davidthedesigner

slap bang in the middle

Well here we are at the halfway point in this little series dedicated to the avoidance of Helvetica. And, for a while at least, my selection process becomes a little easier (though I suspect that Q is going to prove a tough prospect). But back to the Ms, and first up is the typeface that would rule the world if the world was run by designers of a certain age:

Meta was designed in 1984 by Erik Spiekermann, and originally developed as a commission for a corporate typeface for the Deutsche Bundespost, though it was never adopted for use. Meta was designed to be a readable, sturdy, basic sans serif typeface, working on the postage stamp scale, but also as livery for post boxes and vehicles. Attention was paid to creating a face that was easily readable from an angle, and in smaller point sizes. In 1989 it was digitised and three styles were made by Just van Rossum. In the period 1991 to 1998 a larger typeface family was developed, adding small capitals. Two additional related versions, titled Officina Sans and Officina Serif, were developed for correspondence. The intention was to create a typeface for digital office printing that conveyed the immediacy of strike-on typewriter faces like Courier, Elite, or Orator. A serif version was completed in 2007.

And now to something a little more:

Cut by Monotype between 1900 and 1902, the Monotype Modern font family was based on Miller & Richards News 23 and 28; slightly condensed news text types of the 1890s. Monotype Modern is a lively typeface, with long, fine hairlines and well rounded letterforms, representing the best of nineteenth century modern face design.

Rather lovely, isn't it? I must find an excuse to use it some time.

l is no easier than k

But it does spur me on to get out and do some searching. And here we have two fonts that have very similar attributes (aside from the obvious difference of one being sans and the other slab serif): because both are based on strictly geometric forms.

Litera was designed in 1983 by Michael Neugebauer, who used the same construction found in his more widely-known typeface Cirkulus. The overall look of Litera is modern, clear and light. Distinguishing characteristics are the openness and the e and P and the particularly long cross stroke of the G.

And Lubalin Graph, which was designed by Herb Lubalin and drawn by Tony DiSpigna and Joe Sundwall in 1974. They based the geometric skeletons of this new typeface on Lubalin's earlier (and also better-known) Avant Garde, but modified the shapes to add those big square (or rectangular) serifs. The condensed weights, which include small caps and old-style figures, were added by Helga Jörgenson and Sigrid Engelmann in 1992.

kabels and kepler

Getting towards the middle of the alphabet is proving a bit tricky with this little series - hence my failure to keep to my two-weekly schedule. And I'm sure I'm not alone in not having very Ks in my font book aside from Kai and Kufi. Which is when I have to start searching around. But the joy in this is either rediscovering fonts that I might sometime have used (or thought of using), or discovering something entirely new. Such is the case with the Ks.

And Kabel is the one that I might once have thought of using, though I never have. The first cuts of Kabel appeared in 1927, released by the German foundry Gebr. Klingspor, and designed by Rudolf Koch. Like many of Koch's typefaces, Kabel is carefully constructed and drawn. The basic forms were influenced by ancient Roman stone-carved letters, which consisted of just a few pure and clear geometric forms, such as circles, squares, and triangles. Koch also infused Kabel with some elements of Art Deco, making it appear quite different from other geometric modernist typefaces from the 1920s, like Futura.

Linotype has two versions of Kabel in its library. Kabel has a shorter x-height, with longer ascenders and descenders, making it a bit truer to Koch's original design than the second version, ITC Kabel, which was designed by Victor Caruso. This version, also known in the United States as Cable, has a larger x-height, shorter ascenders and descenders, more weights, and a diamond shaped i-dot.

The second K, Kepler, is a new one for me. Designed by Robert Slimbach in 2003, it comes in more weights and variations than you could shake a stick at.

but if you really have to use helvetica...

...here's the screensaver for you:

Available from here.
(via i love typography)

Well at least it's better than that dog.

jjjj... just a cotton-pickin' moment

OK, I'll admit it - sometimes I get things wrong. So a big thanks to both George and Andrew for drawing my attention to the doubtful veracity of that Peter Saville website that I mentioned last week. I have to own up to sometimes just taking things at face value, so I'd assumed that if a typeface is being given away, it must be coming direct from the originator. But if I'd looked more closely I'd have seen, of course, that the font in question is Trajan, which belongs to Adobe and shouldn't be given away at all. (You know, somehow I can't help feeling that when discussion turns to Peter Saville there's always a lot of smoke and mirrors involved.)

But my error does make me go back and dig a little deeper: and the 'J' which ought really have been at the top of my list is Johnston.

It was commissioned by Frank Pick in 1913 and completed in 1916 to become the first alphabet created for a specific corporate identity. Eric Gill, whilst he was a student of Johnston's, also worked on the typeface - and it became a major influence on the later development of Gill Sans. It was redesigned in 1979 by Eiichi Kono at Banks & Miles to produce New Johnston, the variant of the original font currently used by Transport for London. International Typeface Corporation also released a variant in 1999 called ITC Johnston, produced by British type designers Richard Dawson and Dave Farey, which you can read about here.

moving swiftly along...

I'm finding it hard to keep to my schedule of posting two fonts every two weeks - and I'm pretty certain that I'm falling behind. So, to make amends, here we are with the second post in as many days. And it brings us to a type designer that none of us would expect to find here, I'm sure: Peter Saville. If in fact he did design the font above, though that has to be the presumption.

