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- Feed Preview Type Reviews – Typographica
Sandoll Chilseong Shipyard
In 1952, toward the end of the Korean War, Chilseong Shipyard was established in Sokcho, South Korea. The humble family operation built ships and served as a local fishery for generations. In 201...
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/sandoll-chilseong-shipyard/
Elfreth
I can count the number of times I’ve used a blackletter (unironically, anyway) on one hand. But something about Elfreth caught my attention and held onto it like a Brockhaus-Heuer Schraubstock.
Tomasa
Anyone who is from or has lived in Spanish-speaking countries will be familiar with the concept of perreo. It’s a word that describes how we dance to rhythms like reggaeton or funk carioca. The...
Almost
Aside from being a delightful typeface family, Almost opens the door to the discovery of fifteenth-century printing types.
Lava Devanagari, Kannada, and Telugu
Typotheque collaborated with Indian type designers for Devanagari, Kannada, and Telugu extensions of Lava. Knowing these scripts as natives gave the designers the confidence to stretch and play w...
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/lava-devanagari-kannada-and-telugu/
LL Blankenhorn
Whenever I’m in Germany I’m struck by the prevalence of hand-lettered book covers. German publishers also seem particularly unafraid of omitting imagery from their covers, letting the title d...
Graphit
Graphit manages to convey a distinct voice by using elements from sources that might appear almost antithetical.
ABC Laica
Laica’s dislocated shapes and sprawling texture walk a fine line between sublimity and grotesqueness, as the world in 2019 also appeared to teeter on the brink of conflicts and crises.
Plastic
The eighties are everywhere. Love them or hate them, over the past several years it has been almost impossible to escape the resurgence of bright neon colors, flashy animal prints, neoliberal ide...
ABC Whyte
There is so much to say about ABC Whyte and ABC Whyte Inktrap that a review of these non-identical twins from Dinamo could easily consist of two separate articles. The typefaces offer a clear ref...
Lyyra
I’ve never understood why people cut the crusts off of sandwiches. I guess it’s just my aversion to wasting food. I’ll admit, however, the neatness of those unnaturally sharp edges sparks a...
The FACIT Model
Archives are ambivalent places. They promise access to endless knowledge and information — but retrieving it, as most type designers know, can be difficult. The FACIT Model opens the gates ...
Pika Ultra
Several remarkable typefaces were released in 2019, but none of them made me want to roller-skate as much as PSTL’s Pika Ultra, which evokes the rhythm of ’70s bold lettering but avoids the p...
Xingkai Next
XingKai Next aims to find a place for a classical calligraphy face in contemporary graphic design. XingKai is a popular calligraphic typeface designed by Ren Zheng in 1980, inspired by the callig...
PF Marlet
PF Marlet is a type system consisting of five families with distinct voices and purposes. Despite the differences in their design, each family conveys an edgy feeling of elegance in its own way. ...
CoFo Peshka
What makes my Cyrillic heart beat faster is the role Cyrillic plays in this design. I’m under the impression that the Latin lettershapes of CoFo Peshka follow rules established by the Cyrillic,...
BC Orion
It might be tempting to label Maršo’s sans serifs as lesser communist rip-offs of the popular capitalist typefaces Helvetica and Univers (issued just a few years earlier), but that would not b...
Optique Display
Optique is a font family for Hangeul and Latin that follows the traditional writing tools of each script. The Hangeul stroke shape is based on the pointed brush, while the Latin stroke is based o...
JJannon
The fonts of Jean Jannon, a.k.a. the would-be Garamond, were underrated by twentieth-century typographers. François Rappo sets the record straight with his crisp JJannon.
29LT Zarid Display
29LT Zarid Display presents surprising twists and turns, and brings new dimensions to the way multilingual display typefaces are designed, which will only benefit designers and readers.
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/29lt-zarid-display/
Magnat
The type community in Berlin is expanding more and more, even in these pandemic times. It makes me reflect on how important it is to be where things happen, to inhabit the right place to be inspi...
Oli Grotesk
There are many “types” of English: American English, British English, and, for me, Indian English. The character and personality of Oli seemed to capture the last point. I found it warm, appr...
Brucker
With Brucker, Tankard once again consciously questions conventions — particularly the idea that a typeface requires consistency. Like watching a performer on a tightrope, or a live improvis...
Typefesse
Typefesse gives a whole new meaning to type anatomy. Defying logic or reason, each letter manages to squeeze in a contorted foot, leg, and buttock or two while maintaining a surprising level of r...
