Monthly Archives: April 2011

FontShop’s Friday Five: Contest, Promotion, and More

April 29, 2011 – 4:09 PM

We know you’re busy and the Internet is a crowded place, so we’ll try to give you a little reminder now and then of what’s going on out there. Below please find five recent FontShop-related threads that you may have missed.

Deadline Sunday! Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts Contest

Do your weekend plans include finalizing your design for the FontShop Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts Contest? Public voting starts next week, so make sure you’ve posted to our Flickr group by 11:59 PM (PDT) Sunday evening. The winner will get a $500 credit toward any FontFont package, so don’t delay. You can submit up to three entries and make sure to tag them with the fonts you use. Don’t have a Flickr account? Email your submissions to contest@fontshop.com.

50% off Our Type Promotion

We mentioned this last week, but it bears repeating, OurType is offering an incredible promotion to FontShop customers this spring. From now until May 31, OurType’s Meran, Eva, and Fayon are being offered for an astounding 50% off. Use the promotional code OURTYPE50 during checkout for any product from these three families.

April Staff Picks Live

Our staff spent the month scouring fonts new and old to pick some gems for you to consider. Read some background in our blog post or check out the full list here.

On the FontFeed

After recovering from a storm in the cloud, Yves talks about our contest and his own real album design for his band, Rosa Luxe* , utilizing Typejockeys’ Ingeborg and FF Hydra.

The Typewriter May Be Dead, But Its Fonts Live On

Finally, this week Mashable reported the possible death of the once-beloved typewriter. If you’re feeling nostalgic, we recommended coping by exploring our Typewriter Fontlist.

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in FontShop Products, Free Fonts, Staff Picks | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

April ’11 Staff Picks

April 28, 2011 – 2:31 PM

Our April 2011 Staff Picks have arrived! Let these favorite fonts shower your designs with inspiration in the coming month.

Hotel

We here at FontShop San Francisco love the Bay Area, and we love retro, so Jim Parkinson‘s showcard lettering typeface Hotel, inspired by signage still seen in Oakland, CA, is a staff pick shoe-in.

Le Monde Courrier

Download Le Monde Courrier specimen PDF(246 KB).

Jean-François Porchez‘s Le Monde Courrier is but one part of the extensive Le Monde superfamily. Named after the French publication for which it was designed, Le Monde is sometimes serious, sometimes playful, but always maintains a level of sophistication. The Courrier variant straddles the line between typewritten and handwritten, and was designed to be impervious to the imperfections of various printed media.

Also included in April’s Staff Picks is Meran Condensed Black by OurType, just one of the FREE OurType fonts being offered until May 31. Read about our OurType promotion here.

By Ivan Bettger | Posted in Staff Picks | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Contest: Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts

April 25, 2011 – 10:12 AM

Remember a time when digital fonts were new, grunge was in, and ragged was hip? Just like that original Lollapalooza t-shirt that may be lurking in the back of your closet, there are fonts that haven’t been worn a lot recently but it’s good to know they’re still around.  You can win $500 in credit toward FontFonts at FontShop.com by putting some of them to use in our design contest this week. Read on to find out how.

With the update of all FontFont products to OpenType this April, 24 families are now free for use. Since you’ll already be on FontShop.com to procure them, try experimenting by combining these free fonts with more modern typefaces and see what happens.

To celebrate this occasion, we at FontShop are having a little contest for our design customers. Your challenge is this:

Embodying the somewhat nostalgic spirit of these font families, try your hand at redesigning an album cover using at least one of the free FontFonts. Although many of these fonts conjure up the heyday of the grunge-era, your album can be from any time period — pick from the range of Bieber to Bach — or create an album you wish existed.

Submissions should be uploaded to FontShop’s Flickr Group “Rocking FontFont’s Free Fonts,” by 11:59 PM (PDT) on Sunday, May 1. If you do not have a Flickr account you may email your submissions to contest@fontshop.com. Only three submissions per designer please (if you submit more than three, only the first three chronologically will be entered). On Tuesday, May 3, voting will be opened to the public via a survey link on the FontShop.com blog, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Voting will close at 11:59 PM (PST) on Sunday, May 8.

The winner will be announced on Monday, May 9 and will receive a $500 credit toward FontFonts on FontShop.com.

