We partly wrote this newsletter in Milwaukee, where the MyFonts team has enjoyed a few days of intensive networking and font-tasting during TypeCon, the international conference organized by the North-American Society of Typographic Aficionados. Not only does this yearly get-together allow us to connect with a growing number of foundries and type designers, it’s also an occasion for the MyFonts team, usually divided by the Atlantic Ocean, to meet up and brainstorm about the future.
The world of typography is continually changing, and MyFonts receives new fonts on a daily basis. Many of these are from small-scale foundries across the world — and these microfoundries continue to challenge the bigger players with great ideas, trend-conscious designs and smart solutions. They’re a bit like microbreweries in the world of beverages — inventing new tastes and improving old ones. But where small-scale breweries usually think globally but act locally, MyFonts allows its microfoundries to reach a global market and provide graphic designers continents away with nifty and influential type tools. Just have a look at this edition of our newsletter for successful new fonts to see what we’re about.
It’s either/or, this month, on MyFonts’ list of popular new fonts. The crop of successful new typefaces is neatly divided into playful, informal script faces, and cool, clean sans-serifs; not much else in between. Apparently, those are the quintessential typographic tools in this day and age, and who are we to complain? Our foundries offer a wealth of possibilities in both genres, and there is a lot of quality out there. In the elevated realm of typographically sophisticated text faces, there is more nuance, as our selection below shows. Happy browsing to all, and for those professionals who come to TypeCon later this month: we are looking forward to meeting you at our booth!
Belated best wishes for 2013 from the MyFonts team! The time for our Fonts-of-the-Year list has finally come. Perhaps you wonder how it was put together. We’ll be brief. Basically, this is a list that you, as our users, have voted for — with your wallet. It is based on sales (revenue, not number of copies sold) of fonts that have first appeared on MyFonts since December 1st, 2011. It’s not simply the total sales volume across the year, because that would give an unfair advantage to those that have been on sale longest. So we’ve looked at average sales, correcting for what we might call the Introduction Sales Peak (ISP), kept the number of font families from the same foundry down to a maximum of two, and made sure popular genres are fairly represented. There you go: a type hit parade like no other. Thanks for helping us put it together.
He is the co-founder and owner of Dalton Maag, possibly the largest independent studio in Europe specializing in custom type design. Educated in Basel in his native Switzerland, he has worked and lived in London for two decades. His company recently developed a huge plurilingual font system for Nokia and has presented their bespoke font for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Following many requests from our customers, Dalton Maag’s superior typefaces have recently become available for retail on MyFonts. Meet Bruno Maag, at your service.
Is it an exaggeration to say that he’s one of the unsung heroes of digital type design? Whenever you read texts on a digital device, chances are you’re looking at a font he’s had a hand in, such as Microsoft’s versions of Arial, Times New Roman or Courier New. Having led the California office of Monotype Imaging in the 1990s, he became a founding partner of Ascender Corp in 2005 and, as their chief type designer, created a huge range of functional type families including the Droid fonts for Google. He rejoined Monotype when they acquired Ascender in late 2010 and recently published the wonderful Massif Pro typeface. While he excels in making useful digital type, he is by no means a pallid geek: he balances supple curves with steep slopes, and nodes with knots-per-hour. No ODS for Steve Matteson, our man at the top.
The range of his work is stunning: from the corporate-yet-friendly logo for London’s Oyster card to exuberant script lettering and powerful handwriting fonts. His best sellers are versatile sans-serifs such as Houschka and Chevin, the latter of which is ubiquitous in the UK as Royal Mail’s corporate typeface. A recent series of sweeping updates has catapulted several of his fonts back onto our Hot New Fonts list. He has a soft spot for the letter ‘g’ — hence the name of his foundry, G-Type. From book covers dripping in blood to the most realistic script face on the market — here is the Nick Cooke story, told in his own words.
Our July interviewee is the co-founder of Alias, a London design studio that made a name for itself producing cutting-edge designs for magazine publishers, music labels, fashion designers and more. To lend their designs an unmistakable personal touch, they make individualist fonts that MyFonts offers under two labels: Alias Collection and Alias. Most of the Alias typefaces were designed by the man whose offbeat headline font for the London 2012 Olympics will be on a billion TV screens as of this week. Meet Gareth Hague, not your average type designer.
