FontShop Newsletter | September 21, 2011

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Jannon by Storm Type Foundry

Secca by Astype

New foundry Storm Type Foundry: Jannon, Walbaum

New fonts from HvD Fonts: Supria Sans, Livory, Reklame

New foundry Astype: Ornaments Accolades, Secca, Toshna

Spotlight: Craig Eliason’s Ambicase Fatface

Internationally acclaimed Czech type designer František Štorm is also a musician, artist, teacher and author. Upon graduating from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 1991, he immediately became assistant to Jan Solpera at the Studio of Typography, eventually succeeding him. In 1993 he founded the Storm Type Foundry in Prague, with the aim of restoring the values of classical typography for the benefit of digital technology users. Initially, he drew alphabets for book printing, then proceeded to alphabets for film and photo typesetting. Now, Štorm uses the experience he gained to make digital typefaces more human. Outside the area of typography, Štorm is probably best known as the singer/guitarist of the legendary black metal band Master’s Hammer.

Walbaum & Walbaum Grotesk

The eponymous Roman types by German typographer, type founder and punch cutter Justus Erich Walbaum represent the first major departure from blackletter in German typographic history. When František Štorm set out to re-imagine the neo-classical serif face, instead of looking for ways to modernize the design, he went the opposite way, analyzing the original types. The super-family includes optical sizes and the surprising sans serif series Walbaum Grotesk.

Walbaum PDF

Jannon & Jannon Sans

The engraver Jean Jannon ranks among the significant representatives of French typography of the first half of the 17th century. In 1621 Jannon published his own Roman type, derived from the shapes of Garamond’s seminal typefaces, with brilliantly cut, elegant italics. Traditional yet sparkling, Jannon’s early Baroque face has an exotic contrast and more generous forms. František Štorm designed an idiosyncratic revival and augmented it with a fluid, poetic sans counterpart.

Jannon PDF

Supria Sans

Supria Sans gets its versatility from being two things at once. It is a close revival of solid, mechanical, 19th-century grotesques, and it is a charming, contemporary sans. Its grotesque side is taken from just beyond the cusp of realist typography. Its gentler side takes its lessons from humanist postmodern designs like Majoor’s Scala Sans, and perhaps most obviously from recent revivals of grotesques such as Olsen’s exuberant Maple. Should the typographer require a less adorable method of italicization than the supplied too-cute italics, a companion oblique fills this need.

Livory

Livory is a Renaissance Roman drawn in the French tradition. Much of its warmth is achieved through the subtle rounding of its corners, a simulation of the way ink spreads when it’s pressed into rough paper. With its modest slope, the italic creates an even, directional texture when set in a block and gently emphasizes short phrases in the context of its Roman pairing. Livory excels at text sizes.

Reklame

Reklame means advertisement. Its vernacular lettering style evokes the quick, broad, sign-painterly strokes of traditional shop windows. Drawn in five weights, each with a number of alternates, ligatures, and fancy OpenType fractionals, Reklame puts the ladder up and gets the job done.

Ornaments Accolades

Victorian ornamental flourishes such as these are often used sparingly. Astype’s nearly exhaustive three-volume set of flourishes allows the typographer to use them a lot — and without worry of too little variation. See the PDFs below for usage tips, examples, and a rundown of the content breakdown of each package.

Series A Series B Series C

Secca

Andreas Seidel’s Secca is a 12-weight type system made for versatility. This contemporary design draws inspiration from the German grotesque letter. With large counters and ultra-low-contrast construction, Secca is adept and able in text and display settings.

Secca PDF

Toshna

Toshna has an interesting pedigree. It’s a new Humanist Renaissance Roman drawn as an homage to early-1950s Germany. The face credits the masters Hermann Zapf and Georg Trump and offers a quietly confident interpretation of letter shape and fit.

Toshna PDF

From Teeline Fonts, Craig Eliason’s Ambicase Fatface, like its skinnier sister Ambicase Modern, explores the relationship between the letterforms of the upper and lowercase. Instead of settling on a single form to represent both cases, as unicase alphabets do, the ambicase school draws both in one. Ambicase Fatface is replete with alternates and swashes. It comes in both regular and poster weights.

Ambicase Fatface PDF