Today, Albert Estruch from Atipus (the Barcelona-based studio behind the Fruita Blanch work) got in touch to give-away an early Christmas present — a free download of the Blanch font-family.

“Blanch is a display typeface for the ‘Fruita Blanch’ brand, a family-run company which, for four generations, has dedicated itself to the cultivation and marketing of sweet fruits.

“This typeface family came about from a search for a traditional font with a contemporary feel which reflected the Blanch products; artisanal recipes, adapted to our modern times.

“This is a modular typeface family halfway between a 50s style sans serif and the range of numerical characters which most labelling machines use. These are seemingly contrasting concepts which lend themselves to the creation of an atypical font. The Blanch typeface family is comprised of 6 different font weights; 3 condensed weights and 3 caps weights. They are: Blanch condensed, Blanch condensed inline, Blanch condensed light, Blanch caps, Blanch caps inline, and Blanch caps light.”

Get the TrueType font family by downloading this ZIP:

http://www.atipus.com/tipoblanch.zip (1.4MB)

Thanks, Atipus. Already installed. Very nicely done.

Check the Fruita Blanch application on Identity Designed.

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Sounds nerdy. Probably is. Fun, though!

Take five minutes and play the kerning game.

Developed by interaction designer Mark MacKay for Method of Action, via Noisy Decent Graphics.

Some are pretty tough.

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Just My Type: A Book About Fonts is a light-hearted collection of stories aimed at non-designers.

“Just My Type is a book of stories about fonts. It examines how Helvetica and Comic Sans took over the world. It explains why we are still influenced by type choices made more than 500 years ago, and why the T in the Beatles logo is longer than the other letters. It profiles the great originators of type, from Baskerville to Zapf, as well as people like Neville Brody who threw out the rulebook. The book is about that pivotal moment when fonts left the world of Letraset and were loaded onto computers, and typefaces became something we realized we all have an opinion about. And beyond all this, the book reveals what may be the very best and worst fonts in the world – and what your choice of font says about you.”

“Typefaces are now 560 years old. So when a Brit called Matthew Carter constructed the now-ubiquitous Verdana on his computer in the 1990s, what could he possibly be doing to an A and a B that had never been done before? And how did a friend of his make the typeface Gotham, which eased Barack Obama into the Presidency? And what exactly makes a font presidential or American, or British, French German, Swiss or Jewish?”

Those are just a few of the questions considered in the book.

Author Simon Garfield isn’t a graphic designer or typographer so don’t expect an advanced study of typography. But fair play to the man for choosing a topic close to every designer’s heart, and (I’m halfway through the book) producing what I’m finding to be an enjoyable read.

—

Update: 26 September 2011
Alex pointed me in the direction of Paul Shaw‘s critical review: Not My Type. Admittedly, Paul knows infinitely more about type than I do, so I read his critique (and the comments that followed) with interest.

—

Just My Type is available to purchase from Profile Books or:

on Amazon.com
on Amazon.co.uk
on Amazon.ca

More recommended reads: A few good books.

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“Tourists fortunate enough to be permitted to visit the Flong settlements of San Serriffe during the summer solstice will be rewarded by the colourful spectacle of the Gallee sect stamping and shrieking in unison in the Dance of the Pied Slugs.”

Quoted on The Guardian, a few years before my first birthday.

Elsewhere:
San Serriffe, on Wikipedia
Republic of San Serriffe, on Chiefa Coins

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Betatype
An independent type foundry in San Francisco by Christian Robertson.
On Twitter @bttp

Bold Monday
From the Netherlands, founded in 2008 by Paul van der Laan and Pieter van Rosmalen.
On Twitter @boldmonday

Colophon
An independent type foundry set up by Brighton based design studio, The Entente.
On Twitter @colophonfoundry

Fountain
Owned and operated by Peter Bruhn in Malmö, Sweden.
On Twitter @FountainType

Hoefler & Frere-Jones
Publishes fonts exclusively through its New York sales office and website.
On Twitter @H_FJ

Okay Type
Jackson Cavanaugh’s one-person foundry in Chicago.
On Twitter @okaytype

OurType
Managed by three partners since 2003: Fred Smeijers, Corina Cotorobai & Rudy Geeraerts.
On Twitter @OurTypeTweets

