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I LOVE TYPOGRAPHY

Sex, lies, & type

Welcome to a slightly later than usual week in type. Lots happening in the world of web fonts — links to the best content below. There’s also free stuff, so don’t click away.

I’m thrilled by the launch of a new type foundry, Mota Italic. Congratulations to Rob and Co.

mota italic type foundry

As others have noted, the shopping cart is particularly novel and intuitive. Be sure to check out Vesper, their present flagship typeface; it’s bursting with lots of OpenType features, including numerous smart contextual alternates.

vesper

This article’s header is set in Vesper Pro Italic & Heavy Italic.

Inspiration

This wonderful invitation for Ale Paul’s TDC talk on November 3:

ale paul invitation

Nancy Harris Rouemy from the NYT Sunday Magazine designed it with ten (yes ten!) of Ale’s fonts. I wonder who can name them all.

Love this series of photos from Lajos Major:

Lajos-Major

A web site from Ascender Corp., dedicated to the Frederic & Bertha Goudy:

goudy-fonts

New Fonts: A Graphic Designer’s Perspective is a wonderful piece on the H&FJ blog. I’ve always loved their specimens (both on- and off-line). A must-must read:

New Fonts: A Graphic Designer’s Perspective

It’s no secret that Trajan is the movie typeface. If you don’t believe me, then take a look at this Flickr pool:

trajan-movie-font

Some fine alternatives to Trajan over at FontShop. — via @zeldman

Which leads nicely on to this great piece over at the FontFeed, about the making of the Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles:

Typophile Film Fest 5 opening titles

I’m sure you all know Nicholas-Felton. Now he has most of his portfolio on Cargo. Nice:

feltron

I think I’m going to be buying a copy of alphabeasties and other Amazing Types (I’m sure I’ll have children one day — when they come genetically engineered not to cause trouble and puke over one’s clothes):

alphabeasties-and-other-Amazing-Types

You can read more about it at the brilliant Grain Edit. — via Christian Schwartz.

iA (Information Architects, Inc.) has posted a great piece about their pitch for the redesign of the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. They’ve even posted the entire proposal online — a 95MB PDF:

iA

I like their choice of Frutiger Next & Frutiger Serif (Meridien), and the idea of highlighting key words in blue to facilitate scanning. Be sure to follow iA on twitter.

Video

Typembrya by Oded Ezer from www.odedezer.com on Vimeo.

LAIKA, the dynamic typeface:

And a little more info about the project at Laika.ch.

I like this video promotion for Neuforma:

We’ve had Helvetica the documentary; now:

No comment. And, if that’s not enough Comic Sans for one day, here’s an entire book set in Comic Sans. Someone had to do it.

Be sure to check out Jos Buivenga’s Wild Type Gear:

wildtypegear

New faces

At last, a sans-serif companion to Mrs Eaves. Meet Mr Eaves Sans:

Mr_Eaves_Sans

And if that’s not enough, there’s Mr Eaves Modern. Thank you Zuzana Licko.

Mr_Eaves_Modern

A redesign and update of Linotype Really. Meet Really No. 2:

really-no-2

This is fun. A slabby Western by the name of Cowboyslang, from Hype for Type:

cowboyslang

Featured face

First up is the lovely Starling from Font Bureau:

starling typeface

An interesting back story to this typeface. You can read more about it over at FontShop (scroll almost to the bottom of the page).

The wonderful Aunt Mildred:

aunt-mildred

Specimen from FontShop’s Flickr stream.

Web fonts news

Lots to report. In addition to growing support for the new Web Open Font Format (WOFF) specification, there’s this wonderfully exciting taste of what the future holds, and how browsers will one day begin to take full advantage of OpenType features: read After Firefox 3.6 – new font control features for designers and be sure to watch the video.

WOFF sample page — you will need the latest development version of FireFox to actually see the fonts at work (or wait until FF 3.6). Let’s hope the other browser vendors get behind it, and start implementing support for WOFF.
Boing Boing Redesign Uncovers Web Font Ignorance

Where to get Web fonts

Better Postscript CFF font rendering with DirectWrite.

Typotheque has now released its Web fonts. Comes with a 30-day free evaluation, so why not give it a go:

typotheque-web-fonts

I used it while they were testing the service, and It’s pretty easy to set up.

If you’re wondering how it all works, then watch the video:

They also have a comprehensive FAQ.

From Typotheque to Typekit — nice use of David Březina’s Skolar. Site designed by Jason Santa Maria for Liz Danzico:

bobulate by Liz Danzico

Type links

An interview with Rob Leuschke
Ellen Lupton on 90s typography
Web typography techniques
Designing a font to preserve a vanishing language:

Lushootseed

League of Type voting
The awful new Hilton logo
Covering the Good Books
Matthew Carter and Hamilton Wayzgoose
I have seen the shadow of the moon
Serene Infoboards
The Art Institute of Chicago — Pentagram
NBC Sued in Font-Related Flare-Upvia

Need a new wallet? Look no further than:

arial-and-helvetica-wallet

via @danoliver

Events

Type as Object — Oct 20 through Nov 20:

type-as-object

Typo Zürich
Typographic Exploration in Hangul
Adopt a Bodoni

On a lighter note

Think you can tell Helvetica & Arial apart? If you read my Helvetica versus Arial from the archives, you’ll be well-prepared for Ironic Sans’ Arial-Helvetica quiz:

arial helvetica

via @typophile

And the winners are…

Congratulations to Dan Reynolds for winning gold in the Designpreis Deutschland for Malabar (his third award for this typeface):

malabar-gold-winner

And another three cheers for David Březina for winning first place at the Gransham International Type Design Competition for Skolar Pro (Cyrillic):

skolar-pro

Available for purchase later this year from Type Together.

Free stuff

Seb Lester has kindly agreed to give away one of his wonderful prints. The winner gets to choose from Tits Arse or Hellfire.

hellfire-seb-lester

tits-seb-lester

arse-seb-lester

To be in with a chance to win one of these great prints, simply be following @seblester and me, and tweet about this post. Be sure to add the hashtag #ilovetypography, then I can find you and enter you into the draw. I will announce the winner early next week.

And finally

If you haven’t already RSS-subscribed, then you can do so with a mere click of your mouse. Would be nice to see ILT squeeze past the 50,000 mark. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this week’s the week in type. Have a productive and happy week.

previous: Type Camp

next: Type: A Visual History of Typefaces & Graphic Styles

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