LinoLetter 2008/01

Throughout the summer of 2007, Linotype put out the call for posters created with the Helvetica typeface. Last year was the typeface’s 50th birthday, and we thought that this contest would be the most fitting birthday gift for a typeface! Hundreds of entries were submitted, and beginning in October, visitors to our website voted for their favorite designs.
Curious about the selections? Now you can view them all! The top 30 are all on display at Linotype.com. We’ve created a page to feature the winning designs and their creators. We hope that you enjoy viewing these posters as much as we do. Perhaps one of these creations will inspire your work in the future? Bookmark this page and return to it every time you feel the need to experience the magic of Helvetica.

A new book about one of the most widely used typefaces, “Helvetica forever” retraces the Helvetica typeface’s fifty-year history. Along the way, the book compares Helvetica with other well-known sans serif faces from the twentieth century and examines the phenomenon of its unparalleled spread. Illustrations show the many ways that the typeface has been used over the past five decades, including examples from a wide variety of fields. “Helvetica forever” is written for typographers and graphic designers. The book has 159 pages, and it includes 150 images, of which 128 are in color.

Typefaces that are capable of setting large amounts of text are great. When they are available in large families, they can solve even more design problems. When they are shipped as up-to-date OpenType format fonts, what more could you ask for? Several of the most capable text families in our webshop were created by Monotype and ITC. This month, we are proud to feature two of our favorites, Dante Pro and ITC Officina Pro.
ITC Officina Pro is a type system that includes both a serif and a sans serif family. Although the design was initially intended for the office computing environment and early laser printers with relatively low resolutions, its design is so fine-tuned that its capabilities clearly extend far beyond this environment. Created by the German design guru Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina has always been a family suitable for a wide range of applications. Now, thanks to the recent OpenType fonts with the “Pro” character set, this system is easier to use than ever before. ITC Officina Pro’s OpenType features include small caps, oldstyle figures, and extended language coverage.
Dante is a serif design in the Renaissance tradition. Originally designed for hand setting during the 1950s by the printer Giovanni Mardersteig for his press in Italy, Dante found worldwide acclaim after it was adapted for book setting on the Monotype machine. The digital version refers to Mardersteig’s original design, including the punches cut by Charles Malin. Naturally, the OpenType version is bundled with helpful features, including small caps, oldstyle figures, diagonal fractions, subscripts and superscripts, ordinals, alternates, ligatures, titling caps, and a character set that can set Western, Central, and Eastern European languages!

If you are a FontExplorer X user, chances are you love discovering new things related to typography and fonts. Maybe you’d like to be informed about new product features and releases, too? For years, Linotype has produced this monthly newsletters for its webshop and its webshop customers. If you enjoy reading the LinoLetter, then perhaps you should subscribe to the new FontExplorer X e-mail newsletter as well! Starting this spring, Linotype will send FontExplorer X newsletter subscribers a monthly update of sales and release information, as well as typography hints, and all sorts of other goodies for this software! Follow this link to subscribe.
Also, Value Packs are now available in the FontExplorer X Store! With a single click, download compilations of five hand-selected fonts curated around specific themes and priced as bargains! Have a look at all the Value Packs from the Linotype.com webshop now.
If you are still waiting to try out FontExplorer X’s font management capabilities on your Mac, now’s the time to take the plunge!