Typographer.org

bald condensed from february 2006

I heard something pretty weird a couple of days ago. It appears that when my name pops up in a discussion about type criticism, sometimes my credibility is questioned. In all honesty, it’s quite obvious my credentials are lacking — I have no academic background worth mentioning, I’m not a member of any prestigious association, my work hasn’t been featured in any design book, I don’t teach at any renowned university, I was never published in any trade publication nor did I win any awards. Even worse, I have yet to design and release my first typeface. I think it’s pretty safe to say my credibility is non-existent.

Then again, what is credibility? Is it some kind of diploma? One’s inclusion in an official list of “credible persons”? Do you have to collect a certain number of bonus points of some sort? My take is that it is determined by the people who are exposed to what you do. I trust our readers’ judgement to determine for themselves whether they want to lend me any credibility. And for those who doubt my credibility, be comforted by the realisation that this column is just an insignificant blip in a vast universe of digital chitterchatter.

On to the reviews, and I’d like to start with adding a little postscript to last episode.

Although you can tell from my last review that I’ve always been a FontFontFan, I must say I find the FontFont 37 release a bit disappointing. The new OpenType versions of the four classic FontFont designs FF Dax, FF DIN, FF Meta, and FF Scala are great news of course, but the new releases include a redundant kiddie script called FF Eddie (how many more of those do we need?) and FF Headz, a dingbat font which allows the user to compose — you guessed it — cartoon-like heads. I thought FF Type-Face was a neat little free add-on to FF Rian’s Dingbats, but to sell this as a package... Oh well, to each his own. The only design that grabbed me is FF Karo, a digital Fraktur face in three clever variants. Xavier Dupre’s new FF Megano looks fine but fails to excite me, and sports a couple of Triplex-like details that are quite off-putting to me — my take is that the only good thing about Triplex is the italic by John Downer.

As more and more new typefaces are released in the OpenType format, we’ve also seen a fair number of families getting re-released as feature-rich OpenType in the past couple of months. For example Peter Bilak’s Fedra Sans got augmented with Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, Mark Simonson’s completely overhauled Proxima Nova became serious competition for H&FJ’s Gotham, and the conversion to OpenType of the FontFont library proceeds in earnest.

More than just a re-release in the OpenType format is Bryant by Eric Olsen. Not only did he completely re-draw and expand the original series of typefaces, in addition to the new drawings he’s added Compressed, Condensed and a Pro version with italics. Just like the aforementioned Gotham and Proxima Nova, the family’s roots lie in the American vernacular of monumental lettering on buildings. It manages to stay clear of the corniness I usually associate with rounded typefaces. In addition, a couple of strategically chosen stylistic alternates (a, m, n, u, w and y) allow the user to shift the voice of the typefaces from American gothic to Bauhaus geometric sans, thus broadening their scope. After Klavika and Maple, which were included in Typographica’s Best of 2004 and 2005 - Part 1 respectively, this is yet another fine face from the Process Type Foundry.

Likewise, chester’s Apex New is a major improvement on Apex Sans, originally published in 2003, which he designed with Rick Valicenti. All weights of the type have been revised, and everything heavier than Book has been completely redrawn, plus a Heavy weight was added. Adhering too closely to the geometric principles governing the design of Apex Sans proved to give less desirable results in the heavier weights, with counters clogging up at smaller sizes and a rigid overall appearance. This was another example of a design system working against itself. Comparing both versions reveals the flaws in the original design and shows how those were rectified in this new incarnation.

The dedication shown by these two designers is inspiring, and fortunately they are not the only ones. Both prove to not be afraid to reassess their work and if necessary rework or even retire certain typefaces. For example Eric once explained in a Typophile thread that he discontinued Elderkin because “to me Elderkin and Process Grot[esque] come off as micro variations because they are so project specific (they were initially made for a Russian film festival and were never intended [to] be public). After some amount of reflection, I’m not comfortable adding my take on this period of work. Hoefler and Berlow did (do) a fine job with this stuff so why muddle it up?”. Other examples include Stefan Hattenbach and Josh Darden making unavailable all of their early work, with Stefan offering selected single weights of these early designs as free fonts. They could just as well not care and continue to make a few bucks with them. Instead, they refuse to offer work they deem below par and actually do something about it.

Speaking of dedication — I’d like to take a look at an unexpected and fun package that popped up on the Hoefler & Frere-Jones website. H&FJ Numbers is a collection of 15 fonts consisting of numbers from familiar (and some less familiar) sources. As Jonathan explains on the site, “for more than a century, typefounders considered numbers separately from the provision of other printing types. Nineteenth century type specimen books often displayed a separate section containing fonts of numbers alone, many of which contained unique features suited to specific kinds of settings. (...) The practice of creating specialized number fonts began to disappear at the beginning of the twentieth century, vanishing completely by the dawn of the digital age. But recognizing the usefulness of this practice, H&FJ has revived the tradition with its Numbers series of fonts.” Psy/Ops’ Crash Numbering being one of my all-time favourite free font families out there, I couldn’t help but be smitten by this new volume.

All the faces comprise the digits, punctuation, and monetary and mathematical symbols, plus a supporting cast of characters appropriate to their origins.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but as moderator of Typophile’s Type Identification Board I always get a little excited when typefaces that are requested over and over finally get digitised. The H&FJ Numbers series includes several of those, the first one being Deuce which is modelled after the numbers on playing cards. On top of the pre-existing numbers (with a 0 and 1 added) a set of narrow width digits allow for double digits. Also present are the card denominations and symbols.

Then there’s a couple of fonts which are intimately related to the world of finance. Valuta, which means “currency” in Hungarian (and Dutch), is based on a set of numbers used by Hungarian banknotes between 1947 and 1995 and comes in both outline and solid variants. Another often requested identification is the serial numbers that appear on the U.S. dollar bills, digitised here as Greenback. It is augmented by a range of additional currency symbols and an extended set of fractions.

These handy sets of fractions can also be found in several other fonts — Claimcheck (the numbers on claim stubs used by dry cleaners, parking garages, and checkrooms the world over), Depot (the indigenous lettering of the railroads in the prevalent style of the early Victorian age), Dividend (the perforated numbers made by an antique check-cutting machine), Indicia (the numbers on hand-held rotary rubber stamps), Premium (modeled after vintage gas pump gauges, whose spinning dials tallied both gallons and dollars down to fractional tenths) and Trafalgar (inspired by a style of lettering indigenous to the City of London).

Besides Trafalgar, four other fonts originated (literally) from the streets. The oriental-like Bayside is an adaptation of eccentric house numbers that are native to suburban America, and Delancey is based on the gilded decals made famous by the transom windows of American tenements. Half a world away, the Constructivist stencil numbers of Prospekt remain beautifully fossilised as the house numbers on the streets of modern Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Strasse, modeled after the glazed ceramic tiles commonly used for house numbers throughout Central Europe, sports a number of tasty extras like arrows and borders.

Also from the streets, but this time from public transport, Redbird is named for the eponymous red subway cars that ran on the New York City subway system from 1948 to 2003. And Revenue was inspired by the most pedestrian of artefacts, a receipt from a local delicatessen.