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 THE MYFONTS NEWSLETTER — WINTER 2007
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In This Issue
1. Letter from the Editor
2. A cast-iron investment
3. Our new foundries
4. Ascender, Berthold news
5. Building Letters 3
6. More new fonts
7. Regulars
Bestsellers, promotions, subscribing.
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Letter from the Editor
This issue we’re highlighting how fonts are one of the most long-lasting bits of software you can buy, and how MyFonts helps to keep your fonts in tip-top condition.
Major launches this issue are Fine Fonts (home of the great Michael Harvey), Grouptype, and Brass Fonts.
Check out the major new releases from Ascender, and a collection of OpenType upgrades from Berthold. These two foundries debuted on MyFonts early 2006, and we’re pleased to see them expand their collections in useful and creative ways. For MyFonts
customers of earlier versions, Berthold OpenTypes are all available at 50% discount as upgrades to the corresponding non-OpenType fonts.
Finally, we’re very pleased to pass on the news that the charity fund-raising Building Letters 3 magazine (+ excellent font CD) is ready. We wish it the best success.
Enjoy the issue and happy font finding!
— Laurence Penney, In Your Face Editor
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Launching even more new foundries
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Fine Fonts are
the typefaces of Englishmen Michael Harvey and Andy Benedek.
The fonts really do live up to the fine name!
Michael’s work in lettering started when he was assistant to the great Reynolds Stone.
With stone-cut lettering in Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and the National Gallery, years as advisor to the Royal Mint on new coins and medals, years of teaching,
and hundreds of hand-drawn book jackets to his credit, to think of anyone who has achieved more than Michael as a craftsman of letters in late 20th century Britain is difficult indeed.
Michael’s first typeface (as opposed to his drawn and hand-cut letters) was Zephyr (1966), a shadow design strongly reminiscent of stone lettering which was released by Ludlow.
His first full type family was Ellington, released by Monotype in 1990, followed by a sans, Strayhorn (1995).
These exquisite and full-featured faces show much of the graphic liveliness known to admirers of his book jackets.
Now Fine Fonts releases the fonts that Michael and Andy have been working on together.
Aesop is an elegant pen-drawn design.
Balthasar is a languid, upright calligraphic face, unusual in having gaps in the strokes as if from a stencil.
Fine Gothic is a family of three blackletter fonts. Marceta is their distinctive uncial.
Tisdall Script is jaunty, unintimidating, perhaps suitable for a teenage girl’s party invitation.
Songlines is the most unusual design, a slender all-caps face with two alternate forms for each character.
Fine Fonts are 50% off for 4 weeks!
Moretype is the foundry
of Chris Dickinson, based in the town of Moreton, near Liverpool.
Chris graduated in graphic design from Brighton University on England’s south coast. He developed his approach to typography while releasing fonts with T-26.
Now he offers two sans-serif families, both with true italics: Alber is the older and the subtler; Depot the new, robust one.
Both are formatted for long-term, multi-platform use, mastered in OpenType only, and include central European characters.
Moretype fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
TrueBlue is the
studio of Gianni Marcolongo of Canegrate, Italy, specializing in custom fonts, logos, and 3D models for CAD systems.
His font is Pinnochio, a charming font for teaching kids how to write a traditional European cursive.
TrueBlue fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
GroupType,
from the founders of FontHaus, is a new company specializing in period and revival typeface designs.
Aquiline, Carpenter and Ovidius are all luxurious script fonts, but very different in their evocations:
the first has design roots in the 16th century, the second from the late 19th century, while the last, with its scratchy, powerful strokes, is much more recent.
Corvinus Skyline, Cloister Initials, Bank Gothic and Metro Sans all have great of-the-moment appeal,
yet are intelligent reinterpretations of early 20th century classics.
Elegance, variety and fun abound in this collection, of which we’re merely scratched the surface!
GroupType fonts are 35% off for 4 weeks!
Patty Whack Fonts
is an independent type foundry based in the USA, started by Jennifer Patrick in 2006.
Her three fonts, all for fun display usage, are Funky Fat Jiggly, Abracadabra, and the cutest of them all, Cutesy Wootsy!
Schoolgirls, how about that for the efficient writing of love notes?
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Brass Fonts,
from Cologne, Germany, are from the hands of Guido Schneider and seven designer colleagues.
The font collection, digitally mastered by experts URW++ of Hamburg, is diverse: we have space just to mention those that made the strongest impression.
