"IN YOUR FACE" - the MyFonts.com Newsletter - February 2004


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THIS MONTH AT MYFONTS.COM - INTRODUCTION

Four major debuts this month, two from Russia and two from the United States. But before that, let me give you a taste of our plans for displaying your design work. We'll display the work of all MyFonts users who'd like to show others what happens when you "beat the system fonts" and choose something original! Read more below, and watch this space.

There has been much healthy Russian activity in the digital font scene since the fall of the Soviet Union, and our two new Russian companies have an interconnected history. Early in the 1990s, Yuri Yarmola of St. Petersburg started programming "FontLab", a program that would become the definitive font creation software before the decade was out. It gives me great pleasure to introduce this cornerstone of modern typeface design to MyFonts.com. Before they spun off as a separate company - the Fontlab Ltd. marketing operation is now based in North America - the early development work was requested by ParaGraph, a Moscow company that inherited the designs and staff of the old Soviet type design agencies, but wished to move to the digital era. Now known as ParaType, the collection of digital fonts that resulted (and continues to grow) stands comparison with the best of European and American design houses, with highly tuned technical skills and historical sensitivities. Read more about Fontlab and ParaType below.

Thirstype's designs have long been sought after by discerning corporations willing to take the risk. (They're always well rewarded as a result!) Having produced, for strictly design/scientific research purposes, probably the world's ugliest typeface (we can't repeat its name in a family publication...), Thirstype founder, Rick Valicenti went on to enlist some rising typographic stars, and the Thirstype library became known alongside Emigre, House, and Font Bureau as one to watch. Check out the fuller introduction below.

Finally, those of you, perhaps as penniless teenagers (or students) before the days of desktop publishing, who became addicted to wonderful letterforms will rejoice in the news that we've signed up Dan X. Solo to MyFonts.com. He's the guy behind that classic, affordable series of books from Dover Publications displaying fonts from Dan's "Solotype collection". Since the age of 14 (during World War II), Dan has been on the look-out for unusual fonts - in film, wood and metal - and his collection is in the thousands. We're proud to make new digital versions available here. Oh, and don't miss Dan's wonderful autobiography, published right here at MyFonts.com!

Happy font finding in 2004!

-- Laurence Penney, Editor, "In Your Face"

P.S. Remember to use the 'love' keyword for Valentine's Day fonts!


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IN THIS ISSUE:

1. NEW FOUNDRIES AT MYFONTS.COM:
ParaType - Thirstype - Solotype - Fontlab
MADType - David Thometz - Churchward

2. THE MYFONTS GALLERY - coming soon

3. MORE FONTS FROM OUR EXISTING FOUNDRIES
Storm - Bitstream - IHOF - Misprinted Type
Mark Simonson - Tail Spin Studio - Letraset

4. REGULARS

(Please see end of message for how to unsubscribe.)


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NEW FOUNDRIES #1: PARATYPE

* The ParaType library is our major addition from Russia, consisting of more than 370 typefaces. In the spirit of the perestroika changes and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of type designers quit the state-owned Polygraphmash foundry to establish ParaType, the first, and now largest Russian digital type foundry. The ParaType team under the supervision of Art Director Vladimir Yefimov creates new typefaces and explores the Russian typographic heritage by making digital versions of existing Russian designs including hits of Soviet typography such as Literaturnaya or Journal Sans. Most ParaType fonts are available in Western/Roman, Central European, Turkish and Cyrillic encodings.

The Russian constructivist and avant garde movements of the early 20th century inspired many ParaType typefaces, including Rodchenko, Quadrat Grotesk, Ariergard, Unovis, Tauern, Dublon and Stroganov. The ParaType library also includes many excellent book and newspaper typefaces such as Octava, Lazurski, Bannikova, Neva or Petersburg. On the other hand, if you need a pretty face to knock your clients dead, meet the ParaType girls: Tatiana, Betina, Hortensia, Irina, Liana, Nataliscript, Nina, Olga and Vesna (also check Zhikharev who is not a girl but still very pretty).

ParaType also excels in adding Cyrillic characters to existing Latin typefaces -- if your company is ever going to do business with Eastern Europe, you should make them part of your corporate identity! ParaType created CE and Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces licensed from other foundries, including Bell Gothic, Caslon, English 157, Futura, Original Garamond, Gothic 725, Humanist 531, Kis, Raleigh, and Zapf Elliptical 711.


