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| Echoing Pascal, I could either spend days honing a brilliant piece of prose into the few lines at my disposal, or I could do justice to the contents of font 002 and mention everything we have in store for you. It never fails to surprise me how original, well-crafted and useful the typefaces are that we look at in our Type Board meetings and choose to take into the FontFont library. And when I think I’ve seen it all, something comes along like Alan Greene’s FF Atma. Did you know what Mid Caps were? Or Quarter Caps? Here is Alan’s own explanation:
Along with FF Atma, many other new FontFonts—both text and display—are featured in this issue, with great little typo-examples created by Mark van Bronkhorst, Julie Fraize, and Alan Greene (yes, that man again!). I often wish I had more time designing exciting things like packaging, magazines, books, ads, posters and especially all those little pieces we read and see every day. Because then I could work with all the typefaces shown in this issue. Food packages, for example, are a natural application for FF Jambono and FF Tartine Script. Xavier Dupré has an uncanny talent for fresh letterforms that look easy-going and totally relaxed. (My fellow type designers know that nothing is more difficult to achieve than apparent informality and spontaneous-looking characters.) Our other faces from France remind us that Claude Garamond was a Frenchman, too. FF Parango and FF Reminga are Xavier Dupré’s take on the classics: elegance combined with witty informality—in the best French tradition. This little French revival is made complete by FF Bastille Display, a font package from one of the country’s “old” masters, Albert Boton. The package contains Bauhaus-inspired FF Studio and FF Aircraft; FF Zan, based on headline letters originally designed for a book project; and FF District Bold, a heavy, linear sans serif design. Albert Pinggera, the designer of FF Letter Gothic, has finally finished FF Strada: another complete sans family, one that combines the Dutch influence—Albert studied in the Netherlands—with a slightly warmer background—he grew up in the Alps, speaking German and Italian. The Bauhaus in pre-war Germany redefined typography. Their print shop mainly used one typeface in several sizes and weights: Schelter Grotesk. Christian Schwartz has drawn a revival as FF Bau, updating the family for contemporary typographic needs without rationalizing away the spirit and warmth of the original. Most designers associate Futura with the Bauhaus. It was, indeed, praised as the “typeface for the new age” back in 1927. Christopher Burke is the authority on Paul Renner, Futura’s designer. Christopher has already designed FF Celeste, a very useful serif in the “modern” tradition. His new FF Parable is another versatile text typeface. It was designed with small text sizes in mind, which makes it perfect for purposes such as dictionaries, listings, bibles, lengthy introductions, etc. Typefaces for text are 95% stereotypes and only 5% deviation from standard letterforms (unlike some FontFonts for display which deviate a lot more from that standard). It still surprises me to see how far apart so-called “normal” text faces can still be. Geographical distances also matter: while Gallic informality may owe something to the southern climate, sterner northern conditions seem to generate more disciplined, geometric typefaces. FF Olsen is to FF Parango what Volvo is to Citroen—it is precise, well-constructed and totally practical. And still a fresh, uninhibited approach to slab serif design. Morten Olsen builds on the same Danish tradition as Ole Søndergaard does. The doyen of Danish typographic design, Knud V. Engelhardt, was Ole’s influence and himself responsible for a very distinct style. While this specific style has not been noticed very much abroad, it is ubiquitous in Denmark, from street signs to the alphabet of the Danish Railways. FF Signa has joined the large families like FF Fago, FF Meta, FF DIN by adding new versions in every FontFont release. One cannot talk about large families without mentioning FF Dax—also present here with more cousins and nephews, like Small Caps and Wide Italics. Did I mention FF Meta Condensed Italic? Other FontFonts are forever growing as well. FF Cocon now has Condensed Italics and Extra Condensed weights, and FF Rekord has a new Italic, while still offering its cool icons for the music business. FF Eureka adds a Mono Condensed, and FF Elementa Rough features, well, rough contours. Idiosyncratic is a word often used when describing the FontFont library. One of our first releases, back in 1994, was FF Fontesque. Nick Shinn has done it again, this time without serifs. It’s called—not surprisingly—FF Fontesque Sans, and it is just as wacky as its older cousin. Sometimes the hardest thing about type design is finding the right name. When we first saw Per Jørgensen’s pseudo-Arabic and make-believe-Hebrew types, we loved the ironic play with letterforms: one culture of writing blended into another. The situation in the eastern Mediterranean being what it is right now, however, made finding names that would not be considered to insult either culture quite a challenge. We think calling them FF Bagel and FF Falafel presents an elegant solution. The foods nourish and please quite peacefully around the world, as will these typefaces, too. Talking about names: we all know the meaning of SNAFU, so I don’t have to spell it out here. Jonathan Hitchen’s FF Snafu is a soft stencil font, offering lots of alphabetic choices—even a “lazy mix.” FF Nelio from Sami Kortemäki also takes an ironic look at type design: it plays off the current notion of bitmappiness-equals-modernness. The design’s marriage of what seems 19th century dish towel embroidery with 21st century cell phone rendering produces a typeface useful in a surprising number of situations. A bitmap italic may sound silly, but it works. As does Eddie Baret’s FF Eddie, which looks as if it was roughly scrawled with the right hand by a left-handed child. It’ll find its uses, I’m sure, since it is totally charming in its innocence. At the other end of the typographic spectrum is FF Alega, described by its designer, Siegfried Rückel, as being very legible even in long text in spite of its constructed, technical appearance. Finally, there is FF Peecol Pocket from Eboy. This is a collection of ready-made figures, including speech-bubbles and clouds. Bitmapped clouds! A few of the new releases seen in font will look familiar from the FontFont catalogue. Except that, while names like FF Meta and FF DIN are household names to FontFont users, some of the new characters shown will look unusual to “Western” readers. Cyrillic and Greek letterforms don’t appear very often on our horizons, and neither do all the diacritical marks and accents used in CE fonts. CE means “Central European.” We are releasing FontFonts for countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and others who read and write Latin letters, but need a few extra characters and accents to do so properly. Further to the East, a few hundred million people read Cyrillic, and now will be able to use the most popular FontFonts. And we couldn’t ignore Greece, the cradle of Western civilization. Or deprive people in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. For all these, we now have Greek and Baltic versions. And designers in Turkey can also use FontFonts thanks to all the hard work from the FontShop International type department. I know I got carried away (so much for a short editorial), but what else is in font? Peter Hall, our contributing editor, posits the importance of “Typography of News” in this period of heightened interest in all media coverage. Peter analyzes the impact of contrasting outlets for getting the news and emphasizes that type use in all forms for all media has become more crucial as print competes with a range of news sources dependent on electronic typography. Jonathan Barnbrook’s latest editorial adventures are reported by editor Margaret Richardson. Barnbrook designs the Korean Design magazine, maximizes the potential of the square format of the Japanese Kohkoku magazine and creates his Virus typefaces. Barnbrook also travels to Vancouver to art direct the Canadian magazine with a message, Adbusters. FontShop Germany’s marketing director and Type Board member Jürgen Siebert provides insights about the Euro’s difficult birth. And Ian Lynam interviews Alan Greene, designer of FF Atma. Enjoy font magazine. Maybe next time I’ll have enough time to write a short editorial. Erik Spiekermann | |
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