The latest issue of IdN Magazine is a special “font promotional issue” featuring some interesting interviews with foundries who are greying the lines between type design and graphic design like Cape Arcona and Misprinted Type.
The interviews give a unique view into the thought process behind some progressive independent foundries. Pick up a copy if you get a chance, even if just for the fonts included on the accompanying DVD.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This entry is the second in a series of short articles explaining exactly what all those mysterious abbreviations you come across in your typographic lives actually mean. In this installation, the abbreviation we’ll examine is VAG (as in VAG Rounded).

VAG Rounded is a typeface that was originally developed by Sedley Place in 1979 as part of the corporate branding for Volkswagen. The “VAG” stands for “Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft” (which is German for “Volkswagen Incorporated”). In 1989, the font was published for public use by Adobe. Its designers were David Bristow, Gerry Barney, Ian Hay, Kit Cooper, and Terence Griffin.

VAG Rounded is one of many fonts which come bundled with several of Adobe’s industry-standard design programs, such as Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator. Because of the huge popularity of Adobe software (and subsequent proliferation of VAG Rounded), many designers have VAG Rounded loaded on their computers whether they know it or not. It is not surprising then, especially when considering VAG Rounded’s clean, simple, and friendly design, that it has become a very commonly used font.

While the type experts at Adobe identify VAG Rounded as “a variation on nineteenth-century grotesque sans serif designs”, its most obvious distinguishing factor is the use of rounded terminals. This design element gives it a uniquely soft and friendly feeling, making it popular as a choice for many modern logo designs and marketing campaigns (for more on this topic, see this entry on the FontShop blog by Stephen Coles).

In fact, the clean and friendly appearance of VAG Rounded earned it the choice for use on the keyboards of all Apple iBooks and 2003-and-later PowerBooks, further exposing the font to designers around the world.

Another indirect testament to the success of VAG Rounded when used in the context of corporate marketing is GE Inspira, an adaptation of VAG Rounded developed by Michael Abbink around 2002 as part of a visual identity system for General Electric. Some comparisons between the two fonts are made in the following image (from Wikipedia):

I still haven’t figured out how to pronounce VAG Rounded in my normal conversation. My immediate instinct is to make a word from the VAG initials and refer to it as something that would sound like “Vadge Rounded” or simply “Vadge”. But for obvious awkwardness-avoiding reasons I think I’ll just take the time to pronounce each letter: “Vee Ay Gee Rounded”.

In the font business we sometimes pour light-hearted scorn on those who would use Comic Sans, particularly when there’s no particularly light-hearted or funkiness in the subject matter. (When arriving in Lisbon airport, I was amused to see stern warnings about bringing Cholera into the country, set in Microsoft’s most popular font.) Are the people who use Comic Sans “inappropriately” actually worse than other kinds of amateur typographer? Perhaps not in general. At least they have discovered the font menu – one of the first steps on the way to typographic enlightenment.

But every now and then all one’s prejudices come fulfilled in one glorious moment! Recently I took a trip to Germany, taking in the city of Jena (home of Carl Zeiss lenses) as well as Berlin. In a Jena side street, we came upon this laundromat combined with an internet station, call shop and copy shop. There are frankly so many mistakes, even subtle ones like upside-down E’s and H’s, that I can hardly believe it is all an accident, a genuine piece of vernacular use of lettering.

What do you think? Witty joke by a talented typographer? Or not…?

Adam Twardoch and I had the honor last week of meeting with a group of type-related people in Tokyo. The meeting was hosted at the office of Robundo Publishing [English translation], a venerable publishing house, type shop, and private design university all in one.

Robundo houses an impressive collection of typography books, Japanese metal type, and even a replica of a 1921 Adana tabletop printing press that Katashio-san of Robundo is building from scratch based on the original blueprints.

Here are a few photos from that afternoon.

Japanese metal type.

Type forme for Adana press.

More fleurons than you can shake a stick at.

Well-loved Linotype book.

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

Camingo is a highly legible, modern sans serif typeface. Designed for the needs of editorial and corporate design Camingo is not only suited for large texts in small sizes, but is also robust enough to make your headlines stand out. Camingo comes in seven weights. The Camingo OpenType fonts contain a whole slew of typographic features including small caps, fractions, numeral variations, ligatures, and alternate glyphs.

Graphic Stylin is a decorative, stencil script with an old timey feel to it. It works well for headlines and poster art. Included in the font are several handy ink blots, a stylish tailpiece, and two ink bottles. Graphic Stylin is sure to give your projects some pizzazz!

TheNautigal is a contemporary script style, fashionable yet formal with beautiful connectors. It’s great for both casual use and sophisticated projects!

Yevida is a script font with a slightly Arabic twist. It includes a number of advanced OpenType features, including alternates, ligatures, and old style figures. We like its elegant flair, which makes it perfect for weddings and invitations.

Name that font.