nicetype | a blog about fonts, typography & graphic design

Beausite from Fatype

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:38:00 +0000

Beausite is an elegant grotesque in three grades, 6 weights each. Sexy alternates! I really like this gif, see for yourself or head to fatype to buy.

Input: a type system for code

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 11:13:00 +0000

There are some areas of typography that seem underdeveloped, for example monospaced fonts. David Jonathan Ross applied the core concept to proportional fonts, so they feel monospaced without the limitation of fixed width.

With Sans, Serif and Monospaced, Italics and 4 widths in multitude of styles (that even account for white type on dark background!) it is a very usable type system.

You can get it at the beautiful minisite with a lot of process explanations.

Input is free for personal use, and quite cheap for commercial use.

3D Type by Ben Johnston

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 23:21:00 +0000

Is it weird if I want this thing rotating non-stop in my living room? Santa!

More kick-ass type stuff by Ben Johnston here

Typographic posters from Posterama

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 13:42:00 +0000

Quick tip for a cool Christmas present for design geeks: Posterama supplies neat typographic posters. Inspirational words are always just that, well, inspirational, and brought into beautiful form they become even more powerful.

Lolwut

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:17:00 +0000

I read a lot on the internet, and so it happens, I stumble upon a lot of misguided opinions and poorly researched statements. Usually I'd just browse past the bullshit, but this one from Business Insider on why Helvetica is the only typeface in the future tops them all. Kudos to the author for being able to pack so much nonsense in such a short article. Read and cry, typophiles.

Monokrom: a new type foundry

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Welcome a new foundry from Norway: Monokrom opens with 5 excellent typefaces. Aften Screen is a friendly Grotesque, suitable for long reading on screen, as the name suggests. Read more on the process here. Great stuff.

Bruno

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Multilayered type always looks nice, but it's a pain to work with. Until now!

Leo Koppelkamm releases Bruno, a lovely multilayered font that is pretty easy to work with. For that he developed an InDesign plugin, which fetches the colors from your swatches, and lets you use them for the background layer. Essentially it seems to be two text frames, but glued together, and instantly updated. You can track the text, underline it, rotate, resize, basically do pretty much everything you can do while using any other font. Better see it in action in this demo video.

While it's cool from a technological point of view, it is also a cute design, which would feel at home with anything kids-related. The last line in the image is how the glyphs actually look in this font — with alternates to make the background. How Leo didn't go insane while designing them, is beyond me. Anyway, it's great to see people pushing the boundaries of what's possible in typography.

Protip: get Bruno while on sale!

Drop Cap covers for Penguin Classics

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:05:00 +0000

Jessica Hische never ceases to amaze me, every time I see her new work mentioned anywhere leads me to her site, where the unmistakable but versatile style leaves me glued to the display for at least an hour. These wonderful covers are no exception of course, and there goes my productivity for today. Damn you, Jessica, I've got work to do!

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:16:00 +0000

Nice write-up about Karloff, the new typeface from Typotheque. Interesting, how we perceive one extreme contrast shift as elegant, and another as monstrous.

Turnip

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:18:00 +0000

David Jonathan Ross is a master of contrast. His playful Trilby, majestic (and enormously extensive) Condor and the fun Manicotti all show that, some more subtle than others. Turnip has plenty of the subtle but visible contrast variation, a wide top-heavy design with squarish inner and round outer curves and sharp angles that make for paragraphs "with a bite" as he calls it. It all sounds clunky, but makes the paragraphs sit remarkably well on a page. I loved Joshua Darden's Freight Micro, and this goes into similar direction, with Bookman (and hints of Clarendon?) as a role model. Take a look at Turnip here

James Bond Book Covers

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 12:48:00 +0000

Nice typographic covers for the James Bond series from Randomhouse. Head over to CreativeBloq for a nice write-up on every cover, interesting stuff!

Some are better than others (Diamonds Are Forever is my favourite I guess, Dr. No being the weakest of the bunch), but as a whole it's pretty cool.

EURO 2012 match schedule

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 01:00:00 +0000

Nice typographical match schedule for the EURO 2012, free download

Cassannet

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 16:39:00 +0000

A good-looking free font based on lettering of the poster artist Cassandre, and an excellent site

3. PLASTER Festival

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:47:00 +0000

The third edition of International Festival of Poster and Typography PLASTER 3 is dedicated to issues concerning cultural and artistic relations between Polish and Belarusian graphic design. Despite the geographic proximity and strong historical connotations between both countries, the question of mutual references in the field of widely understood design seems to be still little penetrated. The Festival is going to cause symmetrical actions – we will see the art of Polish and Belarusian designers in equal proportions.

The opening of the Festival – on the 23rd of May (7 p.m.) - will be accompanied by vernissages of four exhibitions. On the CoCA's ground floor we will have an opportunity to see an exposition of prominent Polish poster designer Lech Majewski who, in a very individual style, presents relation that exists between graphic form and manually prepared typography. After the opening, in the space of Kino Centrum, at 8 p.m. will take place a meeting with the Artist.

More info

typeconnection

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:57:00 +0000

A pretty cool typographic match game, made with much attention to detail: typeconnection

Chrono

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 13:49:00 +0000

Chrono by Process is another addition to the range Recta/Neuzeit-esque faces, including Calibre by KLIM, Graphik by Christian Schwartz and digitized Recta itself, by CanadaType, to name a few. Eric Olson's vision is DINified a bit, and it's good to have alternatives, right?

Futura: animated specimen

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 16:15:00 +0000

FUTURA LE SPECIMEN ANIMÉ from Thibault de Fournas on Vimeo.

Kontrapunkt Bob

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:02:00 +0000

Kontrapunkt, the danish guys behind award-winning free Kontrapunkt typeface, have released a nice slab serif in two weights, for free. Test and download here

The secret of creativity

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:32:00 +0000

Source

Origins of popular typefaces

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:41:00 +0000

Download the overview as a PDF here (and ignore the terribly written article, wrong typeface names, Times New Roman classified as a Sans Serif, come on)

Prestiggio and Mingray from Rekord

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 11:51:00 +0000

Mingray is a stylish monospaced font in three weights

Prestiggio is an elegant display font with many alternate characters and ligatures

KernType, kerning game

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:33:00 +0000

Pretty cool game, needs more words and fonts though :)

Reuters

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 13:27:00 +0000

Fontdropper

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Some of you may know WebInk, the web fonts service from Extensis, the guys behind Suitcase Font Manager. They offer a pretty cool widget called FontDropper 1000, used for live preview of the fonts on any web page, really any web page, no matter if you have administrative access to it or not.

Using it is very simple, all you do is just drag the bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar, and then drag the fonts out of the preview panel on the text: look how I redesigned the sidebar. Of course the fonts selection is somehow limited to the WebInk library, but the most useful feature (for typophiles) is that the tool also tells you what webfont is being used at the moment (the little rectangle with Benton RE is the font used at ATypI site). It definitely recognizes fonts that are not in the library as well (tested on a site with custom font). Very handy, not having to look into the CSS and all.

Wolda contest winners

noreply@blogger.com (lex) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 12:53:00 +0000

The winning entry is pretty cool, but overall I'm a bit disappointed with the level of the short-listed works. My two favourites among them: