Happy new year! In celebration of 2008, let’s take a look back at the year that was. FontShop introduced hundreds of new fonts to our collection in 2007. What follows are a few of the most salient and successful releases.

But before we get to that list, we’re ringing in the new year with an industry first: FontStars™ 2007, the best typefaces of the year on CD. We worked with 14 international foundries to compile 29 brand new OpenType fonts and offer them on a single disc. Never before have the world’s most important new releases been available in one product. Curated by German type expert Jürgen Siebert, we can confidently declare there are no filler fonts on this CD — only quality, useful text and display faces. At a cost far lower than the standard fee per font, the FontStars collection is the smartest way to freshen up your type library.

FontStars 2007 is currently available only in the U.S., Canada, Belgium, Luxemburg, and The Netherlands. Read more and order now »

And now, here’s our Ten Typefaces of 2007 …

ARS Maquette™  A FontShop Exclusive

Early in the year, FontShop was blessed as the exclusive retailer of ARS Type, the work of Amsterdam-based designer Angus R. Shamal. At the foundation of this unique library is ARS Maquette, a clean, reliable neo-grotesque in the spirit of Helvetica and no-nonsense architectural lettering.

FF Meta® Serif

In 2007, sixteen years after the release of Erik Spiekermann’s seminal FF Meta, a serif companion was born. It took three years and three designers to develop FF Meta Serif. All through the ’90s, Spiekermann made several attempts at designing a counterpart for his groundbreaking FF Meta. Fans of Meta frequently asked him which serif face would best complement it. He recommended Swift™, Minion™, FF Clifford™, and others, until he realized that he should just buckle down and draw his own serif Meta. True to his principle of collaboration, Spiekermann enlisted the help of accomplished type designers Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.

Brisa™

Script fonts with an authentic human touch are surprisingly rare. We posted our favorite handwritten type on the FontFeed a few months ago, and Brisa certainly deserves a spot on that list. With two lowercase variants, Alejandro Paul and Angel Koziupa’s Brisa successfully emulates handwriting that is either connected, printed, or a natural mix of both. For a similar look but with the rough contour of pen on paper, see Tiza.

Freight™ Big and Display

Joshua Darden’s type system now has everything a designer needs to build a cohesive identity program or dynamic publication design: a sans, a serif, a face for small text, and these two striking serif families for large type. Use Freight Display for most headlines, and Freight Big, with its extra high contrast, for the grandest texts.

Taz™ III

Luc(as) de Groot is well known for his Thesis superfamily, one of our bestsellers. Taz III marks a slightly friendlier, more casual departure for de Groot, but, like Thesis, Taz III doesn’t skimp on the options — over 15 weights are available, including what might be the thinnest hairline font in existence. Taz III is our first LucasFont in OpenType format. Every weight includes all four figure styles (text and lining numerals in proportional and tabular widths) and an alternate lowercase ‘a’.

Kinescope™

Jumping straight from the titles of a classic film, Mark Simonson’s OpenType script is meticulously crafted with contextual alternates to keep it as natural as its hand-lettered source.

Battery Park™, Chase™, Roadkill™ Complete, Wormwood Gothic™, Forge™

The latest batch of fonts from Rian Hughes’ Device® label is a mess — in a good way. Taking thoughtful inspiration from the gritty aesthetic of urban environments, Hughes dug up the grunge era and made “old” new again in 2007. Celebrate beautiful imperfection with rough and worn letters lifted from asphalt, paint stencils, old wood type, and manhole covers.

Armchair Modern™ A FontShop Exclusive
“Growing up in Iceland, I was exposed to Scandinavian modernism from an early age. My parents had Arne Jacobsen furniture around the house,” says designer Stefán Kjartansson. “Like furniture — type needs to be appealing to the eye, and simple; with a solid foundation, clean lines, and balance.” In that spirit, Armchair Modern is unabashedly ultra-modern, reminiscent of work by Mark Newson and the aforementioned Jacobsen. The typeface “offers domestic sanctuary; the promise of a bright and friendly future by way of a nostalgic past”.

Ambroise™ A FontShop Exclusive

2007 marked the year that FontShop became Porchez Typofonderie’s first and only reseller. Every family by Jean-François Porchez is a winner, but since we can pick only one, it might as well be his most popular. There are hundreds of Bodonis but there is nothing quite like Porchez’s take on the 19th century style originated by Firmin Didot. Ambroise, and its condensed variants Firmin and François, include Didot’s original forms of ‘g’, ‘k’, and ‘y’. Porchez has tossed in a corps of alternates, making Ambroise the most versatile digital didone available.

Softmachine™
Nick Shinn is always experimenting with ways to improve the life of the type user. His latest innovation is a typeface designed to be outlined. Employing the intelligent contextual alternates of OpenType®, Softmachine insures even spacing when outlined, and its round contour prevents the sharp, unsightly artifacts commonly associated with adding strokes to regular typefaces.

Stefan Hattenbach’s Anziano™ deserves a spot on the Best of ’07 list as one of the few new designs that hearken back to classic book typography. Thanks to our friends at Fountain, you can try the Small Caps for free, and when you fall in love with Anziano, come back for the rest.

Free offer no longer available but you can still test and purchase Anziano.

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Fonts used in Typefaces of 2007 graphics: Freight Big, Anziano Ornaments, and FF Meta Serif.

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