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NEW FOUNDRIES #2: THIRSTYPE

* Thirst (call them "3st" - first, second, thirst), of Barrington outside of Chicago, is the studio of designer and cultural commentator, Rick Valicenti, rickvalicenti.com. In 1993 Thirstype was formed to make available the typographic research and design experiments from within the Thirst Universe.

In the early days, Rick was one of a generation of artistically and technically talented designer-geeks (several of whom Rick signed up as Thirstype designers) who explored the limits of what could be done with the new digital font technology. Up for grabs were questions such as: What cool behavior can we program into this font? How much legibility is desirable? Should digital fonts look like a computer made them? Out of this time of experimentation came a more sober period, resulting in modern classics from those same foundries who'd taken part in the early-1990s experimentation.

In 1995 Rick was joined by chester (yes, that's a lower-case 'c'), a young type designer from Montreal. Since then they have collaborated to design many important fonts. Two that stand out, "Apex Sans" and "Infinity", are both highly adaptable for corporate identity & logo use.

In fact, a remarkable proportion of Thirst designs come in a great range of weights. "Punch" is a definitive decorative bitmap offering of Rick and Gregg Brokaw: check out the amazing potential of bitmap fonts with the R1-4 and S1-4 variants. "Pixella" is chester's bitmap font: we admire him for grappling with bitmap italics! Finally - remember dot-matrix printers? Well, as the "Rheostat" system (in Fahrenheit and Celsius flavors) demonstrates, the medium's not without its charm!

- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/thirstype/


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NEW FOUNDRIES #3: SOLOTYPE

* The Solotype Collection (Alameda, California) is the set of digital fonts made from the vast archives of Dan X. Solo. When he had time off from his career as a radio actor and a magician (still performing at the age of 75!), he was likely to be preparing another book for Dover Publications, one of those which introduced so many of us to the delights of unusual typefaces from the past.

Our favorites are "Excelsis", a spooky, narrow, squarish design with dangerous serifs; "Bindweed", a bobbly design based on old American wood type; and "Moulin Rouge", an Art Nouveau design from the early 20th century. Wood type fans will also be happy to find "Assay" and "Minnesota", both suitable for poster work with a flavor of the US west.

- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/solotype/


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NEW FOUNDRIES #4: FONTLAB

* Fontlab Ltd. makes software applications for those who want to do more with fonts than just use them. With the management and the sales division in the USA, and a group of programmers in St. Petersburg, Russia, this truly multinational company is best known for their flagship product "FontLab 4.6". The features and continuous improvements of this high-end font editor make it the first choice for most professional type designers. In addition, the company offers several other applications at the affordable, semi-pro level.

We're selling two products: "TransType" and "TypeTool". TransType turns a Windows font into a Mac font, or TrueType into PostScript (and vice-versa). Very useful if you use fonts on multiple platforms, especially if your application just doesn't support the other type. TypeTool is the 'lite' edition of FontLab, and has all the essentials for the type designer. In fact, some of the fonts at MyFonts.com are created with TypeTool. TypeTool also allows you to fiddle with existing fonts (for your own personal use only, please mind the user license!) by adding special characters or changing some letters. The programs are a whisker under $100 each and are available in both Mac OS and Windows editions.

- http://www.myfonts.com/info/fontlab-transtype/
- http://www.myfonts.com/info/fontlab-typetool/


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SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE DOING WITH OUR FONTS!

Do you have design in your blood? Well, we think you do, since you use MyFonts.com to find, try, and buy fonts online. But we'd like you to prove it by sending us designs you've made using fonts from MyFonts.com. Posters, images, web pages, newsletters, ads, t-shirts, photos, collages, book covers, even tattoos - we'd like to see them all. Any place you used a font counts as a design! We'll feature your designs at MyFonts.com, where you can see and take inspiration from each other's work. And - we'll award prizes for the best!

Submission details and more will be explained in our next newsletter. Don't send the images yet, but if you have a question in the meantime, e-mail us at:

mydesigns@myfonts.com

We want to hear from you!


