Typography is like fashion: trends come and go, and each season has its new favorites, with different shapes and novel concepts. As we noted last month, the one persistent trend this year is chromatic fonts: fonts that can be layered in different colors, combining basic lettershapes with outlines, fills, patterns, shadows and three-dimensional effects, much like in the old days of chromatic wood type. The saga continues: two of this month’s most popular fonts are made for layering. It’s attractive stuff — once you start spicing up your layouts with some of it, it might even become addictive. For the less exuberantly minded, this newsletter offers typefaces that show more restraint: check out our opening sample, as well as the ever-interesting Text Fonts of the Month selection. Enjoy!
Trends in type come and go the way they do in fashion and music (anybody remember grunge?) but sometimes here at MyFonts we are surprised by the things that catch on. Take the current craze in chromatic fonts. That’s the specialist term for display alphabets in a range of variations that can be layered to decorative and dazzling multi-colored effect. We figured that layering text frames would be a bit too laborious for this technique to become a massive success, but guess what? Thousands are buying these fonts, and several recent families in this genre have become hits. We are getting curious to see what people make with them; scroll down to the news section for details on how to share your work with us.
There was a time — not so long ago — when nobody but typesetters bought fonts. Their service to the client was setting up pages of text, set in a typeface from the typesetter’s limited selection. Typically the typesetter chose the fonts himself (it was almost always he). Graphic designer clients might choose fonts from a small list. You wouldn’t believe (unless you remember) how expensive typeset text was. If you weren’t a regular customer, and just needed a couple of pages of body text and some headlines for a brochure, that one-time service would cost you considerably more than, say, a license for the complete Gist family will cost you today. In fact, fonts have become so affordable that many people now collect them for fun — without wondering if that investment will pay for itself in client work. We don’t mind, of course — but make sure you know what font to choose when the time comes to make decisions. There’s a webinar coming up later this month to help you do just that. See our News section below.
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.
Typejockeys is a small studio in Vienna, Austria. They do a lot of different things — from graphic design to lettering and type design. Outside their country they are best known for their fonts — a small but growing library that is much appreciated by typographic gourmets around the world for their spirited originality and technical precision. They just released three great, affordable display fonts: Freude, Carabelle and the wonderful Sauber Script, making this the perfect occasion to interview the two Typejockeys that specialize in type: Thomas Gabriel and Michael Hochleitner. The team is completed by the duo in the background — co-founder Anna Fahrmaier and graphic designer Stephan Kirsch. 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.
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.
He is not one of those type designers who produces a new font family every two or three months. Each of his typefaces has taken considerable time to mature, and it shows: they are thoughtful, original and well-wrought. Rather than responding to passing trends, his Emtype Foundry publishes fonts that are aimed at having a long shelf-life, and his Geogrotesque has been a bestseller ever since it came out five years ago. He is also prepared to pull his weight when it comes to nourishing international typographic culture — he’ll be co-organizer of next year’s ATypI conference, the world’s major annual get-together of type designers. Meet Eduardo Manso, an Argentinian who has made Barcelona his home.
A decade ago, he was the prince of free fonts. Today, his Typodermic foundry is one of MyFonts’ most successful type libraries, although hundreds of his freeware fonts are still out there. His output is awe-inspiring, his tastes as diverse as can be, and his sense of style spot-on. His tool of choice is the computer. Don’t look for pencil sketches or brush-drawn alphabets in this newsletter; it was all done on the screen — with a trackball. Meet Ray Larabie, a Canadian in Nagoya, Japan.
Before setting up shop as Outside The Line, she was a design director and art director overseeing the corporate image of various companies. After she discovered the possibilities of desktop font design, her life took a new turn. She now specializes in witty, wonderfully usable picture fonts and handwritten script fonts. From the shores of Lake Monona, Wisconsin: meet Rae Kaiser, the Lady of the Line.
He’s probably Germany’s most prolific type designer. He worked at international advertising and packaging design agencies before setting up shop in Munich, Germany. Just the same, he likes to go diving in Hawaii or can be found browsing the Paris flea market for samples of handwriting and lettering. Meet Gert Wiescher, a man of the world.
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