His typefaces are as varied as the places he’s lived in. Is that the reason why his foundry is called Schizotype? No, he says, the name was pure serendipity — as was the way in which his love affair with lettering and type began. He came to MyFonts as a hobbyist type designer offering a bunch of carefree and less-than-perfect fun fonts, but quickly honed his skills. He began putting out ever more sophisticated and increasingly successful typefaces, from luscious scripts to idiosyncratic yet usable text types. Meet Dave Rowland, calling from Koh Samui, Thailand.
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.
Several of MyFonts’ team members have just returned home from Washington DC, where we enjoyed the 2014 edition of the yearly TypeCon event. It’s always a great occasion to meet type designers in person — and to spend some quality time with other team members, as we’re usually spread out over two continents. All is back to normal now, which in the case of MyFonts means: permanent change. We’re constantly adding new typefaces, new foundries and new features to our website. If you want to know more about the latter (i.e. the features), scroll down … ’cos we also added a new section to this newsletter: a monthly snippet of home-made awesomeness. Enjoy!
As we are writing this newsletter, spectacular things are happening on soccer fields in Brazil. The world is holding its breath. How unpredictable can a game get? How euphoric a street full of fans? Most of us here at MyFonts are sports fans of one sort or another, but we can’t help wondering: in a world taken over by football*, who wants to read about fonts? Questions, questions. We don’t have a choice. We have to present you with simply the best and the most popular typefaces in a brave attempt to compete with twenty-two men having a ball, and maybe we’ll get your attention. The fonts, mind you, are worth it.
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!”
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.
Each year in January, newsletters follow up in quick succession here at MyFonts. Last week we presented our list of the Most Popular Fonts released in 2013; today it’s back to the future with our monthly Rising Stars. The mission of the newsletter is simple: we present four of the most successful recent typeface families in a variety of genres, plus three families designed for use in long-form texts — hoping to give you some ideas for adding a new color or two to your typographic palette. 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!
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.
They are four designers from Barcelona: Laura Meseguer, José Manuel (aka Josema) Urós, Joan Barjau and Enric Jardí. They’re a loosely-knit collective of independent individuals, each with their own activities as graphic designers, writers and teachers. They have been making and publishing fonts since the early days of desktop type design, and pioneered digital techniques that are now commonplace. Their fonts represent an approach that is, perhaps, typically Catalan: simultaneously adventurous and serious, witty and well-conceived. They recently released a string of new typefaces by Laura and Josema alongside some by other brilliant Barcelona designers. Meet the delegates of Type-Ø-Tones, a foundry that deserves respect.
Font Bureau was founded in 1989 by type designer David Berlow and media strategist Roger Black. Headquartered in Boston, MA, the small foundry employs a staff of full-time designers and its library has been contributed to by the likes of Tobias Frere-Jones, Matthew Carter, Jim Parkinson, John Downer, Leslie Cabarga, Cyrus Highsmith, Berlow himself, and others. “In a big way, all the designers whose work is published through Font Bureau are my latest teachers,” Berlow, a recipient of the SoTA Award, says in his Creative Characters interview. “From them I learn how to look at things related to type today from a variety of stylistic and entrepreneurial perspectives.”
“I think that what makes Cultivated Mind unique is it offers a lot of different styles of handmade typefaces,” says the foundry’s owner and primary designer, Cindy Kinash. “Cultivated Mind doesn’t have one distinct style, as it is constantly evolving and trying to release fonts that you haven’t seen before.”
Typejockeys is a type foundry and graphic design company based in Vienna, Austria, established in 2008 by Anna Fahrmaier, Thomas Gabriel and Michael Hochleitner. This dynamic group does a lot of different things – from graphic design to lettering and type design. “With Typejockeys, it was never our plan solely to produce typefaces,” they said in their 2014 Creative Characters interview, “since our interest in typography extends in a lot of other directions as well. The disciplines in which we work include graphic design (such as corporate design, packaging, editorial, environmental, and digital media), type design (retail as well as custom work) and lettering, which is a little bit in-between those two, if you like.”
Abjad is a multilingual type foundry, with a focus on Arabic and Latin Scripts. The foundry publishes high quality Arabic typefaces, and craft them to work for specific platforms, wither it’s a digital website, magazine, poster, book, or newspaper. Abjad type foundry also focuses on designing typefaces that work well in multilingual situations, where a matching Arabic and Latin typeface is needed.
