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.
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.
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.
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!
This series is gradually growing into a kind of typographic world tour. During the past year or so, we have interviewed designers from Sweden to Thailand, from Brazil to Siberia, from Chattanooga to Japan. This month’s interview takes us to Ukraine — not its capital Kiev (or Kyiv, as Ukrainians prefer to transcribe their cyrillic spelling), but a pleasant southern town on the Sea of Azov. Here, in Berdyansk, is the seat of AndrijType, one of several likable Eastern European font foundries that have joined MyFonts in the past few years. Its one-man typeface library successfully blends Ukrainian-flavored sensibilities with universal typographic common sense. Meet designer Andrij Shevchenko, coming in from the cold.
A southern girl who loves a challenge, Emily Conners is a self-taught type-designer whose foundry has made a big splash in the type industry in a short amount of time.
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!
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!”
If the Best Seller lists on MyFonts are something of a barometer of trends in typography, then there are two main currents — and they are diametrically opposed. One: the minimalism of cool, clean slab and sans-serif fonts. Two: the delight in exuberance, ornament, cheerful irregularity and all that looks handmade. This month, with summer in the air for many of us, the scale has most definitely tipped towards the latter. It’s May, and our Rising Stars — even the Text Fonts of the month — are bursting with joie de vivre. Enjoy!
It’s that time of the year again. Festive scripts reign, supported by a cast of restrained text fonts and sans-serifs. That, basically, sums up what the December newsletter is about: a joyous dance of swirls and swashes to end the year in beauty — and a parade of all-purpose typefaces to enter 2012 with a set of brand new tools. Charm meets usability in this last Rising Stars newsletter of the year. Enough said. A big hand for the month’s most successful new fonts.
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