Type for you.

If you haven´t seen it already, go and take a look at Mark Simonson’s personal perspective of Adrian Frutiger.

Download the presentation here.

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Boris Dworschak just told me has released his new font over at Die-Gestalten.

IkiruSerif is a contemporary Slab-Serif font family with enough esprit to make your graphic language teem with zest and power. Ikiru means “to live, to exist” in Japanese and the typeface comes in 10 weights including thin, light, medium, bold and their italic versions – all of which are designed from the thin version giving the typeface an elegant, sharp and discreet appearance and a forceful, concise look in the bold versions. The IkiruSerif font family is suitable for composing texts of various lengths – effective for a wide range of daily use. The thin version is especially designed for usage in big point sizes, for instance in posters or banners.

www.borisdworschak.de

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KLIM is a typographic design studio run by Kris Sowersby.
Presented here is Feijoa, a very elegant typeface, with lots of open type features (download PDF).

Feijoa is my first serious book typeface, representing four summer’s worth of bloody hard work. I wanted a feeling of softness in a typeface, to design a type that didn’t have all the sharp points and edges that can make digital type so stale and inhuman. The saying “a straight line is a dead line” was very inspirational, I initially took that rather seriously. However, it became apparent that this need not be taken literally, as many of the baseline curves became irrelevant at smaller sizes.

Available at Village.
Also take a look at his moleskine section, very inspiring.

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Web Safe Typography on Screen for Pixel Perfectionist.
Added to the Directory in Tools and Resources.

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This number of fontshop newsletter is dedicated to type systems and the challenge of choosing typefaces that work well together.
Don´t miss it.

Thanks to AceJet170 for pointing that out.

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Frida, from Fernando de Mello Vargas, is one of the 14 faces resultant of the work from the MA Typeface Design class of 2007 at the University of Reading.

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Typotheque launched a new product: Fedra Arabic.

It takes into consideration the contemporary uses of Arabic type and offers a pragmatic solution for multilingual typesetting. The simplified forms of Arabic are stripped of all decoration while keeping the intrinsic structure of the Arabic writing system.

The typeface is available either as a separate Arabic font, or as part of the large Multiscript font package, which includes support for extended Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic, with advanced typographic features.

The characteristics that were carried over to the design of the Arabic version are mainly the proportions of the Latin: the baseline, ascender and descender, which were kept identical. On the other hand, two middle heights were defined, which are different than the x-height of the Latin font. Rather than directly bringing shapes from Latin, it was mainly the character of the curves that has been adopted for the Arabic counterpart. In Fedra, the curves start fairly fl at and begin to turn relatively late, which creates a particular tension of shapes. The contrast between the thick and thin is maintained. This has allowed for keeping the same color in both the Latin and the Arabic text. Of course many things are not possible to translate from Latin to Arabic directly, so oneto be very sensitive not to impose the Latin structure on Arabic. The Arabic version uses the proportions and formal attributes of Fedra, but not its individual shapes. Because of the Semitic roots, the angle of the contrast is inverted, and what was the thickest horizontal in Latin, becomes the thickest vertical in Arabic. The same is true of the thinnest strokes, it is again rotated 90 degrees.

Fedra Arabic was designed so it can be combined with either Fedra Serif or Sans, by carefully matching the typographic ‘colour’ of the typeface.

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Boris Schandert puts his most recent font available for free.

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Versão portuguesa disponível aqui.

Hello Rui!
1. Tell us a little about yourself.

Hello,
I’m a communication designer and I am from Oporto, where I graduated
at the Faculdade de belas Artes.
Currently, I am working as an multimedia designer at an advertising
agency in Lisbon.
This has been my main activity since short after I graduated, and it
started I Oporto.

