New Foundry: Alias

New Fonts: Aktiv Grotesk, Ambicase, and more

David James and Gareth Hague met in 1990, working together designing record sleeves which increasingly featured custom designed typefaces and logos. Projects for independent magazines Road and A Be Sea also combined art directed photography and custom type design. Alias was formed in 1996 to design and market these typefaces.

Alias features radical type designs with a strong design element, suitable for both headline and text setting. Gareth Hague describes their origin as “combining traditional drawing values with the computer’s mastery of geometric form.” Alias still undertakes commissions for custom typeface and logotype design, services include designing custom type and digitizing and amending existing typefaces. They also work with design agencies and advertising agencies on typefaces for corporate clients and advertising campaigns.

Perla

from Alias

The display typeface Perla adds new possibilities to unicase typography. It includes an extended set of decorative alternate characters mixing semi-cyrillic and lower case influences. This makes it ideal for composing intricate headlines and stunning word shapes. Use this beautiful didone with delicate serifs and hairlines for packaging and editorial work, for it will add elegance and refinement to any design job.

See all Perla products ›

Ano

from Alias

The strict geometric sans Ano was originally designed for Another Man magazine. It is available in six weights — Eighth, Quarter, Half, Regular, Bold, and Black — each in nine different styles, drawn specifically to create typographic patterns when used together. Ano Regular, Ano Half, Ano Quarter and Ano Eighth have been named to demonstrate how their weights correspond to each other. Ano Half is half the weight of Ano Regular, Ano Quarter is quarter of its weight, and so on. So setting Ano Half twice as the size of Ano Regular makes their stem width identical, as does setting Ano Quarter four times the size, and Ano Eighth eight times the size. This system offers limitless creative options for stacking and combining letters.

See all Ano products ›

Progress Two

from Alias

Progress is the further development of an Alias classic, the unique single-weight display face Enabler. This monolinear sans with a soft, organic edge and striking joins, has eclectic, almost abstracted letter forms. Gareth Hague recognized that Enabler’s design may be a little too adventurous for some users, and decided to make it more “mainstream” without taking away any of its personality. He purified the character shapes, making them rounder, more organic, and ultimately suitable for text and bold weights. The resulting design became Progress — a fluid, streamlined and dynamic type for text and headline use.

See all Progress Two products ›

Aktiv Grotesk

from Dalton Maag

Helvetica may be the world’s most popular typeface but one man is having none of it. Type designer Bruno Maag of Dalton Maag views the ubiquitous modernist typeface’s popularity with a mixture of bemusement and irritation. So he has decided to do something about it. With the Dalton Maag team he has created Aktiv Grotesk, a typeface designed to provide an alternative (and, he hopes, improvement) to Helvetica.

See all Aktiv Grotesk products ›

Ambicase Modern

from Teeline Fonts

Ambicase Modern takes the next step in unicase font design, offering not “either/or”, but rather “both/and”. Each letter in Ambicase Modern is a combination of its traditional upper and lowercase forms, in a modern (didone) style. In modern OpenType-aware applications, Ambicase Modern can be set in swash mode, which features sophisticated decorative flourishes.

See all Ambicase Modern products ›

Sense and Sensibility

from ShinnType

A super family of two contrasting styles of roman with italic, Sense and Sensibility have matching stem widths, vertical metrics, and horizontal scale. Sense is the new modernist sans serif with a “big” look and lots of weights, and Sensibility its humanist counterpart. Compact, elegant, and strong, Sense commands any kind of page, while Sensibility enlivens it — from the largest headline to the smallest text.

See all Sense and Sensibility products ›