Decorated Letters

With the holidays closer than you think, this seemed like a good time to get reacquainted with a few hidden treasures in the FB library. Font Bureau has built a reputation for expansive, hardworking type families, so one might be forgiven for not being aware of some of these lesser known gems.

Decorated types like these may not be all-purpose, but when the situation does present itself, they can provide just the right touch of sophistication.

Narcissus is based directly on a 1921 German revival of Fournier’s celebrated 18th-century ornamented types and conveys an organic charm.

Niagara Engraved, on the other hand, recalls the crisp, elegant, soaring geometry of the early 20th century.

Ironmonger Inlaid may have been originally inspired by wrought iron and perforated steel, but in the right context it can be surprisingly festive.

The Zingha Deco styles apply the engraved technique to more contemporary letterforms, in both upright and swash italic styles.

And Nutcracker is a design unto itself — conceived, as the name implies, especially to express the character of the season.

Apparently, some Font Bureau fonts are just begging to be cut out of wood, metal, Plexiglas, and a host of other materials. At least according to Brent Barson, who, along with some fellow faculty and students from BYU, crafted this year’s opening titles for the 5th Typophile Film Festival using real-world materials and painstaking stop-motion animation (no CG effects!). The theme is an exploration of the five senses and three FB fonts play supporting roles.

True, mid-term elections aren’t until next year. We’re talking here about the updated design of the venerable Washington Post which debuted last month. The redesign was accomplished by an in-house team in collaboration with Roger Black and his studio. The new type palette features a host of Font Bureau fonts, including a few customizations. Kent Lew spent some time delving into their new typography in a recent post on FB’s Type 101 blog.

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum will host its first-ever Wayzgoose (a traditional, end-of-summer printers’ gathering and celebration) on the weekend of November 20–22. Matthew Carter will be among the presenters, unveiling his first wood typeface, Carter Latin Wide (a project first begun more than six years ago). He will also be hosting a round table with Rich Kegler, Juliet Shen, and Sumner Stone. Other highlights include a showing of Kartemquin Films’ Typeface documentary.

David Berlow recently attended the annual ATypI congress in Mexico City where he gave a keynote presentation and also teamed up with fellow Font Bureau co-founder Roger Black to lead a panel about fonts on the web. In a follow-up blog post, he opines optimistically that “it sounds to me like the best of all possible solutions is actually possible . . .”