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MORE NEW FOUNDRIES

* DAVID THOMETZ DESIGN (South Jordan, Utah) is the home of the fonts of David Thometz, a freelance graphic designer, typographer, type designer, writer, and illustrator. We loved "Hefeweizen", a jaunty Germanic blackletter design. No (before you ask), it wasn't just because it's named after one of our favorite beers! Its accompanying ligature and alternate sets really are unusual: we see a most versatile future for this typeface family. Decorate your designs with the splendid collection of typographic ornaments and symbols contained in "Seriatim Ornaments". Suns, moons, cats, hearts, knotwork, arrows, shells, pentagrams, fists, even the Eye of Horus from ancient Egypt - all are squeezed in. With no dead weight, David seems to have packed in the best symbols from many symbol fonts. Best of all, the complete Seriatim typeface family (coming soon) comprises a genuinely new take on the geometric sans theme.
- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/thometz/

* CHURCHWARD TYPE is the foundry of Joseph Churchward, originally of Samoa, now working in Wellington, New Zealand. This experienced designer first offered his lettering skills as a freelancer in 1962, and went on to form one of New Zealand's largest typesetting companies. His designs have been published by D. Stempel, Linotype, Mecanorma, and others. With the help of David Buck of SparkyType (whose fonts are already on sale at MyFonts.com) many of Joseph's fonts have been turned into digital fonts: our favorites are the Pacific-drenched "Maori" and "Ta Tiki", the friendly multi-weight sans "Samoa", and also "Design Lines", a stripy design straight out of the 1970s.
- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/churchward/

* MADTYPE (Atlanta, Georgia) is Matt Desmond's one-man type foundry. Matt is well-known as one of the founders of Test Pilot Collective. "Mang" is Matt's bold bitmap design, with matching light version set on equal character widths. "Rubba", a Frankenstein of a font according to Matt, works strangely well on a theme of mixing pieces of unrelated letters to form this alphabet. With "Serifity", those 'little feet' that define any normal serif typeface get somewhat out of hand, attaching themselves to anything they feel like! SALE: 25% off all fonts until Feb 28. See all 17 MADType styles at:
- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/madtype/

* PREUSSTYPE is the foundry of Ingo Preuss from Dossenheim, Germany. He's a freelance graphic/type/web designer & illustrator; preussType was formed just last year to release his fonts. With fonts already in Linotype's collection, Ingo knows what it takes to make professional fonts. His narrow geometric "Spitting Image", the handwriting fonts "Picnic", "Bad Girls", and "Gekko", the cut-up font "Scooter" - these are OpenType fonts (that's the new font format in which Microsoft and Adobe now release fonts), all including the special characters needed for central European languages. 21 styles altogether.
- http://www.myfonts.com/foundry/preusstype/


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MORE FONTS FROM OUR EXISTING FOUNDRIES

* The famous Czech STORM TYPE FOUNDRY releases several new font families. "Serapion II" is a revision of their popular typeface, with new true small caps and ligatures, and many features streamlined and harmonized. Serapion II blends the spirits of Renaissance and Baroque, making an elegant typfeace with delicate ornaments and a most vivacious italic. "Sebastian" is Storm's brand-new beautiful sans. Rather than geometric and constructed, Sebastian is truly humanistic. The artist Frantisek Storm gave the letterstrokes a softening modulation that helps the typeface "compensate for their basic handicap - an absence of serifs". Another sans newly released by Storm is "Juvenis", a typeface originally drawn 1979 by the Czech master Josef Tyfa, now finalized in digital form.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/serapion-ii/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/sebastian/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/juvenis/

* ROB LEUSCHKE is a calligrapher living in St. Charles, Missouri, USA. Both Bitstream and IHOF are releasing new fonts by him. A lettering artist for Hallmark Cards in the 1980s, Rob has created hundreds of fonts. He specializes in calligraphic scripts, perfect for personal touches in a greetings cards and invitations. Rob releases his fonts under his own brand name Alphabytes, and with other foundries such as Bitstream, ITC and IHOF/P22. The newest additions at MyFonts.com include the free-flowing charming "P22 Corinthia", the elegant, traditional "P22 Imperial Script", the swirled and funny "P22 Oh Ley", the hand-styled contemporary "P22 Petemoss", the elaborate and very original "P22 Ruthie" (all from IHOF), and the informal "Ambiance BT", notable for being Bitstream's very first OpenType font. In applications that support OpenType Layout features, Ambiance BT creates a lively appearance of handwritten text, making use of contextual alternates and two sets of capitals to choose from. IHOF's offering 50% off for their Leuschke set until Feb 28.
- http://www.myfonts.com/person/leuschke/rob/

