For nearly three months last year, I drew some type every day. My “Daily Typesketch” was an experiment — in drawing, discipline, public practice, and in getting less fearful of process and paper. Let me say this first: I know there are many designers who draw more and better than I; who have sketchbooks filled with lovely [...]

Yesterday, Adobe declared that Creative Cloud is its future. Designers will no longer license desktop copies of Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign and use them “forever” (though that word is obviously limited by each version’s practical lifespan). Instead, they subscribe to a Creative Cloud membership and get access to the apps through an online account. Along [...]

Based in Vienna, Typejockeys are three young designers — Anna Fahrmaier, Thomas Gabriel und Michael Hochleitner — with a broad palette of activities. They make graphic design for print and web, and have their own digital-to-letterpress project. They are also a typefoundry, to which both Gabriel (KABK, The Hague graduate) and Hochleitner (University of Reading [...]

I’ll be honest. When December rolls around and I ask a group of smart, articulate font users and makers to each select their favorite release of the year, not everyone rushes back with their pick. And when they do, they don’t always have much to say about it. Some years are stronger than others. 2012 [...]

Today’s large font families allow graphic designers to easily create variation — using different weights, widths, or italics — while retaining stylistic consistency. Kunihiko Okano, who is also an experienced package designer, chose an unusual way of creating a useful palette of fonts. How do you achieve typographic diversity in display use? The layered approach of [...]

Like it or not, much of modern life is lived through a screen. We navigate our world via an omnipresent system of menus, lists, buttons, and other elements that we scan all day, every day. In many ways, the operating system is the environment we live in — and type is at its core. Many [...]

Sometime, somewhere, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the type designer slowly mutated into a ghost hunter. Faces of the past became sources of inspiration, some quite obvious, others forgotten; all acquired a mnemonic, almost “mediumnic” value. An aura. It is heaven-sent, then, that the works of Jean Gabriel Bery were summoned and [...]

In Cyrillic and Latin scripts, there are many letters which, when written, look the same. This is something that has intrigued many designers. While some might insist on enforced separation, Nikola Djurek and Marija Juza have reconciled the situation with ingenuity. The concept of the Balkan Sans type system is quite simple — it represents equivalent letters from both scripts [...]

Good wide display fonts are tough to come by. Period. As a novice designer in the late 90’s, I was enamored with Microgramma. Maybe it was obsession with things Swiss, having a grandfather born in the country. Perhaps it was a natural inclination to wide type. Whatever the case, the release of Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ [...]

Fenland is a very polarizing typeface — you either admire it, or you think it’s pretentious art or just plain ugly. But Fenland doesn’t care. Fenland doesn’t care, because when it needs to prove itself by setting running text, it performs with aplomb. But it really gets the lead out stylistically when set large — [...]

I have been in a love affair with grotesque sans serifs for many years now, so it’s no wonder I chose Atlas Grotesk as my favorite type family of 2012. Its clear, plain shapes simply appeal to my innate taste. Any newly released Neo-Grotesque has to face the mother of the genre, Helvetica (1957). Being [...]

Atlas Typewriter, the lovely complement to Atlas Grotesk, is described by its creators as possessing a fundamental “monospacedness”. I think it is this principle that helps make the face stand out, even amidst a year of many other fine monospaced releases. The ascenders and x-height are confidently high, contrasted by noticeably shorter, squattier descenders. The [...]

Robert Bringhurst has issued the latest edition of what Hermann Zapf called the “Typographer’s Bible”. The news will surely be welcomed by his ardent followers, but does the book speak to a modern congregation? In 1992, when the first edition of The Elements of Typographic Style was published, Bringhurst was already an accomplished poet and [...]

In many ways, it’s just the right time to revive FUSE, Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft’s experimental publication on fonts and typography. 2012 and 1991 (when FUSE was first published) share many parallels. We’re reaching another turning point in the conversion from analog to digital, the bar for entry in modes of production has lowered, [...]

Austin-based designer Vitorio Miliano prefers to give books rather than lend them: For me, the important parts of a book are inside me, after I’ve read it and taken it in. So, when I give you a book, I don’t want it back. It’s not a loan: it’s a gift; depending on the book, perhaps [...]