As we’ve written before, one thing that’s been helping us persevere through the pandemic is top-shelf type.
Every Tuesday we spotlight a new typeface release. Here are some of our favorites from the past month. Stay tuned to PRINT for the latest here.
Agatized Formal & Informal
Glyphs make the typographic world go round—and with Agatized Formal and Agatized Informal, Michael Gills has infused his new faces with more than 2,500 of them. (As he details, “There is a saying: ‘Use sparingly.’ Whoa! Not here, no, no, no. Make your Glyphs palette earn its money.”)
Agatized Informal began life as lettering for a killed book project. Gills, who runs Ulga Type, was fond of the character shapes, and eventually fell down the typographic rabbit hole, emerging with a full design—one that he would adapt and refine to produce Agatized Formal.
As for the descriptions of the two display faces, they’re best left to Gills’ signature stylings:
Agatized Informal: “The design is something of an enigma, a curious mish-mash of genres—imagine splicing Uncle Buck and Deadpool into a horror movie—it’s big, bold and funny but it also has a dark side.”
Agatized Formal: “It exudes authority without taking itself seriously, like a plump jolly uncle in charge of a brass band. Agatized Formal is a big, bold typeface with a charismatic presence that commands attention—in a friendly way, of course.”
As for the name, well, “Agatized” does have a meaning—essentially, something that has been fossilized. Yet—
“I felt the name suited the solid, almost rock-like letterforms, but most of all I just wanted a typeface name that began with the letter ‘A.’”
Grab copies of the typefaces, with glyphs galore, here.
Images: Ulga Type
Mireille
Anita Jürgeleit has a history of finding inspiration abroad. While studying communication design, the Hamburg-based creative traveled to Korea and found herself hopelessly in love with the type system she discovered there. She eventually took her passion for letters pro, working as a type designer for URW and lecturing on the subject at Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Hamburg.
Today, she runs Anita Jürgeleit Type Design, and her latest release draws inspiration from a border away in Europe. Mireille, “a typographic homage to French culture,” riffs on contemporary and classic visual cues from the country, and it goes down smooth.
Equally at home on a wedding invitation as it would be deployed in an identity, the typeface covers 100 languages across its seven weights and features more than 1,000 glyphs, standard and discretionary ligatures, as well as swashed alternates.
C'est belle. Find more about the face here.
Malice Stencil
Sure, a typeface design should stand on its own.
But when a face is accompanied by the honest story of its development, with all the typically unspoken brain-grating quandaries in between, you’re left with a deeper appreciation for the tools we so often take for granted in the trade—and the creative struggles inherent to them, bearing lessons all their own.
Scott Biersack’s Malice Stencil began life as a blackletter logotype for his studio website, youbringfire. In 2018, Andrew Fairclough of True Grit Texture Supply contacted Biersack about creating an exclusive typeface, and the two agreed to build upon the youbringfire work, which has even deeper roots in Biersack’s studies at Type@Cooper.
As Biersack details, “The goal of Malice was to create something very true to the pen/brush and the motions of my (left-handed) calligraphy.”
The full story of the typeface is well-worth a read here. Suffice to say, Biersack spent swaths of time working on Malice intermittently. He got stuck—“nearly all of the capital letterforms gave me grief.” Lowercase entry strokes were too sharp and
light. Glyphs were possessed by odd optical flaws. Friends weighed in. He forged on.
Ultimately, Biersack emerged with a calligraphic blackletter-inspired typeface that is simultaneously traditional and modern, supporting 200+ languages, with a textured companion developed with the support of a custom Robofont extension created by Andy Clymer.
Biersack describes the final product best:
“The undulating stems and soft rounded forms give the stencil a soft touch while still able to throw down in the mosh pits. You can let Malice Clean hold its own while Malice Rough does the heavy lifting on grungy band posters, Halloween decor or occult book covers.”
And the name? It’s inspired by the band Bad Omens’ song “Malice,” which pairs nicely with the typeface’s “evil” emojis, drawn with the same Zig calligraphy marker at the roots of the font.
So break out a raven. After all, while the typeface is good year-round, Halloween is right around the corner.
Paper Tiger
If you’re in the market for a set of versatile display faces, Fenotype’s Paper Tiger—“a mesmerizing potpourri of fonts”—offers a varied and veritable design clowder.
“It’s a Victorian Script accompanied by a condensed flared serif in two weights and a chunky sans serif,” Fenotype writes. “Together they make a powerful set for creating logotypes, posters, packaging design, headlines or any display use online or offline.”
Each of the fonts comes in “clean” versions and gritted-up “print” variants, giving users easy exploration of the typeface’s different expressions.
Paper Tiger features contextual alternates and standard ligatures, as well as swash, stylistic and titling alternates.
Check the face out as it purrs to life in Fenotype’s specimens below.
Pacaembú
Home to the 1950 World Cup and the 1963 Pan-American Games, the Estádio Pacaembú in São Paulo, Brazil, is an Art Deco masterpiece—and now, it’s being honored with a typeface.
As Naipe Foundry writes, fonts and football are natural bedfellows, with many teams featuring their own custom faces.
“Football—or soccer—is born in Europe, but becomes magical in Brazil, through the feet of legends like Pelé, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo Nazário or Neymar. The Art Deco influence in lettering follows the same trajectory: It’s brought to Brazil by European designers who teach it to the architects and engineers of São Paulo, who in turn give it a new and unique personality that reflects its tropical surroundings.”
To ring in the 80th anniversary of the stadium, Naipe has created the Pacaembú typeface. A family in seven weights supporting 200 languages, the typeface began as a study of the inscribed lettering found throughout the stadium as part of a wayfinding project by Álvaro Franca that was ultimately benched. In 2019, Felipe Casaprima joined Naipe, and the team brought the effort back to life, imbuing caps with heavier proportions and reworking the lowercase while adding bonus characters and icons.
“The result is a font that sits between the 1940s and the 2020s, built to withstand the harsh reading conditions of wayfinding and stand out when set in all caps,” the foundry writes. “Pacaembú carries the flare and style of Art Deco in just the right amount. It won’t overpower any design or shout at the reader, but it always brings a taste of history to the pitch.”
To pick up a copy, go here.
