A matter of taste
Italy’s typographic modernism under fascism: In the 1930s, graphic designers found in fascist propaganda exhibitions and industrial advertising new spaces where an “Italian”-modernist visual language could be developed.
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Jaini: Glimpsing alternate traditions
A Devanagari typeface whose design references a calligraphic style used in Jain manuscripts.
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Tune in into a stream of updates on everything typography and design. ↓
Kuzushiji recognition with AI
Dr. Tarin Clanuwat – a young scholar from Thailand who specialized in Japanese medieval literature – has developed an AI-based character recognition system, which magically transcribes pre-modern Japanese characters into modern Japanese.
Berlin’s typographic legacy
In 2021, four Berlin institutions collaborated to digitize a large part of their printed type specimen collections and make the images freely available online.
Kopius
This serif typeface is full of surprises. It looks lively, is pleasantly readable, and its italics are independent in their design and full of verve.
Nebiolo typefaces in search of an author
An analysis of the archive material that survived after Nebiolo’s shutdown makes it possible to identify more precisely the role played by Studio Artistico’s director Alessandro Butti, Novarese’s predecessor, in creating Nebiolo typefaces. The case of the photo in the type specimen book PC 570.
Job Clarendon
This variable design turns its back on a common tendency of adopting Clarendon-style letters to text-typeface proportions. David Jonathan Ross and Bethany Heck returned Clarendon to its more condensed 19th-century roots.
Interview with Alexander Nagel
The Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin has published a new video interview with Alexander Nagel, whose career covered all the stages of photo-typesetting in Germany.
Quick News
Congratulations to Emma Marichal, who won TypeTogether’s 2022 Gerard Unger Scholarship for the Ploquine typeface. Marichal designed Ploquine while attending the post-diploma course in type design at Esad d’Amiens. You can learn more about Ploquine and read an interview with Marichal on TypeTogether’s website.
Pierre-Yann is the Recto Verso studio’s art director and the creator of the Typologie typographic color chart collection. After the success of the first Typologie, dedicated to French foundries, he is expanding his collection with a new edition dedicated to Swiss foundries. That unique and ephemeral edition is now available for pre-order on Kickstarter. It features 18 Swiss foundries, including Grilli Type, Optimo, and Swiss Typefaces. The cover will be signed by the Swiss artist Rylsee and the item will include a preface by Roger Chatelain, author of La typographie suisse du Bauhaus à Paris.
After two years of online-only meetings, Fontstand can finally organize an in-person conference again! The 2022 edition of the annual Fontstand International Typography Conference takes place in The Hague on September 9th and 10th.
There is a new online course for learning how to make Variable Fonts. Taught by Arthur Reinders Folmer, it is open to everyone who wants to experiment with variable fonts: graphic designers, creative coders, visual designers, type lovers, and type designers; both students and professionals of all levels of expertise. You can learn in your own tempo with 11 video lessons coving the process from letter creation to HTML & CSS browser animations. The goal is to make this new technology accessible and fun for everyone!