Search Results: Tijmen Ploeger Businessman Portrait 2013

Each typefoundry is unique, but some are more unique than others. Initiated by David Březina from Brno in the Czech Republic, the Rosetta foundry specializes in fonts for writing systems other than the Latin script (the one you’re reading now). Contributing to its growing library of beyond-Latin typefaces is a group of young designers from eight different countries, several of whom have acquired an MA in Type Design at the University of Reading (pronounced “redding” — a town not far from London). We managed to capture three of them at their alma mater, as shown above; they agreed to answer our questions about designing type for the world.

This month’s interviewee was an international free-font hero while still in his teens, before attending design college, dropping out, and becoming a well-known graphic designer and illustrator. Having made stunning illustrations and typographic posters for clients in the cultural and editorial sectors, he eventually specialized in energetic script and display fonts. His foundry Fenotype has been at MyFonts for a mere three years, but it feels as if it’s been longer. His fonts were featured in our Fonts-of-the-Year lists of 2011 and 2012, making him the most successful type designer from the Nordic countries currently on MyFonts. Meet Emil Bertell, our man in Turku, Finland.

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.