The Smallest Letter in the World

A nice surprise: inside a folder of oversize type proofs, I found a stowaway: A Specimen of Printing Types by Joseph Fry and Sons, Letter-Founders, 1785. Like many contemporary type specimens, it separates dinner from dessert: on the front are romans... 

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Comalle

Comalle is an organic roman typeface that recovers some elements proper of handwritten letter forms, even though its strokes do not necessarily refer to a literal calligraphic structure. In order to produce a powerful impact on the page, Comalle has... 

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The Living Glagolitic

Last month’s post about Cyrillic and Glagolitic Alphabet Day prompted some great responses from our Croatian colleagues, where the Glagolitic alphabet, a national treasure, lives on. Vjeran Andraši? wrote from the island of Krk , home to some of Croatia’s... 

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My Thoughts Exactly

Hey where can I get that Brady Bunch font. Hey where can I get that Star Wars font. Hey where can I get that Red Dwarf font. Hey where can I get that Brady Bunch font. Hey where can I get that Star Wars font. Hey where can I get that Red Dwarf font.... 

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Letterror at the Graphic Design Museum

Photo: Erik van Blokland When we first met at the ATypI conference in 1989, Erik van Blokland, Just van Rossum and I were branded the “young turks” of typography, presumably because we were fifteen years younger than ATypI’s next-youngest member.... 

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Favicon Unmasked

Designer Randy Pfeil wrote to ask the burning question, “what the heck is the favicon for typography.com? Designer Randy Pfeil wrote to ask the burning question, “what the heck is the favicon for typography.com? All I can see is a pixelated masked-man.... 

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The World’s First Graphic Design Museum

On my first trip to Amsterdam in 1992, I spent a couple of hours having lunch at a pleasant café on Willemsparkweg. I’d come from seeing an exhibit of the year’s best book covers, and planned to spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the city’s... 

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What’s in a Font Name

For as long as fonts have had names, they’ve had bad names. For as long as fonts have had names, they’ve had bad names. Historical inaccuracies have been common for two hundred years: typefounders of the Industrial Revolution groped for historical... 

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Springtype

I’ve been trying to find a type specimen book from the Italian foundry of Nebiolo for twenty years, and this morning one finally turned up: the Campionario Caratteri e Fregi Tipografici of 1928. Here’s a sample of what’s inside, perfect... 

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