Type Slugs 2005-02-09

News and notes on about marks you use to make news and notes.

In this edition: The February Linoletter; new fonts from FontHaus; Numbers from Hoefler and Frere-Jones; CreativePro.com gives you the top ten steps to great type, and handmade type-hats.

The February LinoLetter

This month’s LinoLetter announces some delightful “hidden gem” goodies:

• Eduardo Manso’s serif font Bohemia. This is described by Linotype as having a “cunning and elegant essence” that “shows off refined letters that evoke the Transitional style typefaces like Baskerville, though most Baskerville-like designs tend not to be as curvaceous as Manso’s!” The font has had wide critical acclaim and is well-designed, having good presence at various sizes, and may prove to be a worthy alternative for other well-known and well-used text faces. They invite you to try it out here.
• Bertram Plain and Escript, two energetic and fun fonts for those who want the comic book look withouth having to use The Font Which Must Not Be Named.
• The lively and lovely script Bargell.
• And our favorite: Linotype’s Complete Typeface Catalog, A-Z. This book, a comparative steal at USD $16.95, is Linotype’s complete portfolio in printed book form, updated to the present. Certain to be a favorite on the studio shelf (or the nightstand) of the typophile in your life.

FontHaus Gives You The Works

This month, FontHaus announces the avalablility of The Works, a compilation of the entire P22 font collection on CD-ROM. It’s available for Windows or Macintosh, Truetype and PostScript for $999 the set, or a combined Mac/Windows set for $1,479 (licensed for 5 CPUs).

They also offer new selections: Cachet, Houston Pen, Picayune Intelligence Roman, Time Script, and Mahsuri Sans, priced ranging from $19.95 to $41.95 the single and $124.95-$156.95 the collection; also a variety of lovely and nostagic Show Card fonts (available for $29 singly or as a set of 4 from $59, in Mac, Win, and OT formats.

H&FJ Has Your Number

Each and every year, Pentagam carefully selects twelve typefaces for its well-known Pentagram Calendar, typically from a variety of designers past and present for a variety of solid reasons. This year, in a change of traditional approach, Pentagram has chosen faces from one house–Hoefler & Frere-Jones.

Bayside, from H&FJ

To answer this challenge, H&FJ developed a range of fifteen fonts composed of number, punctuation, and symbols–no letterforms. This collection is named, appropriately, Numbers.

The range is a great deal of visual fun and excitement. With infulences from digital displays to script house numbers to register and adding machine tape, we dare anyone not to find some personal emotional resonance with the fonts in this set (we particularly like Bayside and Premium)

A one-CPU license runs USD $129.

Type Mastery in Ten Easy Steps

One of the reasons we love type is because when it’s used well it’s a thing of true if not completely ineffable beauty.

Seriously, though, type is just like any other communications tool; it’s used best when it’s used well. Hundreds of years of exploration into type has resulted in observations that ring fairly true.

While there isn’t a canonical list, at least not as far as we know, CreativePro.com’s contributing editor John D. Berry published a top-ten list as his most recent installment in his dot-font column series. They speak basic good sense in typesetting. Among our favorites:

• Use real italics
• Use real small caps-or none at all
• Give the lines enough leading
• Dont’ justify narrow columns

Read his well-illustrated advice, as well as get the other six, in his column here.

A Tip of The Top

And, finally, from the “Just Plain Cool Stuff” department, comes a selection of warm ‘n’ cozy stocking caps with a bright cheerful monogram using Fedra Dsiplay Heavy.

“B” Mine? (image copyright typotheque.com)

Typotheque’s Typohats are unisex, one-size-fits-all, and available in 8 colors. Complete information can be had at Typotheque’s page here. They’re so darned cute we think they pretty much sell themselves.

Cost is EUR 35 by the each, and very commercially smart; not made in sweatshops, but rather by designer Lieke Kempen, who “hand-knitted them while watching TV during long winter nights”.

Additional mad props to Microsoft Typography. We love those guys!