Type resources for designers and brand owners
Meet Hope Sans.
Hope Sans has been selected by the judges of the 22nd Annual TDC Typeface Design Competition to receive the Certificate of Typographic Excellence. It will be included in the Annual of the Type Directors Club, “The World’s Best Typography,” and will also be shown at the 65th Awards Exhibition (TDC65) in New York City.
Meet Neue Plak.
German designer Paul Renner is best known for his Futura design, but Plak, his ‘other’ typeface, is long overdue a rediscovery. Monotype designers Linda Hintz and Toshi Omagari have restored this under-appreciated design, creating a versatile set of 60 weights that draw on the forms of the original wood type.
Meet Madera.
Malou Verlomme’s Madera is a fresh addition to the popular geometric sans serif font genre, intended as a go-to typeface for branding and visual communication.
The perils of piecemeal font licensing.
Whether you’re a startup that recently hit the big time or a legacy brand with offices around the world, a messy font library can cause major headaches.
Tencent expands global presence.
If you’re using a messaging app in China, chances are it’s owned by Tencent. See the brand identity and typeface that is helping Tencent expand to new markets.
Introducing Sagrantino.
Sagrantino is a non-connecting script that traces its roots back to hand-drawn letterforms, and the connection between pen and paper. Named after the Italian wine, Sagrantino is bold and full of flavor, while embodying a sense of freedom and fluidity. Its quirky character shines at larger sizes – making it perfect for headlines, posters, or anywhere type is needed to really make a point. The family is available as OpenType Pro fonts, and has an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.
Type Mixtape: Paula Scher.
In the latest Type Mixtape from the new issue of The Recorder, Paula Scher walks through some of her favorite typography projects from her iconic career.
Introducing Amariya.
Created with screen reading in mind, Amariya’s sculpted, understated elegance is specifically designed for long-form copy in Arabic, Urdu or Persian. Its open shapes and streamlined forms are tailored not just to the digital world, but the flow and rhythm required by someone immersing themselves in words.
The story of PMN Caecilia Sans.
The making of the serif typeface PMN Caecilia from first sketches to usable fonts took more than seven years. Designed by Peter Matthias Noordzij, it is the child of a time when font technology changed rapidly, not knowing which development the next day would bring. Eventually it was released in 1991 and quickly turned into a quiet tip for designers; not overused, and yet selected for prominent applications. Today, more than 25 years later, Noordzij adds a sans serif companion to his first type family and equips it for today’s needs.
SST: a font for everywhere.
The SST font tackles a central challenge of branding – universality. The SST superfamily supports more than 90 languages including Japanese, Thai and Arabic.
Simplified font licensing for Scotiabank.
Scotiabank has long used Frutiger as its brand font. But as they expanded to new digital channels and regions, font licensing became too complex. Until now.
Variable Fonts: making the promise a reality.
Bob Taylor, Monotype’s Font Technologies Director, offers his views on the promise of Variable Fonts and shares how Monotype and the tech industry are bringing this promise to reality. He shares a few Variable Font tests gone wrong, what we are learning, and introduces the newest Variable Font from Monotype.
Part 1: from TrueType GX to Variable Fonts.
Tom Rickner, veteran type designer, shares his personal role in the beginnings of type’s most exciting development in decades.
Part 2: from TrueType GX to Variable Fonts
Tom Rickner introduces Monotype’s first Variable font, available free on GitHub, and shares his research into potential use cases for variable fonts.
Ruq’ah - the new style.
In this feature from the Recorder, issue 2, we speak to the Swiss designer about how his natural aversion to authority has played a role in his approach, and how his work aims to break the boredom of everyday design.
Neue Helvetica comes into its own for TED.
With their first site redesign in seven years, TED turned to Neue Helvetica as the perfect typeface for conveying ideas worth spreading.