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.
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.
The award-winning Hipster Script by Alejandro Paul is based on a style of hand lettering that was created for advertising in the 1940s and 1950s yet stills looks fresh today. While the lettershapes have their roots in copperplate script styles, it’s the tool that made the difference. Painting the letters on board or paper with a round brush, the artist created thinner and thicker strokes by exerting less or more pressure, varied letterforms according to context, interrupted the connected flow by lifting the brush. A faithful digitization must emulate all these aspects of brush lettering, and Hipster Script does it very well. Have a close look at the various letter combinations in the sample above, such as the recurring “-er”, or letter pairs such as “ee” and “ll”. These variations are selected automatically for specific combinations using OpenType’s Contextual Alternates function. The result is a convincing imitation of hand-painted letters. Use with OpenType-enabled layout software!
With Christmas only days away, we can’t help looking back at this remarkable year. One of the biggest changes in typography, of course, is webfonts. More and more websites look and work so much better now, being designed with great new typefaces instead of system fonts or type made into GIFs. Web designers can now order most of our new fonts as webfonts. The biggest news: since last week, our collection of webfonts includes thousands of classic and contemporary families from Monotype, Linotype and ITC. Meanwhile, here are some of last month’s most successful new typefaces from independent foundries — a varied and enticing bunch.
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.
We’ve seen a few meteoric careers on MyFonts before, but the dazzling feats accomplished by the one-woman foundry called Emily Lime has left us seriously in awe. Based in Greenville, SC, this brand new font company managed to score one best-seller after another these past six months. The energetic Southern Belle in charge of the operation has made fonts in a range of styles, but capricious scripts are what she does best. Her peacefully named Bombshell Pro is at the top of our Hot New Fonts list as we speak. And while her alphabets are nonchalant and untamed, the underlying font technology is smart and nifty. Meet Emily Conners, a newcomer with a punch.
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!
Welcome to our monthly newsletter, showcasing some of the most successful fonts of the moment. As usual, our four Rising Stars are selected from the best selling type families on our list of Hot New Fonts, which is updated daily. For those who design books and magazines, the Texts Fonts of the Month section offers a selection of type families that are equipped for complex editorial tasks and immersive reading.
The number of successful type designers living and working in Berlin today is staggering. Some individual careers are no less impressive. Born and raised in Berlin, this month’s interviewee started up his own typefoundry the moment he submitted his first typeface to MyFonts in 2012 — and he’s been on an upward trajectory from there. Two of his font families made our 2012 and 2013 lists of Fonts of the Year. He hasn’t brought out a single family yet that has not done well. His designs are powerful, unadorned, straightforward, and well-made. Meet the energetic and purposeful René Bieder.
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.
Graphic designer graduated from IPEVE (Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and self-taught type designer. He teaches typography at Universidad Católica de Chile. Francisco is author of the book Educación tipográfica, una introducción a la tipografía, published in Chile in 2004 and then a year later in Argentina. He is one of the founding partners of AGR Diseño and Frescotype. Each studio specialises in font design, information design, and corporate identity design. Some of his most famous typefaces include: Australis, the Gold Prize winning typeface of the Morisawa Awards 2002 International Typeface Design Competition (Tokyo, Japan); Elemental, the 2002 Altazor Awards winning typeface; font families for newspapers such as La Discusión (Chillán), and La Cuarta (Santiago) in collaboration with Rodrigo Ramírez; the typeface for the information system of Santiago Public Transport (Transantiago); the typeface used on Chile road signs.
This month’s interviewee was an international free-font hero while still in his teens, before attending design college, dropping out, and becoming a well-known graphic designer and illustrator. Having made stunning illustrations and typographic posters for clients in the cultural and editorial sectors, he eventually specialized in energetic script and display fonts. His foundry Fenotype has been at MyFonts for a mere three years, but it feels as if it’s been longer. His fonts were featured in our Fonts-of-the-Year lists of 2011 and 2012, making him the most successful type designer from the Nordic countries currently on MyFonts. Meet Emil Bertell, our man in Turku, Finland.
freelance illustrator, graphic and type designer based in Torino, Italy. Graduated in 1989 from ITIS G.B. Bodoni – Graphic Arts. From 2003 to 2006 editor and art director for Miele, free independent Italian magazine. Since 2007 teaching at IAAD – Institute of Applied Arts and Design (Communication & Graphic Design Dept.).
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