Philip Bouwsma was born in Boston in 1948 and grew up in Berkeley, California, where his father was a professor of Renaissance and Reformation History. He was given a calligraphy book when he was ten and spent a year in Florence two years later, where he learned Latin and discovered history and art. Bouwsma was originally interested in calligraphy because of its appeal as craft and because it is old; later from copying manuscripts he discovered the unique capacity of the written stroke to record the thought patterns of people from long ago. Only later did he come to see it as art and, ultimately, a new way of seeing the universe.
Abjad is a multilingual type foundry, with a focus on Arabic and Latin Scripts. The foundry publishes high quality Arabic typefaces, and craft them to work for specific platforms, wither it’s a digital website, magazine, poster, book, or newspaper. Abjad type foundry also focuses on designing typefaces that work well in multilingual situations, where a matching Arabic and Latin typeface is needed.
They are four designers from Barcelona: Laura Meseguer, José Manuel (aka Josema) Urós, Joan Barjau and Enric Jardí. They’re a loosely-knit collective of independent individuals, each with their own activities as graphic designers, writers and teachers. They have been making and publishing fonts since the early days of desktop type design, and pioneered digital techniques that are now commonplace. Their fonts represent an approach that is, perhaps, typically Catalan: simultaneously adventurous and serious, witty and well-conceived. They recently released a string of new typefaces by Laura and Josema alongside some by other brilliant Barcelona designers. Meet the delegates of Type-Ø-Tones, a foundry that deserves respect.
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
We know — it’s a busy month at MyFonts, with newsletters landing in your mailbox in quick succession. Don’t panic! It happens only once a year, and last week’s Most Popular Fonts of 2014 is a newsletter many of you devour — literally, if such a thing is possible. With this edition of Rising Stars, it’s back to the future: here are some of the most successful fonts of this month, and the next. Enjoy!
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.
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.
This month’s catchword is “more”. First of all, the MyFonts website itself has been receiving some major (and rather amazing) updates, offering more and smoother ways of testing and installing fonts. Scroll down to the news section for more details. As for our Rising Stars, they are certainly not of the “Less is More” persuasion. Each offers a huge choice of options beyond the basic functions of a font — more ornaments, more swashes and ligatures; or fancy shadows and dynamic fillings for multicolored layering. Finally, this month’s recent text fonts are also rather maximalist in their approach, offering up to eight weights and lots of extra features.
Many of you must have marveled at the number of typefaces offered at astonishing introductory discounts these days. A large, well-equipped font family at the price of a single font — that would have sounded like commercial suicide three years ago. It has now proved to be an effective way of promoting fonts, at least for some. MyFonts, your humble distributor, doesn’t decide about promotions. It’s our partners, the foundries, that come up with these ideas. But one thing we’re certainly pleased about is that so many people buy complete font families now. To have many weights to play with, from Thin to Black, can be so much more rewarding than making do with a couple of weights, just because you can’t afford more... And as this newsletter shows, there are still fonts that become popular simply on the strength of a great design.
Over the years, MyFonts has occasionally received mails from customers worrying about the relatively low number of female type designers represented on our pages. Needless to say, this was not on purpose but simply reflected the situation in the typographic world. However, things are changing fast. At design colleges around the world, female type design students now often outnumber the men. And at MyFonts, our list of productive “type ladies” is growing rapidly. This month’s selection of popular new fonts is a case in point. Successful typefaces from Germany, Denmark and the United States are proving that Fontland is not just a man’s, man’s, man’s world anymore.
In the American typographic landscape P22 takes a special place. Having started out as a maverick art project, they morphed into a foundry specializing in typefaces related to art and history. They became known for their spectacular, award-winning packaging. Then a series of unrelated font projects crossed their path, which they decided to accommodate in separate labels: IHOF (International House of Fonts), Lanston Type, Rimmer Type Foundry, and Sherwood Type. They also publish books and music CDs, and are co-organizers of this year’s TypeCon. All of this is accomplished by a surprisingly small staff, led by Richard Kegler and Carima El-Behairy, husband and wife. Meet one of the type world’s hardest working couples…
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