in the near future. The Parmigiano family is in progress and other designers are getting on board too. Alessia Castelli, Irina Smirnova and Irene Vlachou have already joined the project.

Author: Riccardo Olocco
Link: Compulsive Bodoni

Sponsored by H&FJ.

A compulsive tribute to Giambattista Bodoni

Typotheque: Supernova

A family that combines the spontaneity of a script typeface with the versatility of multiple weights and cuts.

Hoftype: Foro Rounded

The softer sister of the succesful Foro family. Distinct in appearence, whith pleasant haptic, objective, and with graphic appeal.

Device: Cadogan

A freeform linking script that again uses OpenType programming to replace beginning and ending characters with uniquely designed variants.

District: Fair Sans

A distinctive sans-serif with much of its calligraphic structure left intact. Its casual construction and unconventional letterforms create a unicase family that’s relaxed and lively at the same time.

Jure Kozuh: Stat Display Pro

A sans serif type family legible in circumstances of low visibility. Its large character set with multiple weights is defined by optimal size ratio, distinctive letter shapes, wide aperture and balanced counters.

Nootype: Selfico

A modern font family, that has a strong verticality intensified with the vertical “y” and a special È. These special letters don’t create any issues with legibilty. The large number of ligatures help to make an original and creative layout.

Laura Worthington: Number Five

Captures the moments before we moved into our Brave New World. The letters are subtly retro and just barely distressed, and are evocative of Betty Crocker cookbooks used by women in high heels and crisp aprons, signs painted on old barns along the highway, and slow summer days with Joltin’ Joe Dimaggio (and his number 5 jersey) at bat.

Tipo Pèpel: Boxed

Brightly conceived and designed to look good on small screen devices, but offering also enlightened looks on paper.

Stereotypes: Prism

Mainly inspired by two things, the sketches of Rudolf Koch for Prisma and the proportions of Avant Garde by Herb Lubalin. Even when the proportions and widths stay the same from ExtraLight to Black, you get the opportunity to change the weight and get a complete new look for that typeface by changing the grayscale or color.

Sponsored by H&FJ.

This Week in Fonts

The Crafting Type workshops are part of this trend. Traveling the world, they are aimed at people who think fonts are cool, but have little or no previous font-making experience. Previous workshops have been in Edmonton, Canada (my home town!), Kyev and Lviv, Ukraine, and at MIT in Boston. The next couple are in Chicago (March 8–10) and Portland OR (March 15–17), just next month.

Here is typography teacher Andrea Emery talking about what she thought of the Crafting Type workshop she attended:

… and student Meagan Chambers talking about how she hopes to make use of what she learned:

What are the defining features of a Crafting Type workshop?

* concentrated 2-5 day workshops, typically 3 days now
* multiple instructors to give varied perspectives on overlapping topics
* individual attention, aiming for no more than12 students per instructor to help accommodate diverse backgrounds with type and typography
* lectures on theory mixed into plenty of hands-on practical time
* all instructors have considerable relevant experience and training (most have an MA in Typeface Design from the University of Reading)
* most participants have some graphic design background, and no type design background. However, some lack the former, or have a bit of the latter.
* free, libre, open source type design software and sample fonts keep costs down (participants are welcome to use common proprietary type design software such as FontLab Studio or Glyphs if they prefer)

Something different about the Crafting Type workshops is that they are heavily influenced by libre/open source ideas. Dave Crossland in particular, and other founders of Crafting Type in varying degrees, are involved in the free software movement. Dave helps coordinate the development of FontForge and the library of Google Web Fonts, and encourages participants to use the libre application FontForge and consider the potential of libre, open source fonts.

Now, knowing that, if you also know me or read my bio, you might think there are some very odd bedfellows here. After all, I curate the font library for Extensis WebINK, a commercial competitor to Google Web Fonts. I also am currently consulting for FontLab, the dominant proprietary software company in font editing tools, competing with FontForge.

So you might think that Dave and I ought to be arch-enemies. Yet I am one of the joint instructors for the Portland workshop, and likely more in the future. What the hell am I doing working with these people, and why would they have me involved?

It is not actually all that surprising. We all love type and typography, and we all care about quality and craftsmanship. Professionally, we will all benefit from the success of web fonts in general; a growing market has room for multiple vendors, with a range of quality and price levels (even with “free” as one of those prices).

One of the strengths of Crafting Type is that each instructor brings their own perspectives on the material. For me, I don’t think free software or free fonts are evil or wrong. Mostly I have concerns about how one can make a living at type design without charging for fonts—especially at the time-consuming quality levels I prefer. I was the one who suggested to Dave and the Google folks that they use Kickstarter to help fund their open source font development, something that has helped fund a number of Google Web Fonts. I am all for education, teaching people how much fun type design is, and encouraging quality type design based on an understanding of fundamental principles, whether those fonts are libre or proprietary.

(Photos by Rob & Lauren Lim)

In any case, I love type, and type design in particular. Even for those who don’t pursue it as a career, taking a workshop like this can deepen their appreciation and understanding of type. I want to get more people hooked on type and type design. With Crafting Type, I am hopeful that it might be a gateway course for type and type design addiction. Crafting Type Students often say they wish there were even more more days, so it seems to be working. But we are trying to find the right length to keep the workshop affordable and accessible. Three days seems good, even if five would be better in some respects.

Left: Eben Sorkin. Right: Students

My colleague Eben Sorkin, type designer and veteran of teaching several Crafting Type workshops, says: “People who work as graphic designers, web designers, architects, UX/UI designers, product designers, and people who do branding and identity work have all said the information provided by Crafting Type was something they could apply to their work. Even teachers who already teach typography find it deepens their understanding, and gives them an additional angle to bring to their own pedagogy.”

* Students considering work in any of the above fields can benefit from learning the basics of type design.

* You don’t need to want to be a type designer to find the course useful. But we can give you a good start if you do want that.

I won’t be surprised if more workshops and courses in type design continue to spring up, in response to demand. I remember it wasn’t that long ago that Veronika Burian did a type design workshop here in Portland. But I think the idea of an ongoing, traveling workshop series is a great one. Crafting Type can go to places where there is nobody local doing both type design and teaching, and can bring a whole group of instructors with diverse backgrounds, so students get more than one view of things rather than being indoctrinated with One True Way.

For those who get seriously hooked on type design, you can practicing on your own, hang out in online communities like Typophile and Typedrawers, and attend conferences such as TypeCon and ATypI. But there are also a growing number of longer, hardcore type design educational programs one can consider. Here are the main English-language academic programs in type design:

* MA Typeface Design (one year), University of Reading, UK
* Type & Media Master’s program (one year), KABK (Royal Academy of Art), the Netherlands
* Extended (one year, evenings/weekends) and Condensed (5 weeks) certificate programs, Cooper Union, New York City

Still, if you are type-design-curious, trying a 3-day workshop might seem to be a good idea before committing to something so lengthy!

Header image: Dave Crossland teaching.
Author: Thomas Phinney

Sponsored by H&FJ.

Crafting Type