Font of the Month Club

This month’s font

Klooster Thin v2

An anachronistic uncial lowercase

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Klooster Thin is a new take on the uncial script, and now it has a lowercase! It’s a mix of traditional Roman capitals with round, hybrid forms that would event what the alphabet was like before the lowercase had fully evolved. This typeface is related to the Black weight I drew in 2017, but also has its own unique features: a distinct diagonal stress connecting it to its calligraphic roots, and super-long vertical serifs that add snap and elasticity to the curves and give the letterforms an untamed energy.

Klooster is based on the uncial hand, a script that was popularized many centuries before the existence of the lowercase we use today.
So the entire concept of a “lowercase uncial” is anachronistic at best, and this expansion is in some ways a work of historical fiction.
Extremely long serifs and snappy, elastic curves are preserved from the original caps, and it introduces new proportions, prominent ascenders and descenders, and even more rounded forms.

December 2021

Bradley Initials DJR

No numbers? No kerning? No problem!

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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.

rfrfyurfgtrfguyuyfgtrfgtyugtgtrfrfyurfgtrfguyuyfgtrfgtyugtgt
frfruyfrtgfrtyuyurtgfrtguytgtgfrfruyfrtgfrtyuyurtgfrtguytgtg

May 2021

Extendomatic

A monolinear connected script with the power to extend

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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

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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

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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.

Superelliptical rigidity meets off-kilter playfulness

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Heckendon is a bracketed slab serif based on the Condensed Clarendons of nineteenth century British and American poster typography. Under the guidance of Clarendon-enthusiast Bethany Heck, I drew this Hairline style far thinner than any of its Victorian predecessors, and we hope this is only the beginning. Heckendon’s simple and confident forms make it feel industrial-strength even at the thinnest possible weight, while its ball terminals lend it a touch of gracefulness.

Note: An updated version of this font is available as Job Clarendon.

Heckendon is a bracketed slab serif based on the Condensed Clarendons of nineteenth century British and American poster typography. Under the guidance of Clarendon-enthusiast
Bethany Heck, I drew this Hairline style far thinner than any of its Victorian predecessors, and we hope this is only the beginning. Heckendon’s simple and confident forms make it feel industrial-strength even at the thinnest possible weight, while its ball terminals lend it a touch of gracefulness.

July 2020

Pomfret

Titling caps in the style of Bertram Goodhue

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Pomfret is a set of titling capitals with Arts & Crafts flair. After years of encouragement from Roger Black, I began the design as an homage to the work of Bertram Goodhue, famous as the architect of the Nebraska State Capitol as well as the typeface Cheltenham. The skeletons of the letters were initially inspired by the tightly-spaced capitals (especially the restrained R and K) found on his cover for The Knight Errant. Pomfret moves beyond its source material, adopting a more contemporary finish with discretionary ligatures, razor-thin hairlines, and restrained, bracketed serifs.

Note: An updated version of this font is available as Pomfret v2.

Pomfret is a set of titling capitals with Arts & Crafts flair. After years of encouragement from Roger Black, I began the design as an homage to the work of Bertram Goodhue, famous as the architect of the Nebraska State Capitol as well as the typeface Cheltenham.
The skeletons of the letters were initially inspired by the tightly-spaced capitals (especially the restrained R and K) found on his cover for The Knight Errant. Pomfret moves beyond its source material, adopting a more contemporary finish with discretionary ligatures, razor-thin hairlines, and restrained, bracketed serifs.

June 2020

Bild Compressed Weights

Dattilo DJR revives the slab serif counterpart to Forma, released between 1972 and 1974 by the renowned type foundry Nebiolo and created by a team of Italian designers led by the inimitable Aldo Novarese.

Like Forma DJR, this revival attempts to bring new life to this bygone era of typography, embodying the peculiar collision of midcentury modernist idealism with the smudgy realities of metal, ink, and paper. With rounded corners and tapered serifs, the type- face pairs well with Forma DJR, but has a typewriter-influenced personality that is distinct from its neo-grotesque counterpart.

February 2020

Megabase

Wood type clunkiness meets space age funkiness

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Megabase is a display gothic with strong horizontal stress inspired by the clunkiness of 19th-century gothics like Gothic Bold and the space-age funkiness of 1970s designs such as Aldo Novarese’s Sintex and Bob Newman’s Zipper. Megabase goes beyond its forebears in emphasizing its horizontality; while most typefaces strive for an even typographic color, Megabase embraces its unevenness, allowing topheavy, bottomheavy, and diagonal forms to stick out like sore thumbs. The typeface offers several variants of especially disruptive letters, allowing the designer to calibrate these interruptions.