P22
Creates computer typefaces inspired by art, history, and sometimes science.
On Twitter @P22TypeFoundry

Porchez Typofonderie
Founded in 1994, Porchez Typofonderie is an independent digital type foundry in France.
On Twitter @typofonderie

Process Type Foundry
The Minnesota-based trio of Eric Olson, Nicole Dotin, and Alice Savoie.
On Twitter @processtype

TypeTogether
Created in 2006 by type designers Veronika Burian and José Scaglione.
On Twitter @TypeTogether

Typotheque
Run by Peter and Johanna Biľak, collaborating closely with Nikola Djurek.
On Twitter @typotheque

Village
The union of eleven young type foundries from around the world.
On Twitter @vllg

Can you recommend any others?

Wood type image courtesy of Thinkstock

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Choosing typefaces is one of the two most important choices you make when designing a book. Aside from a cover photo or illustration, it is the detail that is most out there in front of readers. Fonts* used on a book cover make the initial reading impression and, when properly chosen, prepare readers for how the reading experience will feel when they turn to the first page.

I know of two ways to select typefaces for book projects. First, the lazy — though not necessarily uninteresting way — is to choose superfamilies comprised of both serif and sans serif fonts. The other way is arguably the more creative way, and is what, intuitively, one expects to pay a book designer to do: dope out perfect matches for each book he or she works on.

A few of my favorite type superfamilies are Fontin/Fontin Sans, Liberation Serif/LiberationSans, and Scala Pro and Scala Sans Pro. (As a bonus, both the Fontin superfamily and the Liberation superfamily are open source — that is, free to use.) There’s also an interesting list of forty superfamilies in an article on Peyton Crump’s Viget Inspire blog. Stay on your toes, however, as not each of these pairs is suitable for making books.

The second way to pair types is the “hard,” creative way; the doping-it-out kind of way, where the book designer does the matching. And that leads to the two ways to pair serifs and sans serifs: by contrasting or by matching.

Contrasting, at first blush, is by far the easier of the two ways to work out pairings. Theoretically, nearly every difference provides contrast.

Some obvious points to compare are letter height, x-height, stroke weight, character shapes, and direction of the axis (vertical or angled). The most practical contrast, however, when using serifs and sans side-by-side are roman to bold — the more extreme, the better; and size — one of the fonts should be at least a few points larger than the other.

When matching types, there are certain combinations that work naturally, because of the weights, shapes, and proportions of the characters. Oldstyle Serif types, with their angled stress and mild difference between thin and thickness of stroke, pair nicely with Humanist Sans Serifs — Minion and Frutiger, for instance.

Other Oldstyle Serifs such as Jenson, Bembo, Caslon, Garamond, Palatino, and Sabon, combine well with other Humanist Sans Serifs such as Eras, Gill Sans, and Lucida Grande.

Transitional faces have a vertical stress and the contrast of thin and thickness of a character’s stroke is more obvious than with Oldstyle faces. Some examples of Transitional Serifs are Bell, Bookman, Bulmer, Caledonia, Joanna, Mrs. Eaves, New York, Perpetua, and Times Roman typefaces. Transitionals are paired well with Geometric Sans Serifs such as Avant Garde, Avenir, Bernhard Gothic, Century Gothic, Eurostile, Futura, Kabel, and Univers.

Modern typefaces have much more pronounced contrast between the thin and thick of their stroke than the Transitionals, and larger x-heights. Examples of Moderns are Bernhard Modern Roman, Bodoni, Didot, Fenice, New Century Schoolbook, and Walbaum. Geometric Sans Serifs, as with Transitionals, make nice pairings with Modern Serifs.

For book design, I stop here, except for my desire to sometime set a book in Optima, a Near-Serif Sans.

*A word on the two separate and distinct terms, typeface and font. A typeface is the name under which all the characters (letters, numbers, punctuation marks), in all styles (roman, italic, bold, etc.) and sizes, of a particular design are unified. A font is a typeface in a single size and a single style. So Bembo is a typeface, but 10 point Bembo Italic is a font.

—

Many thanks to Stephen Tiano for sharing his knowledge. You can read other book design-related articles here on his blog, and follow Stephen on Twitter.

