Reina by Maximiliano Sproviero is probably Lián Types’ most sophisticated typeface to date. With its vertical stress and strong contrast between fat strokes and gossamer hairlines, Reina is a display Didone with bells on. Inspired by the classics Didot and Bodoni, and spiced up with influences from 1960s New York magazine lettering from the likes of Herb Lubalin, Reina is up there with the most whimsical of classicist and modern-face titling faces, with traces of copperplate and Spencerian scripts. When none of its alternate characters are activated, Reina works well in medium-sized texts; when activating its OpenType capability and using the swash and decorative varieties, you get a toolkit (and plaything) for making dazzling headlines. In April this year the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA) announced that had Reina garnered an Honorable Mention in their 2011 Catalyst Awards: “Nicely heavy romantic letterform … great skill is shown in the detailing … an excellent feel for the correct flow of curves and displacement of stroke weight,” said the judges.

Ever since webfonts began influencing the look and feel of hundreds, and then thousands of websites, Exljbris’ Museo series has been all over the place. This new variety is likely to become as successful as its older siblings. Museo Sans Rounded is a softened version of the Museo family’s best-selling variant, Museo Sans. While the lighter versions are just that — a sans with rounded corners — there are some interesting modifications in the heavier weights. 900 and 1000 especially (Museo weights are numbered, not named) are inspired, cuddly varieties of one of the world’s most popular typefaces today.

When wood type became the technology of choice for posters advertising shows and trade fairs in the nineteenth century, specialized manufacturers cooked up some really weird and picturesque letterforms. But besides those wicked fat face, egyptian and ornamented letters, printers always liked to keep some normal-looking narrow sans serifs ready for those lines of text that simply had to be there without making a spectacle of themselves. That is the kind of wood type that HVD’s Cheap Pine is inspired by. The font contains arrows, hands, stars and other special glyphs available through the OpenType ligatures feature. You can use Cheap Pine Sans & Cheap Pine Shadow in separate layers to create colored shadows.

Gibson is a humanist sans-serif designed by eminent Canadian type designer Rod McDonald to honor John Gibson, one of the founders of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. Its roman is open and clean yet friendly, a kind of humanized Avenir. But its remarkable warmth and swing comes mainly from the italic, which has subtly bent stems and a wonderful roundness. This is a great basic font for students and budding designers: the eight-font family is available for a token price to make it affordable to all, hoping to raise awareness about type piracy. All the revenues from sales will be donated to the GDC.