Slab Happy: Trilby Reviewed
by Paul Shaw
Although the sans serif was originally a bastard offspring of the slab serif, the latter has been copying the former for the past 80 years, and Trilby by David Jonathan Ross continues this trend. Just as Roger Excoffon and Evert Bloemsma reversed the weight distribution of grotesques to provide a fresh appearance, Ross has done the same for the Egyptian. In doing so, he has managed to avoid the pitfall of ending up with a French Clarendon (think Playbill or Ponderosa), the typeface that has been pigeon-holed as a symbol of the Old West: the typeface of gunslingers and gamblers, of ranchers and rustlers....
More
|
|
Priori Acute: A Twist on 19th Century Display Types
by Paul Shaw
Jonathan Barnbrook, one of the "bad boys" of type design in the 1990s, has mellowed. Priori Acute Serif, his newest font, designed with Marcus Leis Allion, does not have a provocative name, nor is it obviously transgressive...
More
|
|
|
|
Lettercentric: Type as Writing
by Paul Shaw
Type has always aspired to achieve the status of writing—to emulate its freedom, fluidity, and diversity of forms. In the past, type makers have tried to account for the variety in individual handwriting by allowing for a certain amount of randomness in their designs. But this approach is being challenged...
More
|
|
Review: Ten Years of Tipoteca Italiana
by Paul Shaw
A book full of wonderful photographs of printing equipment, type, and printers. The photographs, both historical and new, are not only evocative and informative—they are simply gorgeous....
More
|
|
|
Remaindered: Typography Papers 8
by Paul Shaw
Typography Papers 8 does not tell the whole story of British graphic design after World War II—but it tells a story worth hearing, a story that focuses more on politics than aesthetics....
More
|
|
Diotima Classic
by Paul Shaw
Diotima, originally made as foundry type by D. Stempel AG, has become a forgotten face in the digital age. Linotype has just released Diotima Classic, a family of four weights (light, regular, bold, and heavy) with corresponding italics....
More
|
|
Stereo Types
by Paul Shaw
Although typophiles deride ethnic, "chop suey" fonts--lettering or type that suggests the culture of a specific ethnic or religious group--Paul Shaw defends the genre. He argues that it has a revealing taxonomy and...
More
|
|
Empire State Building
by Paul Shaw
Empire State Building is a font family from Christian Scwartz and Paul Barnes that balances a reverence for history with an understanding of the demands imposed on a face intended for signage....
More
|
|
Flexion
by Paul Shaw
John Langdon created ambigrams as title animations for the film version of The Da Vinci Code. They weren’t used in the movie, but they inspired Langdon to create Flexion, his first typeface....
More
|
|
Arno Pro
by Paul Shaw
Arno Pro, Robert Slimbach's latest design, is the latest font in the designer's Humanist tradition. He calls it “a distillation of his design ideals and a refinement of his craft.”...
More
|
|
|
12
|