Fonts in Focus, October 2006

The font Ambigue™, designed by Carla Schweyer, originally was named “Confidence”. This font family receives the first prize at the German Kurt Christians-Foerderpreis in 1997/98. This professional typeface is available in the weights Light, Regular, Medium and Bold. Its interpolated weights offer a subtle differentiation in the grey levels. A special “Small” weights is available which offers a better readability in small point sizes like lexica and directories. The work has been supported by professor Jovica Veljovic.

Annlie™ Extra Bold and Annlie Extra Bold Italic are two display faces designed by Fred Lambert in 1966 for the Annlie type family. These two samples from the Annlie family are both fat faces. Fat faces were offshoots of the modern, or Didone, typefaces that were de rigueur during the early 1800s. These fat faces were among the first typefaces to be used solely for advertising purposes. Naturally, they were always used in larger point sizes, in display functions.
Annlie could be called an optimization of these old advertising typefaces. With high x-heights, ultra contrast between thick and thin strokes, and perfectly engineered drawing techniques, Annlie is a highly crafted typeface. Give it a spin in your next advertising campaign! Annlie’s fine thin strokes are very graceful in their appearance, and lend a strong, yet soft, feminine feeling to anything they touch.

Linotype Authentic™ is a post-modern type system developed by the German designer Karin Huschka in 1999. With 30 individual styles, Linotype Authentic is broken up across four sub-families: Linotype Authentic Serif (8 styles), Linotype Authentic Stencil (6 styles), Linotype Authentic Sans (8 styles), and Linotype Authentic Small Serif (8 styles).
The post-modern-ness of the Linotype Authentic system manifests itself through its stylistic qualities (“snap-on” serifs, small serifs, and stencil “white space” lines) as well as through the overall appearance of its letterforms. The letters seem to be built from a complex matrix system. Elements that would normally be full curved have been flattened out. The uppercase letters run condensed. Both the “serifs” and “small serifs” are of the slab serif variety. The “small serifs” are reminiscent of the sort of serifs found on Didone letters (i.e., Didot or Bodini).
The Linotype Authentic fonts may be used in a wide array of point sizes, from small text (in moderate amounts) to headlines, titling, displays, book covers and posters. Linotype Authentic can set a mean logo in the right hands, too.

Bernhardt Standard™, which was designed in 2003 by Julius de Goede, is a flowing Bastarde script. (Bastarde is one of the sub-categories of Blackletter typefaces).
The flowing nature of Bernhardt Standard makes it similar to some other sorts of Blackletter typefaces as well. Bernhardt Standard, because of its handwritten roots, is also similar to Kurrent, a style of handwriting that was popular in Germany prior the 20th Century.
Bernhardt Standard is a very calligraphic face, suitable for formal applications. This typeface would be an excellent choice for certificates or awards. The old style figures in the font allow for nice short settings of text as well.

The German designer Peter Huschka created Linotype Chineze™, a family of typefaces that resemble the calligraphic strokes found in Chinese characters, in 2002. Using a variety of brush-like elements, Linotype Chinese imbues the Roman alphabet with an Eastern flair. Try out this font in a menu, a comic book, or on food packaging! Like this foreign feeling? Check out Sinah™ and Sinah Sans, two other Eastern-inspired font families from Huschka.

Linotype Creatures™ is a symbol font populated by a series of delightfully drawn imaginary animals. One would expect that bat-like creatures would look scary, but coming from German designer/illustrator Martina Theisen’s pen, they are as cute as can be! These symbols promise to offer a witty touch, or a breath of fresh air to almost any newsletter, flyer, or other communication project.
Linotype Creatures and other designs by Martina Theisen are included in the Take Type 4 collection from Linotype GmbH.

Michael Gills, formerly a resident designer at Letraset, created the Fling™ typeface in 1995. Fling’s letterforms are based on the Ronde – or round – script style from France. The design includes intricate and generous capital letters, which are contrasted with a more reserved lowercase letters. This allows for a sophisticated and elegant appearance in text.
Fling’s letterforms are highly legible for those of a script face, and it is a typeface with many uses. Aside from short amounts of running text, Fling’s capital letters serve well as initials. An extra font of ligatures and alternative letterforms, named Fling Plain Alternate, offer expanded typesetting possibilities.

Impakt™ is the work of British designer Leonard Currie, a cold, condensed typeface inspired by the Soviet Constructivist movement of the 1920s. Impakt‘s powerful geometric appearance makes it an ideal choice when a commanding, masculine effect is required.

Zoran Kostik began designing the Just Square™ font family in 1999, based on a logo that his son, an art student, had designed. The design project grew until Kostic had designed eight weights, for both the Latin and the Cyrillic writing systems. Just Square is a very geometric and constricted face best used in experimental designs (i.e., logos, web sites, flyers, and expressive headlines).

Locarno is the work of British designer Alan Meeks and is his adaptation of Rudolf Koch’s Koch™ Antiqua for the Klingspor type foundry. The unique design of the roman weight features geneous capitals and a reserved lowercase. The italic capitals have an open, engraved decoration that combines perfectly with the lowercase with its tall, elegant ascenders. Locarno is a typeface with the sophisticated look of the 1920’s and 30’s.

Dieter Kurz designed Matthia in 1994. It is a slender, flowing brush script design. Matthia’s characters are in a handwritten style yet stand almost straight, making it a mixture of reserved and lively, of static, and dynamic. The font is reminiscent of advertisement typefaces popular in the 1950s, and is extremely versatile. Matthia is suitable for short texts in small point sizes, or large headlines on posters.
Matthia is part of the TakeType Library, which features the winners of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contest from 1994 to 1997.