FONTZINE GESAMMELT by Olivier Montebelli

(1910 – 1983)

ROGER EXCOFFON (1910-1983) INFORMATION ABOUT THE TYPEFACE DESIGNER ROGER EXCOFFON AND HIS FONTS.

xcoffon was a French graphic designer whose flamboyant typefaces were to shake up French advertising. Born in Marseilles, he went to Paris to study painting. He then became design director of a small type foundry in Marseilles, the Fonderie Olive. His Antique Olive family of types is regarded as his masterpiece. His exuberant typefaces - Calypso, Choc, and others became symbolic of the stylish modernity and exuberance of post-war nouvelle vague France, and a benchmark for French graphic design. International Typeface Corporation is proud to announce the launch of four new typefaces based on some of the best known and most successful designs created by celebrated French designer Roger Excoffon. Of these four, three are light versions of Mistral, Choc and Banco while the fourth is a lower-case addition to the original Banco. To celebrate the occasion, ITC commissioned John Dreyfus, printing historian and Excoffon‘s longtime friend, to write an essay about this outstanding designer. Dreyfus‘ text provides a fascinating account of the man, his achievements and his enormous contribution in the field of graphic communication, both in France and on the international stage. Roger Excoffon has four claims to fame. Since his death in 1983 at the age of 72, he is remembered best for his highly original type designs (which have been given a new lease on life by being adapted and extended for use in digitised versions). In his lifetime, however, he was famous first and foremost as an outstanding graphic designer and painter who produced magnificent posters in the 1960s and 1970s for Air France and other leading French companies. He was also admired for the quality of the work which came from his own advertising agencies - first U&O from 1956, and then Excoffon Conseil from 1971. Finally he became an influential and widely respected public figure by taking a prominent part at meetings of French and international bodies where graphic design and publicity were intensely debated. My friendship with Excoffon developed in 1955 while we attended a weeklong meeting in the Basses Alpes. This meeting of „typographical argonauts“ took place in the village of Lurs, sited in a mountainous area named Lure. Only at Delphi have I been so stirred by the spirit of a place: it had panoramic views of immense beauty, and a magical quality of light. The instigator of the annual meetings at Lurs in the last week of August was Maximilien Vox, with whom Excoffon and I had become acquainted in Paris. He had a passionate interest in typography, and it had grown out of his many talents as a writer, illustrator, type designer, journalist and publisher. After a visit to the ruined village of Lurs in 1951, Vox had appealed to a few people of proven typographical ability to join him in Lurs to debate subjects of mutual interest. So successful were these meetings

that what are now called the Rencontres Internationales de Lure still take place every year in August at Lurs. That they are still so well attended is partly attributable to the role played by Excoffon from 1963 to 1968 as President of the Rendez-vous Graphhique de Lurs. Excoffon had many innate qualities that made him the natural leader of a group. An air of authority and self-confidence was combined with a great deal of charm and natural grace. Many of his French contemporaries thought he looked like an Englishman, with his fair hair and blue eyes. His clothes, too, looked British and he had a liking for black and white cloth woven with a houndstooth or check pattern. He stood about six feet tall and was of slim build; lithe and swift in his movements, he conveyed a strong impression of effortless elegance. His expression in repose was usually serious and thoughtful, but it quickly became engagingly open or amused while he listened. He talked in an attractively mellow voice, speaking fast but expressing himself very clearly, not only in words but through gestures made with his hands and especially with his fingers. Speed seemed to me to be so much a part of his character that his usual rapid pace seemed to mirror his customary impatience to understand and enjoy whatever was being discussed. Later I will describe how his love of speed affected his type designs and graphic work; but first I must explain how the man I met in 1955 had lived during the 45 years before our friendship began. FROM PAINTING TO TYPE DESIGN

oger Excoffon was born in 1910 at Marseilles. His family had been active as flour millers and magistrates. At his family‘s suggestion he went as an undergraduate to the University of Aix-en-Provence to read law. Very soon he found that his heart was not in it. So at the age of 19 he went to Paris, ostensibly to study painting, though his interests began to centre on graphic art and letterforms. Having a nimble brain, he also attended some courses in philosophy at the Sorbonne. Throughout his life he relished every chance that came his way to stretch his mind by having long and searching arguments with his friends. At the same time he enjoyed the solitary excitement and risk of handling his paint brushes with tremendous vigour and freedom. He came to admire the extent to which these qualities appeared in the paintings of Georges Mathieu and Hans Hartung; but above all he admired the joie de vivre which he found in the paintings of Pierre Bonnard. Immediately after peace returned to Europe in May 1945, Excoffon joined the Fonderie Olive. This typefoundry was managed in Marseille by his brother-in-law who made Excoffon the firm‘s art director. Consequently he became responsible for promoting sales of the foundry‘s types. He did this so successfully that he discovered that he had a talent for publicity work. At the same period he quickly learned enough about the technical side of typefounding to start designing new types for the Fonderie Olive. The first of his type designs was named Chambord. Its purpose was to compete in the market with the Touraine series

