M O S T R A
2 N U O V A DESIGNED BY MARK SIMONSON E D I T E D
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C H E N G
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Mark Simonson is the founder of Mostra Nuova typeface. He started his studio specializing in lettering and typography in 2000. He had started out as a graphic designer and illustrator in 1976 working as an art director on a number of magazines as well as Minnesota Public Radio. Mark started licensing fonts to FontHaus in 1992 and now has over 100 fonts on the market. Mostar Nuova was created in 2009 and it is an enhanced and expanded version of Mostra, which was released in 2001. Simonson was inspired after seeing Stephen Heller and Loise Fili’s 1993 book, “Italian Art Deco” sometime in the late ’90s. He was trying to create a typeface that was based on simple geometric shapes, like Futura, but more strictly geometric and with different proportions
Mostra Nuova is based on a style of lettering often seen on Italian Art Deco posters and advertising of the 1930s. It includes many alternate characters, representing commonly found variations in Italian Art Deco lettering. They can be used in endless combinations to capture a particular mood or style. There are six weights ranging from the almost invisible Thin to the ridiculously bold Black. Mostra features an extended character set (most Western and Eastern European Latin-based languages supported) and kerning tables for display setting. I think Mostra Nuova is a lot better than Mostra(2001) because it was added a lowercase and many more alternate characters, both in the caps and the lowercase, making it much more versatile than its predecessor. It was fine for some purposes, but it is impossible to include automatic kerning for many combinations of characters.
The original version of the typeface is Futura, which is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It is based on geometric shapes that became representative of visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–33. Although Renner was not a member of the Bauhaus, he shared many of its views, believing that a modern typeface should express modern models rather than be a rivial of a previous design. Even though Mostra Nuova wasn’t designed during the 1930s, the unique designs make it stand out in the 2000s. It is a combination of the old and the new.
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GIA CHENG WWW.STUNNINGPETITE.COM