In This Issue

1. Letter from the Editor

2. Take me there with fonts!

3. Our new foundries

• Outras Fontes
• Andinistas
• Samuelstype
• New Renaissance Fonts
• LightHouse
• Schriftgestaltung
• Lindstrom Design
• SIAS
• Scholtz Fonts
• Gustavo Lassala
• wkklee
• Amber Phillips
• Christian Büning
• Fonticon

5. Indie Fonts 3

6. Linotype additions

7. More new fonts

6. Regulars
Bestsellers, promotions, subscribing.

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Friendly terms or font names: your choice. Try graffiti, elegant, rough, typewriter...

Take me there with fonts!

Ireland

You’re spoilt for choice if you need fonts and symbols on an Irish theme. The famous Book of Kells from 800AD inspires P22 Kells (& Extras). Ireland confronts its fantastical past (or future?) in P22 Phantasmagoria. Celtic knots get a good showing in Celtic Knots BA and in the totally over-the-top alphabetic font Knotwork. Best of all is Missale Lunea, surely the most delicious Uncial typeface ever created.

India

With a billion people speaking 22 official languages, I must admit it feels a little silly suggesting a font might conjure up "India" as a whole. Most of our India-pastiche fonts use the "washing line" idea from the Devanagari script – Faux Sanskrit, Modakshar, Sansara, and ITC Simran – one of the most sensual fonts ever created. RA Ganesh is one of several collections of Hindu symbols.

Italy

Although the typeface has been with us for so long its nationality is not obvious to other than cognoscenti, Bodoni remains the natural choice for Italian text fonts. However it seems like every foundry has had a go creating their ideal cut of the 18th century master’s work! Which to choose? With its three versions – 6, 12 and 72 – for use at different sizes, ITC Bodoni is the classy choice. Gert Wiescher’s Bodoni Classic is also a strong contender. Both avoid the “designed with compasses” look of some Bodonis, and they have beautiful ornament sets too. Gert adds deco capitals, even humorous swashes!

Going back in time, the ancient Romans would be pleased the letters from Trajan’s Column (120 AD) are exemplars that inspire font designers even today: try Goudy Trajan, La Gioconda (with its superb lower-case), or the easy choice, Adobe Trajan.

The Italians have a splendid history of calligraphy and lettering: try Cresci, Pacioli, and P22 Operina (which, remarkably, even has Cyrillic and Greek). Oh and finally, don’t miss Il Futurismo!

Switzerland

Helvetica and Univers are the clean (some might say soulless...) Swiss faces you see everywhere. Recently, Helvetica’s going even more places with Helvetica World: she speaks Greek, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic among many other languages.

But to avoid the plain one and the scientific one, choose Venus, Folio or Imago.

Reams have been written on reaching high typographic ideals by the Swiss. Let’s sum up: generous margins on the page, conceive a grid and stick to it, don’t change font size, let alone the font, often, never center headings, and (John, can I say this?) never use anything but Helvetica!

Greece

In the 20th century European and American foundries added Greek letters to their typefaces. Now we’ve got the verdicts of Greek typography experts: they’re mostly ugly bolt-ons!

So nowadays Linotype, Bitstream and many others regularly seek the advice they should have sought earlier, and the Hellenic font world is a happier place. Local expert Natasha Raissaki tells us that Minion and Myriad (both by Robert Slimbach for Adobe) will please the Greeks.

You might test their patience with Greek pastiches for feta cheese packaging or an ouzo bottle label, but we’ll mention them anyway: Kouros, Skia, Syntax Lapidar, Lithos, Kaffeesatz, and ... (they’ll just love this!) P22 Acropolis.

Launching ever more foundries

Samuelstype fonts come from the hand of Hans Samuelson of Stockholm, Sweden. Many of his type designs come out of packaging design projects. Colin Samuels is our favorite of the four families, a super-confident grotesque sans-serif with 4 weights from Thin to Bold. Rosemary Samuels is a much more humanist sans, again in a useful range of weights, while April Samuels and Rebecca Samuels are his serif fonts.

Samuelstype fonts are 40% off for 4 weeks!

