Hello and — oh my — thank you so much for sticking with me despite me managing to address every single one of you ‘Kim’ in the last issue, due to me breaking the mail merge tags. 🤦♂️ This was especially embarrassing because a lot of you are new here, having arrived via the ad I placed in Dense Discovery #326 (welcome!), but it seems like lots of you either didn’t notice, or didn’t mind, or perhaps quite like being called Kim. All three probably apply if you actually are called Kim.
With that little apology out of the way, let’s crack on with some typographic goodness. We’ve got new fonts, new books, new events, new articles, and even new news. How about that?
Jason Santa Maria — whose work as a web designer has been a massive influence on me over the years — dipped his toe into the world of type design last year with the release of Chonk, and I’m so happy to see that he has a new typeface out: Citywide draws inspiration from the letterforms Jason found on a bus roll sign at a flea market several years ago.
I’ve probably lost myself staring at that sign everyday since, thinking about how the type system works while trying to puzzle out some of the unusual choices. Why are letters like P and R so high-waisted in their wide forms, but pretty normal when narrow? Were these boxy curves drawn by hand or mechanically produced? Why does the middle stroke of the G change so much across widths?
This work-in-progress typeface is made up of five widths and five weights, plus italics: 50 static fonts and 1 variable font, all for $30.
TypeMates have just released Gregory Poster — a flared serif that “embraces an enticing mix of spiky and soft sentiment.” Variable, too. I especially love the specimen graphics. Hey, someone should put that in a book! (More on that below…)
Neil Summerour has been busy releasing a lot of new typefaces through his Positype foundry, including the beautiful Analogy — “a contemporary interpretation of the timeless elegance found in Nicolas Jenson’s 15th-century type.”
Iosevka is an “open-source, sans-serif + slab-serif, monospace + quasi‑proportional typeface family” designed by Renzhi Li and it has a nice website, too. Have a play with those stylistic sets!
Tropical Type is a new foundry discovery for me. At least, I think so…? Either way, Tom Cunningham has some really eclectic type designs in his catalogue, as well as some generous bundles — like The Eclectic Font Collection! Many of the fonts are single weight, but still a bargain. $39 for a collection? Go on then!
This one was an insta-buy (literally: I got the email and had bought the book about 30 seconds later): Type Together have just released Letters for the future: Ten years of the Gerard Unger Scholarship, which showcases the 10 type designs that have come out of 10 years of running the programme. I had the pleasure of chatting to Patti about hers, Politik, at TypeParis Now24 last year, while she was still in the design process.
FINE SPECIMENS UPDATE! For a while I was considering starting a separate newsletter just to cover the progress of
Fine Specimens — my next book — but I’m spinning so many plates at the moment, I realised that would be a bit silly. So here’s a new, recurrent section of the newsletter, in which I’ll give you a small update about the book’s progress. Right now I’ve just submitted the
BLAD, and the publisher is about to send their final round of feedback for the WIP cover. Both the interior design and the cover will change between now and me submitting the final files for print, but this is an important stage to get sorted so that the publisher’s pre-sales team can get to work in drumming up early interest. Watch this space (quite literally) for more pretty soon.
Typotheque have just published a new book in the form of New Thai Type and there’s some background — and some very nice graphics — in the foundry’s blog post, New Thai Type: Bridging Tradition and Modernity.
There are so many type-specific and type-adjacent events coming up in the near future. I’ve mentioned ATypI (Copenhagen, 22nd–26th April) and TypeParis Now25 (Paris, 31st May) before; now we can add this year’s Typographics to the list. The conference will be held once again at New York’s Cooper Union on 27th–28th June, although it’s part of a wider group of events happening from 23rd June to 3rd July(!). The lineup hasn’t yet been announced, but early bird tickets are now on sale.
Last week, Jamie and I went along to the Bristol chapter of Petcha Kutcha, as our friend Emma was speaking, opening the night with a 400-second run-through of her lettering process. She wrote about it in the latest issue of her newsletter and you can watch / listen to her talk on the Petcha Kutcha site. All of the speakers did an amazing job in what looks like a very challenging presentation format, and it was great to meet Peter Lord, of Aardman fame, who closed out the night with a look behind the scenes at the chaotic workspaces of stop motion animators. His talk is on the PK site, too.
You might be interested to know that Viktor Baltus is running both his Font Making Course and his True Italics Course again in the very near future. Enrolment for both opens next Wednesday (26th) and closes on the 30th! If you decide to book and you remember to use it, I have an affiliate link.
I’m very, very excited to announce what might very well be the biggest speaking gig of my life: I’m speaking at this year’s Config! So if you’re in or near San Francisco this May, come and join over 8,000 other attendees (oh dear lord) to see me talk about how typography is the foundation of any design system. I’m especially excited to be sharing the Mezzanine Stage with Annie Atkins, whose talk about her work for Wes Anderson’s films (among other projects) was a highlight of my experience at last year’s Berlin Letters.
Oh, and speaking of Figma... the other day I noticed, while renaming a frame, that my “x” character got automatically converted into the correct “×” character when it detected that I was using it for dimensions. I rejoiced and posted a quick video to Bluesky. However, Rasmus Andersson pointed out that it’s actually an OpenType substitution baked right into Inter (his typeface). And then it was pointed out to me that Apple’s San Francisco does exactly the same thing! Nice.
I’m not entirely sure where to link to, but this symmetrically arranged alphabet by Scott Kim (which sadly isn’t on his website) is very, very cool. And also very, very not new.
I was so happy to see the release of Fontself 2.0! This very approachable type design app for iPad has always been lots of fun and my kids love it, but this new version adds a load of more pro-level features; in particular, node editing. I’m treating this as an official reminder to myself to pick it up again and do something proper with it.
The Secret History of the Manicule, the Little Hand that’s Everywhere (found via DBG’s Meanwhile newsletter) — just wonderful. Also, what a great website this is! I can’t wait to visit Messy Nessy’s Cabinet next time I’m in Paris.
What does weight mean? That’s the question posed by John D. Berry in a guest post for Delve Fonts’ blog. In the article, he looks at what actually happens to letterforms at different weights, and addresses the arbitrary way in which type designers delineate different weights or styles.
In a serif typeface with high contrast between the thick and thin strokes, such as Bodoni, the thin strokes usually stay the same in bolder weights, while the thick strokes get thicker and thicker. So the contrast between thick and thin is even greater in a bold weight than in a lighter weight of a typeface like this.
And speaking of Mr. Berry, he recently launched a fundraiser to help finance his ATypI History Project that is absolutely worthy of your support.
Did you see that Monotype released their Future Typography report? I downloaded it, but haven’t read it yet. It sits open on my desktop, yet another window munching away on my RAM. Let this be another note-to-self to actually read the bloody thing.
Over on my blog, I finally published my 2024 in review. I realise how ridiculous that is, given that we’re almost a quarter of the way through the year, but hey, I kept my streak. And it was nice to reflect on what was, overall, a really lovely year. I’m so lucky.
Well done for making it all the way down here. I’ll leave you with a reminder — especially for you new folks — to add yourself to the Readers of Typographic & Sporadic map! This is purely for my own interest, by the way, so approximate location / nearest town is fine. I’m just intrigued to know where in the world this little newsletter is getting read. Less than 4% of you are currently on there, so let’s change that!
