Font of the Month Club

Fern is a Venetian oldstyle typeface with exaggerated diagonal stress. Its weight clumps in round strokes and chunky triangular serifs, giving it a rich texture that sparkles even at the smallest size. Its ribbonlike forms are modeled after the Renaissance faces of Nicolas Jenson as well as related twentieth century revivals such as Centaur and Dante. This month, I’ve added a larger “Text” optical size to the family, as well as Bold weights and ornaments.

Typeface

In spring, I am always taken by surprise here in Western Massachusetts. Since I wrote you last, flowers have started blooming, deer and wild turkey are visiting, and birds are chirping (there’s even a nest directly above my front door!).
And the forest floor in the woods around my house—just dirt and dead leaves a few weeks ago—is now covered in a thick blanket of ferns. These ferns are lovely, sure, but I couldn’t help but feel that they were taunting me...a constant reminder that I still haven’t figured out what to do with my typeface Fern, a series that has been described on my website as “coming soon” since 2016!

So, what I’m sending you this month is a “re-tuning” of Fern for those larger text sizes (I’m thinking 11–14pt, but your mileage may vary). It makes the same kinds of changes that I attempted in scrapped Display cut (smaller x-height, higher contrast) but in smaller, subtler moves. I think it does the job!
Fern isn’t trying to be the prettiest, most exquisite interpretation of a Jensonian Roman, and it’s not trying to be a postmodern deconstruction of it either. Fern is just a simple text face.

Several of you have asked for a Bold weight for Fern (a reasonable request!), so you’ll find that in the package as well as an update of Fern Micro. The variable versions unite Text and Micro along an Optical Size axis, which now works automatically in the latest InDesign.

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May 2021

Extendomatic

A monolinear connected script with the power to extend

Extendomatic is a monolinear connecting script based on the streamline lettering of the mid-20th century. The typeface juxtaposes flowing, cursive forms with a rigid rectangular skeleton, all connected by an ever-present baseline. In addition to its adjustable weight and slant, Extendomatic’s variable font features a tracking axis that extends the baseline as it spaces out the letters.

Extendomatic is a monolinear connecting script based on the streamline lettering of the mid-20th century. The typeface juxtaposes flowing, cursive forms with a rigid rectangular skeleton, all connected by an ever-present baseline.

Beyond its adjustable weight and slant, the variable font features a tracking axis that extends the baseline as it spaces out the letters. Pretty nifty!

Standing on a sidewalk in Manhattan Beach, I found myself admiring the exaggerated baseline of the “Sounds of the Sea” sign, pictured below, and that’s what got me drawing.

April 2021

Club Lithographer v2

This month, Club Lithographer gets an uppercase! This typeface is a wide-set italic with elongated serifs, blobby outstrokes, and an unusually steep slant (roughly 24°). It’s a response to the typeface Lithographic Italic, credited to Andrew Little and published by A. D. Farmer & Son in the mid-19th century. My rendition plays up the expansion contrast present in this style of lettering, letting the weight quickly swell up in the downstrokes in a way that’s reminiscent of the expanding nib of a pointed pen. It goes even further than pointed-pen lettering by punctuating the beginnings and endings of strokes with expressive blobs.

MAJUSCULE Describes Any Script in Which the Letters Have Very Few or Very Short Ascenders and Descenders, or None at All.
by Virtue of Their Visual Impact, This Made the Term Majuscule an Apt Descriptor for What Much Later Came to Be More Commonly Referred to as Uppercase Letters.
in Orthography, the Uppercase Is Primarily Reserved for Special Purposes, Such as the First Letter of a Sentence or of a Proper Noun (Called Capitalization, or Capitalized Words), Which Makes the Lowercase the More Common Variant in Regular Text.

March 2021

Job Clarendon

Taking the Clarendon style to new extremes

Job Clarendon is an homage to the Condensed Clarendon, the versatile bracketed slab serif style that was a mainstay of 19th century British and American job printing. A collaboration with Bethany Heck, this interpretation builds on the Hairline weight published in 2020 and extends the weight range to the opposite extreme. This design changes across weight more than any other typeface I’ve designed: stems get up to 45 times thicker from Hairline to Black, and the average letterform more than doubles in width.