BF Tara is a
highly legible sans in five weights.
It features elegant italics, small caps, and good economy of space. BF Anorak is another sans, this time squarer and more insistent with what it wants to say.
BF Decore and BF Styptic are
ethereal delights, their wispy strokes evoking half-remembered dreams.
BF Stoneman is a pumped-up beefcake of a font, its strokes so bold as to bulge into one another.
BF Vota reproduces the über-rational, supposedly tamper-proof letterforms from German license plates.
(The idea is that one may identify any letter or digit by observing just a quarter of it.
Perhaps they didn’t think someone might simply make a typeface...)
A review of the whole collection is recommended!
Brass Fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
Poole is
the foundry of talented artist Wesley Poole. In the 1970s Wesley’s love of lettering expressed itself in hand-painting signs around the Napa Valley, California. Inevitably his talent was spotted by the wine business, and he spent many years designing award-winning wine labels as well as working as a fine artist. Now from his studio on the outskirts of Honolulu, Hawaii, Wesley creates typefaces with the help of technical wiz Rod Cavazos.
The four families so far
are very much exemplars of their kind, each with a few little twists that raise the design above the generic. Vingo is the sophisticate: expensive-looking and generously proportioned without too much formality or tradition. Contempo Elan adds spice to a formal script. Poole Standard is legible and plainer than his others, with a friendly art nouveau spirit.
With Pagoda International a hint of Japanese calligraphy combines with well-chosen legible proportions, resulting in a funky yet easy-going design.
Wesley tells us: “I feel like I’m coming back to where I started. I’ve never had more satisfaction or fun than I’m having now, designing alphabets.”
Poole fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
ByType,
based in Sapiranga, Brazil, brings us the font named After by Fabio Luiz Haag.
It’s a trendy sans-serif with many shapes not quite completed, adding dynamism.
Designed for display, it also shows excellent legibility at small sizes; check the careful attention to detail on the stroke widths.
It’s been enhanced with OpenType goodness to provide ligatures and alternate characters too.
ByType fonts are 25% off for 4 weeks!
Vic Fieger
is the creator of the web comic Dubmarine.
Of course, comics need lettering and the modern way to do those letters is with fonts.
Not content with the standard fonts from Windows, Vic designed many of his own and releases them to a wider audience at very low prices.
Celonius Mark XIX (just $2.99!) is a narrow geometric design, whose angled stroke joins and ends make the font reminiscent of Fraktur.
Santa Mensch is grunged-up lettering, based on a newspaper picture that had a band’s flyer in the background.
That’s some grunge!
ArgonType is Vic’s most sober design, characterized by incomplete strokes and soft curves.
Vic Fieger fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!
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Of all the wonderful things about fonts, there’s one that is rarely mentioned by us font sellers. It’s this: fonts last for a very long time. Unlike almost all the other software you may have bought 10 or 15 years ago, any fonts you bought are likely still working well, waiting to be called back into action when you load up that old newsletter or greetings card you made! As you probably know, MyFonts makes it easy to find fonts you bought years ago: we keep all your purchased fonts backed up in your Order History.
But, of course, foundries make updates to their fonts every now and then, with both bug fixes and major upgrades in features and language coverage. At MyFonts we realized there had to be a way to keep our customers in touch with these improvements without nagging them to buy, buy, buy.
So we devised MyFonts Updates. Whenever a foundry alerts us to an updated font, we let all customers of that font know there’s a new version waiting to be downloaded. This free service is automatic, so you don’t need to sign up specially. Bug fixes are completely free of charge.
Sometimes there’s a new, much-improved version waiting in the wings, such as OpenType versions with many new characters and typographic features. Upgrade pricing on these can be very attractive too, a reassurance that your money was well spent in the first place.
From once being highly expensive and cast from lead that would soon wear out, fonts are now inexpensive, lighter than air, and last forever. A cast-iron investment!
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Updates from Ascender and Berthold
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Ascender launched
at MyFonts in early 2006 with a range of fonts that – let’s be honest – most of us had seen before.
In providing these fonts (originally developed at Microsoft and Monotype), their raison d’être may have appeared to be to rework common Windows fonts for professional graphic designers.
But, with some handy additions in May and even more impressive new fonts added recently, it’s plain for all to see there’s a lot more to Ascender than a bunch of earnest font engineers! Here’s our view on the newcomers:
Ayita is a new, playful and relaxed sans-serif by Steve Matteson and Jim Ford.