Unlike most of our interviewees, Crystal Kluge never dreamt of working OpenType magic or getting the most out of FontLab software. Pens, pencils and brushes are her tools of choice. She’d already found her own enchanting style of lettering and illustration when she was approached by Font Diner’s Stuart Sandler, who had spotted her work when shopping for wedding invitations in Minneapolis’ Uptown area. In 2006 the twosome started the Tart Workshop. It’s a dream team: Kluge draws cheerful, sassy letterforms and pictograms, Sandler makes them into smart and usable fonts with a catchy swing. And the beat, as they say, goes on.
Just over a year ago, a brand new foundry appeared on MyFonts — Hoftype. In twelve months the foundry published an astounding array of useful, elegant and original text typefaces. The man behind Hoftype is Dieter Hofrichter, type designer in Oberschleißheim, near Munich in southern Germany. Hofrichter’s career as a professional type designer began in 1989 when he was hired by H. Berthold AG. In the company’s famous studio he worked with the late Günter Gerhard Lange, the most exacting taskmaster in post-war German typography. This issue of Creative Characters was co-edited with Berlin-based type designer Dan Reynolds, who asked most of the questions and transcribed the answers. Many thanks!
Last year Daniel Hernández left his native Chile for Buenos Aires, Argentina — arguably the typographic capital of South America — to become a full-time type designer. His dedication has paid off. In the brief period since his first typefaces appeared on MyFonts, he has become a regular on our bestseller lists. His typefaces are also quite special, with that mixture of novelty, fun and craftsmanship that we have come to know as, somehow, typically “latino”. Having published his first fonts with Sudtipos, he is now part of LatinoType, a successful new Chilean foundry with international ambitions.
Type design is a craft that requires training and practice. Some newcomers choose to grow up in public, sharing their half-baked first attempts with the entire internet. Others do it differently: they develop their skills away from the public forums, then impress with a series of mature, quality fonts — which in the long run may be more rewarding. Our interviewee this month has followed such a path. His first typeface, released in 2008, was accomplished and singular — Ninfa made clear that, although still in his mid-twenties, Eduilson Wessler Coan knew what he wanted. Four years on, Coan’s dooType foundry has grown into a remarkable little collection of diverse typefaces with strong personalities. Meet our man in Curitiba, Brazil.
Type design is a craft that requires training and practice. Some newcomers choose to grow up in public, sharing their half-baked first attempts with the entire internet. Others do it differently: they develop their skills away from the public forums, then impress with a series of mature, quality fonts — which in the long run may be more rewarding. Our interviewee this month has followed such a path. His first typeface, released in 2008, was accomplished and singular — Ninfa made clear that, although still in his mid-twenties, Eduilson Wessler Coan knew what he wanted. Four years on, Coan’s dooType foundry has grown into a remarkable little collection of diverse typefaces with strong personalities. Meet our man in Curitiba, Brazil.
Type design is a craft that requires training and practice. Some newcomers choose to grow up in public, sharing their half-baked first attempts with the entire internet. Others do it differently: they develop their skills away from the public forums, then impress with a series of mature, quality fonts — which in the long run may be more rewarding. Our interviewee this month has followed such a path. His first typeface, released in 2008, was accomplished and singular — Ninfa made clear that, although still in his mid-twenties, Eduilson Wessler Coan knew what he wanted. Four years on, Coan’s dooType foundry has grown into a remarkable little collection of diverse typefaces with strong personalities. Meet our man in Curitiba, Brazil.
Type design is a craft that requires training and practice. Some newcomers choose to grow up in public, sharing their half-baked first attempts with the entire internet. Others do it differently: they develop their skills away from the public forums, then impress with a series of mature, quality fonts — which in the long run may be more rewarding. Our interviewee this month has followed such a path. His first typeface, released in 2008, was accomplished and singular — Ninfa made clear that, although still in his mid-twenties, Eduilson Wessler Coan knew what he wanted. Four years on, Coan’s dooType foundry has grown into a remarkable little collection of diverse typefaces with strong personalities. Meet our man in Curitiba, Brazil.
