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MoMa Type-Design-Collection

Last edited May 03, 2014

In January 2011, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired 23 digital typefaces for its Architecture and Design Collection. Helped by a panel of expert advisors that included graphic design critics, designers, and historians, MoMA based its decisions on criteria that range from aesthetics to historical relevancy, from functionality to social significance, and from technological ingenuity to economy. This first selection of typefaces represent a new branch in MoMA’s collection tree.

Photo © 2011 The Museum of Modern Art, Timothy Hursle

mystic
zygapophysis
Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies
FontShop Team

OCR stands for “optical character recognition,” a technology that converts printed information into workable electronic data by scanning and identifying individual numbers and letters. Because of its retro-tech look, OCR-A has become a popular choice among graphic designers.

OCR-A was originally designed in 1968 as a machine-readable alphabet. Its functionality was its most important element, instead of its... Read More

grapes
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Do not joke for the bathroom
FontShop Team

Matthew Carter’s modern revival of the 16th-century typefaces of Robert Granjon. According to Carter, the aim was to “make a serviceable, contemporary, photocomposition typeface based on a strong historical design . . . not a literal copy of any one of Granjon's faces—more a reinterpretation of his style.”

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FontShop Team

Erik Spiekermann designed FF Meta to be “a complete antithesis to Helvetica”, because he found it “boring and bland”. His unerring instinct struck a nerve, and FF Meta became immensely popular overnight. Now it is sometimes fondly referred to as the “Helvetica of the 90’s”.

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Hell: one way in and no way out

FF Blur is from FontFont’s earliest period, made in 1991 by British designer Neville Brody. The typeface was developed by blurring a grayscale image of an existing grotesque and then vectorizing what remained. Though deceptively simple, his process was imitated widely afterward, with mediocre results. Notwithstanding the knock-offs, FF Blur entered the zeitgeist of early and mid-1990s design,... Read More

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No occupation while stabilizing

On the way back to the airport from the 1994 ATypI conference in San Francisco, Albert-Jan Pool and Erik Spiekermann discussed Pool’s prospects, Spiekermann knowing that his friend’s employer had just gone out of business. He suggested that if Pool wanted to make some money in type design, that he take a closer... Read More

Miriam Röttgers
Linotype 2006
Matthew Carter
ITC 1978
Erik Spiekermann, Oded Ezer and Akaki Razmadze
FontFont 1991
Neville Brody
FontFont 1991
Albert-Jan Pool
FontFont 1995