Stencils aren’t new. They’ve been around nearly as long as crates and people with not quite enough time to mark them. But what I’m seeing happen with stencils, to my delight, is that the genre is coming into its own. Marking the progress is the rise of stencil faces released as collections, and the development of stencil families independent of any non-stencil counterparts.
The above example, part of the FF Backstage collection demonstrates stencils at work in their native habitat. Stephan Müller’s FF Container, and Cornel Windlin’s FF Water Tower.
Fred Smeijers’s Puncho, part of the Orly Stencil, Puncho, Standing Type pack. I love to see the robust bridges taking a more definitive role in breaking the letterforms and causing the eye to connect what’s left undone.
Encountering Nikola Djurek’s Typonine Stencil was for me, and many others I can only assume, an awakening at what stencil type was capable of conveying; shown here with Thomas Thiemich’s Fakt as part of the Great Pairs series. Its fine details seem antithetical to the normal purposes of the stencil genre. Also note how substantial the bridges are that hold the islands in place.
Also a monospace, Pedro Leal’s User Stencil comes in both positive, and reversed Cameo weights.
To finish out, here are a couple we don’t carry; Paul Barnes’s Dala Floda, above, and Nikola Djurek’s Plan Grotesque Stencil below.
That’s it for this week; just something to whet the appetite for more stencils in use, here on Thursday.
