Nickel is a stocky engraverâs alphabet based on the inscription of a 1918 Chinese banknote. In this face, the traditionally round letters (like O and S) are straight-sided, as if chiseled from a block. Meanwhile, the traditionally straight letters (like H and N) are dominated by the sweeping curves of large, bracketed serifs. Nickel shares the monumentality of the lettering on todayâs American currency, but its squarish forms add a peculiar strengh and energy with overtones of the 1970s classic typeface, Serpentine. This version adds a lowercase and color fonts.
Exactly five years ago, I published the inaugural edition of the Font of the Month Club. I thought Iâd be ready to celebrate this anniversary with some big, insightful retrospective on how the experience has redefined my process (which it has) and transformed the way I think about making and releasing type (which it did).
Aforementioned highlight layer adds a little extra oomph and gives Nickel the full color fonts treatment: it now comes as layerable fonts (Nickel Layers) and color fonts (Nickel Color). On the technical front, thereâs been recent progress in support of customizable color palettes in Safari and Chrome, which I hope will make my color fonts easier and more fun to use. Iâd love to see color palette selection in Desktop apps, but in the meantime you can always use my Color Font Customizer to tweak the color palettes embedded in the font file.
This allowed me to make specific accommodations, most visible in the pinching counterforms of the lowercase. When used alone, I wanted those pinches to feel sharp and incisive. When used with the open shapes, I needed them to shrink or disappear to make room for the inline shapes.
