New Helvetica documentary clips posted!

For those of you fiending for the upcoming Helvetica documentary, you can now get a quick fix to help tide you over… four new sample video clips were just posted on the official site for your guilty type-nerd pleasure.

December 2006 Rising Stars

Every month we add new, innovative fonts and sign up new foundries. In the December 2006 Rising Stars, we show you our top-selling new fonts, including:

Laramie Pro is a distinguished contemporary and versatile script font with approximately 1,500 characters including Western European, Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, and Romanian.

Silk Script is a graceful font, perfect for invitations and other projects requiring a touch of elegance. It’s available in two separate styles, Silk Script and Silk Script Alt. However, Silk Script Pro unifies both styles in one font, providing 550 characters of sheer elegance.

Joanne Script is an informal handwriting design. This fun font has a sharp, angular feel, which lends itself to casual messages, greeting cards, post-its, journals, you name it!

Aquiline is based on a cursive italic style, meaning writing that was done fairly quickly but skillfully with a square-edged nib. Aquiline has a strong personality and works well for invitations and projects requiring legibility, elegance — and a little bit of adventure.

Top 5 weirdest dingbat fonts

I was looking through a listing recently of picture fonts on MyFonts, and realized that there are some pretty weird ones there. Being a lover of all things weird (you should see my Netflix queue), I couldn’t help but share my findings with you all. So, without further ado, I present to you the top 5 weirdest dingbat fonts on MyFonts (drumroll please)…

#5: LTC Creepy Ornaments

This collection of weird images was uncovered by Lanston in their research of historic decorative material. I’ve seen a lot of these kinds of odd-ball Victorian printers’ ornaments stashed away in random corners of various letterpress shops. Every time I see a new one I imagine a bustling print shop, circa 1895, being run by men with big mustaches… all of them completely high on absinthe, brainstorming ideas for new disturbing ornaments.

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#4: Dingfatz

What can I really say about this one? Big is beautiful.

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#3: Peepod

The first time seeing these curious shapes, it took me a minute to realize that the reason they were so familiar was that I had spent some very personal time with them. These are all silhouettes of the plastic drain-type thingies that are almost always at the bottom of public urinals.

I’m so curious to know how the guys at T-26 went about collecting these shapes… I have no idea what I would think if I walked in to a public restroom to find some dude taking a close-up photograph of the urinal.

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#2: CA Subbacultcha

I guess in some ways the weirdo images in this font might be considered our generation’s equivalent of the Victorian stuff in the LTC stuff above (#5). They remind me of the retro-appropriation and collaging / juxtaposition that is used so much by the ever-weird Church Of The Sub-Genius. We are now approaching total obscurity. (sidenote: This font is named after a Pixies song!)

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#1: Stalker

At present, it’s pretty hard to make anything of the default sample images of this font on MyFonts, but I’m not so sure that’s really even a bad thing for our average visitors… all I can really say about this font is “disturbingly weird”. I love it.

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Special Mentions
Some acknowledgement is due to the following dingbat fonts for being unique and/or interesting, without necessarily tipping the weirdness scales:

Rorschach – psychologists’ ink blots
Olympukes – free icon font depicting the “true spirit” of the Olympic games
Patriot Kit – different camouflage patterns from different countries
Mr J Smith – mix and match facial features to recreate a person’s face
Dos De Tres – Mexican luchador wrestler masks
Soupirs – While the actual shapes of these dingbats aren’t too dissimilar to traditional typographic ornaments, the source material is pretty unique.

Dec. 2006 Design Trends: Holiday Fonts

When it comes to holiday typefaces, most people look for script designs, picture fonts, or decorative initials. We have a small assortment of each to show you below. We suggest using the fonts at large sizes for your invitations and other holiday projects.

Fete is a two-weight script family. Fete Regular presents itself as a distinctive script with an unusual luxurious flare, while Fete Super was deliberately designed to further express exuberance. The name comes from the French “fête” which means “festival.” Fete Super is a font that sparkles with the freedom and fascination of a wonderful festival of fireworks in celebration of something noble like Bastille Day.

Snowmany Snowmen features fifty (count ’em) Snow People, perfect for creating Seasonal Greetings for homemade Christmas Cards, decorating your children’s “Thank You” letters - or just printing them out for your kids to color while Uncle Frank’s shovelling out the driveway!

Contempo Elan is a new script that comes in two flavors. Contempo Elan Grand Script is an elegant, hip alternative to a more traditional formal script. Contempo Elan Ornamental is a festive calligraphic script, perfect for any holiday announcement that requires a classy, celebratory typeface design.

Flat10 Holly is a decorative pixel font for Flash and other graphic images. You should use it at a size of 10 pixels or at multiples of 10 (20, 30, 40, etc.).

LTC Holiday Ornaments features over 80 printers’ ornaments and covers many holidays including Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and more. There’s even a pirate to represent international “Talk Like a Pirate” day. LTC Holiday Ornaments joins the Lanston Collection alongside the popular Christmas Ornaments. LTC Holiday Ornaments contains additional Christmas ornaments as well.

Venice Initials are a redesign of a 15th-century Venetian original by an unknown calligrapher. They work well as drop caps and monograms. Use them at large sizes.

Be sure to check out our holiday fonts for all your seasonal events and projects.