Stilson

The story of Stilson begins with Postoni, the iconic headline face for The Washington Post.

Postoni is Matthew Carter’s interpretation of the Modern style exemplified by Bodoni’s types, but heavily informed by the requirements of a contemporary newspaper display face. As Carter remembers it, when Postoni was commissioned in 1997, “the decision had already been made at The Post to continue to set headlines ‘up style’ and to continue to use Bodoni. Postoni was an attempt to reduce the relative prominence of the capitals and give the face more modern proportions.”

The original is pretty sturdy for an ostensibly high-contrast style. The serifs are completely flat and unbracketed. It works best for medium display sizes, around 36 to 42 points, but holds up surprisingly well down to about 18 point.

For The Post’s 2009 redesign, Richard Lipton, Jill Pichotta, and Dyana Weissman expanded the family with more refined Display and Display Condensed styles for use in even larger headlines. (You can read about that redesign in our blog post entitled “New Faces in Washington.”)

The Display styles have a more pronounced contrast, with more delicate thin strokes and lightly cupped & bracketed serifs. They start to shine at around 72 point and maintain their elegance up into the 120+ point range.

For its release in Font Bureau’s Retail library in 2012, Postoni was renamed Stilson in honor of The Washington Post’s founder, Stilson Hutchins.

We’re venturing into cameras and action and movie making! Our type designers are fascinating (well, we think so) and we think you might think so, too. We’re going behind the scenes and into their studios. Sure, they talk about type; but not only type. Cyrus Highsmith is our first star, and he invites us into the world of his sketchbooks. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the oh-so brief show!

When a typeface appears on a “Best Of” list, that’s nice. But when the same typeface makes a showing on two completely separate year-end reviews, from two different parts of the world, you just might want to sit up and take notice. And when two different font families share that distinction — well, a foundry can be proud, can’t it? The Salvo Sans & Serif families by Cyrus Highsmith and FB Alix by Matthew Butterick all received high praise in both Typographica’s “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2011” and Typefacts’ “Die besten Fonts 2011.” (Georgia Pro and Verdana Pro by Matthew Carter also got a mention on Typefacts.) You know, you just might want to put these on your own list!

It’s gratifying for us to see our fonts working hard in all manner of print and online media. We’ve been gathering new images for the magazine section of our site over the past few months. There’s Backpacker and Outside, Cooking Light and Food & Wine, Kiplinger’s and Smart Money, Fitness and Self, and it just keeps growing.