LinoLetter 2010/03

Several years ago, Rod McDonald revived, expanded and enhanced the classic Handel Gothic design for ITC. Recently, we added five oblique fonts to his ITC Handel Gothic™ Family. We also updated all of the weights to a Pro character set. Our “Pro” fonts support for all Western, Central, and Eastern European languages written with the Latin script, including Turkish and those spoken in the Baltic. Only rarely does our “Pro” designation refer to increased OpenType feature support. The ITC Handel Gothic “Std” fonts and the ITC Handel Gothic “Pro” fonts both offer the same sweet stylistic alternates. The ITC Handel Gothic Pro fonts just extend these alternates to additional languages’ characters as well.

What’s old is new again! Keen readers might have thought that all of D. Stempel AG’s older typefaces had already been digitized. For decades, D. Stempel AG – which became a part of Linotype in 1985 – was one of Europe’s most creative addresses for new typeface design. Somehow, one of their classic serif families slipped through the cracks; but we’ve rediscovered it, and are happy to pass it on to you in OpenType format! Madison Antiqua™ was named after New York’s Madison Avenue, the global hub of advertising innovation during the 1960s. The typeface was released in 1965, as a re-tinkering of an older concept. The design is an excellent choice for body text in magazines and newspapers.

Originally drawn by Robin Nicholas, (the same chap behind the recently released workhorse, Ysobel™) and released by Monotype in 1980, the Nimrod® family of fonts has grown into a sturdy and legible text face that performs really well in newspapers, and reads especially well at small sizes. Though its forms don’t belie its Ionic® heritage, it has shed a number of the potentially distracting details in favor of Old Style letterforms that for centuries have proven their worth in setting extended texts well. It’s no surprise then that Nimrod is still a popular choice for newspapers and other extended text applications where legibility and economy are paramount.
So, what else is new? Well, we’re delighted to announce that this exceptionally legible and versatile set of fonts has been expanded to include support for Cyrillic and Greek. All the ingredients that have gone into making Nimrod such a success have also gone into the drawing of the Cyrillic and Greek versions, making Nimrod more versatile than ever.

With a growing library of thousands of fonts, sometimes even the best-drawn and most versatile fonts get overlooked. Our Hidden Gems feature is intended to restore the balance, to shed light on some typographic treasures that you might be missing out on. This month we present seven such treasures from the Monotype and ITC libraries: ITC Clearface®, Ocean Sans®, ITC Outpost™, ITC Greengate™, Mosquito™, Chong Old Style™, and Chong Modern™.

Originally presented at Typecon 09 in Atlanta, designer educator and typographer Will Hill’s ‘The Typographer as Reader’ takes a look at the changing relationship between typography and graphic design. He challenges some of the established theories of design history, proposing a fresh look at the activity of reading as a vital and often overlooked aspect of design education – and calls for a more concrete and practical approach to the teaching of typographic design.

Every month, new type foundries and their fonts join our online shops.

On Friday, February 12, 2010, Linotype’s Malabar™ typeface received the design prize of the Federal Republic of Germany. Presented by the German Design Council and the Ministry of Economics and Technology, we are very pleased to receive one of just five Gold awards in the Communication Design category. Over 1,200 design items were nominated for the country’s highest distinction in the field.

Good-bye winter! Spring is just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate the return to longer days and warmer temperatures than the Spring Value Pack. Check out this bouquet of five fresh fonts, including Linotype Elisa™, Linotype Gaius™, Gavotte™, Linotype Dala™ Pict, and Rosemarie Kloos-Rau’s charming symbol font Wiesbaden Swing Dingbats™.