Broome Sound
Broome Sound, a custom typeface designed by Tré Seals for the third issue of Umber Magazine, intrigues me for several reasons: its important historical reference; its craft; its simple beauty; a...
Roba
At first glance, Roba may appear to be a deco revival display face useful only on rare occasions. And indeed, Franziska Weitgruber has created two subfamilies that echo the geometry- and contrast...
Zangezi Sans
Zangezi Sans doesn’t come across as just another naked sans or neutralized friend of a serif family. Varied stroke weight, fluid counters, and spiky tails give Zangezi Sans a nonbinary vibe. Th...
Ribaasu
As a reverse-contrast typeface in Latin, Japanese, and Chinese, Ribaasu is a hall of mirrors, with the scripts looking at one another in mind-bending and positively unexpected ways.
Movement
I have always been fascinated by the various tools used to create letterforms. How an object like a nib, a chisel, or even an imaginary tool can shape glyphs is what I find most interesting in ty...
Okay
In a marketplace full of puffery, the typeface name “Okay” seems like a declaration of mediocrity, but this may become a new go-to type for when volume and affability need to be high.
Quinn
With type styles and influences as divergent as contrasty Didones, chunky Clarendons and straightforward Transitionals, Quinn is a nicely done portmanteau. It can be used for sedate text as well ...
Roslindale Variable Italic
We love RVI because of its high educational value. In its own humble way, this typeface actually teaches its users. With all of the little changes that pile up, the differentiation between slanta...
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/roslindale-variable-italic/
Brando Arabic
Arabic typography has long suffered from stagnation due to the sacralization of calligraphy. Brando Arabic is an innovative contribution to the Arab world, which now produces publications of all ...
Söhne
Although I agree with Sowersby’s description — “Söhne is the memory of Akzidenz-Grotesk framed through the reality of Helvetica” — I would argue that Söhne contains more Akzid...
Antonia
Antonia is a contemporary serif typeface that interlinks a sharp-edged character with cheerfulness. Combining characteristics that don’t seem to be compatible is one of the most difficult arts ...
Vulf Sans
Business, let’s keep it casual Let’s keep it fun for you and me, so you can see
Nirvana
The visuals for Nirvana are both a throwback and futuristic. An off-the-beaten-path seventies cult, reborn with more technology and burnished lines. They straddle the unfamiliar. The video Anthon...
Viksjø
A reaction to a piece of brutalist Norwegian architecture, Viksjø is an anomaly as a typeface. It lives in a universe of its own, with no equivalent past or present.
Hudhud
There is a fluidity of movement that is very appealing in this typeface. The low contrast and openness of forms helped to create the contemporary feel. Both of these design features capture a sen...
Triptych
Where other fonts are promoted as workhorses, this one is a mule. It is often said that “workhorses” do their work without a murmur, quietly and in the background, conforming to the text they...
Schijn
Type can be a helpful means of escape. The mad toyshop designs of Arthur Reinders Folmer’s Typearture foundry are kind treats to puzzle over in bad times. In appearance, Schijn is a product of ...
Maelstrom Sans
I appreciate and adore Maelstrom and its wacko Italian Futurist approach to reverse-stress letterforms, with the historically noteworthy (and entirely crackpot) E. But I didn’t expect to like t...
Flecha
Reduction in letterform has always been an appealing type-design idea. Trying to find the magical point that removes enough to create something new, but not so much that the vitality of the origi...
Gustella
Thomas’ typefaces are a set of rigorously designed, extensive, and genuinely fresh explorations of a flamboyant genre, seriously playful or playfully serious depending on mood or message. The c...
Laima
Bogidar Mascareñas has done something in type design that I absolutely love: he began with a commonly known premise and took it to a place where no one has been before. Laima: a stencil? It has ...
Arvana
The difficulty in creating a Hangul–Latin multiscript design lies in the disparities between the tools of their original letterform constructions. While Latin type design descends from the broa...
Cloisterfuch
This typeface is far from static. There are hardly any straight lines to be seen. Extreme flaring, waisting, and cupping can bestow a cartoonish quality on type. Cloisterfuch definitely walks tha...
Role
But what is Role all about? Anything. Or, almost. That’s its strength. In fact, when asked to detail what I found interesting about the family, my first thought was, “It’s not interesting.�...
Mexica
With Mexica, Gabriel Martínez Meave sought to create an ideal complement to Nahuatl, the indigenous language of the Aztecs spoken by about 1.5 million people today. His aim, not just to salute N...
Montage
To my mind, Benguiat Montage is the quintessential Photo-Lettering, Inc. typeface. Used on the covers of its Alphabet Thesaurus specimen books during the company’s peak in the sixties and seven...