of types designed by Cassandre for the Deberny Peignot foundry in Paris. Charles Peignot once told me with a chuckle that when he suggested to Excoffon that the similarity between Chambord and Touraine was a little too close for comfort, Excoffon tried to set Peignot‘s mind at rest by assuring him that he had kept Cassandre‘s design in front of him all the time he was working on Chambord - „just to make sure that he didn‘t copy a single letter“. Despite this incident, Excoffon joined the Association Typographique Internationale soon after it had been founded by Peignot, and he remained on very cordial terms with Peignot for the rest of his life.

TYPE DESIGNS WITH STYLE AND VIVACITY

xcoffon‘s second type for Olive was far more original than Chambord. Named Banco ‒ an allusion to a term used by gamblers playing baccarat ‒ it was designed to provide vigorous emphasis for a displayed name or phrase in a wide variety of jobbing printing. Demonstrations of how effectively it could be used were given in a lively and stylish type specimen booklet. This was produced in close collaboration with Olive‘s salesmen who know from their visits to printers how important it was to show them how new typefaces could be used for the categories of printing in which they specialized. Banco was cast as a titling fount containing only capitals and numerals; this simplified Excoffon‘s task by reducing the number of letter combinations that he needed to foresee while designing the letters. He was exceptionally thorough and systematic while he worked out his type designs. He attached great importance to the tops of letters because he knew how important they are in creating distinctive word shapes. From legibility studies he knew that experienced readers take in the shapes of several words together each time their eyes pause for a fraction of a second as they sweep across a line of text. In Banco, the tops of the capitals are made distinctive by emphatic serifs on C and S, and by highly unusual transitions from stems to curves in letters such as P and R. While Banco was being developed, Excoffon played a dual role in supervising the production and marketing of a new type named Vendome which had been designed for the Fonderie Olive by a stage designer named Francois Ganeau. With no previous experience of type design, Ganeau had managed to create a fine design which was refined and improved by Excoffon. To publicise it, Excoffon designed one of the most beautiful and elaborate type specimen books produced by any French typefoundry in the 1950s. It was produced by La Ruche, his favourite printing house in Paris where the craftsmen took exceptional care with their presswork and did complete justice to his unusual range of coloured inks. His first script type, named Mistral, was introduced in 1953. Like Banco, its purpose was to bring greater vivacity into French typography which at that time involved printing from letters created for casting in metal on rectangular bodies. That techno-

logy placed an obstacle in his creation of a perfectly free inclined script which was to reflect the personality of mid-twentieth century man. Hoping to find out what characteristics would convey some of the good qualities of mid-twentieth century man, he consulted eminent graphologists. To his disappointment, they explained that theirs was a purely analytical science, so they were incapable of helping him to synthesize or recreate a graphic symbol of the qualities he wanted to be embodied in Mistral. At this point he realised that he would have to base his design upon his own handwriting because it would be the easiest and most familiar one for him to adapt. Knowing it so intimately, it would be relatively easy for him to modify its individual letters into shapes which would conform to the restraints imposed by typefounding. Unfortunately some of those restraints made it very hard for him to design script letters which would seem to have the same characteristics as free handwriting, notably: (a) absence of alignment; (b) total disregard of the rectangle on which typefounders cast letters; (c) infinite variations in the way letters were linked; and (d) different shapes used for the same letters. Helped by a careful study of data supplied to him by cryptographers tabulating the frequency of letter juxtapositions in the French language, he managed to simulate the irregular alignment of handwritten letters. The liberty taken by the hand in varying the shapes of written letters was simulated to some degree by varying the angle in the more prominent downstrokes in Mistral. Finally he showed great ingenuity in concealing the difficulties he had to overcome with linking strokes; the reader‘s eye was deceived by the deliberately irregular edges of the letters he designed for the typeface. In the wake of its success came Choc in 1953. Excoffon‘s very bold brush script had no link strokes. Its exceptionally heavy weight precluded it from having as much success as Mistral, but its capitals can be highly effective when used for a single word or name. Three years after Mistral and Choc, Excoffon brought out his fresh interpretation of a formal copperplate script which he named Diane. Its novelty lay mainly in the way he managed the links between the formal lowercase, and the characteristic panache which he displayed in the design or its swirling capitals. The Fonderie Olive showed great technical skill in casting the letters, and for many years it had an honourable place in French jobbing printing. It could hardly have been more different from his next type named Calypso (1958). This was another titling fount and it showed his fascination with the effects that could be obtained from mechanical screens in photo-engraving. In fact, the drawings for Calypso were made entirely by hand, helped at one stage by an airbrush. The final result is a set of letters which are more likely to succeed when handled by a trained graphic designer, but which few printers were capable of handling with confidence. While the Diane and Calypso types were being developed, Excoffon engaged a young type designer named José Mendoza as his assistant. The two men had been introduced to each other by Maximilien Vox. Mendoza worked in the Fonderie Olive‘s Paris studio from September 1954 until July 1959 before setting up as