Fonticon is the outlet for the remarkable Mannequin font by Joe John Mittler of Finland. Lest some decry this as the bizarre work of an obsessive, we can imagine dressmakers and health professionals finding this collection of 720 line-drawn depictions (yes, 720!) of the female form rather useful. All body sizes covered (and uncovered).

Fonticon fonts are 45% off for 4 weeks!

Outras Fontes is Ricardo Esteves Gomes and Jarbas Barros Gomes, who work out of Vitória in Brazil and started their foundry in 2006. Their font Maryam uses the OpenType format to mimic friendly handwriting, numerous ligatures (specially-designed letter combos) automatically appearing as you type. A more generous character set than is usual with script fonts, plus an accompanying font of a more ‘swash’ nature, round off this well-considered offering.

Outras Fontes’ Maryam family is 35% off for 4 weeks!

Andinistas is a design studio started in 1998 by Carlos Fabián Camargo in Venezuela, later moving to Bogotá, Colombia. Many graphic artists love the work of M.C. Escher. One such was the late Nedo Mion Ferrario, who in the 1970s presented an alphabet on those impossible 3D themes. Carlos has revived and digitized these letters, completing the typeface as Denedo, a superbly original set in three styles. Their other font, Nikona is designed by Carlos with Rafael Rincón, and reflects a fascination with digital imperfection: what happens when computers go wrong, when robots malfunction even while trying to help us? Nice to see that Asimov’s classic Three Laws of Robotics inspired the names of each style in the font.

Andinistas fonts are 30% off for 4 weeks!

New Renaissance Fonts is run by musician/artist David Kettlewell, who has teamed up with artist/calligrapher Richard Bradley and others to bring out a line of charming, decorative fonts. Richard’s an old hand at font-making, with Bible Script, Fine Hand, Calligraphic Ornaments and Bradley Hand to his name. Alice Scrolltip Roman is Richard’s flowing script with a thick and a thin for every stroke. Sevillia starts with a set of tiles inspired by the street names in Seville, Spain, then adds two matching text fonts. Karin’s Lombardy Caps and Soest St Mary – from a church embroidery – complete the initial font collection. The emphasis at New Renaissance is on preserving “hand-measured beauty and human balance”, as David puts it. Lots of examples show you how the fonts can look in use.

New Renaissance 50% off for 4 weeks!

SIAS stands for “Signographical Institute Andreas Stötzner”, a label that indicates the devotion of its designer, who’s from Saxony, Germany. SIAS offers a range of fonts containing graphic symbols. SIAS Gramma gives us a set of basic graphic shapes, SIAS Lineaturen is for composing more ambitious designs from simple elements, while Andron Corpus Publix is a collection of transport-related symbols ideal for maps. There’s also SIAS Freefont which gives you a taste of SIAS fonts, as the name suggests, for free.

SIAS fonts are 25% off for 4 weeks!

Schriftgestaltung is the foundry of Georg Seifert of Leipzig, Germany. His font is Olive Green Mono, a family of four weights, each with a regular and a proper, lively cursive and full European character set. Mono is short for monospace, a kind of typeface that’s difficult to design without giving a lumpy look to paragraphs: narrow ‘i’ and wide ‘W’ must fit to the same width. The name ’Olive Green’, a soothing even color if ever there was one, indicates Georg’s satisfaction that his confidently deployed and fearlessly suppressed serifs (along with the typeface’s other fine touches) have achieved the desired result – ’an even gray value’ in typographic parlance.

Schriftgestaltung’s Olive Green Light is FREE for a limited period! Other weights 40% off for 4 weeks!

Scholtz Fonts of Durban, South Africa, was started by artist and designer Anton Scholtz in 1997, and specializes in fonts with an African flavor. Why? Because there’s a serious lack of African-inspired fonts on the market! Seventeen families, one of them a fascinating font of African Patterns are on offer.

Scholtz Fonts are 45% off for 4 weeks!