And who knows? Just as fashion cycles have seen the resurgence of leggings, fluorescent colors, and ’80s typefaces in the last few years, FontShop.com has designers covered when the ’90s come back with the availability. Perhaps your design will move the trend forward!

Free FontFonts

UPDATE: Information on voting for designs can be found here.

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in Announcements, Free Fonts | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

New Fonts: Progreso and Calypso I Heavy

April 22, 2011 – 12:06 PM

We’ve had an abundance of new fonts recently, most of which you have likely seen in our bi-weekly newsletter. Here are a couple of new ones you may have missed:

Progreso by CastleType

Jason Castle was inspired by 1920s Russian lettering when designing the condensed unicase Progreso. Fittingly, it contains Cyrillic language support, in addition to Western, Central European, and Greek.

Calypso I Heavy by Typolar

Jarno Lukkarila‘s Calypso I Heavy has Italian aesthetic origins (hence the “I”), its heavy decorative letters somewhat reminiscent (to me, at least) of Western All’Italiana poster lettering. Calypso I Heavy is based on Lukkarila’s extensive Egyptian Grotesque family, Calypso E.

By Ivan Bettger | Posted in FontShop Products, New Fonts | Comments (0)

50% Off: OurType’s Meran, Eva, and Fayon

April 20, 2011 – 10:00 AM

Last month, FontShop introduced two new families from OurType: the all-in-one sans serif Fakt by Thomas Thiemich, and Valentin Brustaux’s discreet, yet strong, serif Tiina. For a limited time, both families were offered with a generous 40% discount.

This month OurType has upped the ante. From now until May 31, OurType’s Meran, Eva, and Fayon are being offered for an astounding 50% off. Use the promotional code OURTYPE50 during checkout for any font product from these three families.

And just to sweeten the pot, OurType is also offering select styles from each family entirely free of charge. You can give the complimentary fonts a test run, then come back for the family when you realize how great they are.

And as if this deal isn’t big enough, here’s something else to keep in mind: OurType’s standard End User License Agreement allows for editable embedding. This includes:

  • Web embedding, using @font-face, Cufón, and sIFR
  • Editable PDF embedding
  • Flash embedding

Meran


Maurice Göldner’s Meran grew out of an exercise to construct capital letters from strips of black paper. Its origins make Meran difficult to characterize. A sans? Undoubtedly, but its angular forms might also qualify it as a “contemporary rotunda”. A 3-width, 6-weight text face that works equally well in headlines as it does in small print.

Meran is available in Standard or Pro which adds small caps; lining, old style and small cap figures (each in tabular and proportional widths); fractions; comprehensive superiors, inferiors, nominators and denominators; case sensitive punctuation sets; mathematical and monetary symbols; arrows; standard and discretionary ligatures; and support for all (Latin script based) Western, Central and East European languages.

Free until May 31:

Download the Meran specimen PDF (418 KB).

Eva


Named after the warm, organic work of ceramicist Eva Zeisel, Eva defies the popular image of a sans, thanks to the contrast in its strokes and the freedom with which they have been drawn. This friendly personality provides added interest at larger sizes, yet Eva also has a notable clarity, and it works well for setting continuous text. Indeed, it was Zeisel’s “playful search for beauty” that is the crucial connection between her and her audience. Designers Merel Matzinger and Fred Smeijers hope their typeface achieves a similar feeling.

Free until May 31:

Download the Eva specimen PDF (291 KB).

Fayon


A fresh take on the Didot style, OurType Fayon is a contemporary, high performance family for text. Designed by Peter Mohr.

Free until May 31:

Download the Fayon specimen PDF (3.6 MB).

The 50% discount and free font offer expires May 31. I’m not sure why you’re still here and not over at FontShop.com downloading like crazy.

By Ivan Bettger | Posted in Font Packages, FontShop Products, Free Fonts | Comments (0)

New webfonts on the blog, and improved webfont categorization at fontshop.com

April 15, 2011 – 1:14 PM

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you may have noticed a slightly new look in the past week. No we have not lost weight or gotten a haircut (thanks for asking), but instead changed the webfonts we are using for our headers and text.

The featured webfont for headers is now FF Amman Serif Web and body text is set in FF Milo Web.

Some words from our designer, Aaron, as to why he picked this pairing:

FF Amman is a distinctive Latin/Arabic family designed by Yanone in 2010. This post at the FontFeed covers the story of its unique design. I wanted to highlight a newer FontFont that isn’t used widely as a webfont (if at all), and FF Amman fit the bill perfectly.