a freelance type designer of great distinction. Another talented friend of Vox named Gerard Blanchard also worked in the Olive studio for four years at this period (and later became President of the Rencontres Internationales de Lure). Excoffon needed their help because he was becoming ever more deeply involved in his advertising agency, and at the same time had launched into his last and largest venture in type design for the Fonderie Olive. THE ANTIQUE OLIVE SERIES

hat eventually grew into a set of 11 related typefaces for the Antique Olive series began in 1956 with Nord, a new type by Excoffon. He had been made art director by Air France, for whom he designed a house style and posters. These incorporated the airline‘s name as a logo, drawn by Excoffon in a distinctive new sans serif style. Several typefoundries in the mid-1950s were at work on new sans serif type families, notably Debery Peignot with Frutiger‘s Univers, and Haas in Switzerland with Miedinger‘s Helvetica. Marcel Olive and Excoffon decided they, too, would bring out a new sans serif, similar to that used in the Air France logo. None of the types on which Excoffon had worked previously for the Fonderie Olive were meant to be used for continuous texts, except for Francois Graneau‘s Vendome; and even that had been given such a noticeably forward tilt in the roman that it was used mainly for advertising work. Now Excoffon was keen to design a set of typefaces that could be used for both text and publicity setting. With such a marked fresh interest in sans serif types (known in France as „antiques“), it was natural for him to try his hand at designing a set of types of this kind for a growing market. Taking Nord as a point of departure, he developed 11 new romans and italics in a variety of weights and proportions for the set which became Antique Olive. Mendoza and Blanchard gave him much-needed help in the early stages of this ambitious undertaking. Blanchard was sent to the Bibliotheque Nationale to study a treatise published in 1905 by Emile Javal on the physiology of reading and writing. This was a pioneer work in which Javal, when dealing with the legibility of type, singled out an old typeface from the Fonderie Olive for its high degree of legibility. Excoffon discussed Javal‘s findings with his collaborators and they tried to apply them as they developed the design of Antique Olive. The first trial drawings were really caricatures of types, made to find out by experiment how far you could go without going too far. Mendoza remembers how their task involved reducing the extremely heavy weight of Nord, and concentrating upon the upper parts of the letters because they were so important in creating easily recognizable word shapes. Mendoza told me that the final design of Antique Olive, issued between 1962 and 1966, was formulated in reaction to the uniformity and regularity of Frutiger‘s Univers family of 21 typefaces. Excoffon had been irritated by the very Swiss geometrical construction of Univers which, in his view, created too even an effect. Excoffon was more concerned with creating typefaces that were easy to read, and this

depended upon stressing the distinctive character of each letter along its top. He was convinced that by emphasizing individuality in letterforms, legibility was enhanced. A BUSINESS LEADER AND VISUALISTE

