Hello and welcome to a very short, somewhat sweet, and most debatably special edition of the newsletter, in which I’d like to tell you that — just in case you skipped the subject line — the 8 Faces presents: Fine Specimens Kickstarter campaign is live!

TL; DR: Fine Specimens is going to be another hardcover coffee table book and yes, it is of course about type.

Fine Specimens will be filled with hundreds of beautiful type specimens from contemporary indie foundries all over the world. This book is all about celebrating the incredible type design — and, specifically, the artwork created to promote it — from foundries operating right now. As such, every typeface in the book was created within the last year, and the book itself will serve as a source of inspiration for any designers, directors, and agencies looking for the very latest fonts.

My first thought, when realising that I’d be stuck for a considerable amount of time in the forecourt of a tyre garage, tacked onto the outskirts of a rundown town, harangued by the banter of two car washers working in the same lot, was that of despair. I’d brought my laptop with me in anticipation of a long wait, but somehow this didn’t feel like the kind of place where whipping out a MacBook would be a great move, so a full and unproductive hour or so loomed before me. But then, freed of the ability to get any real work done, I realised I’d been given the perfect excuse to catch up on some RSS feeds and, oh, the liberation! Permission to just read. Among the pile of unread feeds (and, by the way, isn’t it wonderful that people are blogging again and yes, RSS really is still a thing?) was a recent essay from Craig Mod. I’ll point you towards Continuous Uninterrupted Solo Walks and the Adam Phillips interview that Craig quotes, which really resonated with me.

Craig’s motivations for his walks are very much the same as those for my (extremely tame by comparison) ‘wilderness days’, which I’ve written about in the past. In fact, reading Craig’s essay has made me want to get another one in for this to happen once more: “there is no “endgame” of the walking. The walking is conversation. Why would I want to stop having a conversation?”

But now I must apologise, because everything else in this issue is about me. Narcissism! Self-indulgence! Me me me me me! That’s what the algorithm gods demand of us, is it not? But honestly, though, I do try to avoid this behaviour. It’s just that I have so many new things I want to tell you about! And if I’d waited longer to fill out this issue with the ‘regular’ content, I would’ve missed the boat in telling you about all this stuff on time. So, first of all, here’s the big one:

This issue comes to you from that strange mental place that exists after having completed a thing. Waves of euphoria and then the inevitable post-release comedown, the two states ebbing and flowing, back and forth, up and down. How do you feel? they ask. Pretty good? I reply, very much with the question mark. But the residual feeling is a positive one, and I feel so fortunate to have been able to properly celebrate the publication of Universal Principles of Typography with the official release party at bookhaus on Tuesday night.

Before answering some questions from the audience, expertly fielded by Laurence, I did a short speech to thank everyone who came and much of it focused on how, in our current times — digital-first, scroll-addicted, algorithm-dictated — putting anything ‘out there’ so often feels like shouting into the ether. It’s not simply that many people might not actually see the thing we make; it’s that we ourselves often don’t get to experience that sense of having completed something. Whether that’s jubilant celebration, a relieved sense of closure, or anything in between, it’s rare that a thing being out in the world ever feels like an event. So I was really happy to mark the occasion with this release party, hugely grateful to bookhaus and Quarto (my publisher) for making it happen, and overjoyed that anyone turned up. And they did! And they bought books! Real books, from a real shelf, in a real bookshop!

A lot of yesterday and today has been about processing all of that and, in a sense, moving on to the big ol’ “now what?” by composing this issue. I’m sure you’ll be grateful to finally get some respite from me talking about the book constantly. So let’s get on with that.

I’ve got a regular issue of the newsletter brewing in the drafts, but today I’m sending out this short-ish and simple-ish edition to let you know that my book, Universal Principles of Typography, is out. Out out. Out, as in: you could walk into your favourite bookshop today and find it on their shelves. Potentially. Or at least order it from them. Actually, it came out in the US on Tuesday, but today is the UK pub date, which means that it’s now officially out everywhere.

(I realise, of course, that the US and UK in no way constitute ‘everywhere’, but I believe all other countries are getting their stock from these two official publication territories. Funnily enough, the very first customer to receive a pre-order, that I know of, was in Australia. Go figure.)

Anyway, I’ll be so grateful if you decide to buy a copy.

