Weekly Roundup: January 13
Here is the ninth regular update by TYPE of font releases, custom type launches, and type-related events.
Mort Modern
Lost Type released their latest: Riley Cran’s Mort Modern, a robust (56 styles) serif face based on the lettering of artist Mortimer Leach. Mort Modern supports greater than 150 languages and includes a variety of weights across three optical sizes—not to mention italics, contextual alternatives, fractions, and everything else one might expect from Cran. While researching Leach’s work and life, Cran discovered no one had written a biography of the quietly and incredibly influential Leach. Correcting this, Mort Modern’s interactive specimen includes just that: Leach’s first biography, written by Cran himself. Both professional and personal licenses of Mort Modern are available on the Lost Type website.
The Guardian
The Guardian released a trailer this week highlighting its new masthead in anticipation of its upcoming January 15 redesign launch. The video describes The Guardian as a “space for ideas.” Editor-in-chief of the Guardian and Observer Katherine Viner wrote that the design is the “result of months of thought, creativity and vision by a team of talented designers and senior editors.” See the new masthead on their site starting Monday.
Inria
Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and mathematics, commissioned a typeface from Black[Foundry], which the foundry has—in keeping with Inria’s goals—decided to release as an open source project. Inria Serif and Inria Sans come in three weights, with italic sets for each. Inria Serif and Inria Sans are available on the Black[Foundry] website.
Writing the Future City
Black[Foundry] published a typography white paper this week on “New Urban Experiences.” The paper includes four well-researched essays on topics ranging from autonomous mobility user experience design to urban data visualizations, each contextualized in a conversation about the future of typography in cities:
Words — spoken, printed, scrawled on walls or tapped out on a smartphone — define a city as much as its physical form. They help residents and visitors find their way around, explore the necessities and pleasures of life, and interpret the rules and regulations that govern commercial, municipal and social interactions.
You can download the white paper from Black[Foundry]’s website.
Isotope
Hoefler & Co. released their latest typeface, Isotope, which was “inspired by a style of lettering invented to convey precision and reliability.” The typeface sources from Functionalist hand lettering, a style which arose and faded in the decade after WWII yet preserved in the logos of such companies as Sennheiser and Soehnle. All of Isotope’s eight weights—from Thin to Ultra—can be found on the Hoefler & Co. website.
Cosmica
Village published Chester Jenkins’s latest typeface, Cosmica—his first new commercial face in five years. The typeface “started life in mid-2014 as an exploration into taking the Galaxie skeleton—already flesh out as Polaris, Cassiopeia, and Copernicus—and applying its rules of construction to a geometric sans.” Cosmica includes various stylistic sets, discretionary ligatures, and an assortment of weights. The typeface is available on the Village website.
Send your announcements and tips to TYPE’s digital editor, Lucas Czarnecki.