y the early 1960s, his active involvement in type design declined, but his passion for typography remained intense it showed brilliantly in his re-design of the Income Tax Return introduced in 1973. This was not set in a type of his own design, and I have sometimes wondered whether he used the type named Souvenir (French for remember) so as to pique the conscience of typographically sophisticated French taxpayers. Evidently he went to great pains to make the print run of 80 million copies as lucid and as legible as he could even for unsophisticated French citizens; and to speed up the transfer of information from the completed tax returns to the taxmen‘s computers. From 1951 he built up an impressive list of clients for his own agency U&O, and from 1971 for its successor which he named Excoffon Conseil. His clients included several multi-national companies, a well as French state institutions such as the Banque de France and the Post Office. He worked on Larousse encyclopaedias, on packaging for several pharmaceutical firms, and on a catalogue for a leading French mail-order business named 3 Suisses. His work became more quickly known to the French public from the series of about 20 superb posters which he designed during the 1960s for a mix of institutional and commercial clients. As his reputation grew he became actively involved with numerous French and international associations concerned with the graphic arts, and he often served on design juries. He was founder-president of the UVPI (Union des Visualistes Publicitaires indépendants) from 1967-72, and as there was virtually no French word for design, he tried to get the word visualiste accepted when he created the UVPI. From 1965-70 he served as president of the Syndicat National des Graphistes Publicataires. And after being made a member of the internationally respected Alliance Graphiques in 1961, he acted as its secretary-general from 1964-71, and for the next four years as its vice-president. He was active in many more associations than those I have mentioned; and with all his other commitments, he began to regret that success and popularity left him too little time for painting. After all, the reason whey he had abandoned his law studies and moved to Paris was to become a painter. The public became familiar with his dazzling artistic talents through his posters and his work as a graphic designer, which won awards in many European countries and in the US. Yet it was only a small consolation for him to have had an exhibition of his paintings at Toulouse in 1979, four years before he died. Much to my regret, I never managed to see that show. Previously I had seen too few of his paintings to guess whether his life might have been successful and happy if he had concentrated on being a painter. I am, however, convinced that by leading so much of his life in direct contact with others, as he did, he enriched and energised the lives of many of his contemporaries.

His was a mercurial and beguiling presence: and the moment has now come for me to honour my earlier promise to explain how his love of speed affected his type designs and his graphic design. ALWAYS THE FAST TRACK

erhaps his greatest gift was to create a vivid and highly personal rendering of speed in his posters for Air France, French Railways, and the Olympic Games at Grenoble in 1968. He did so mainly by the speed with which he handles his brush, and by his remarkably successful choice of colours which enhanced the effect. Sometimes he would keep peripheral detail out of focus to sharpen the impact of the central image; and on a poster for Dunlop tyres, his fuzzy splash beside the sharp pattern created by the tread of the tyre created the illusion of speed. Like Georges Mathieu whose work he admired, Excoffon handled his brush with the disciplined speed of a Chinese calligrapher. Rigorous training created self-confidence which allowed him to work at a speed which would otherwise have been very hazardous. Speed is also the feature which gave so much vigour to his type designs, notably Mistral and Choc as well as Banco and Calypso. As with his posters, speed would have been risky had he not prepared himself so thoroughly to use it as he chose. He mastered the art of courting danger in order to create compelling effects which would never have been achieved by more timid and less disciplined artists. There is another reason why we must be thankful that speed was so dominant a part of his character. He was 35 when he began his postwar career in type design and graphic design in 1945: had he not enjoyed working at such high speed, he would have found it almost impossible to produce so much fine work before his death in May 1983. In 1956 I had firsthand experience of the advantage which speed gave him when he took on a commission from me. It was to decorate a printed edition of a visitorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC; book kept by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild at Waddesdon Manor, the home built for him in the style of the chateaux de la Loire. The book contained 58 entries by guests who had visited the Baron between 1886 and 1898. Excoffon agreed to design a series of cartouches to surround the names and date of the contributors. In 1966 the technique of powderless etching on zinc was scarcely known in France. I explained its advantages to Excoffon who was always keen to exploit new techniques. I suggested that he take his inspiration from photos of the ornamentation of the building. A trial etching proved that the new process could hold even the tiniest dot drawn by Excoffon on a rough-surfaced handmade paper. This commission made me realize that for Excoffon, speed heightened his concentration and enthusiasm. It also showed me that a great stimulus to his creativity was the desire to surmount a new challenge, and to exploit the potential of a new technique. He grew old - but always stayed young at heart. Essay by John Dreyfuss http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/OtherArticles/_Excoffon2.htm