Public Sans
Why must government design be subjected to utilitarian austerity? Like any brand or institution, governments have their own design sensibilities and needs, and a good typeface can help provide a ...
Omnes Arabic
Titus Nemeth has done an admirable job translating Omnes’ relationship of structure and surface into the Arabic script, creating a design that is unmistakably Omnes while also respecting the pr...
Black Mamba Venom
In an alternate universe, where typefaces are reptiles and designers’ computers are secret laboratories for genetic modification, the Black Mamba is a finely orchestrated accident of interbreed...
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/black-mamba-venom/
Obviously
I think I first fell in love with Obviously while I was standing in front of a six-foot-tall version of it, struggling to frame a selfie. Because it was blown up so big, I could see it wasn’t j...
Haultin
Although Pierre Haultin was a sixteenth-century Parisian punchcutter, the typeface bearing his name looks more like a seventeenth-century Dutch type than a sixteenth-century French one: sturdier,...
Aglet Sans
Maybe it’s because I’m writing this in 2020, both with the benefit of seeing the next iteration of Aglet and also against the backdrop of a particularly tumultuous year, but there is somethin...
Pilowlava
Named after the caverns of space found in lava flows, Pilowlava evokes a feeling of carved-away whitespace like a Cyrus Highsmith drawing but with the mechanics of a CNC router. Straight lines an...
Queezoid
Although invented writing systems are not an alien concept, ones for cultures that don’t actually exist are rather rare. Thankfully, that didn’t stop the cosmically inventive Jeremy Tankard f...
Nostra
Most type families set a consistent style and flex other parameters, like weight, optical size, and slant. Nostra ditches the style-centric paradigm and achieves cohesiveness through tension.
Caslon Doric
Commercial Classics serves as a catalog of typefaces that investigate and bring back to life some of the most notable milestones of English design during the Industrial Revolution / Victorian era...
Birra Bruin
What is obvious from Birra Bruin is that Elena had fun drawing it. We don’t talk a lot about that in our work, I find. In a lot of cultures you’re supposed to live to work, and in reaction to...
Chikki
At first, Chikki seems contradictory: How can something brittle, crisp, and textured evoke a feeling of such warmth and familiarity? If you are familiar with chikki, the Indian snack food to whic...
Clavichord
Clavichord looks tarted up like a scrawny Christmas tree weighed down with a multitude of frills, swashes, flourishes, and ball terminals like so many garish and pendulous ornaments. Sounds godaw...
Kafa
Arabic for “enough!”, this noble design proves not only that actions speak louder than words, but also that typefaces can amplify voices of dissent and resilience.
Eckmannpsych & Cheee
James Edmondson took what was good about Eckmann-schrift and Sintex and brought those ideas to the next level, replacing old design decisions with a healthy dose of funk.
https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/eckmannpsych-cheee/
Découpe
María Carla Mazzitelli, was inspired by gestural graphic expressions, like paper cut-outs (découpes!) and spontaneous handwriting.
CoFo Chimera
Maria Doreuli was able to take the fearless ideas she had as a student to a professional level. I believe the market needs more typefaces like CoFo Chimera — fewer rushed ideas, more confid...
Faune
Even with all of the innovations in contemporary typeface design, one might expect some basic concepts to be set in stone — like what constitutes an italic, for example. Savoie, however, of...
Karelia
As a fan of error, serendipity, and misuse, I’ve always enjoyed the winks of oversized ink-trapped type. Though these days, the form falls more and more into pastiche. Karelia’s Outtakes styl...
Ohno Blazeface
I picture five-year-old James Edmondson, sitting on the floor of his dad’s graphic design studio back in the early 1990s, poring over vintage Letraset catalogs and copies of U&lc from the 1970s...
Hesse Antiqua
Hesse Antiqua is a titling face that, like a particularly fine wine, is best reserved for special occasions. These are letters that can lend a sense of dignity and permanence to titles and inscri...
Reforma
Like other serial or “multiform” type families, Reforma explores versatility by way of a common skeleton wearing different outfits. In this case, though, Lo Celso also wanted to convey the na...
Mohol
The way Katyi allows elements of broad-nib translation to become the raw material for abstraction reminds me of the limited palette that gives concrete poetry its striking power.
FS Kim
FS Kim’s liveliness confidently evokes a calligrapher’s hand. Flair, character, heft, and a touch of self-consciousness — FS Kim is both versatile and really rather lovely.
