Weekly Roundup: November 25
Here is the second regular update by TYPE of font releases, custom type launches, and type-related events.
Extra Brut
French design studio Bureau Brut launched retail type sales website Extrabrut.shop. The very minimal website set sail with four type families—Droulers, Ostia, Totentanz, and Traulha—each with at least regular and italic. Their website is visible here.
Museum of Type
Technically released last week, but too impressive to leave out on technicality, Microsoft designer Dong Yoon Park’s Museum of Type is a wonder to behold. The virtual reality museum allows anyone with a new Microsoft Mixed Reality headset or Microsoft HoloLens to walk through an open air, interactive museum of letterforms, classifications, fonts, and so on. You can even pick up and examine much of the type, as if you were given carte blanche in a real museum. Park published his creation process in an article on Medium and a walkthrough of the museum on YouTube, which is embedded above.
Wind by Hansje van Halem
Typotheque published Hansje van Halem’s layered/variable font, Wind, this week. Wind is van Halem’s first type design, and, like the rest of her work, it “uses vivid colours and intricately detailed patterns to create unexpected optical illusions.” The typeface is available in two versions: a static version mean to be layered, with NE, SE, SW, and NE styles, and a variable version with “full 360° of rotation, (one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise).” More information about Wind is available on the Typotheque website.
Typotheque’s new YouTube channel
Speaking of Typotheque—the foundry relaunched their YouTube channel with five new videos. These include a few short specimen videos, a lecture by Peter Bilak, and—most interestingly—the first episode of a new series titled “Type Designer Interviews.” The first episode coincides with the launch of Wind (mentioned above) and goes behind the scenes of Hansje van Halem’s design process. You can watch their videos here.
La Repubblica
Commercial Type went to Twitter this week to reveal the results of La Repubblica’s “top-to-bottom redesign.” For the Italian news outlet, Commercial Type produced three custom typefaces and a new nameplate, including Miguel Reyes’s Eugenio Serif for main titles, Greg Gazdowicz’s Eugenio Sans for subtitles, and Paul Barnes and Dan Milne’s Eugenio Text for body type. The new nameplate refreshes the 1976 original, adding “higher contrast and some Bodoni details” without scaring any long-time visitors. These new typefaces are visible on the La Repubblica website.
Praxis Next
Gerard Unger’s 1970’s Praxis has been a staple sans serif since its release at the dawn of digital typesetting; now, with the help of Linda Hintz and the Monotype Design Studio, Unger has released an updated Praxis Next. The new typeface includes 36 fonts and a “new, contemporary structure,” making it suitable for “an even wider range of tasks.” Praxis Next is available in various packages on the Linotype website.
Edit Serif Pro
Berlin type-design studio Atlas Font Foundry released Edit Serif Pro this week. The typeface looks to be a true underground hit, with a series of styles that show strong character at display sizes and reads cleanly at text sizes. Edit Serif also includes a strong barracks of features, including a variety of ampersands, attractive discretionary alternatives and swashes, ligatures, and all the figures you could need. Edit Serif Pro is available on the Atlas Font Foundry website.
Send your announcements and tips to TYPE’s digital editor, Lucas Czarnecki.
