Fonts in Focus, September 2005

Linotype Agogo™ is part of the TakeType Library, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. Designed by British artist Ed Bug, the font is reminiscent of the elegant 1920s and 1930s. It is a calligraphy font with five weights, one regular and four swash. The regular weight alone is clear and legible enough even for longer texts, although when used with swash characters, the texts should be shorter or headlines.

Anlinear™ is part of a series of constructed typographic experiments from the young Swiss designer Michael Parson. In the Anlinear family, which contains three separate weights, Parson has successfully created a fabulous display of alphabets out of the sole arrangement of lines at right angles to each other. The letters in this face virtually groove with the beat as you set them in text. Like a musical score, they provide a fantastic look just right for your next flyer. This family of fonts looks best when set in larger point sizes, in headlines or other display settings. Anlinear and nine other Michael Parson designs are featured in the TakeType No. 5 collection from the Linotype Library.

ITC Arnova™ was designed by Genevieve Cerasoli in 1997 as a calligraphy typeface with pronounced stroke contrast and rough contours. The characters have pointed strokes and sit on the baseline leaning diagonally sometimes toward and sometimes away from one another and both characteristics give ITC Arnova a lively, dynamic feel. This font remains legible in point sizes as small as 8 and is well-suited to headlines and short to middle length texts.

A casual, open brush script style designed with a shadow effect for a three-dimensional impression: the typeface Artiste™ was created by British designer Martin Wait. This design looks best with tight letter and word spacing in large display settings.

This elegant, free-flowing copperplate script style type was designed by renowned British designer Martin Wait. Generous initial capitals complement the more restrained lowercase letters that join for balanced letter spacing in word settings. Balmoral™ is an excellent for use on certificates, citations, diplomas, and in greeting card applications.

Bigband™ Terrazzo is part of the Take Type Library, selected from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. German artist Lothar Kloth based his design on the forms of Karlgeorg Hoefer’s Bigband font, but added to it finely drawn slashes which cut through the characters, giving them an effect similar to marble. Bigband Terazzo is best used for short headlines in large point sizes.

The award-winning Linotype Conrad™ was created by Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi. Its design was based on the fifteenth-century type by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, two German printers active in Rome at that time. They produced a unique, slightly unbalanced yet attractive type. Kobayashi says of his typeface, "I have designed a couple of typefaces inspired from the past, but this time the original print acted merely as a reference. The distinctive lowercase ’a’ and some other letters were inspired by Sweynheym and Pannartz’s second roman type, but I revived the type in a more informal way. Here I used the historical type as a springboard. The resulting type looks different, taking on a rather temporary and lively look. I assume that the Linotype Conrad is the first revival of the Sweynheym and Pannartz type, though it does not closely resemble the original." Linotype Conrad won first prize for text font in the Third International Typeface Design Contest as well as the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors’ Club.

Linotype Gaius™, created by Dutch designer Julius de Goede, is a beautiful script face with a nice relationship between the broad-edged pen and the proportions of the letterforms. It is very flexible and gives a personal touch due to its various alternate fonts with swash beginners, ending and ligature letterforms. Like Zapfino™ from Hermann Zapf, Gaius offers a great variety and makes the text more personal and readable.

Linotype Irish Text™ is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. German artist Torsten Weisheit designed this font based on Irish scripts of the 5th century. Characteristic of this style is the mixture of upper case letters in the mostly lower case alphabet and vice versa. The letters look as though written with a broad tipped pen and have triangular serifs, displaying a decorative tendency akin to that of Irish calligraphy. Linotype Irish Text is intended exclusivley for headlines in large point sizes.

Linotype Monday Devils™, from German designer Jörg Herz, is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the entries of the Linotype-sponsored International Digital Type Design Contest 1999 for inclusion on the Take Type 3 CD. All possible everyday ... and not so everyday ... situations are pictured in this symbol font using simple and endearing stick figures. Whether you need an angel or a skater, a cleaning lady or a business man, you can probably find it among the figures of this font. Even in extremely large sizes, the figures of Linotype Monday Devils communicate a unique kind of liveliness.

Between the 3rd and the 9th centuries, calligraphers showed a marked preference for plain, curved capitals. Holding the quill at an angle allowed for a swift writing movement. Omnia™ is the modern combination of the Classical Roman monumental capitals and Roman cursive hands.
Omnia’s handwritten forms leads to line lengths that are longer than those set in more traditional text faces. The design is therefore ideal for shorter passages of text. Especially when used as a headline face for certificates, diplomas, or posters, Omnia evokes a ceremonial character.
The German calligrapher Karlgeorg Hoefer created Omnia in 1990 for Linotype’s Type before Gutenberg collection, which included the work of twelve contemporary designers representing writing style styles popular in Europe prior to 1450.

Created in 1983 by British designer Alan Birch, this dramatic font conveys all the immediacy, impact, and effect of a stencil or rubber-stamp on paper. With a corroded, rough-around-the-edges feeling, Rubber Stamp™ gives an impression similar to the old, beat-up looking typewriter fonts that were popular among designers during the 1990s. Rubber Stamp is an all caps font, and is primarily suited for many headline and display applications that use larger point sizes. Try out Rubber Stamp in magazines, newsletters, and any other work that would be enhanced by a stencil, branding, or rubber stamp effect.

The techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, font creation software, and some inspiration all came together to inspire the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Alessio Leonardi and his friends had the demand to create new unusual typefaces, which would be used in the leading German techno magazine of the day, Frontpage. Even typeset as small as 6-points, in nearly undecipherable layouts, it was a pleasure for the kids to read and try to decrypt the messages.
Bubbly black letterforms dancing across the line: this is F2F Tagliatelle Sugo™, a funky font from Alessio Leonardi. Try it out in a big headline today!

The original typeface idea of Taut™, designed by John Jones, was outline with diagonal stripes at 45° through the characters and was to be called "Candy". This was in 1971. The font "Taut" which is based on "Candy" was started in summer 1995 and four versions of the font were submitted to Linotype in February 1996 and included a striped version. As with Albertus the font has only caps and is essentially minimalist.
Taut was originally named "Mies" after the great architect Mies van der Rohe, whose designs inspired the geometric simplicity of the font. "Mies" has an unfortunate meaning in the German language and so "Taut" was chosen as the final name for the font, after the Bauhaus architect Bruno Taut. In Taut, John Jones attempted to marry this geometry and a 30´s personality with the stylish graphic adventures of the 90´s.

Linotype Zurpreis™ is a family of two typefaces created by the Swedish designer Bo Berndal in 1999. The letterforms in these faces are made up almost entirely of curves, giving them a slightly handmade, inky, or psychedelic appearance. The round characters dance and bounce along their baseline, lending a fun and uneven quality to text set with the fonts. Linotype Zurpreis is best used in sizes above 12 points, either for short passages of text, or headlines.