Category: News

  • Hear Doyald Young

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    On February 2, Debbie Millman interviewed Doyald Young on her American radio program, Design Matters. Doyald Young may be the don of American calligraphers and letterers. A long-time professor at Art Center College of Design in California, he is a slightly younger contemporary of Hermann Zapf. Listening to Debbie Millman’s interview, it seems that 2006…

  • Generate Magazine, Sabon Next

      Yesterday at work I received a beautifully-printed loose-bound thesis project: Generate Magazine. Created by Philipp Zurmöhle, who is just about to graduate from the University of Applied Sciences (FH) in Hannover, the entire project is set in Linotype’s Sabon Next, by Jean-François Porchez.

  • Betatype goes gamma?

    For the past week or so I’ve been enjoying Christian Robertson’s reloaded website, Betatype. In true beta spirit, he is posting working drawings there for comment, a feature I am instituting with immediate haste here at the TypeOff. Sketch Book. This is not the first version of Betatype which has been online. I can remember…

  • More 100-best typeface lists…

    Everyone seems to love typeface rankings. Gerrit van Aaken wants more, the FontBlog’s statistics are at new heights because of their cataloging efforts, and even my recent post recounting the 12 most-common typefaces in award-winning German annual reports has received more hits than anything else I’ve ever written here. On this thread at Typophile about…

  • Me, in a previous life?

    At TYPO Berlin last year, Richard Kegler from P22 showed a photograph of this painting, which was printed in his guide book of the city. By Hans Holbein the Younger, it hangs in the Gemäldegalerie, part of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Although entitled “Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze,” and from the year 1532,…

  • Indie Fonts 3 Released

    Hot off the press, or at least new to my inbox: the third edition of the lovely Indie Fonts series is now available for purchase! The volume features 20 foundries with over 400 pages of type specimens, plus a bonus CD with 53 fonts. Although it will be shipping to bookstores in a flex-cover edition,…

  • Most Popular Business-Typefaces

    On the German typography forum Typografie.info, Kerstin Meier recently mentioned the Annual Report Competition organized by Manager Magazin [sic. magazine does not have an “e” in German]. I recently completed some research into the typefaces found in these annual reports, and this seems like a good time to post it. The prize winners for best…

  • Some Things Never Change

    Yesterday I saw a peculiar type specimen sheet at the University library in Frankfurt. Although the specimen, printed in Leipzig in 1710, contained samples in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Samaritan, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Armenian—all of which were surrounded by Fraktur letters and floral ornaments—the part I found particularly interesting was its headline. The text reads: Gegenwärtiger…

  • TypoTechnica 2007 Dates

    Linotype is pleased to announce its fourth TypoTechnica conference, to be held on April 27–28, 2007. TypoTechnica is renowned as the premiere platform bringing together typeface designers, font developers, and software technicians. Panels of industry leaders will present a range of topics concerning new font technologies and file formats. All events will be hosted in…

  • London, Briefly

    Anke and I were in London a few weeks ago. Since I’ll be moving to the UK next year, I went over to scout out a few things, and stayed over the weekend for my birthday. All in all, I just behaved normally—looking at type and trying to take some pictures. The city was beautiful,…

  • Table for Six

    Better late than never. On Saturday, the ninth of December, I celebrated Thanksgiving at the latest conceivable date. Since I was on a business trip on the real holiday, and on vacation for most of the two and a weeks between then and now, I had to take some drastic measures. Nevertheless, Anke and I…

  • Thanksgiving, Two Weeks Late!

    I’m a sentimentalist, and I love Thanksgiving—certainly my favorite [American] holiday. Thanksgiving this year was two weeks ago, on Thursday, November 23. After I realized that I was going to be on business in Romania for most of the 23rd, and in London shortly thereafter, decided upon something drastic. In order to Thanksgiving at all,…

  • The Trajan Column, Sort Of

    Trajan is a typeface designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems in 1989. Its letters are based on a sample from an ancient inscription from the Trajan Column in Rome, which was completed around 113 AD. During the late 19th Century, a plaster cast was taken of the entire column. A copy of this is…

  • Netter Typ von Hessen

    In his “Type Designers from Around the World” series for the German magazine VALUE, Peter Reichard has summarized a series of global typographic trends from hot spots around the globe. His concluding article can be found in the November 2006 issue; here, he deals with his home turf. Touching upon Hessen in a nationwide survey…