JOHAN MICHAEL FLEISCHMANN

ohann Michael Fleischma nn wurde 1707 in Wöhrd bei Nürnberg geboren. Er lernte das Handwerk des Stempelschneidens und ging 1727 auf Wanderschag. Nach Arbeitsaufent halten in Frankfurt am Main bei der Lutherschen Schriftgießerei und in Mainz kam er 1728 in die Niederlande, wo er endgültig blieb. Dort arbeitete er für mehrere Schriftgießereien, darunter die des Hendrik Floris Weystein; kurzzeitig hatte er sogar eine eigene. Fleischmann kam schnell zu bestem Ruf. Bereits aus den Jahren ab 1732 stammen einige seiner schönsten und reifsten Schriften. 1743 wurde mit Weysteins Gießerei auch der äußerst talentierte und fleißige Stempelschneider Fleischmann vom Haus Enschedé übernommen. Die Schriftgießerei und Druckerei Enschedé en Zoonen in Haarlem wurde 1703 von Izaak Enschedé gegründet und entwickelte sich in den folgenden Jahrzehnten, nunmehr geleitet vom Sohn Johannes Enschedé, zum bedeutendsten niederländischen Schrifthaus. Es erlebte im zweiten Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts seine höchste Blüte, wozu nicht nur die Enschedés mit großem kaufmännischen Geschick und harten Ellenbogen beitrugen, sondern auch der herausragende und hoch angesehene Schriftschneider Fleischmann mit seinen schönen Typen. Von den Zeitgenossen wurde sein Schaffen außerordentlich geschätzt, er dankte die Förderung durch Johannes Enschedé mit großer Produktivität und arbeitete bis zu seinem Tod im Jahre 1768 für dieses Haus. Er schuf über zwanzig lateinische Antiqua-Schriften und Kursive; ferner Schreibschriften, eine grafisch originelle gotische Schrift, Notenstempel (»Volkomene Muziek«, 1760) sowie griechische, arabische, malaiische und armenische Alphabete.

Johann Michael Fleischmann zählt zu den großen Meistern der Schriftkunst; Paul Renner hat ihn als den bedeutendsten seiner Zeit bezeichnet. Fleischmann setzte die reichen Traditionen nicht nur fort, sondern führte die niederländische Schriftkunst auf neue Höhen und entwickelte den Formenstil der Typen weiter. Es muß deswegen verwundern, daß es auf dem westlichen Markt bisher keine »Fleischmann« gab. Für den östlichen hatte Typoart in Dresden 1985 eine Fleischmann für den Fotosatz herausgebracht, gezeichnet von Harald Brödel aus Leipzig. Es ist die bisher einzige Neuschöpfung von Rang, aber leider nur wenig bekannt. Erwähnt sei eine Fleischmann von Georg Belwe, deren erste Fassung 1930 bei Ludwig Wagner in Leipzig erschien. Auch Belwes spätere Überarbeitung, aus der eine noch heute existente Typoart-Bleisatzschrig wurde, kann keinem ernsthagen Vergleich mit den Originalschriften Fleischmanns standhalten, insbesondere die Kursiv nicht. Gleichwohl hat sich die BelweFleischmann in manchem Buch bewährt. Ihr Bild hat trotz geringerer Authentizität Charakter. Was zeichnet nun Fleischmanns Schriften aus? Im Stil barock, sind sie zeitlos schön, charaktervoll und sehr sorgfältig gefertigt; sie wirken selbstbewußt und phantasievoll, was dem damaligen Lebensgefühl der Niederländer entsprochen haben mag. Fleischmanns Schriften bezeugen in stilistischen Details durchaus Eigenwillen, womit ihr Erscheinungsbild abwechslungsreich und lebendig wird. Sie haben große Mittelhöhen, relativ schmale Minuskeln und meistens senkrecht stehende Achsen der Rundformen, erhielten einen ausgeprägten Strichkontrast, und die Serifen sind mager, im Ansatz kaum gekehlt. Antiqua und Kursiv zeigen eigentümliche Versalserifen, sicher das bekannteste Erkennungsmerkmal seiner Schriften. Stilistisch sind Fleischmanns Schriften dem Barock verpflichtet. Wie es typisch für diese Phase des Übergangs ist, finden sich in seinen Schnitten noch Formelemente der Renaissance, in manchen bereits klassizistische Figuren. Die Kursiven schwelgen im Barock und sind außerordentlich schön. Große Antiqua-Grade sind von kristallener Noblesse und schon dem Klassizismus nahe.

