Fonts in Focus, July 2006

Airam™ blends contemporary legibility with historic blackletter forms, creating a contemporary text face that speaks to the old European past. The term blackletter refers to a style of typefaces that evolved out of Northern Europe’s medieval manuscript tradition. Often called gothic, or Old English, these letters are identified by the traces of the wide-nib pen stroke within their forms. Typefaces designed in this style normally exhibit a drastic thick-thin stroke contrast. They tend to be set a bit narrow, leaving the appearance of a black tone across the page. The strokes of these letterforms also appear quite “broken” in nature.
To fit the bill, when set on a page, Airam certainly appears darker than most other contemporary text faces. Airam’s letterforms are slightly broken, too. They display angled joints in lieu of smooth curves. This "broken" aspect actually aids legibility at smaller point sizes. While Airam may not be suitable for setting whole books or newspapers, this font will add a splendid touch to short tracts of small text. Additionally, Airam looks superb in large headlines.
Airam was designed in 2002 by the Austrian designer Maria Martina Schmidt, and is included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH.

What sets Amelia™ apart from all the rest are its unusual inner spaces. Their teardrop forms lead the readers eye through the line of text. These teardrop shapes can also be seen in the contours of the characters themselves, making the letters look rounded and flexible. Linotype Amelia was designed by Stanley Davis in 1965 and speaks the language of the digital age. The flowing strokes and round forms give it an uncomplicated and lively look.

Linotype Bix™ Plain, from Argentinian designer Victor Garcia, is part of the TakeType Collection, chosen from the entries of the 1999 International Digital Type Design Contest for inclusion on the Take Type 3 CD. The font is composed exclusively of capital letters. The figures have constructed basic forms and show the influence of the advertisement types of the 1920s, with all their well-mannered details. The lower sections of the graceful letters are white and set against a black background, the upper sections are black on white. This makes the overall picture look as though written on stripes and gives the delicate letter stability. The nostalgic-modern Linotype Bix Plain is best for headlines in point sizes of 18 or larger.

Contrivance™ was created by the prolific German designer Frank Heine. It is an unusual style script face, with an uneven baseline and varying stress. Yet these oddities help simulate its quick, handwritten appearance. Although text set in Contrivance is not particularly legible or even, it can strike an interesting note within an overall design piece. Contrivance may be set in virtually any size.

Designed by Thomas Hoffman, HoTom’s historical roots are easily traced back to the slab serif style. HoTom™ was originally intended as a lettering system for a project in the center of the old East Berlin. This explains the stable, angular characters and the consistent rectangular base forms, which also makes HoTom a very legible font, suitable for longer texts.

ITC Kokoa™ is the work of German graphic designer Jochen Schuss. Schuss found the seeds of inspiration on a trip to Ghana and expanded and experimented with the idea on the computer. It includes an array of symbols and borders to complement its stylized letters. ITC Kokoa retains a touch of its African roots but is overall a modern, funky font.

3 robbers is not a typeface family, only a collective name for three typefaces with the looks of handtexted characters: Kasper™, Jesper™ and Jonatan™. There are some common traits between them, but they are three individuals. As the three “terrible” robbers in the Swedish writer Lennart Hellsing’s Kamomillastad – the ones who borrowed their names to the typefaces – are three individuals. They always appear in the same order: first Kasper, then Jesper and last Jonatan. Swedish children love to sing about them and are not at all scared of them.
All three robbers were released in 1995.

Frantisek Storm first created the Mramor family about 1988. Its design arose through the narrowing of Roman capitals. It has uniform width proportions and, above all, original lower-case letters and picturesque italics. The text designs are suitable only for the printing of shorter texts, because the artistic singularity of the typeface soon makes the reader tired. Altogether all of Mramor’s weights are appropriate for posters. The upper-case letters used in a simple inscription have absolute mastery of the entire area of the page, whereas the arabesques of the lower-case italics play an uncommon decorative accord in it. Were we to look deeper into the “nooks” of this alphabet, we would behold florally modeled serifs and stems with a very delicate entasis; the curves seem to follow on the one hand the merging of palm trunks, on the other a succession of rugged ridges. The overall expression of Mramor is vertical. It is a tranquil, contemplative and intimate typeface. It is not suitable for inscriptions that are supposed to shout out of the surface. However, in large areas the nakedness of the letters results in a strange, wistful tone.

Designer Franko Luin about Nyfors™:
“Nyfors was a sudden idea. I noticed an ad in a magazine, with some handtexted words. I don’t recall what the ad was about, neither the words. When I later on tried to remember how the single characters looked like and began to draw them, the result wasn’t bad at all. I am not longer sure that they resemble the characters in the ad, but it doesn’t matter. Nyfors is a nice handtexted typeface, whatever its origin.
There is a small stream in Tyresö where I live and work, called Nyfors. During some centuries there was a center of small scale industries along it, and they used its water to run their machinery. The typeface has its name from that stream.”
Nyfors was released in 1995.

The Danish designer Nina Lee Storm designed Noa™ for use on television and computer screens during the late 1990s. She began her six-member type family with the creation of bitmap fonts, developing their print outlines only secondarily. Noa’s letters exhibit a tall x-height, coupled with very short ascenders and descenders. Storm is proud to report that her typeface also looks very “Danish.” Why don’t you give it a try?

Sinah™ is based on the idea of building letters around a circular origin and allowing them to expland freely outwards. The lowercase letters a, b, d, e, g, o, p, q, v and w contain the characteristic features of the font. All other characters are essentially derived from these.
Its design principle makes Sinah ideal for certain form-based applications and text passages with long lines. Experimenting with the Sinah in the areas of cosmetics, jewellery, fashion, luxury goods and design is highly entertaining.

British designer David Quay originally created Titus in 1984. A serif design, Titus is a wide, curvy, and round typeface that is best used in larger point sizes.

Veronika Grüger designed the Veronika™ type family in 2004. Veronika is a semi-serif text face, available in three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold. All three faces are available in OpenType format, with both lining and old-style figures.
Grüger, a German artist and designer, first began the design of her typeface by writing out its letterforms with a wooden stylus. She wanted to create a new semi serif face that had uniform stroke widths, but still maintained some aspects of calligraphy. Veronika achieves this; the terminals that begin the first strokes of most letters are round and bulbous, as if the writing instrument added extra emphasis on that spot. This adds a dynamic, movement-like quality to texts designed with Veronika. Aside from some sans serif-ness, Veronika appears similar to old style typefaces from the renaissance: classical inscriptions inspired the proportions of the capital letters, and the lower case letters stem from Carolinian minuscule. These proportions allow Veronika to function very well in text and at small sizes. However, only when you design larger headlines, logos, or other elements with Veronika, will you notice all of its special qualities, like its weight distribution and stroke characteristics.

The Washington type family is a series of five constructed faces made by the Austrailian designer Russel Bean. Ranging in weight from Extra Light to Black, these narrow geometric letters exude the experimental essence of Central European design from the 1920s. Both the upper and lowercase letters are built up from simple elements, such as circles, half-circles, and straight lines. The numbers are highly stylized and quite beautiful.
Washington is best used in larger point sizes in headlines, or on flyers.