JibJab creates the best US election animated shorts, period. Following their 2004 hit comes a new offering: Time for Some Campaignin’. And if any Austrian readers make it through the whole video… yes, that impersonation at the end of the clip is what your voices sound like to Americans. I’m sorry.

Berlin has so many fab type designers that it can be difficult to pick favorites. So I won’t. However, Verena Gerlach newest typeface release was announced on the German FontBlog today, and I just have to jump on the band wagon. I first got a peek at this design a few months ago, and I’ve had a total crush on it ever since. Who can avoid going week in the knees over swash capital alternates on a sans serif’s regular weight? Well, I sure can’t. Check out the images at Verena’s blog, the buzz at FontBlog, and the fonts themselves at your local FontShop!

In the project Handwritten Typographers, Kris Sowersby’s handwriting sample strays a bit from the pack. Itdoesn’t read “I’m Kris and this is my handwriting,” but rather “Typografische Monatsblätter Nr. 4 1989.” What’s that about? I want to know! For insight, I went over to the University of Reading library, were bound archives of Typografische Monatsblätter are kept in the periodical section on the third floor.

What’s inside the issue? Here’s a list of the contents:

• Gestaltung—Walter Erb, Fotomotagen und Arrangements; Textbeiträge von Hans Fässler, Heinz Hänni (Gespräch), Walo Landolf
• Schrift—Max Caflisch, Bitstream Charter, eine von Matthew Carter für Lichtsatz und Lasersatz gezeichnete Schrift

So the articles are:

• A piece on the photomontage and photo-arrangements of Walter Erb, by Hans Fässler, Heinz Hänni (interview), and Walo Landolf
• An article on Matthew Carter’s Charter, by Max Caflisch

Both articles are written in German. My money’s on Mr. Carter.

Via: FontBlog and iLT. Image from Handwritten Typographers.

Monday July 7th was the submission deadline here in Reading, and I uploaded my files about an hour or so before the noon requirement. The typeface, pictured rather briefly above, will still need ages of finishing before I could call it properly complete, but I guess that I am proud anyway.

Here are the details: a text face optimized for small-sized running text, supporting both the Latin and Devanagari scripts. This means that the languages supported run a long gamut from Western Europe (English, French, German, etc.) to points further East (Romanian, Slovakian, Turkish) to India (Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, etc.). Variants include Regular (with small caps), Italic, Bold, and Heavy. The fonts have a healthy accoutrement of figure options and a few ligatures added in for good measure. During the typeface’s development as part of the MATD course, I also experimented with a Condensed Roman and Heavy. Hopefully, these will soon see the light of day, too.

For the course, I’ve given the design the name Martel (मार्टेल), after that cheery French fellow Charles Martel. Of course, the world already has at least one display uncial font with the same moniker, so upon eventual release I’ll try something more clever and trademark-able.