This month marks the second anniversary of a change at MyFonts that most of our regular customers have remained unaware of. Since late 2012, a review team of renowned type specialists has reviewed all the work proposed by new foundries. In order to be included on MyFonts, foundries need to prove they’re able to produce well-made, original and technically sound fonts according to our specifications. This has sometimes resulted in months of hard work, but it’s paying off: the quality of new work has been steadily improving. This month’s newsletter of popular new fonts contains the work of several new designers who successfully jumped the hurdle of MyFonts’s scrutiny. Enjoy!
This month marks the second anniversary of a change at MyFonts that most of our regular customers have remained unaware of. Since late 2012, a review team of renowned type specialists has reviewed all the work proposed by new foundries. In order to be included on MyFonts, foundries need to prove they’re able to produce well-made, original and technically sound fonts according to our specifications. This has sometimes resulted in months of hard work, but it’s paying off: the quality of new work has been steadily improving. This month’s newsletter of popular new fonts contains the work of several new designers who successfully jumped the hurdle of MyFonts’s scrutiny. Enjoy!
Belated best wishes for 2014 from the MyFonts team! Convinced, as usual, that the year ain’t over till its over, we waited longer than most other list-makers to compile our overview of the Fonts of 2013. This is a list that you, as our customers, have voted for — with your wallet. It is a font hit parade that is based on average sales (revenue, not number of copies sold), with some correction for what we sometimes call the Introduction Sales Peak, and making sure that popular genres are fairly represented. There you go: your annual barometer of trends in type. Thanks for helping us put it together.
Based in Santiago, Chile, Latinotype has been one of the most successful foundries on MyFonts in recent years. Their type library is a rapidly growing collection of typefaces in a wide array of genres. They specialize in colorful display and script faces, but have recently focused on sophisticated text faces as well. The foundry is owned and managed by a trio of type designers, two of whom have the same family name but are unrelated: Miguel Hernández, Luciano Vergara and Daniel Hernández. Yet Latinotype has worked with about a dozen talented, young designers and hopes to welcome more. Meet three of the most productive type designers in Latin America.
There are many ways of looking at typefaces. Most of the time we’re not even looking at all: we just read. That’s what good type designers keep in mind when they labor to add something meaningful to the huge arsenal of available typefaces. Just like chairs or shoes, fonts can be a means of self-expression or a way to make the world prettier (that’s why people keep thinking of new chairs, shoes and fonts) but their goal first and foremost is to perform a well-defined task — in the case of type, it’s to give people access to a written text. But contrary to popular belief, type is not invisible. It’s a kind of packaging for texts: it carries a subtle message about its content and may bring the reader into a specific mood. The bigger it is, the louder the message. Get ready for yet another selection of popular, recent typefaces that whisper, ask, or shout: “Look at me!”
It does not happen very often that we interview designers right after they’ve signed up with MyFonts, and we’ve never interviewed a group as large as Fontyou. But then, the subject of this month’s Creative Characters interview is not your average type design studio. The Paris-based initiative has an ambitious plan: finding new ways to design and produce fonts. Using online tools, Fontyou establishes fruitful relationships between people with complementary skills — lettering artists, type designers, font technicians, and more. The outcome: something that’s greater than the sum of the parts — collaborative font designs with originality, quality, and character.
Useful: that’s the key word in this month’s newsletter. Whether you’re a professional or a hobbyist, a web designer or an art director developing corporate publications or packaging — you’ll find some extremely affordable as well as extremely sophisticated typefaces in this edition of Rising Stars. Enjoy.
The name of his one-man foundry is modest: insigne, with a lowercase ‘i’. But his achievements, in the eight years since he launched his first font family on MyFonts, are remarkable. His label carries over ninety typefaces, from informal fun fonts to distressed scripts to ambitious suites, one of which — Aviano — made our Best of the Year list not once, but twice, and has graced Hollywood blockbusters. He has seen more of the world than most of us, and remains hungry for new experiences. Introducing Jeremy Dooley, his eyes firmly on the future.