This month, I add lighter weights to Gimlet Sans, a Grotesque sans serif companion to my typeface Gimlet, which was in turn inspired by Georg Trump’s 1938 typeface Schadow. While superelliptical sans serifs can sometimes feel cold, Gimlet Sans harnesses Schadow’s unique blend of geometric clunkiness and organic spunkiness to add some bounce and liveliness to the mix.

Zenith Slab DJR is a slab serif version of Zenith DJR, a set of Art Deco capitals based on a fire station inscription in Charlotte, North Carolina. In this design, each letter gets a single heavy stem, eschewing traditional weight distribution and enriching words with a distinctive rhythm. The slab serif version enhances Zenith’s Art Deco geometry with angular vertical serifs, which adds a sense of playfulness to the otherwise-spare design. Zenith’s chunky strokes and open spacing make it a perfect choice for headers and packaging.

An impactful Gothic in four widths (and a variable font)

A sloped Roman was not enough for Roslindale. Like De Vinne before it, Roslindale combines a rational structure typical of the Victorian era with echoes of historicized “oldstyle” shapes. And because Roz has a foot in both the “modern” and “oldstyle” worlds, I felt that its Italic should as well.

Italics can have an especially complicated relationship with their companion Romans. This is because they can differ from the Roman not only in slope, but in cursiveness as well.

Typographica review

A sloped Roman was not enough for Roslindale. Like De Vinne before it, Roslindale combines a rational structure typical of the Victorian era with echoes of historicized “oldstyle” shapes. And because Roz has a foot in both the “modern” and “oldstyle” worlds, I felt that its Italic should as well.

Italics can have an especially complicated relationship with their companion Romans. This is because they can differ from the Roman not only in slope, but in cursiveness as well.

December 2018

Dattilo DJR Banner Extra Light

An Extra Light weight from Forma’s slab serif cousin

Forma and Dattilo share an interesting history as the product of a committee of eight prominent Italian graphic designers led by Nebiolo’s art director, Aldo Novarese. The struggling foundry assembled this committee to create a new “universal” typeface that would compete with the likes of Helvetica and Univers. Indra Kupferschmid documented this unusual tale of design-by-committee in an article that accompanied Forma DJR’s release, and even more detail can now be found in a pair of recent articles by Alessandro Colizzi. Just like Forma, Roger has admired the design for decades, even commissioning a phototype version from Jim Parkinson for a 1977 cover of Rolling Stone when the original metal was unavailable.

Note: An updated version of this family is available as Dattilo DJR Expansion

Forma and Dattilo share an interesting history as the product of a committee of eight prominent Italian graphic designers led by Nebiolo’s art director, Aldo Novarese.
The struggling foundry assembled this committee to create a new “universal” typeface that would compete with the likes of Helvetica and Univers. Indra Kupferschmid documented this unusual tale of design-by-committee in an article that accompanied Forma DJR’s release, and even more detail can now be found in a pair of recent articles by Alessandro Colizzi.
Just like Forma, Roger has admired the design for decades, even commissioning a phototype version from Jim Parkinson for a 1977 cover of Rolling Stone when the original metal was unavailable.

November 2018

Pappardelle Party

It’s a variable, stencil, multicolor horizontal-stress slab, sorry in advance

Pappardelle Party expands on Pappardelle, a French Antique slab serif inspired by the modernist uses of horizontal stress in the twentieth century, particularly Herbert Matter’s branding for Knoll. This new stencil style further abstracts the design, complete with horizontal bridges that form bands across a line of text. It also combines color font technology, a variable axis, and OpenType contextual alternates to cycle through a sequence of four colors that changes position with each letter is typed.

Demo Page

Pappardelle Party expands on Pappardelle, a French Antique slab serif inspired by the modernist uses of horizontal stress in the twentieth century, particularly Herbert Matter’s branding for Knoll. This new stencil style further abstracts the design, complete with horizontal bridges that form bands across a line of text.
It also combines color font technology, a variable axis, and OpenType contextual alternates to cycle through a sequence of four colors that changes position with each letter is typed.

