Fonts in Focus, August 2006

Anasdair™ is a semi-serif text face that maintains its calligraphic origins. Its wide uppercase characters display an even, mono-spaced appearance. The design of the lowercase letters couples this rhythm with large apertures and tall x-heights. Anasdair’s sharp, pen-formed details are recognizable even in small point sizes, and they help lead the eye through the letters’ curves-bringing the reader’s eye across the line of the page. Both Anasdair Regular and Anasdair Bold have supplementary Alternate fonts available. These Alternate fonts contain extra ligature pairs not found in the standard character set (e.g., ffi, ft, and tt), as well as alternative characters, such as a second capital I, and a long s.
Anasdair was created by the British designer Richard Yeend, and is similar to Prof. Herbert Post’s Post Antiqua, and Renate Weise’s extensive Scriptuale family. Anasdair looks great in formal applications, and may be particularly useful on certificates or invitations.
All four fonts in the Anasdair family, including its two weights, and their alternate sets, are part of the TakeType 5 Collection.

The modern serif typeface Basilia™ is distinguished by its soft, open appearance as well as a number of details which together mark a departure from historical models. For example, it has nothing of Bodoni’s round letters and their angular, narrow spacing, and displays instead round forms with a much softer stroke in the curves. For André Gürtler, who designed Basilia in 1978, it was very important to avoid the Modern characteristic of stiff, vertical, grid-like strokes and to create instead a lighter, more transparent type. He retained the Modern style by using straight horizontal serifs at right angles to the strokes to still give the type its sense of rigidity.

ITC Belter™ was designed by Andreu Balius in 1996. Out of a purposely limited form repertoire Balius created a constructed typeface with a cool and technical character. A distinguishing characteristic of this font is the cross at the ends of many strokes. The figures seem to be products of mass production, which heightens the mechanical feel of the font. Belter is meant for point sizes of 10 and larger in headlines and shorter texts and must be set with generous spacing.

Bernhard Modern™ font was designed in 1937 by Lucian Bernhard, an artist who lived and worked in both Germany and the USA. Like many typefaces of this time, Bernhard Modern has a low x-height and generous ascenders. It also displays a marked broad tipped pen stroke. Characteristic is the lowercase g with its upward-reaching ear, whose stroke contrast emphasizes the diagonal. Bernhard Modern font with its mannered elegance is best for short to middle length texts and headlines, wherever a subtle touch of the historical is desired.

Blippo with its constructed style is a typical headline typeface. Its robust figures with their even strokes were composed using the basic forms of the circle and rectangle. Its curves are often not completely closed. The figures of Blippo form dark, heavy lines, making the typeface suitable only in middle and larger point sizes. Blippo will make an impression when used for flyers and correspondence.

ITC Dartangnon is a work of English designer Nick Cooke and began with the thought, ‘It’s a long shot but it might just work as a font.” It started as a doodle with a chunky pencil. “So many script fonts look too stylized so I thought I’d try to produce one that looks more like handwriting.” He scanned the doodles and used Fontographer to draw a set of monoline letters. “Working quickly I soon drew the whole alphabet, and without being too pedantic about the characters joining exactly, I arrived at this script.” ITC Dartangnon is an energetic font which remains legible even in small point sizes. And, Cooke adds, “It is supposed to be used as upper and lowercase only, NEVER just caps.”

The Legal™ typeface family grew out a sans serif project that Hellmut G. Bomm began in the 1970s. This refined, industrial type family is well suited for short amounts of text, headlines, corporate identity and logo design. In small sizes, the typeface works like many other sans serifs, but with better differentiation between characters. The Legal family includes Old Style Figures and true Italics.