Steve goes on to bring us:
Mayberry, a highly legible, no-nonsense sans in one weight, large of x-height but narrow in width for maximum space economy, ideal for the presentation of non-styled text such as TV subtitles, electronic displays and computer interfaces;
Kootenay Pro might be used for the same purposes, but there’s a sense of generosity so use it when space is not at a premium;
Miramonte Pro, based on Stanislav Marso’s humanist sans of 1960 (Matteson includes a cursive italic rather than a sloped roman);
Pescadero Pro, a distinguished text face inspired by calligraphic inscriptions; Chicory, a beautiful calligraphic typeface in the narrow chancery style;
and oh-so-techno Titanium.
Ascender uses the “Pro” tag to indicate wide language coverage and technical wizardry, so the polylingual typophiles among you will enjoy those the most.
Technically, fonts don’t get much better than this.
Ascender’s font engineers include some of the very people that developed the core fonts in Microsoft Windows.
Browse the complete Ascender collection
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Berthold, according to the MyFonts database, is the 140th foundry to offer OpenType fonts at MyFonts. This brings 250 more of these nifty new fonts, making more than 13,000 “OTFs” at MyFonts!
Each OpenType font file can be used in text and graphics applications on both Mac and Windows. The expert characters come alive in “OpenType-savvy” applications: Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress 7, and Apple Keynote and Pages.
We’ve mentioned before our enthusiasm for this “format that works everywhere”. It makes so much sense for buyers, makers and sellers of type that we hope you’ll forgive our harping on! When a major foundry embraces OpenType, the industry takes note. Customers past and prospective evaluate what extra language coverage and typographic features have been added. In Berthold’s case, the additions include additional characters that were previously available in separate “expert” fonts: ligatures, old-style figures, small caps and alternate glyphs. Euro signs throughout, and stylistically matched punctuation symbols also feature.
The cornerstone of
the Berthold heritage is design “made in Germany.” The classic Akzidenz Grotesk (in fashion ever since the 1890s!) leads the pack in terms of popularity, but the collection would be deprived of its greatness without the towering figure of Günter Gerhard Lange, the foundry’s long-time artistic director. His original typefaces Concorde, Concorde Nova and Imago and his meticulous reworkings of earlier designs (Berthold Baskerville Book, Berthold Garamond, Berthold Walbaum Book and others) all deserve the attention of the serious typographer.
Other eminent German designs include Bernd Möllenstädt’s distinctive sanserif Formata; Georg Trump’s famous slabserif City; Hans Reichel’s Barmeno (now with italics); and finally, Friedrich Poppl’s exquisite faces. Our current favorite from Berthold is Aldo Novarese’s sturdy slaberif Colossalis.
The Berthold OpenTypes are all available at 50% discount to past buyers of the PostScript versions.
Browse the complete Berthold collection
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We’re delighted to announce the completion of a project that began in early 2005 in response to the South Asian Tsunami.
It’s a 64-page, full-color magazine called Building Letters 3.
Started by Jim Richardson and recently completed by Filip Blazek, it has contributions (most with an Asian slant) from noted writers on typography. Production costs have been met, so all proceeds go to help victims of the disaster.
It includes a CD containing 25 free fonts by established and up-and-coming designers – really rather good ones too. Amazing value and a remarkable project, read more and get yours here. The price is just €35 (around $45) with free shipping.
Visit the Building Letters website now!
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Font Aid update: Fleurons of Hope, the flagship font of the Font Aid 3 project, also produced in response to the South Asian Tsunami, remains on sale here at MyFonts. As the new year arrived, $26,000 had been raised. Sincere thanks to all the customers and font designers for making this possible.
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Check our What’s New and Special Offers pages
for live updates of all the new fonts that go on sale, and the great promotions we run!
We always like to hear of good and bad experiences you have at MyFonts. Just e-mail us at <[email protected]> and
we’ll get back to you!
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In Your Face is sent out every quarter to MyFonts users. It announces every new foundry signing up with MyFonts, new fonts from current foundries, and introduces all the useful and fun new features on the site. To unsubscribe or manage your subscriptions, go here:
The font used for our In Your Face masthead is Walburn Tooled from ShinnType. The main graphic uses Alber from Moretype, Ironmonger from Font Bureau, and Buzzcog from T-26.
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Cambridge MA 02142
USA
Copyright © 2007 MyFonts.com, Inc.
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