UPDATE: My presumption was wrong - the font that you can download for free is, in fact, Trajan. Instead I've replaced it with Johnston, over here.

It was used on the cover of Closer and is therefore called Joy Division Closer - and you can download it for free (along with a number of other fonts) from Peter Saville's website.

And now back to somebody who's been mentioned before and will be mentioned again: Eric Gill. And the font this time is Joanna, which Gill designed in the period 1930-31 and used to handset his book An Essay on Typography. It's notable for its almost vertical 'upright' italics, and the unusually small size of its italic characters. Joanna is versatile and extremely legible. The letterforms are a bit narrow, so the face is very economic as well - a lot of text can be packed densely together on a page with Joanna. It also mixes very well with other typefaces designed by Eric Gill; especially Gill Sans.

iFonts

I'm having a struggle here in the middle of the alphabet, and the Is have been just as difficult as the Hs were. Still at least it's making me do a bit of research and allowing me to discover fonts that I've never used, but which could come in handy one day.

If ever I'm asked to design a newspaper, for instance, then I might start by choosing Ionic. The earliest form of which was brought out by Vincent Figgins in 1821, and intended for display work. In 1863 a more refined version appeared which had more contrast between thick and thin strokes and the serifs were bracketed. Further developments were made, however the robustness of the Egyptian style was retained making the face suitable for newspaper text setting. With a large x-height and strong hairlines and serifs, the Ionic font family became widely used by the newspaper industry as a body type and provided a model for many 20th-century newspaper typefaces.

But if I wanted something a bit more 19th-century (at least in appearance), then I might well choose Industrial Gothic. I can't tell you a great deal about it, except that it was designed for Monotype by Jim Parkinson, whose website can be found just here.

sometimes i hate designers; sometimes i hate helvetica

and here's why...

from helvetica to holland

When I started out on this little series I knew that I'd eventually reach a letter of the alphabet that was going to prove difficult. I thought it might be X or Z (and that still might be), but I hadn't expected it to be H. Because I freely admit that in the whole of my career I've never used a font beginning with H that wasn't Helvetica. And I'd wager that you haven't either. But perseverance often pays off (as if you need to tell that to a Taurean), and some rooting around has thrown up a couple of real gems from our friends over in the flatlands.

Here's Haarlemmer: and it's a recreation of a typeface designed by Jan van Krimpen that was never produced. The original, drawn in the late 1930s, was created for the Dutch Society for the Art of Printing and Books and was to be used to set a new edition of the Bible, using Monotype typesetting. Hence the problem: fonts for metal typesetting machines like the Linotype and Monotype had to be created within a crude system of predetermined character width values. Every letter had to fit within and have its spacing determined by a grid of only 18 units. Often, the italic characters had to share the same widths as those in the Roman design. Van Krimpen believed this severely impaired the design process.

The invasion of Holland in World War II halted all work on the Bible project, and the original Haarlemmer never went into production. Flash forward about sixty years. Frank E. Blokland, of The Dutch Type Library, wanted to revive the original Haarlemmer, but this time as van Krimpen would have intended. Blokland reinterpreted the original drawings and created a typeface that matched, as much as possible, van Krimpen’s initial concept. While van Krimpen’s hand could no longer be on the tiller, a thorough study of his work made up for his absence.

And next comes Hollander: designed in 1986 by Gerard Unger. The name of this font stems from the font’s similarity to the Dutch styles of van Dijk and Voskens, two Dutch type designer from the 17th century. Hollander makes a robust impression and maintains its quality even on inferior-quality paper. When used as a display face, Hollander is an excellent companion to one of Unger’s most successful text faces, Swift.

So there you have it: happy to have hopped over to Holland.

gee whiz

Apologies, but I've fallen behind with my fortnightly posts in my 52 font series. I guess I'd better hurry up with the Hs and aim to get back in line with the Is. But first of all the Gs: and a couple of real classics here. In fact, if you were allowed just two fonts to work with, you couldn't go very far wrong with these.

First up is:

A font that surely defines the expression 'what goes around comes around'. Because it often becomes the victim of lazy over-use, but give it a rest for a few years and up it pops again as a graphic designers' favourite. Designed by Eric Gill for the London & North Eastern Railway in 1927, it was heavily influenced by Edward Johnston’s Johnston typeface for London Underground, which Gill had worked on while apprenticed to Johnston. Although designed primarily as a display face, it's long been a favourite for text setting as well (and not much wrong with that). But there are a couple of little quirks to look out for when using this font:

First of all the figure 1, which is indistinguishable from a lower-case L: something to watch out out for if, for instance, you're designing an annual report (where you have a mix of text and figures). And second, the cap T at the start of a sentence; because the auto-kerning function in typesetting programs will close it right up to the preceding full point - so this may be an instance where you really do need that secretaries' favourite - a double word space between sentences.

Roll back the years by another decade (give or take), and 1916 gives you the year in which Goudy Old Style first appeared. Designed by that great American type designer, Frederick W. Goudy (although some of the subsequent heavier weights were designed by Morris Fuller Benton - and you'll remember that he's been mentioned before in this series).

So there you have it: all geed up for the last Thursday in February.