Auszug aus: Schriftmuster-Broschüre der DTL Fleischmann

NICK SHINN (1952 – TODAY)

I READ A PUBLICATION WHERE YOU WERE QUOTED SAYING „I ALSO WANT TO CREATE FACES THAT ARE DESIGN SOLUTIONS“... CAN YOU ELABORATE ON THAT STATEMENT? WHAT TYPEFACES IN PARTICULAR DOES THIS APPLY TO??

ick Shinn: Most of them. Handsome, for instance, was a design solution to the criteria: *Fully/cursive/script* Written directly in Fontographer with the pen tool, using a Wacom tablet ForEunoia: * High contrast/sans serif * A family of 3 self sufficient typefaces, with distinct personalities, whose members can be mixed with one another as alternates * Includes a unicase (I‘ve been teaching a type design course for 4 years at York University, in Toronto, and the student project is to design a unicase typeface, so I thought it was about time I walked the talk.) My most recent face, Preface, is an attempt to combine trendy letterforms from a variety of hot faces into a single typeface. So they‘re not really design solutions for particular uses, more design solutions to sets of formal criteria. However, Brown, Walburn, and Worldwide were commissioned specifically for newspapers. And Richler as a book face. ) WHICH PROJECT OF YOURS DO YOU FEEL HAS BEEN THE MOST SUCCESSFUL SO FAR?

t depends what you count as success. I think the Globe and Mail fonts, which I recently designed, such as Pratt Pro, are some of the most successful because their development was intimately involved with the development and major redesign of a newspaper from the ground up. WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO CREATE A NEW TYPEFACE?

would say a collision of ideas. And then working out how this collision can resolve itself – that’s the typeface. I just try to come up with a different idea for each typeface. Like, I’d never done an exact historical revival in all my typefaces until the Modern Suite. So I thought, I haven’t done that yet, so I should give it a go. I always try to do something different. For intellectual reasons and also for marketing reasons. Because my theory of marketing is that if you want to survive as a type designer and as an independent foundry, you have to have products that fit the Long Tail theory of marketing, which says that there’s a lot of people in the world, there’s a lot of people online, you can have a lot of products, and that way, as long as the products are unique, no matter how crazy they are, there will always be someone somewhere in the world who’ll find a use for them. Not necessarily the use which the designer intended, but if you design something which has its own raison d’être, then it’s got a reason to exist and a personality, qualities that people find useful – somewhere. FIGGINS AND SCOTCH MODERN?

he constraint was to create a typeface to compete with Adobe products because it seems to me that Adobe typefaces are the de facto standard of the digital era. If most professional graphic designers use the Creative Suite then

they will be familiar with the Adobe fonts that are bundled with it. These are fonts such as Arno Pro, and the other Pro fonts. And those fonts have a lot of OpenType features, they have a lot of language support, and they are presented in very nicely designed printed specimens. So, that’s what I set out to do with the Modern Suite – on the one hand to design typefaces which could in theory compete with Adobe typefaces in terms of OpenType features and language support, and secondly to create an accurate historical facsimile. And the third constraint was to create a superfamily of sans serifs and serifs that worked together. Because that’s the way that most designers work, they use a sans with a serif. So those were some of the constraints that I set up and observed from the beginning of the design process. YOU SEEM TO BE SOMEWHAT OF A NATURAL REBEL. HOW IS THAT EXPRESSED IN YOUR TYPEFACES?

would say I’m a contrarian, yeah. I look at what everybody else is doing and I say: “I don’t want to do that, it’s too obvious or too conformist.” A lot of people don’t like the 19th-century Scotch Moderns. They are said to have poor legibility and too much “sparkle” due to the contrast between the thin hairlines and the heavy verticals. But the modern face was the main face used in all kinds of publications in the late 19th century when mass literacy arrived in the United States. So how can you say that it doesn’t have good readability when it was instrumental in promoting mass literacy?! That’s how the contrarian in me looks at it, and it’s why I would do a revival of that face. Another thing is, I didn’t scan it; I drew it by eye, with aloupe. It’s a kind of romantic notion that you can draw a revival typeface like that. WHEN YOU BEGIN TO CREATE A TYPEFACE LIKE MERLIN OR FONTESQUE, DO YOU HAVE SPECIFIC CRITERIA YOU SET INITIALLY, OR IS THE PROCESS AN OPEN EXPLORATION? IN OTHER WORDS, DO YOU SAY TO YOURSELF „DAMN I FEEL LIKE DESIGNING ONE OF THEM ‚BITCHIN‘ WIZARD FONTS!“

oth.Merlin, for instance, was inspired by the word Errazuriz (all caps) on a wine label. I didn‘t recognize it as a typeface (still don‘t), so I thought „Hey, I wonder what the rest of the letters could look like.“ Of course, Errazuriz was only the starting point. The intricately drawn finish was another concept I was thinking about at the time - serifs on serifs on serifs - kind of fractal. But in general, yes, I was probably thinking, „Dude, time for a kickass goth monstrosity“. ONE OF YOUR LATEST FONTS IS DUFFY SCRIPT. A