* BITSTREAM's new release program shows no signs of stopping. We love Lorenzo Lalatta's "Orchestra BT", a joyful alphabet of people and instruments declaring a love of music and calligraphy loudly and proudly. "Indoo BT" explores what Indian scripts, where all letters attach to a line, can offer western alphabet shapes; and "Ambiance BT", as we've mentioned in the Rob Leuschke story, is Bitstream's significant new OpenType script family. "Lindisfarne Nova" has some new members: an Incised and a wonderful Runes version inspired by the illustrated initial capitals found in the Lindisfarne Gospels.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/orchestra-bt/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/indoo-bt/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/ambiance-bt/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/lindisfarne-nova/

* MISPRINTED TYPE got onto our best-seller lists last year with the semi-destructed script font "Nars". And stayed there. Quite a feat, considering the competition for the top spots in the 'script' category. Now Eduardo Recife comes along with another that could do as well or better: "Great Circus" comes in 5 versions for $30. Buy it and use it big, use it real big, to get that same buzz that comes when you buy a giant old wooden horse with paint flaking off it - before asking your partner.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/misprinted/great-circus/

* IHOF brings a font that any lover of antiquarian books will fall in love with. "P22 Operina" by James Grieshaber is a faithful recreation of the 16th-century lettering model of the scribe Ludovico degli Arrighi used in his 1522 instructional lettering book (considered to be the earliest printed example of Chancery Cursive). With its rough edges, the font captures a look that mimics the endearing artifacts of quill and ink lettering on parchment. The font comes in three styles, from Romano that includes regular lowercase and uppercase letters to Fiore that is full of vivid swash forms.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ihof/p22-operina/

* LETRASET adds several fonts, among them "Avalanche Script", a lively calligraphic font by Michael Gills, inspired by Hermann Zapf's lettering.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/letraset/avalanche-script/

* TAIL SPIN STUDIO brings out the update that everybody was waiting for! The eccentric "Softie" font, used in our site headlines, just got a big brother, named Bloated by the designer Steve Zafarana.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/tailspinstudio/softie/

* MARK SIMONSON adds a series of families that include "Kandal", a legible wedge-serif face that looks highly suitable for newspaper use; and "Proxima Sans", a geometric sanserif with unusually large x-height, and whose italic is particularly at ease with itself. So much so that Rolling Stone magazine chose it for their house sans typeface last time they had a redesign.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/marksimonson/kandal/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/marksimonson/proxima-sans/

* E-PHEMERA brings us "Lanier", based on the intriguing handwriting of American poet and novelist Sidney Lanier; and "Impersonal" - remarkably, this most unromantic monospace font is a detailed replica of lettering in a 1950s personal ads magazine!
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ephemera/lanier/
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/ephemera/impersonal/

* PROCESS TYPE introduces Eric Olson's "Lingua", two weights of a geometric font with OpenType layout features - nearly 200 ligatures! The normally reductive geometric forms of Lingua without ligatures can be turned into a nearly upright script with the ligatures turned on.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/processtype/lingua/

* PRESENCE TYPO revives a pair of fonts originally created by Typofonderie Olive in 1956 by masterful French letterer Roger Excoffon. Their "Diane" featured two sets of capitals: the first, revived as "Diana", is drawn with a vigorous style and a fanciful distribution of thick and thin strokes; the second, revived as "Princess", is much more traditional and comes from Olive studio staff.
- http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/presencetypo/diana/

* MORE NEW FONTS from Ingrimayne, Pizzadude, Typodermic, FontCity, Blambot, Joe VanDerBos, PosiType, DrewFonts, DingbatCave, URW++, astype, Baseline Fonts, Sentinel Type, SparkyType, Zang-O-Fonts, Cape-Arcona, SelfBuildtype, Presence Typo, BA Graphics.


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REGULARS

Remember our WhatsNew and Special Offers pages are constantly updated. Check them often to see new fonts, and other MyFonts.com news including great offers!
- http://www.myfonts.com/WhatsNew
- http://www.myfonts.com/Promotion

We always like to hear of good and bad experiences you have at MyFonts.com. Just e-mail <comments@myfonts.com> and we'll get back to you!

-- The MyFonts.com Team


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