The body text is set in Michael Abbink‘s FF Milo, a pleasant and versatile typeface with a large x-height that works well at smaller sizes on screen.

Our blog isn’t the only part of FontShop with an updated appearance. Web FontFonts are now categorized by classification for easy browsing. This will make it easier for designers to find and try out fonts to freshen up existing sites or build a new one with typography in mind.

Have you recently changed your “look” using webfonts from FontShop? Share your experience in the comments.

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in FontShop Products | Tagged , | Comments (2)

Nice Price Collection from Linotype Creative Alliance Fonts

April 14, 2011 – 4:14 PM

“A great little collection of fonts – at great prices – for scrapbookers, educators, home and small business users. These distinctive designs and your operating system fonts combine perfectly to tackle a wide variety of projects.”

That’s how Linotype describes their recently-packaged Nice Price Collection from their Creative Alliance brand. With nearly 150 fonts to choose from, priced individually at $5 USD, this is a good collection to revisit and sample for designers on a budget.

Check out hidden gems like:

Newtron

East Bloc by Grant Hutchinson

Radiant Condensed by R. Hunter Middleton

What are your favorite Nice Price fonts?

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in Font Packages, FontShop Products | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

New Fountain Type: Foral and Satura

April 12, 2011 – 4:12 PM

Last month, FontShop released a couple of new typefaces from the masterful designers at Fountain. Let’s take a look:

Foral by Rui Abreu

Download the PDF (4.3 MB).

Foral was designed and developed over a four year period, starting in 2006 with a rigid and sober foundation. It evolved into a more organic and fluid typeface, maintaining its geometric skeleton but with a softer, more approachable exterior. Check out the very cool and unique Foral trailer:

Foral comes in eight weights, each with italics and a number of OpenType features. Abreu‘s sans serif Forma is based on the same geometric skeleton and will pair well with Foral in a pinch.

Satura by Peter Bruhn and Göran Söderström

Download the PDF (6.2 MB).

Satura was conceived and grown under unique circumstances. As Fountain tells it:

A creative collaboration between Göran Söderström (Stockholm) and Peter Bruhn (Malmö), Satura began with Göran’s concept for a reversed contrast typeface — one in which the horizontal strokes are heavy, rather than the more traditional vertical stress. Sparked by these ideas, Peter responded with his own thoughts. For months, the design bounced back and forth over the Nordic intertubes until the summer of 2010 when the friends met in Malmö to complete the project in person. Type design is most often a solitary undertaking, so perhaps it is this dialogue between the two Swedes that makes Satura so unique.

Derived from a Latin word meaning “mixed dish”, the Satura Suite is four related, but distinct, families: Satura, the mother, a display face with reversed contrast; Satura Parts, a stencil version; Satura Core, the contrast removed, revealing the design’s basic structure; and Satura Text, a more conventional and readable interpretation, suitable for smaller and longer text. Each family includes multiple weights. Satura Text adds italics. But expect the style range to grow in the future — Satura is a living project.

You can find more specimens of the various weights and styles of Satura on its gallery page.

By Ivan Bettger | Posted in Font Packages, New Fonts | Comments (0)

New Fonts for April ’11

April 5, 2011 – 1:25 PM

On Friday, we told you about the new FontFonts added with FontFont Release 55. April showers have brought plenty of other new fonts to FontShop and we’ve listed them for you here.

We’ll be highlighting them throughout the month on this blog and in the FontShop Newsletter, so stay tuned.

What are your favorite April fonts?

Calgary Script by Sudtipos

Pollen by TypeTogether

Foundries with New Fonts This Month:

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in New Fonts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

FontFont Release 55: Now Available at FontShop.com

April 1, 2011 – 1:22 PM
FF More

FontFont Release 55 includes FF More (shown above)

Happy April FontShoppers!

Pop over to FontShop.com today and you’ll find a plethora of updates in the FontFont catalog. These include OpenType conversions for all FontFonts and three additions to the FontFont library (FF More, FF Spinoza, and FF Meta Hebrew).

Look for full details in our newsletter next week. Not subscribed? Sign up here.

Read More »

By Meghan Arnold | Posted in Announcements, FontShop Products | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
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