Type Slugs 2005-12-18

Fresh-cast movable bits of type news, in news digest form.

It’s the dead of winter and typefounders far and wide are coming out with new stuff to empty your wallet and deplete your budget. This edition will take you on a rocket ride around the type market where we find deals and interesting and sometimes very silly stuff: FontHaus has a special deal for us, MyFonts has its usual crop of rising stars, Linotype throws open the doors to the Christmas giftshop, and T.26 brings us things from a urinal . . . amongst other stuff.

Value: FontHaus Brings It

In the monthly mailing to FontHaus customers, the typefounder advertists fonts from $1.50 each. These are actually part of collections, though, which means prices outside the reach of the individual. However, these look to be great deals for the enterprise-level type user.

Amongst this month’s offerings are the EF Font Collection (at $777 the CD-ROM, working out to be about $1.50/font), Neue Helvetica (the full family for $498 or $9.76/font, or singly for $21 each), and the Adobe Library (2,300 typefaces on a CD for $5,995, or $2.60 the font). Until 31 Jan 06, purchasers of the full Adobe Library will get a free black Apple iPod Nano with their order.

FontHaus can be visited at http://www.fonthaus.com

MyFonts: Rising Stars and Holiday Goodness

Viewers of MyFonts’ monthly Rising Stars e-mailer were treated to the hand-drawn V-hand, the exquisitely antique and sublimely Venetian Fifteen36, and Ultimate Ornaments, a set of 47 delicate and decorative symbols.

What The Font?, the well-known font ID service, has also been upgraded. A new “drag and drop” interface aims to increase usability by allowing the user to drag in font pieces and put them together for identification. Of course, all the What The Font? goodness that has made it so popular is still there.

There are also the obligatory run of holiday images, from fonts on ornaments to fonts on dreidls, and Hefeweizen, a strong bold font drawn from Fraktur.

View this month’s Rising Stars at http://www.myfonts.c...tters/rs/200512.html

Linotype’s Christmas List

This month’s Linotype LinoLetter gives us two remarkable fonts: the new font from type legend Hermann Zapf, Palatino Nova, the OpenType updating of the timeless classic recently released; and Candice, a swirly, groovy blast straight from the ’70s, literally: it was designed by Alan Meeks in 1976, and invokes memories of numerous album covers and TV shows.

Linotype also featurs a Christmas symbol font this month, A Christmas-themed gift selection with t-shrts, bags, and scarves amongst other things.

You can visit this month’s LinoLetter by going here.

New FontFonts

Font Shop brings us some interesting and fun things to play with. FF Karo, designed by Martin L’Allier, combines Fraktur with a dot-grid. The effect is startlingly interesting. FF Headz, Florian Zietz’s first design, is an interactive picture font that allows the user to combine faces with bits and parts much in the way a children’s book with split-pages allows mixing and matching of images. And Christina Schultz’s innovative FF PicLig takes advantage of OpenType’s discrtionary ligatures feature to enable the user to create single typographic characaters from emoticons: the “:-)” combination actually becomes an upright “smiley-face”, for instance.

They also update a few of thier longstanding fonts, and this month’s free download is the OpenType FF Meta Pro Book.

View FontShop’s emailer by clicking this link.
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T.26 goes into the Toilet

Typefounder T.26 is well known for daring design, and this months Font Showcase is no exception. Gareth Hague gives us the sans-serif Elephant, Anomoly, Harbour and Sylvia, running the gamut from hard edged to soft and round. Andrew Graham brings us Exuberance Primary, a clean font with the merest hints of handwriting for a friendly note. Jim Marcus’s Entelliant and Anuthin Wongsukakon’s Board bring us fonts with technological play.

But, saving the best for last, is Carlos Segura’s Peepod. This dingbat font is very familiar to anyone who’s ever used a men’s convenience; we find a range of shapes that are based on the lattice designs of urinal deodorizers. There is interest contained in the myriad designs – who knew there were so many? This should be just the gift for the type lover on your list who has an interesting sense of humor.

Peepod has to be seen to be believed. The other fonts are exciting too: visit this month’s T.26 Font Showcase at:http://www.t26.com/fonts.php

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!