Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter now officially called Typographic & Sporadic. Somewhat ironically, while looking back through the publish dates of the issues to date, I noticed that I’ve not actually been that sporadic, and have generally sent out a new issue about once a month. So clearly I’ve got some work to do in imposing a bit of chaos.
Stop stealing sheep 4.0
The fourth version of Erik’s seminal book, Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works, has recently been published — you probably already know this. But did you know that you can get the PDF version of the book for free from Google Fonts Knowledge? Okay, I’m probably biased about this, but seriously, that’s pretty cool, eh?
How to spot fonts worth your money
While doing some research for a GFK article I’m working on, I came across this wonderful blog post by TypeTogether: “Quality type: how to spot fonts worth your money” — a must-read for, well, anyone. And good knowledge to pass onto your clients, too.
Prints by Ty Finck
Ty Finck — type designer, web designer, brand designer, musician, visual artist, developer, all-round insanely talented chap — has just updated his site with a new design and a load of ty-pographic 🥁 prints (my dad joke, not his) and I’ve got my eye on the Ampersandwich one. (By the way, if your email client supports web fonts, you’re probably reading this in Ty’s Epilogue as we speak.)
Public
The awesome Sam Valenti IV (of Ghostly International pointed me towards a new foundry called Public from resident Ghostly art guy Michael Cina and friends. Some lovely type here, including the sans originally commissioned for Ghostly’s brand.
Variable fonts on Adobe Fonts
Adobe dabbled with variable fonts pretty early on, but they haven’t really pushed them until now, with the announcement of variable fonts arriving on Adobe Fonts (née Typekit). I really like the UI they’ve created for end users to interact with the variable axes on the site — especially that dial-like control for the slant axis! Good work, mates. Bonus trivia: Jamie’s first ever variable font, the variable version of his recently released SideNote, is up on Adobe Fonts right now.
Anek
Here’s a fascinating article about the creation of Anek, the variable font for the Bangla, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Latin, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil, and Telugu scripts. I’ve been learning a load about non-Latin (urgh, yeah, horrible term) scripts recently, although I’ve only just scratched the surface. Pieces like this are great entry points.
beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf in April
I’ve spoken at Marc’s wonderful beyond tellerrand a few times now. I’m not speaking at the Düsseldorf event in April, and sadly I can’t even attend because it clashes with a family birthday, but I wanted to say that you absolutely should. There are talks for type lovers — Scott Kellum and my Google Fonts colleague Tobias Kunisch are sure to deliver — but really you should just go anyway, because it’s one of the best, friendliest conferences out there. And if Düsseldorf in April doesn’t work for you, there’s always Berlin in September.
2022 in review
Lastly, a totally non-typographic link for you. At the start of every new year, I like to reflect on the one that’s just passed, and this year is no different. I’ve just published “2022 in review” over on my blog. I won’t go into details here because you can read the blog post if you’re interested, but I did want to call out that starting this newsletter has been a real personal highlight, so thank you very much for coming along on this journey.