Linotype Facts of Life™ by Pippo Lionni is based on the designer’s wish to show his children “the concepts of life.” It was important for him to easily get in touch with essential questions of life such as identity, philosophy, responsibility and objectivity.
Through his language of ideograms and pictograms, he enables us to associate and enter into discussion about the essential things that make the world go round.
Each character of Linotype Facts of Life uses “object symbols” (such as human beings, cars, computers or globes) connected by “association symbols” (like arrows, question marks, parentheses or equal signs) to create different meanings. Pippo Lionni really is the philosopher among the typographers. His new font tries to show that there can be many truths to explore behind a single symbol.
This creation is one that will get you thinking. Take a look for yourself!

Linotype Sketch™ is part of the TakeType Collection, chosen from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. German designer Dieter Kurz gave his display font a calligraphic character. The forms lean slightly to the right and have a spontaneous and individual look. This light, cheerful font also displays a harmony among the forms and gives text a personal touch. Linotype Sketch combines well with modern text fonts which have the same narrow proportions. This font is well-suited for headlines and short and middle length texts with point size 12 or larger.

Retro™ was designed by Colin Brignall and Andrew Smith and comes in two weights, bold and bold condensed. They are all cap, slab serif typefaces which were inspired by a number of historical artistic movements: Constructivist, Bauhaus, Art Deco and Streamline. Retro has a strong graphic appearance, a number of alternate characters, and is suitable for a wide variety of promotional applications.

ITC Simran™ was created by the London designer Satwinder Sehmi in 1998. The Indian influence is recognizable at first glance and lends the font an exotic feel – at least to the western eye. Sehmi borrowed forms and feelings from northern Indian writing systems for this typeface.
Both the upper and lowercase letters make use of the same lowercase forms, but the upperacse letters have the addition of a horizontal bar running over them at the ascender height. This feature is directly reminiscent of writing systems in northern India, and is ITC Simran’s most distinguishing characteristic.
But there were other influences as well: Sehmi was also inspired by uncial forms when designing this typeface. ITC Simran exhibits the typical look of writing with a broad-tipped pen, with its strong strokes, as well as characteristic letter forms, for example, the a or h.
ITC Simran is a fascinating and harmonious symbiosis of a variety of influences from different cultures. This font is best used for headlines and short texts in point sizes of 12 and larger.

Latvian designer and educator Gustav Grinbergs created Stencil Moonlight™ as an attempt to slightly lighten up the stencil type scene. Intended as a lively, semi-formal face, its shapes are smooth and compact. It leaves a very heavy feeling on the page, as its letters display a very fat bold design. Stencil Moonlight is available is two separate font styles, Regular and Small Caps. When used together, the Stencil Moonlight family can create the perfect combination for your next display need.
Stencil Moonlight works best in larger sizes, where it is clear that its forms stem from an experiment with stencil design. Grinbergs recommends the face for application in package design, advertising, poster design, and perhaps even for the subtitling of foreign films!
The Stencil Moonlight family was the second-best Display category entry in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype GmbH.

Smudger™, from designer Andrew Smith, is oriented toward a young generation who does not want to mind the rules. The font invites unconventional and playful use. The figures seem to be almost coincidentally shaped. Letters alternate between thin and thick strokes alternate and give the font the smudged look that inspired its name and gives the font its unmistakable character. Smudger is a font that just cannot settle down. It is best used for headlines and short texts in point sizes of 12 or larger.

Tetria™ was designed by Martin Jagodzinski, who says that the font “came from the need for a compact, constructivist typeface. Tetria combines the expression of simplicity of the ‘norm’ typefaces like DIN Mittelschrift with elements of Old Face typefaces which optimize legibility. It therefore contains old style figures and a larger stroke contrast, which makes the font legible even in smaller point sizes.” Sources of inspiration for Tetria were the designs of Joost Schmidt and Herbert Bayer as well as the norm typefaces. The name comes from the Greek word for ‘four’, tetra. “Four is the number of many simple and useful objects, four wheels on a car, four corners of a book. Also, the basic forms of Tetria come from the simple geometric form of the square.” The space-saving Tetria is well-suited to a variety of uses, from corporate typeface to text to display on posters, flyers or onscreen.