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.).
Trick — or treat? The nice thing about modern typefaces is that you can have both. Many of the fonts offered in this month’s newsletter are amazing bags of tricks. Some offer a totally different set of capital letters if you ask them to, link characters with surprising ligatures, look just like messy handwriting, or offer the perfect conditions for reading a 500-page novel. And of course, each of these fonts is a treat — not just visually. Their introductory discounts also make many of them very affordable. Now, it’s not always easy to use all the goodies that these fonts offer. Many layout applications make it unneccesarily difficult to take advantage of OpenType, and keep the fonts’ features hidden from the user. A worldwide group of designers and experts is now asking a major software manufacturer to finally get its typographic act together. Scroll down to learn more about this, and chip in.
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.
One of the biggest changes in the world of type and typography is a geographic one. A sector that was once was almost exclusively in European and North American hands, is now truly global — MyFonts sells typefaces from six continents. The typographic rise of Latin America has been especially remarkable, and this month’s newsletter is proof of that. Of our four Rising Stars, three come from South America. They combine a strong sense of purpose and tradition with the charm and novelty that we have come to identify with fonts from that part of the world. Europe, true to its tradition, is strongly represented in the text font section. Enjoy!
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.
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!
They’re based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a city that, like Liverpool and Manchester, was a one-time center of the industrial revolution. Jonathan Hill is from Sheffield, where he worked as a graphic designer for the thriving local music industry. After several years in a London studio he moved back to North East England to set up his own logo and type design studio. Mariya Pigoulevskaya came to the region from Belarus in 2006 to study Art and Design and joined Jonathan’s studio after graduation. Their company’s type library is a fast-growing and increasingly popular collection of type families — many of them clean, modern sans serifs with an industrial or tech touch. Getting better all the time: here is The Northern Block.
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.
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.
Over the past year or so, we’ve seen a subtle shift in typographic tastes. While until recently the top 10 of our Hot New Fonts was dominated by witty, wild display fonts and scripts, these days there’s a more serious-looking bunch of fonts up there.
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.
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.
Dear reader, get ready for one of the most relevant best-of-the-year lists of the font world. MyFonts’ parade of most popular fonts of 2010 is based on sales, so ultimately this is the list that you voted for. And a fascinating collection it is too, offering striking, charming and highly original faces for all tastes and budgets. Some trends? “Friendly and human” is big, with typefaces sporting rounded corners, soft silhouettes or hand-drawn letterforms. Scripts are going as strong as ever. And two cities have risen to prominence as typographic metropoli, 7500 miles apart: Buenos Aires and Berlin. Those are the trends; these are the typefaces — enjoy! And happy 2011 from the MyFonts team.
In the eight months since Laura Worthington joined MyFonts, she has published an impressive run of original script fonts, all meticulously designed and each of them very successful. Based in Bonney Lake, south of Seattle, Laura Worthington turns her expertly crafted hand-lettering into fonts through “patience, a tendency towards being obsessive over the smallest details, and the ability to focus your attention on work that sometimes seems like you’re watching paint dry.” Meet Laura Worthington, a woman with a plan.
He’s one of those designers who live and breathe letterforms, whose hand-lettered titles and brand names look as if they’ve always been there. Based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Mark Simonson worked as an art director and lettering artist for many years before being able to fulfill a lifelong dream: to become a full-time type designer. Having started out in the pen-and-ink, cut-and-paste era, he has made the transition to digital design with flying colors. Meet Mark Simonson, a contemporary craftsman.
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