See that “read this email in your browser” link above? It might not look particularly exciting, but if you choose to click or tap it — and please do — you’ll (hopefully) see the improved online version, which now lives on my website. And of course feel free to browse the whole archives, which now live at elliotjaystocks.com/newsletter. Massive thanks to my friend (and former business partner) Keir, who’s been helping me with this integration.

On the face of it, this is a small and insignificant change, and probably no-one but me will care, but this integration work is an important piece of a wider effort to help me consolidate — and grow — all of these various typographic projects I’ve got going on. This newsletter. The podcast. The book. The workshops. Either way, if you do care about these nerdy details (and I know a few of you are guilty of that), let me know and I’ll probably blog about it at some point. Expect to see some design changes to the newsletter soon, too.

The first thing I absolutely have to tell you, right at the top, is that my forthcoming book, Universal Principles of Typography, has been pushed back a little: it’ll now be out on 16th April in the US, and 18th April in the UK. I’ve updated the “book” page on my site with some handy pre-order links, and I’ll update it again with photos of the actual book once I receive my advance copy — hopefully, in a couple of weeks.

I hope 2024 is going well for you so far. I was lucky enough to dedicate a good chunk of that first week back to making plans for the year ahead, and it felt great. I even wrote a load of plans on different sheets of paper, stuck them to the wall, and drew lines between each one, like a crazed detective in a film, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Very apt.

Then the second week hit and my optimism waned somewhat. Whether it was the reality of getting back to all the things, the daunting task of navigating (too many) side projects, or the general state of, you know, the world, I found myself in a bit of a slump. But then my 2024 wall planner arrived in the post, I broke the back of a project plan via an over-the-top sprint plan in Notion, a semi-random “please can you do me an intro to...” email immediately bore fruit, and everything started to feel a little bit more doable again. So, onwards!

And we’re also now just under two months away from the publication of my book: 12th March in the US and 14th March in the UK. It’s available to pre-order from your favourite local bookstore and, if you do choose to pre-order it (thank you thank you thank you), would you mind helping me and my publisher out by pre-ordering it from somewhere that’s not Amazon, please? Bookshop (US | UK) is a great place to start.

I had grand plans to put out another jam-packed newsletter this side of the Christmas holidays, but a whole load of end-of-year deadlines got in the way. But maybe that’s not a bad thing..? I mean, perhaps all those lovely links would’ve just got lost in the festive chaos anyway.

So today I’m keeping it simple: I have some news and that news is that the third episode of my podcast Hello, type friends! is live — and my guest for this episode is Erik Spiekermann!

I recorded our chat back in the summer, when I sat down for a cup of tea with Erik at this house in London. We discussed his successes and failures, his latest typeface neue Serie57®, the relationship between paper and screen, and why Frutiger could very well be the typeface he takes to a desert island.

You can listen to the episode right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and hellotypefriends.com. 🎉 Oh, and, if you know Erik, you won’t be surprised to hear that there’s plenty of swearing in this episode, so, um, cover the kids’ ears!

Have you noticed that it’s Black Friday? Oh, you have? What gave it away? I guess it must be something to do with the oh, you know, THOUSANDS OF EMAILS from All The Brands.

However, if you can forgive the shameless celebration of capitalism, there are actually a few good deals to be found for us type nerds. That’s right, folks: welcome to a short, sweet, special Black Fontday (let’s go with it) edition of Typographic & Sporadic!

Let me be really honest here: my first link is an affiliate link, so I’ll get a small kick-back if you sign up using it. But it’s only that first one; all of the rest of the links are here purely because I thought that you (like me) might appreciate a type-related bargain.

Last week was a good one for a few different reasons; mainly, because I actioned all of my copyeditor’s feedback and managed to send off the almost-final version of my book, Universal Principles of Typography. Now it’s undergoing one final proofread to correct any typos that might’ve snuck in, and then that’ll be it. Done. Off to the printers with not a single look back.

I’m feeling a mix of emotions about this. Elated that the book is very nearly complete. Terrified that I’ve missed something that needs correcting. Proud that this thing will exist in the real world come March next year(!). But something that’s bothered me a little lately is that I’ve focused so much on getting it completed, I’m not quite sure I’ve managed to savour the process of, well, writing and designing a book. So, as this chapter draws to a close (see what I did there?), I’m very consciously trying to be present in the moment. I’m hoping I won’t look back in hindsight — as I have with so many other projects — and think, “oh yeah, I forgot to enjoy that.”

