his is a month of celebrations and togetherness for many people. But for your inner business person, December may also be a period of practical decisions prompted by the approaching end of the fiscal year. Assuming you’ve done well this year – what better way to fill out the budget than by buying some great new fonts? It’s fun, it’s useful, it’s good for you and your co-workers’ morale – you could even make a New Year’s resolution out of it.
This month’s Rising Stars
When we interviewed Professor Brian J. Bonislawsky earlier this year, he told us that for a type designer, “Inspiration is easy, it’s all around us.” Of course, that’s easy to say if you live in Las Vegas… For his Montelago typeface inspiration was found just around the corner, in the logotype of the Las Vegas Mirage Resort and Casino. The single word logo was expanded into a nonchalant but powerful script alphabet. The extended “Flare” capitals offer some extra mileage for all of you wide boys (and girls). Use in moderation!
Terfens is almost monolinear – its even strokes look as if they’ve been drawn with a felt-tipped pen. There is some similarity to Gerard Unger’s upright italic Flora, a modern classic. But Terfens has a logic of its own, with separate italics and elegantly drawn, subtly curved strokes. Its openness and clarity make it a versatile and useful little family – it even has oldstyle figures. Used at medium sizes, it might make for a nice informal text font. An alternative to Comic Sans, believe it or not!
One of the year’s new fonts that remained under the Rising Stars radar was John Bomparte’s Subliminal BF, an intriguing headline font that appears to glow and vibrate. Glow Gothic BF is a further exploration into typographic special effects. In its basic font the letters are transparent, made visible by the rasterized glow emanating from them. The same effect can be obtained in a two-color variety by combining the “Overlay” and “Underlay” styles – they’re designed with perfectly matching widths. In addition, “Overlay” can be employed as a stand-alone, solid font. Have a look at the gallery images to get an idea of this psychedelic trio’s possibilities.
Rob Leuschke’s font TheNautiGal was “best brush script” in our selection of 2006’s favorite fonts. QwitcherBychen is equally buoyant and sassy, but its appearance is more irregular. Like all of TypeSETit’s scripts, it shows great confidence and craftsmanship – the fruit of the designer’s past experience as a lettering artist at Hallmark Cards. The merry QwitcherBychen comes in three weights – which makes it easier to combine different sizes in one harmonious headline.
Text family of the month
Typefolio is a new foundry based in Macapá, Brazil. Designer Marconi Lima aims to offer typefaces of superior quality – technically, functionally and aesthetically. With his first font family on MyFonts, Adriane Text, he certainly does not disappoint: it is a wonderfully readable book typeface:
Stylistically, Adriane is hard to pin down – somewhere in between baroque and rococo (“transitional”), but utterly contemporary in its details. Adriane Text is a fairly small font family – two weights in Regular and Italic – but it does everything you may want a versatile text family to do. Its letterforms are wide and solid enough for setting small text, and subtle enough for titling. Its italic is gorgeous and doubles as a stylish headline face.
Adriane Text comes as an OpenType family equipped with small caps and several sets of numerals including “tabular oldstyle figures” – an elegant alternative solution that is often overlooked when setting text tables. Adriane Text offers a splendid range of ligatures and ornaments, arrows, alternate ampersands... In short, a beauty.
Follow-Up
Picture fonts do pretty well at MyFonts – but they seldom show up on bestseller lists because they’re outsold by the usual loud-mouthed posse of alphabetic characters. So we were surprised and delighted by the success of SubiktoTwo, one of the most quietly charming, inspiring picture fonts that have installed themselves on our virtual shelves lately. Ideal for creating multi-colored backgrounds and ornaments, SubiktoTwo is a digital botanic garden full of interesting flowers and leaves.
If you liked this font by Subtitude, have a look at their other pictogram fonts:
Subikto One
A set of pictograms showing a multitude of hand positions and combinations. Designers Valérie Desrochers and Sébastien Théraulaz put together a large collection of unique gestures and visualized them in drawings that are as clear as they are sensitive.
Subeve
Subeve was designed for a young Montreal fashion designer. Starting from photographs of her collection, Subtitude used the silhouettes of the models to create a charming series of icons for her website. Subtitude’s advice: feel free to play with these nice women!
Subzoete
Originally made for a cultural listing in Montreal, where Subtitude are based. This collection of pictograms is a unique resource whenever you’re designing a festival program or a calendar of events. Contains indications for tickets, free admission, outdoor events, and many others.
Subtitude also has some great headline fonts. For instance, check out Subytro Black, Subalde or Subroyal.
Have your say
—Michael from Sussex, England
November 2, 2007
Your opinion matters to us! Feel free to share your thoughts or read other people’s comments at the MyFonts Testimonials page.
Font credits
The Rising Stars masthead and subheading are set in Auto 3 and Bryant, respectively. The drop-cap T in the introduction is set in Fab, and the “Have your say” quotation in Adriane Text. The small pixel typeface used at the very top is Unibody 8.
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