Megabase is a display gothic with strong horizontal stress inspired by the clunkiness of 19th-century gothics like Gothic Bold and the space-age funkiness of 1970s designs such as Aldo Novarese’s Sintex and Bob Newman’s Zipper.
The typeface goes beyond its forebears in emphasizing its horizontality; while most typefaces strive for an even typographic color, Megabase embraces its unevenness, allowing topheavy, bottomheavy, and diagonal forms to stick out like sore thumbs.

January 2020

Gimlet X-Ray

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

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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.

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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.

Even though type on screen has progressed far beyond where it was in 2012, I think that Fern can still be relevant to text typography today. My hope is that sending this to you will be a kick in the butt for me to return to the design and expand it into a useful family.
Text on the screen is a different story. It’s easy for these designs to get light and splotchy. Web designers frequently pass over these classics, opting for sturdier alternatives based on Baroque and Enlightenment Romans instead (or, let’s be honest, sans serifs).

September 2018

Bradley DJR

A fairytale blackletter

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Bradley DJR is a revival of Bradley, a typeface released by American Type Founders in 1895. It is based on Will H. Bradley’s cover for the Christmas edition of The Inland Printer magazine, and most records show that it was Hermann Ihlenburg who completed the design. Its simplified forms make it more accessible to readers who aren’t accustomed to blackletter, and this revival seeks to preserve its softness, descending caps, and distinctive storybook character.

Typographica review

Bradley DJR is a revival of Bradley, a typeface released by American Type Founders in 1895. It is based on Will H. Bradley’s cover for the Christmas edition of The Inland Printer magazine.
Most records show that it was Hermann Ihlenburg who completed the design. Its simplified forms make it more accessible to readers who aren’t accustomed to blackletter.
This revival seeks to preserve its softness, descending caps, and distinctive storybook character.

August 2018

Map Roman

Pristine titling caps from the illustrative maps of Max Gill

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Map Roman is an elegant set of capitals based on the lettering of MacDonald Gill, whose work included a variety of beautifully handlettered maps of London, England, and the world. After stumbling upon his work in a map museum, I tried my hand at a typographical interpretation that attempts to capture the liveliness and authority of his letterforms.

Note: An updated version of this font is included in Map Roman Compressed.

Map Roman is an elegant set of capitals based on the lettering of MacDonald Gill.
Beautifully handlettered maps of London, England, and the world were included in his work.
After stumbling upon his work in a map museum, I tried my hand at a typographical interpretation that attempts to capture the liveliness and authority of his letterforms.

July 2018

Rhody Expansion

Pushing this mechanical slab to light and heavy extremes

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Rhody is a stocky geometric slab with distinctive vertical serifs in unexpected places. Its jumping-off point was the cover of a 1952 garden calendar that I found in the Mölndals Stadsmuseum outside Gothenburg, Sweden. With narrow, straight-sided forms and curves, Rhody’s quirky, mechanical look is punctuated by extra-gappy inktraps as well as blocky forms of f, j, and t. The July 2018 edition adds Light, Medium, and Black weights to the Rhody family, as well as a bonus variable font for licensees of the February 2018 edition.

Rhody is a stocky geometric slab with distinctive vertical serifs in unexpected places. Its jumping-off point was the cover of a 1952 garden calendar that I found in the Mölndals Stadsmuseum outside Gothenburg, Sweden.
With narrow, straight-sided forms and curves, Rhody’s quirky, mechanical look is punctuated by extra-gappy inktraps as well as blocky forms of f, j, and t. The July 2018 edition adds Light, Medium, and Black weights to the Rhody family, as well as a bonus variable font for licensees of the February 2018 edition.

June 2018

Merit Badge

My first variable color font

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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

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Thick on the top and thick on the bottom

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Pappardelle is a French Antique slab serif inspired by the rationalized, modernist uses of horizontal stress in the twentieth century, particularly Herbert Matter’s branding for the furniture designer Knoll. Its vertical stems range from dense to delicate across the duplexing family, but its thick horizontal strokes always stay the same. Ample letterspacing will counterbalance Pappardelle’s condensed forms in a fresh and surprising way; think about adding some tracking to accentuate its stacatto rhythms.

Pappardelle is a French Antique slab serif inspired by the rationalized, modernist uses of horizontal stress in the twentieth century, particularly Herbert Matter’s branding for the furniture designer Knoll. Its vertical stems range from dense to delicate across the duplexing family, but its thick horizontal strokes always stay the same.
Ample letterspacing will counterbalance Pappardelle’s condensed forms in a fresh and surprising way; think about adding some tracking to accentuate its stacatto rhythms.

September 2017

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