Font combination resources

• Four techniques for combining fonts, by H&FJ
• Best Practices of Combining Typefaces, on Smashing Magazine
• The Big Book of Font Combinations, priced $24.95, from Doug at BonFX
• 7 New Typeface Combinations for Book Design, on The Book Designer
• 3 Great Typeface Combinations You Can Use in Your Book, on The Book Designer
• 19 fonts in 19 combinations, on BonFX
• The non-typographer’s guide to practical typeface selection”, on Authentic Boredom
• Combining Type With Helvetica, on FontShop
• Top Ten Typefaces Used by Book Design Winners, on The FontFeed

Image courtesy of Thinkstock

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“Arcano was born with drawings of special glyphs in Chinese ink. In each letter you will find symbols, diamonds, leaves, and more. I usually work with Chinese ink because the black is always so deep and sharp. The substrate was a Japanese calligraphy paper, used because it’s smooth, bleed-proof, and the warm white of the sheets makes the ink come out even more.

“I studied calligraphy more than 10 years ago, and in a way, I stopped for a while because of my Mac. The calligraphy world is very extended and there are people that work solely in that niche. You need practice, time, patience, and of course good taste.

“I’m a graphic designer, web designer, and typographer. I have always had an interest in writing, and I developed 10 fonts last year. My studio is called Resistenza.es, basically we are two — me and Paco González. We have a lot of collaborators and friends who help us when we need an extra bezier.

“Arcano has been scanned and traced, with Fontlab, the best typography software that I know. It was a lot of work, spanning four months, 26 letters and 10 numbers. There are no commas, dots, or accents, and I recommend Arcano Type for large text.”
— GIUSEPPE SALERNO

Giuseppe kindly agreed to give five of you a copy of his true type font (or you can buy it here for €30).

On Wednesday I’ll randomly select five names from the comment thread on this post, then send winners an email with Giuseppe CC’d so he can send the file.

—

Update: Wednesday 23rd February
The winners are: Carlos, Juan, Mindi, Arvin, and Wendy.
Thanks for sharing your favourite typography vids.

—

All I ask is that you include a link in your comment to one of your favourite typography-related Vimeo or YouTube videos with a sentence or two describing what it shows (the less “views” the better — I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen our fair share).

I struggle to think of giveaway requirements that have some form of side-benefit to you, so if you have future entry suggestions, I’m all ears.

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A gallery of the end titles from Warner Bros. movies (1924-1967), collated by designer Christian Annyas. Mouse-over each image (there, not here) to reveal the movie.

“Unlike other studios Warner Bros. managed to maintain consistency in their designs. Their logo, which hasn’t changed much since the early 1930s, is present in every design they’ve done.”

On the same site is a similar collection for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM).

Interesting to see the progression in style when scrolling through the years.

“Almost all designs from 1925 to 1936 are the same: a calligraphic script type. Later, a more formal script was used (1939-1942) while various other designs reused from 1944 to 1947.”

If you like those, here’s a small collection of movie title sequences I enjoyed.

Nice work, Christian. Via Veer.

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Quick mention for FontShop’s education page that includes useful typography PDFs.

PDFs on offer:
Meet Your Type: A Field Guide to Typography (52 pages)
Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips: Seven Rules for Better Typography (9 pages)
Type Anatomy: A Primer of Typographic Terms (2 pages)
The Right Font for the Job: Beyond the Look of the Letter (9 pages)

Download for free.

Via We Made This.

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• Blanch font family, free download (26)
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Five of you can each scoop a freebie, and all you need to do for a chance to win is leave a comment telling me the last typeface you used for a design project, mentioning why it worked.

I’ll draw five winners at random this coming Wednesday (9th June), updating the post with the names and emailing each person individually.

Here’s a small sample of the type goodness on offer.

Akimoto (with 3 weights)

Affair

FOSU

Oxygen (with 6 weights)

Regardless of the draw, the HypeForType categories (above) are definitely worth a browse.

——

Update: 09 June 2010
I’ve emailed each of the five winners with details on how to collect. They are Don Fennucci, Sam, Julien, Jaz, and Gonzo. Congratulations! Thanks very much to everyone who commented.

——

Published on David Airey, graphic designer

Related posts on David Airey dot com

• Blanch font family, free download (26)
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• Just My Type (14)
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