SCRIPT FONT BASED ON ANOTHER DESIGNER’S LETTERING, IT IS AN EXCEPTION IN YOUR CATALOGUE. HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?

hen I was an art director, Amanda Duffy was one of the illustrators from whom I frequently commissioned work. She would do celebrity illustrations with big heads and little stick bodies, and I always kidded her saying: “You should do a picture of me like that.” One day she did —

which was very nice of her — and I said: “In return, I’ll turn your lettering into a font.” Hence the Duffy Script typeface. To tell the truth, I don’t find scripts as complex and meaningful as text faces. Maybe that is a bit snobbish or academic, but… there had to be something else to interest me in a script, and that was this personal aspect — that she is someone I know. DO YOU HAVE ANY NEW PROJECTS YOU ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON?

D H

eath to Helvetica!

COULD YOU FILL US IN ON THIS?

elvetica is the #1 selling typeface at MyFonts. It‘s given away with every operating system. It‘s the corporate face of the multinationals, be they the Gap or Getty Images. But it‘s only one of the many old sans fonts that dominate today‘s typography. What does this say about the present age, when its spirit is best expressed by vintage and traditional sans faces? It speaks of a fascist aesthetic˜banal, conventional, monolithic and utilitarian. In 1923 Paul Renner designed Futura, which he termed „The Typeface of Our Time“ The typeface now known as Helvetica is a rip-off of Akzidenz Grotesk (1898), itself derived from faces originally designed in London in the 1830s: it a typeface of the 19th century, not the 21st. Helvetica must die!

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ab cdef g h i j k l mno p q r s t u vwx y z #0123456789 0123456789 ABCDEFG H I J KLM N OPQ RS T U V WX Y Z A F � �� a a � b b cc �dd � e e ff f g g h hh ii i j j kk k l ll m m m n n n o �o o o p �p p q q rr r r � sss t t t u uu v v w w w x x x yy y� zz z �� ﬁ ﬂ �� ª á à â ã ä å æ ç é è ê ë í ì î ï ñ ºó ò ô õ ö ø œ ß ú ù û ü Á À Â Ã Ä Å Æ Ç ÉÈÊËÍ Ì Î Ï Ñ Ó Ò Ô Õ Ö Ø Œ Ú Ù Û Ü ¶ *† ‡ § © ® @ ? !& [ « » ‹›“ ” ‘ ’ ] • · ., ; : … „ \ | / ⁄ - – — ( $ € £ ¥ƒ ¢ ) ¡ ¿ {= + – ± ÷ < > ¬ ^ ~ % ‰ ' " ° } ™

Shinntype

EUNOIA UNICASE

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The formal qualities of a typeface energize, facilitate and inform the typographic layout. Skilled typographers will leverage the attributes of

The formal qualities of a typeface energize, facilitate and inform the typographic layout. Skilled typographers will leverage the attributes of judiciously chosen fonts

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The formal qualities of a typeface energize, facilitate and inform the typographic layout. Skilled typographers will leverage the attributes of carefully selected fonts to enhance the personality of the page, thereby standing out from the crowd. The formal qualities of a typeface

The formal qualities of a typeface energize, facilitate and inform the typographic layout. Skilled typographers will leverage the attributes of judiciously chosen fonts to maximize the personality of the page, thereby standing out from the crowd. The formal qualities of a

The formal qualities of a typeface energize, facilitate and inform the typographic layout. Skilled typographers will leverage the attributes of judiciously chosen fonts to maximize the personality of the page, thereby standing out from the crowd. The

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ #1234567890&?! ªáàâãäåæçéèêëﬁﬂíìîïñºóòôõöøœßúùûü ÁÀÂÃÄÅÆÇÉÈÊËÍÌÎÏÑÓÒÔÕÖØŒÚÙÛÜ ¶*†‡§©®@[«»‹›“”‘’]•·.,;:…„\|/⁄-–— ($€£¥ƒ¢¤)¡¿{=+–±÷<>¬^~%‰'"°}™ Shinntype

T g N M NEW FONTS 2™1™ Nick Shinn

PRATT LIGHT ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT LIGHT ITALIC ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $™123456789 !? PRATT REGULAR ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $™123456789 !? PRATT REGULAR ITALIC ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT BOLD ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $™123456789 !? PRATT BOLD ITALIC ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT HEAVY ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT HEAVY ITALIC ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT BLACK ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PRATT MICRO ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $0123456789 !? PpRrAaTtTt DdUuPpLlEeXx AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz PRATT FINE ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $™123456789 !? PRATT FINE BOLD ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz.,:; $™123456789 !? Pratt Fine Bold Italic ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz., $™123456789 !? Pratt Fine Bold Italic with Swash Caps ABCDEFGHIJ KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqr’stuvwxyz., $™123456789 !?