NN Rektorat
NN Rektorat, a typeface family currently consisting of fourteen cuts, features squarish, geometric glyphs whose origins date back to the early 1930s. Rudolf Barmettler has resurrected the family ...
Berthe
Once in a blue moon, a revival contributes something missing, something lost. Berthe is rarer still because it actually contributes two things that today elude mainstream typography: a congenial ...
Ziza
Ziza is the second digital font release to emerge from Mark van Wageningen’s ongoing experiments in constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing type, exploring the connections between vari...
Heldane
Before I saw Kris Sowersby’s Heldane, I used to lament that Van den Keere didn’t receive as much enthusiasm from type designers as he deserved. Instead of directly interpreting a specific typ...
Empirica
In an era of 1970s-inspired chonky serif typefaces, Empirica, by Tobias Frere-Jones and Nina Stössinger, traces the serif’s historical roots back much, much further. If the Romans had designed...
Bradley DJR
If you’re looking for a blackletter without the baggage, Bradley DJR may be the typeface for you. David Jonathan Ross’ first attempt at producing a blackletter, Bradley DJR is a revival of an...
Tangly
Tangly’s characters are composed by lines with subtle differences in thickness as they move through their square units. Connecting points are consistently placed on the four sides of each unit,...
Garnett
“Over the past few years, Sharp Type have assembled an eclectic team of skilled young designers in an effort to produce audacious, high-quality work, while trying to change the industry from th...
Study
For Study, Jesse Ragan transformed Rudolph Ruzicka’s 1968 hand-lettering into a typeface that “feels somehow calligraphic, metal, and digital all at the same time.”
Mizan
Mizan strikes a balance between aesthetics and legibility and, as such, provides a great starting point for graphic designers working with the Arabic script.
Beatrice Display
A typeface’s identity rarely lies in the design of a single glyph but rather in the texture and rhythm created by the sequence of letters, words, paragraphs. And this is where Beatrice Display ...
Rizado Script
Some strokes wind with a slight kink, some more traditionally swing into curve, and others are blunter, abruptly tapering and expanding. This is one of many instances where this typeface plays wi...
Fern
DJR pushes type past expected usage: whether it’s his super-heavy take on De Vinne that exists somewhere beyond the intended design’s theoretical limits, or the Venetian-inspired Fern that pe...
Brenner
Editorial designer Reed Reibstein: “Type palettes shouldn’t be blandly uniform, especially in publication design. Variety is necessary not only for functional roles (headline versus caption, ...
Antipol
Antipol is like a whirlwind tour of typographic history in a single typeface (Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar’s Electric Circus, Antique Olive, Eurostile, Barry Deck) and yet still manages to b...
New Airport Dot
Margaret Calvert (of British road sign fame) created Dotmatrix in 1970 for lit airport signs. Henrik Kubel’s New Airport Dot adds capital letters and numerals and expands the original single we...
Salvaje Display
Have you ever tried to domesticate a wild typeface? Christian Vargas has tried, and the result is magnificent.
Kalice
The nineteenth century is still going strong — every week seems to bring a new revival of another Barnhart Brothers or Stephenson Blake typeface. Many of them are proudly anachronistic, wit...
Phase
Phase has many faces. While not one typeface by traditional standards, its underlying parametric concept is neither entirely new nor fully explored. With Phase, Elias Hanzer contributes an intera...
Bourrasque
What if a typeface were forced to slant to such an extent that it challenged the limits of the acceptable? What if the slanting happened in both directions, leftward and rightward? And what if th...
Speakeasy Script
While I admire scripts, I don’t have a lot of need for them in my everyday life, so I tend to skip over them pretty quickly when I see specimens come across my desk or announcements arrive in m...
Spindle
Spindle looks like it was created by the space between the letters. As if the letters were formed by moving through the spaces they inhabit. Impacted by the air that then cleaved out a waist. Or ...
AG Choijeongho
Choi Jung-ho is part of the first generation of Korean type designers and is responsible for defining the original shapes of Buri (serif) and Minburi (sans serif) styles. Choi’s work has been a...
Aglet Slab
Aglet Slab is part of a powerful trio of typefaces that XYZ Type launched with last year. Along with Export and Cortado, Aglet Slab hints at what we can expect from the partnership of Ben Kiel an...
ALS Lamon
I still remember being immediately attracted to ALS Lamon because of its incredibly novel concept and brilliant execution. The design has a very difficult brief: first, both upper- and lowercase ...
Artigo Display
Joana Correia of Porto, Portugal, has been around, typographically speaking. A graduate of Reading University’s type design program, she has contributed to Google Fonts and Indian Type Foundry;...