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OurType holds a special place in FontShop’s heart because it was co-founded by the clever captain of our Benelux operation, Rudy Geeraerts. The foundry was born in 2002 when Rudy teamed up with Fred Smeijers who is internationally known for his writing and lectures, but above all, for his type designs. Smeijers’ work is sought after by designers seeking to dip into the deep well of contemporary Dutch typography. Seven years later, OurType is now one of the world’s preeminent font collections with over a dozen extensive families from both established designers and promising young guns. This latest batch includes four new releases. Also new this week is an exclusive sans serif family from Alejandro Lo Celso of PampaType and the first collections at FontShop to specialize in Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese fonts.
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Fred Smeijers’ latest creation is already raising eyebrows among the internet typorati, whose contemporary eyes are more accustomed to polished sans serifs. Purposely adopting the blunt and inelegant forms of early German grotesques, Smeijers seems to nod to the past while he winks at those modern designers who truly appreciate it.
While Ludwig is based on grots of the 1800s, it is not a mere revival. It embodies Smeijers’ personal vision of how an early 19th-century sanserif design might look and perform today. While Ludwig᾿s roman shapes are rooted in antique material, its italic is more contemporary in approach. Much like his FF Quadraat, “Ludwig charms simply by being there, without looking too smooth and beautiful,” says Smeijers. His words are proven by the cover of the book Elmgreen & Dragset and Hyphen Music’s album sleeves (shown above).
Along with its glyphs that echo typical 19th century letterforms — like the capital G, for instance — Ludwig includes alternates for G, Q, W, a and g, plus a large variety of ligatures and other fine typographic features necessary for present-day use.
Ludwig’s other significant feature is that it’s been designed as a companion to Arnhem. Both families have the same x-height, cap-height, ascender-height, and descender-depth proportions, and while Ludwig offers more weights, most are shared with Arnhem.
To the Standard version, Ludwig Pro adds small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive scientific superiors and inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols (in tabular and proportional widths); arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and support for all (Latin script based) Western, Central and East European languages.
Designed by Thomas Thiemich, Alto is a no-nonsense typeface that avoids quirky details in favour of down-to-earth usability. Its neutral design is well attuned to daily design needs, suitable for a broad spectrum of subject matter and functions.
With an impressive nine weights, Alto joins a group of contemporary humanist sans serifs notable for their large font families, such as those by Erik Spiekermann and Luc(as) de Groot. Alto is also built around four widths, making it OurType’s largest sans serif family to date. Monospaced versions of each width are also available.
As an alternative to the Standard version, Alto Pro adds small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive superiors, inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols; arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and support for all (Latin script based) Western, Central and East European languages.
With its graceful, high-contrast strokes Lirico appears at first glance too delicate to be a text face. But witnessing a paragraph of text on good paper reveals a design that is both elegant and sturdy, charming and reliable. It is Hendrik Weber’s first commercially available type, though it is by no means the work of a beginner. Weber is an accomplished calligrapher and designer with a fine sensitivity to letterforms. His debut in type design won him a TDC2 award in 2009.
The six-weight Lirico is also available in a Pro version with small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive superiors, inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols; arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and support for all (Latin script based) Western, Central and East European languages.
Maurice Göldner’s Meran grew out of an exercise to construct capital letters from strips of black paper. Its origins make Meran difficult to characterize. A sans? Undoubtedly, but its angular forms might also qualify it as a “contemporary rotunda”. A 3-width, 6-weight text face that works equally well in headlines as it does in small print.
Meran is available in Standard or Pro which adds small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive superiors, inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols; arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and support for all (Latin script based) Western, Central and East European languages.
The work of Argentinian designer Alejandro Lo Celso is often inspired by literary luminaries and the Perec family is no exception. It pays tribute to the genius of French writer Georges Perec, one of the most original authors of the 20th century. The type system will consist of 3 subfamilies, the first of which is this contemporary grotesque with 15 text fonts of roman, italic, and small caps in 5 weights. The rest of the Perec subfamilies will follow soon, each as unique and invigorating as Georges himself, and all exclusive to FontShop.
Hasan Abu Afash was educated as an engineer and developed an interest in Arabic type design later in his career. He started Hiba Studio in Gaza-Palestine in 2007. Among Hasan’s Arabic fonts are traditional Kufi designs like the award-winning Hasan Hiba, along with more contemporary styles.
Our online sampler isn’t yet capable of generating custom samples of these fonts — Arabic scripts require a very different kind of rendering — but you can see all the glyphs of each font by clicking through to their Character Set or contact us for more samples.
Chinese and Japanese Fonts from DynaComware
DynaComware (formerly DynaLab) has been providing high quality fonts for Asian design and communication since 1987. We’re pleased to offer over 200 of their Japanese and Chinese typefaces in both Traditional and Simplified forms.
Our online sampler isn’t yet capable of generating custom samples or displaying the full character set of these fonts (which contain thousands of glyphs each) but you can get a taste of each style in the one-line samples and contact us for extended specimens.
 Founded by Erik Spiekermann and Neville Brody in 1989, FontShop is the original independent retailer of digital type. We offer more than 100,000 fonts from dozens of expert-selected foundries, including our house brand: FontFont.
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