Anyway, lots of new subscribers recently. Hello! And thank you. OG subscribers might notice that I’ve really leaned into the sporadic side of the newsletter this time — it’s been a busy month (see above), and I figured you wouldn’t mind me holding back until I had big ol’ stack of type links for you. Well, today is that day: this is a pretty mammoth issue. So grab yourself a coffee, or a tea, or perhaps something stronger (hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere) and we’ll get going.

The special edition of the newsletter I sent out last Friday was only meant to be a “heads up — the podcast is coming” sort of thing, but many of you sought it out immediately and managed to find the first episode on your podcasting platform of choice, as — much to my surprise — it appeared on Spotify within minutes of sending out that issue, and on Apple Podcasts about an hour later. Weirdly, it’s still marked as “processing” on Google Podcasts, but hey, they’ve literally just announced the imminent closure of Google Podcasts, so there’s that.

Anyway, the important thing is: the very first episode of Hello, type friends! is officially live, and you can listen to me chat away with Jessica Hische right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and hellotypefriends.com. 🎉

But it’s not all podcast podcast podcast in this issue, you’ll be glad to know...

Welcome to this short, sweet, and special edition of the newsletter, which is here to do one thing and one thing only: to let you know (and I’m announcing it here before I post it on social media) that my Other Big Secret Typography Project is... 🥁

... a brand new podcast called Hello, type friends!

The idea is that I sit down with a friend to discuss life, work, and, well, whatever comes up. Rather than discuss the details of type (who wants to listen to people talk about Bézier curves on a podcast?), type is instead the thread that binds these friends together, be they lettering artists, graphic designers, illustrators, or type designers. Listening to Hello, type friends! will hopefully feel a bit like overhearing a couple of mates chatting in the pub. In other words: this is a podcast that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Some episodes even involve actual beer.

I made it.

I actually made it.

After nearly a year of writing and illustrating and designing it, my book, Universal Principles of Typography, is now with the publisher for review. I made a quick video last week to celebrate the moment.

However, like I mentioned in the video, it’s not quite done yet. First the publisher does a copyediting pass, then I action change requests, then they send that version to be proofread, then I fix any last finds, and then that is the final version that goes to print. So a couple of months to go, really. But the ‘main’ deliverable is in the bag.

Aaaaaaargh! Oh, don’t mind me, that’s just the sound of blind panic setting in while I attempt to finish every single illustration in my book before the school holidays are over. But there’s nothing like a looming deadline to prompt some intense procrastination, is there? So please join me in a bit of typographic distraction...

First up, I’m going to sneak in one of my own links — hope that’s alright. I’m really excited to be partnering up with I Love Typography to teach a Mastering Web Typography workshop for ILT Academy at the end of September. Over a weekend (2 × 4-hour sessions), we’re going to deep dive into fluid type scales, variable fonts, colour fonts, OpenType, and the most modern CSS for getting the most out of type on the web. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy — or something a friend or colleague might enjoy — please email academy@ilovetypography.com to book a place!

First of all, a huge thank you to all of you who replied to the last issue with such lovely, supportive messages about the book. I can’t tell you how motivational they were. I mean, I’m motivated to finish the book, of course, but in many ways a finished book is a somewhat abstract concept. Someone saying something like “I can’t wait to buy this and read it” suddenly transforms it into something almost tangible.

After the book announcement (which I’ve now also put on my blog), I was going to take a bit of a newsletter breather, but the type world had other plans, with a load of news that just had to be shared.

I had to check, double-check, and then triple-check that I hadn’t read something wrong, but no, it appears that this is actually real: Off Type (Pangram Pangram Foundry’s new offshoot, which I linked to not long ago) are offering a bundle called The Off Set, which collects all 9 of their typefaces (a total of 45 fonts) in one package for just… $14. Yes, $14. You can see why I had to check this. I bought The Off Set and can confirm that this is a total bargain. I feel almost guilty linking to it.

Happy Monday, folks. It’s a new week — and it’s going to be a tough one because my kids are off school with chicken pox — but I’ve been promising a big reveal for a while now, so here we go. Okay. Let’s do this. Finally. No, you first. Alright, fine...