Figgins Sans Italic

ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQRSTU VWXY&Z $1234567890 abcdeffghij klmnopqr stuvwxyz?! THE MODERN SUITE 路 SHINNTYPE 19

Scotch Modern Italic

ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQRSTU VWXY&Z $1234567890 abcdeffghij klmnopqr stuvwxyz?! THE MODERN SUITE 路 SHINNTYPE 11

FF Merlin OT Regular Designed by Nick Shinn in 1997 Published by FontFont

Character Set Preview

OpenType Features Small Capitals From Capitals Contextual Alternates Case-sensitive Forms Discretionary Ligatures Fractions Standard Ligatures Lining Figures Oldstyle Figures

Ordinals Ornaments Proportional Figures Small Caps Titling Alts Tabular Figures

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888 FF FONTS 415.252.1003

FE ATURES

Duffy Script Shinntype

Original Duffy lettering (left) and one of many possible Duffy Script font simulations (right), utilizing type set on curved paths to mimic the “bounce” of the original.

scissors scissors scissors scissors scissors scissors Try out different combinations of glyphs by inserting the cursor in front of a word and hitting the space bar repeatedly: each time, the text will be represented by a different sequence of glyphs.

1+[space]+1+/+3 =1⅓

Fractions converts “number-space-number-slash-number” into integer and fraction, replacing the full space by a thin space: good for half, quarters, thirds, ﬁfths, and eighths.

TATATÁTĄŤĄŢÄ

Class kerning is an OpenType feature which kerns all accented variants of any character, in every one of its four iterations.

AAAA aaaa 1-1 I-I The four variant glyphs for each character are not radically different, but consistent in the way that letters from Ms. Duffy’s hand exhibit slight modulations from a distinctive pattern.

The hyphen is automatically raised between ﬁgures. All-Caps raises the hyphen between capitals.

…………✩✩✩✩✩✩✩ -------------♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Decorative effects made by repeating dots, dashes, hearts and stars, demonstrating the natural look of the Contextual Alternates feature.

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

GAVILLET AND RUST (19XX – TODAY)

GAVILLET AND RUST GAVILLET AND RUST EST UN STUDIO DE DESIGN BASE A GENEVE

l est fondé en 2001 par Gilles Gavillet et David Rust et rejoint en 2006 par Nicolas Eigenheer. Ils travaillent pour les domaines culturel et commercial avec une préférence pour le design éditorial, les identités visuelle ainsi que pour la typographie DAVID RUST, GILLES GAVILLET, NICOLAS EIGENHEER

es membres de la team Optimo, sont tous 3 détenteurs d‘un diplôme de designer HES en communication visuelle obtenus à l‘Ecal. Primés pour de nombreux travaux, que ce soit seul ou en équipe, ces jeunes et talentueux graphistes ont su faire leur place au soleil et sont aujourd‘hui souvent sollicité. CARGO

argo est une police a caracteres gras plus adaptee aux titres que aux textes. En effet, ses caractères épais et noirs rendent la lecture difficile mais sont parfait pour l‘impact rapide et efficace recherché dans la communication visuelle. C‘est un caractère de type stencil (pochoir) particularisé par des coupes courbes qui donnent aux lettres et à leur combinaison un certain charme graphique. Cette typo est inspirée du logo de l‘entreprise de pochoir Marsh. La première version de cargo, fût conçue pour le mythique club de musique de l‘exposition nationale suisse de 2002. Elle fût en 2009, retravaillée et utilisée pour la nouvelle identité du label de Jay-Z Roc Nation. OPTIMO

arallelement a leur bureau Gilles et David ont aussi lance le label Optimo Sous lequel grace a leur fonderie ils creent leurs propres caracteres et travaillent avec des typographes reconnus. Cette particularité leur permet de disposer d‘outils typographiques propices à un développement de projets plus complet, allant de la simple utilisation d‘une typo à sa customisation en passant par une nouvelle idée de caractère et sa réalisation.