2. When did you first got interested in typography and when did you
start drawing fonts? Was it difficult to start?

I was already in faculty. It was sort of an epiphany to me when I found
that there were different typefaces for different purposes or
meanings. In a time when I was still discovering what
graphic design was, it was important to my vision of design and
myself has a designer.
I think when you start to like letter-forms, you get seduced
by their beauty and history and start to take greater care
in composing with typography, and in the way you layout a written word,
with all the attention to detail, beauty and adequacy.
On top of that, I’ve always liked drawing and I like drawing letters.
Anyway, after my typographic epiphany, it was only a matter of time
until I plunged into to drawing my own letters and eventually building
a font in fontographer.
It was stimulant. I don’t think it was difficult to start. The hard
part came when I decided to make a type family. The work seemed
endless.

3. Tell us a bit about your work process when designing a font.

It depends on the font. But I usually try some ideas on paper before
starting on the computer.
The only time I drew the all font on paper, or at least the alfabetic
characters, I got fed up with it immediately after I started on the
computer, and I never finished it. But I think the end result is
better when everything is worked out on paper.
My first fonts, before Cifra and Forma, were made more or less with a
modular structure, and a few hand hand drafts were enough.
I usually work on the outlines in freehand or illustrator, copy them
to font lab and fix the curves and points there. finally, comes the
spacing and kerning.

4. We noticed that you have explored several styles in your type
designs. Is it a concern of yours? What´s next?

Yes, it’s true. My first font to be distributed was started after I
graduated and it was released in early 2006. So, these are still my
first fonts, and I guess I’m trying to do different things and learn
with it.
In this last year, I have been working on two new fonts, a monoline
slab serif and a didone style typeface, inspired on the tomb
inscriptions of the catacombs of Igreja de São Francisco (a church in
Oporto). It’s hard to say when they’ll be available, as they are more
ambitious projects comparing to my previous fonts, and they still need
work.

5. You´re also a very talented designer, both print and web. Do you
plan to dedicate yourself only to type design in the future? Is it
possible to “survive” only selling fonts?

Yes. I would like to be more of a type designer. I enjoy very much
being a designer, but there are lots of mornings when I wish I could just
sit down and mold some beziers instead of going to work at my job.
But to me, it seems hard to “survive” only by selling fonts especially
if you don’t distribute them your self. but I dream one day I can just
do type (or try to), without bosses or dumb clients. And every once in
while embrace a nice and enjoyable design project. That is my idyllic
ambition.

6. Do you feel that designing type is a very lonely act?

For me, it has been a lonely act because I work alone. But i don’t
think it should necessarily be that way. When you work alone,
sometimes you fall victim of boredom and discouragement, especially in
type design. it would be more motivating and less tiresome to work
with one or two more people, and i am not alluding to the case of type
designers that have employees to develop the all font from just a few
characters. A collaborative work should be nice for ideas, and labor
distribution.
However, I do think there are always tasks that demand a few hours of
lonesome work and concentration, like for instance, shaping bezier
curves.

7. How do you feel the type scene in Portugal?

I think it is very nice. I like the work from the portuguese designers
and i think it is well seen internationally.
It would be nice though, if a portuguese taste was more felt. witch I
think is hard to achive if we remain captive to the same examples.
But, as the number a portuguese type designers rises, so does the chance
of finding portuguese signs in portuguese fonts, or at least a chance
of achiving more typographic decency and self consciousness.

8. Who should we interview next? And what would be your question?

The first question that pops to my mind is wether it’s possible to
discover any typographic idiosyncrasies in the portuguese historical
context (wether it’s architectural, or artistic, or whatever) or urban environment.
Maybe because I feel it is possible but I would welcome any ideas on that.
It’s a good question to any portuguese designer or studious in this
matters, but maybe, i would ask it to Ricardo Santos or Dino dos
Santos.

9. Finally, name three of your favorite fonts.

Jenson, Minion and Luc de Berry
Human, elegant, beautiful.

Rui Abreu is a Portuguese type/graphic designer. He studied Graphic Design at FBAUP (Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto), where he graduated in 2003.

He has been working has a interactive media designer in different design/advertisement agencies along with is type design activity.

Rui Abreu Site.
Rui Abreu Fonts at T26 (Cifra, Forma, Salto Alto, Tirana).

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A video.

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