October 2018

Fern Micro

A chunky humanist text face

Fern Micro is a Venetian oldstyle that is native to the screen. With exaggerated diagonal stress, Fern’s weight clumps in round strokes and chunky triangular serifs, giving it a rich texture that sparkles even at the smallest size. Its ribbonlike forms are modeled after the Renaissance faces of Nicolas Jenson as well as related twentieth century revivals such as Centaur and Dante.

Note: An updated version of this font is available in Fern Text.

Typeface

Typographica review

Fern is my attempt to bring the elegant ribbonlike letters of the Venetian oldstyle to a typeface that is native to the screen. I’ve been kicking it around for the past five or six years, but I never got around to releasing it.
In recent months I’ve been revising the design, adding characters, features, and kerning pairs in the hope that I can give it the proper release that I think it deserves. I am sending you Fern Micro’s Regular and Italic weights, designed for extended reading at small sizes.
I originally intended for Fern to be part of Font Bureau’s Reading Edge series, and it largely follows the approach of Turnip RE and the other RE faces: large x-height, low contrast, generous spacing, and oversized details that could stand up to the limitations of text rendering at the time.

Not only did I look at Nicolas Jenson’s prototypical Roman, but I spent a lot of time examining the letter shapes and textures of twentieth century interpretations such as Bruce Rogers’s Centaur and Giovanni Mardersteig’s Dante.
Fern’s Italic follows Dante’s model especially closely, combining a variety of angles into a unified design. What sets Fern apart is the complete exaggeration of the diagonal stress and the interesting texture that I was hoping would come in even the smallest of sizes and the harshest of onscreen conditions.

With weight clumped in the southwest and northeast, not to mention the strong triangular serifs, I tried to balance a sturdy and dense typographic color with the ribbonlike forms that the Venetian oldstyle is known for.
Fern Micro is different than most of my other Fonts of the Month in that it has been used a handful of times over the years, and I have had the benefit of learning by seeing how it was used. This includes a couple books, a poster series, the website for the excellent Song Exploder podcast, and most recently the super-valuable Vietnamese Typography resource by Donny Troung, who also consulted on Fern’s Vietnamese accents.

My first variable color font

Merit Badge is a variable color font based on blocky modular letters found in a 1970’s boy scout guide. In contrast to the stark simplicity of its design, the font is technically complex, allowing for variation in weight and serif length, as well as for color to be applied to its three layers. These features make it perfect for animation and experimentation with emerging font technologies.

Demo Page

Merit Badge is a variable color font based on blocky modular letters found in a 1970’s boy scout guide. In contrast to the stark simplicity of its design, the font is technically complex, allowing for variation in weight and serif length, as well as for color to be applied to its three layers. These features make it perfect for animation and experimentation with emerging font technologies.

May 2018

Roslindale Light and Regular

As the stems get narrower, the serifs get sharper

Roslindale is a text and display serif that takes its inspiration from De Vinne, a typeface named for the famed nineteenth century printer and attributed to Gustav Schroeder and Nicholas Werner of the Central Type Foundry. Roslindale smooths out the clunkiness of the original and dials up the contrast, making for a headline and text face that is eminently usable but still quite distinct. May’s offering includes two Condensed Display weights, Light and Regular, as well as a Bold companion to the text weights.

Note: An updated version of this font is included in Roslindale Display Widths.

May’s offering includes two Condensed Display weights, Light and Regular. It smooths out the clunkiness of the original and dials up the contrast, making for a headline and text face that is eminently usable but still quite distinct.
Roslindale is a text and display serif that takes its inspiration from De Vinne, a typeface named for the famed nineteenth century printer and attributed to Gustav Schroeder and Nicholas Werner of the Central Type Foundry.

April 2018

Rumpus Extended

Sharp, triangular serifs

Rumpus Extended is a super-wide typeface with sharp Latin serifs. It is descended from Stephenson Blake’s 1883 Wide Latin, which contrasts super-pointy serifs with super-round forms. Rumpus keeps a bit of the wild side of other Latins, but isn’t as overtly circuslike. Unlike its predecessors, Rumpus has a distinctly humanist structure, evidenced by its interior corners and punctuated by its diamond shaped dots. And the sheer width of Rumpus Extended is enough to give significant heft to any message, no matter how short it may be.