Gustavo Lassala is a designer and professor in São Paulo, Brazil. That city’s phenomenon of pixação, a highly distinctive form of narrow, semi-legible graffiti with strange hints of Fraktur letters, simply begs to be examined in more detail. What better way to learn than by doing? Gustavo’s font Adrenalina Normal is his adaptation of the lettering as as font, created from numerous photos of São Paulo pixações. How many professors that you know are also graffiti artists?

Gustavo Lassala fonts 40% off for 4 weeks!

wkklee is the foundry of Wai Lee in Canada. His font Bohy is constructivist, playing with circles and squares and giving a surprisingly legible result. Try making semi-abstract backgrounds with just a few letters set very large. Or make patterns with dense text in a color only subtly different from the background layer. Or multi-colored... the possibilities are endless!

Amber Phillips, from Cary in Illinois, offers us her scratchy, grunge font. Appropriately, it’s named Ambie Skratch. Amber is keen to get into publication design, ideally for an experimental or design mag. I wonder if she’ll dare choose Ambie Skratch for her résumé!

Amber Phillips fonts 40% off for 4 weeks!

LightHouse is run by David Hamuel of Los Angeles. While he is adept with all the great writing systems of Europe and the Mediterranean, the seven typefaces he launches with are all Hebrew designs. What a variety they are: sparkling Shirah 25, monoline Shirah-Joie, chunky and friendly Ayasha, the historically-informed Hamuel Nine Five, and others.

Lindstrom Design is from Glendora, CA, and represents the designs of J. Nils Lindstrom. He’s been an instructor of type and letterforms for 20 years at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. He’s come out with Elfin, a wispy, magical, elvish font based on the writing inside the Ring of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”.

Lindstrom Design fonts are 25% off for 4 weeks!

Christian Büning is from Münster in Germany and offers one font, a collection of icons for wayfinding signs – Rolli , drawn by Elisabeth Schwarz. It’s a clear and bold design in an international style, and is specialized for helping disabled people in public places.

Christian Büning fonts 50% off for 4 weeks!

Linotype += 100

* STOP PRESS * Linotype’s amazing collection has just had a major update at MyFonts: there’s been a freshening up of the whole library. Particularly useful is the expansion of many hundreds of their fonts, including the most well-known, to a full European Latin character set, including not just the familiar French and German characters, but also including Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Turkish and Baltic sets. Choosing fonts for international use just got more exciting! All fonts are in the future-proof OpenType format.

We mentioned Helvetica World in the “Take me there with fonts” feature, but this giant that speaks Hebrew, Arabic and Vietnamese as well as Greek and Russian is worth an extra mention! Among the plethora of new families now available, don’t miss Zapf’swonderful new Palatino Sans and Palatino Sans Informal.

In all, that’s well over 100 new and updated Linotype families now shipping from MyFonts.

Indie Fonts 3

For many of us, the experience of typography on the printed page cannot be matched by that on the screen. Let’s face it, even super-duper anti-aliasing with LCD enhancements from boffins at Microsoft, Adobe and Apple (ClearType™, CoolType™ and ATSUI™) is no match for the 2,540 dpi of modern offset lithography on coated paper. That’s over 6.4 megapixels per square inch! So we’re delighted to announce we have in stock the latest of the splendid Indie Fonts specimen books.

Indie Fonts 3, published by P-Type Publications of Buffalo, NY, features the work of 20 independent foundries in a showing of over 1900 fonts. You’ll be impatient to try out many of the fonts in the catalog, so, as with previous Indie Fonts 1 and Indie Fonts 2 (some copies still available) there’s a CD of 53 fonts selected from the foundries in the book.

Note that this is the limited edition hardcover version with dust jacket.

Shipping now at $39.95 + delivery (10% off until May 31)

Foundries featured: Baseline Fonts, Blue Vinyl Fonts, Device Fonts, E-phemera Fonts, Font Bros, Handselecta, Jeremy Tankard Typography, Ken Munk, Letterhead Fonts, Pizzadude.dk, Positype, Process Type Foundry, Rimmer Type Foundry, Shinn Type Foundry, SparkyType, Suitcase Type Foundry, Suomi Type Foundry, Village, Virus Fonts, and Wilton Foundry

More Fonts from our Current Foundries

Regulars

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!

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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.