It’s either/or, this month, on MyFonts’ list of popular new fonts. The crop of successful new typefaces is neatly divided into playful, informal script faces, and cool, clean sans-serifs; not much else in between. Apparently, those are the quintessential typographic tools in this day and age, and who are we to complain? Our foundries offer a wealth of possibilities in both genres, and there is a lot of quality out there. In the elevated realm of typographically sophisticated text faces, there is more nuance, as our selection below shows. Happy browsing to all, and for those professionals who come to TypeCon later this month: we are looking forward to meeting you at our booth!
As the northern hemisphere slips into summer — almost imperceptibly, in some places — our type designers make every effort to provide us with fonts that lighten up our screens and emanate a sense of fun. This month’s display fonts offer soulful grooves, well-wrought decoration, soft-spoken clarity and bouncy mirth; and our text fonts are the latest in smart, elegant yet modest functionality. It’s June: the new season in typographic finesse begins here.
With so many new typefaces coming out every week, it’s those that have a clear purpose or add something genuinely new to the typographic palette that capture attention and stand out from the crowd. Of course, fonts that simply offer fantastic value for money also stand a good chance of getting noticed. This month’s newsletter for successful new fonts offers a bit of each: the original, the useful, the affordable and the downright gorgeous. Enjoy!
The month is February, and we figure it’s going to be such a good month that twenty-eight days simply won’t do this year. So we’re in for an extra day to enjoy work, make an early start on the spring cleaning or, for some of you, celebrate that all-too-rare birthday. More importantly, we’re getting one more day to enjoy good typography and gorgeous fonts, monomaniacs that we are. This month’s crop offers you scripts from some of the best specialists around, unruly fonts from a couple of newcomers, and three eminently usable text fonts. Enjoy.
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.
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.
This month’s interviewee left Buenos Aires almost a decade ago to study type design in the Netherlands. He put down roots in Amsterdam and set up ReType, one of the country’s most productive and versatile type foundries. An avid reader of books on type history, he is equally inspired by ancient calligraphy, Dutch modernism and vernacular lettering. He has roamed the streets of Amsterdam to research letterforms that few Dutch designers ever paid serious attention to, and digitized some of them into beautifully made and wonderfully usable fonts. Meet Ramiro Espinoza, an Argentinian designer in the land of windmills.
He is the co-founder and owner of Dalton Maag, possibly the largest independent studio in Europe specializing in custom type design. Educated in Basel in his native Switzerland, he has worked and lived in London for two decades. His company recently developed a huge plurilingual font system for Nokia and has presented their bespoke font for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Following many requests from our customers, Dalton Maag’s superior typefaces have recently become available for retail on MyFonts. Meet Bruno Maag, at your service.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last year Daniel Hernández left his native Chile for Buenos Aires, Argentina — arguably the typographic capital of South America — to become a full-time type designer. His dedication has paid off. In the brief period since his first typefaces appeared on MyFonts, he has become a regular on our bestseller lists. His typefaces are also quite special, with that mixture of novelty, fun and craftsmanship that we have come to know as, somehow, typically “latino”. Having published his first fonts with Sudtipos, he is now part of LatinoType, a successful new Chilean foundry with international ambitions.
Laura Condouris is a calligrapher, illustrator, typeface designer and occasional comedienne located in Charm City (also known as Baltimore, Maryland). “I studied fine art in college (at MICA),” Laura says, “but regretted never getting a background in graphic design. When I became a full-time calligrapher, I became really interested in typography and letterforms. After lots of frustration and tears trying to teach myself font design, my first font, KatieRose was released in Spring 2012.”
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.
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.
It does not happen very often that we interview designers right after they’ve signed up with MyFonts, and we’ve never interviewed a group as large as Fontyou. But then, the subject of this month’s Creative Characters interview is not your average type design studio. The Paris-based initiative has an ambitious plan: finding new ways to design and produce fonts. Using online tools, Fontyou establishes fruitful relationships between people with complementary skills — lettering artists, type designers, font technicians, and more. The outcome: something that’s greater than the sum of the parts — collaborative font designs with originality, quality, and character.
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!
Rational yet friendly: such is the personality of many a typeface today. Many of the fonts featured in this newsletter are the result of the somewhat paradoxical fusion of geometrical shapes — constructed with circles and straight lines — and just enough likable detailing to steer clear of rigidity and iciness. Which is just as well at this chilly time of year, as millions of us in the Northern hemisphere crave silver linings, bluebells and blossoms, and the warm yet sensible curves of well-crafted type.
Best wishes for the brand new year from the MyFonts team — all twelve of us. From our respective locations in Massachusetts, Berlin, Sacramento, Bristol, and Siem Reap, we wish you a splendid, happy and successful 2012 wherever you are.
The name of his one-man foundry is modest: insigne, with a lowercase ‘i’. But his achievements, in the eight years since he launched his first font family on MyFonts, are remarkable. His label carries over ninety typefaces, from informal fun fonts to distressed scripts to ambitious suites, one of which — Aviano — made our Best of the Year list not once, but twice, and has graced Hollywood blockbusters. He has seen more of the world than most of us, and remains hungry for new experiences. Introducing Jeremy Dooley, his eyes firmly on the future.
View options
- Sort by
- ↑ Return to top