🥁

I’m writing a book! It’s called Universal Principles of Typography and it’s going to be published by Quarto in spring 2024. Here’s the (WIP) cover:

I wrote the majority of this issue on the trains to / from London last Thursday. I was visiting Erik Spiekermann to interview him for… well, I can’t say just yet. But I can tell you that this is one of the big typographic-in-nature projects I’ve been teasing for a while. I promise I’m going to reveal one of them in the next newsletter! Promise promise promise.

Anyway, onto this issue, which is sporting some small-but-important refinements: the text is now set in Ty Finck’s Def Sans (if your email client supports web fonts), and the images now click through to their respective links rather than showing full-size versions (which you prefer, right?). I’m front-loading this one with a load of URLs that have been open on my phone since attending the most recent Letter Luvvers event, prompted by talks I had with the many fine folks there. I figured I’d share them here, as you fine folks might be interested, too (and phew, I can finally close those tabs).

Happening at the end of this month, Meticulous Ink’s On Paper Festival is a whole week of workshops, talks, demonstrations, and opportunities to — as Athena herself says — “drool over our printing presses and expand your mind via the medium of beautiful paper”. There’s even a free wayzgoose on the Saturday! If you’re not near the Bath area, what a great excuse to come and visit our lovely little corner of the world. The festival kicks off on the 27th.

Weird times at the mo. As part of the big tech industry cutbacks, which I’m sure you’ve heard about, I’m no longer contracting for Google Fonts — for now, anyway. On the one hand, it’s come at the perfect time because it’s finally allowing me to spend some solid daylight hours breaking the back of two very big projects — which I’m itching to tell you about, by the way, and will do very soon, because they’re both 100% typographic in nature — but on the other… well, there’s that whole earning money thing, isn’t there? And I’m really good at filling my time with projects that rarely make any money.

That said, this project (the newsletter) brings me a lot of joy. There’s something about this new creative outlet that I’m particularly enjoying at the moment, although honestly I’m struggling to articulate exactly why that is. Is it that writing issues of this newsletter feels more like composing a postcard than a blog post? Is it the sense of a more immediate connection to you folks? Is it that I essentially get to brain-fart my way through all of my recently saved typographic links for the benefit of like-minded type nerds? Oh, speaking of which…

Rosetta have published an online book called Legibility: how and why typography affects ease of reading, written by Mary C. Dyson and María González de Cossío, and although I haven’t made my way through the whole thing yet, it seems like a great resource.

Hello! If you detect a hint of excitement in this issue of the newsletter, it might be because it was mainly composed while on a plane heading back from Brooklyn, where I spent two wonderful days attending Kinference. This was an event that’s not really a conference, but more an intimate gathering of like-minded folks noodling away on creative conundrums, like the looming clouds of the global economic crisis, the threat of AI in the design community, and most of us just, well, being 40-ish and wondering why everything looks a little different these days. A bit of group therapy, really. And the chance to hug a lot of friends I’d not seen in a long time. Craig Mod said much the same earlier today.

My sustained state of semi-euphoria has actually been bubbling away nicely since I finished running my Universal Principles of Typography masterclass for SmashingConf near the middle of March, and also from when spoke at Letter Luvvers #5 shortly after that. Both sessions were filled with such lovely people, it’s been hard not to feel optimistic about… I don’t know… human connection? I guess that’s the thing — because, hey, let’s face it, it’s not easy to feel optimistic about earning money at the moment. (Wait, is this weird euphoria a stress reaction?) Anyway, on with the show! It’s been a while.

My friends over at FontWerk have just released a new typeface called Hamster and the promotional video for it is just fantastic. Did they actually really make physical characters and then dip them in paint? Who even knows what’s real anymore? I don’t mind either way. I love it.

Today, a super-quick “special edition” of the newsletter (oh, lucky you) to let you know about two upcoming things I’m doing with the lovely folks at Smashing Magazine.

The first is Smashing Hour — a live-streamed chat between me and Vitaly Friedman, which is happening tomorrow at 4pm UK time (check your timezone). It’s going to be a very informal affair, so come and join in, or throw the proverbial rotten tomato, via Zoom.

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?