|
Tom Wallace of HiH Retrofonts
(Hand-in-Hand, Naugatuck, Connecticut) is a lover of historic typefaces, particularly the period 1815 to 1914
– “typography’s teenage years, messy, conflicted and full of the discovery of the raw power being unleashed” in his evocative words.
After a childhood spent kowtowing to Roman forefathers, to extend the metaphor perhaps.
HiH fonts impress not least for their full character sets: too often this genre gets just the basics.
Our favorites? Figgins Tuscan has pleasing organic shapes: “our interpretation of what Vincent Figgins might have produced in a basic, plain Tuscan form”. Edison has
zany coils with the “mechanics of a coiled spring, rather than the tendrils of a growing plant”.
Augsburger Initialen might be used for drop caps in any art nouveau design. HiH fonts are just $10.
HiH fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
Pretty is the
design studio of Patric King – with friends Su and Milan – in Chicago.
The fonts, all by Patric, are geometric. Revenant has a very stretched-out, techno look that’s initially familiar; but on closer inspection it reveals a fascinating approach to the lowercase, almost as if a new alphabet has evolved without human intervention to fit the extreme design brief.
Patric says Nineteen Eighty Four is “mechanical, but patently expressive”:
it’s a diagonal-shunning bitmap, whose letters K, R and X will surely be studied by competitors.
Away from fonts, the studio designs very popular websites (Gawker, Gizmodo, Wonkette, Lifehacker), creates images for covers and features of Wired magazine, and much more.
Pretty fonts are 35% off for 4 weeks!
G. Alex Gonzalez of
Long Beach, California made a name for himself by getting his very cool free font, El Hombre, distributed via Chank in the late 1990s.
Now he’s come up with Orange Whip, a super-friendly all-caps font tailor-made for you to get the look of vintage sign lettering &ndash for just $10.
The fonts are 20% off for 4 weeks!
Grummedia fonts
are from Graham Blakelock of Ilkley in England. Old printing and other historical lettering are his source materials.
From these he fashions modern computer fonts, some closely based on the sources, others showing inspiration from them.
Fifteen36 and Fourteen64 are modeled on Renaissance printing in Venice.
High German is a narrow Fraktur.
And ItalicHand uses the surprisingly modern looking Carolingian cursive letterform, resulting in a most legible calligraphic face.
Grummedia fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
|
profonts of northern Germany have a focus on script and display fonts.
The initial offering is two families of script fonts: Sonora and Valentine.
These are jaunty designs, sure to put readers in a good mood! Sonora is the more down-to-earth, Valentine the more delicate.
They’re high tech too:
these multilingual fonts are delivered in the OpenType format, and use the technology to swap in special ligatures to get a true joined-up look – over 1000 glyphs in each font! OpenType works on both Windows and Mac.
Though a new foundry, Profonts are very experienced making fonts: they’re directed by Peter Rosenfeld and Dr. Jürgen Willrodt, both of URW++.
profonts fonts are 50% off for 4 weeks!
The Wundes Foundry
of Hayward, California features fonts by John B. Wundes – graphic designer, website designer and Flash programmer – who now turns his hand to the labor of love that is font making.
His Ossuary font is named after the place where human bones are stored, and the font itself doesn’t disappoint. Each and every letter and numeral is fashioned from skulls.
The skulls are arranged respectfully into proportions of classical lettering, not haphazardly like some novelty fonts.
Use in big sizes, but sparingly – perhaps with just one or two letters at a time.
Wundes fonts are 50% off for 3 weeks!
Fontron fonts
are from Ronald Underwood, a British advertising designer.
The lettering in his logos struck Ronald as a good basis for font designs, so this is the result.
The fonts – Halfron, Sideron, Arcron and Foldron – are all best used in short texts of just a few characters, so we can easily imagine many more logos being produced from them.
We particularly like Foldron – the ambiguity of its folds (which parts are overlapping which other parts?) works very well, and it’s a natural for imaginative coloring.
Fontron fonts are 50% off for 4 weeks!
Dimitre Lima of
DMTR.ORG, a creative designer from Sao Paulo, writes computer programs to explore artistic fields.
His fonts are proud products of this outlook.
To us they are strangely reminiscent of minimalist, electronic music.
0Gatu, a lowercase-only design, is made almost entirely of circular segments.
0AFerrugem is based on a similar idea, uppercase-only this time, with a different, less alien result.
0Arame is a more legible uppercase, similar letters designed to be read by computers.
0Decomputer has a humorous Hurt version: Dimitre thereby reminds us that computers feel pain too...
DMTR.ORG fonts are 30% off until Jan 31!
|
