Tuesday, November 9, 2021

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Oxford Street
Oxford Street Oxford StreetOxford Street

Designed by Keith Bates, Oxford Street is a sans serif font published by K-Type.


Oxford Street is a signage font that began as a redrawing of the capital letters used for street nameplates in the borough of Westminster in Central London.

The nameplates were designed in 1967 by the Design Research Unit using custom lettering based on Adrian Frutiger’s Univers typeface, a curious combination of Univers 69 Bold Ultra Condensed, a weight that doesn’t seem to exist but which would flatten the long curves of glyphs such as O, C and D, and Universe 67 Bold Condensed with its more rounded lobes on glyphs like B, P and R.

Letters were then remodelled to improve their use on street signs. Thin strokes like the inner diagonals of M and N were thickened to create a more monolinear alphabet; the high interior apexes were lowered and the wide joins thinned. The crossbar of the A was lowered, the K was made double junction, and the tail of the Q was given a baseline curve.

K-Type Oxford Street continues the process of impertinent improvement and includes myriad minor adjustments and several more conspicuous amendments. The stroke junctions of M and N are further narrowed and their interior apexes modified. The middle apex of the W is narrowed and the glyph is a little more condensed. The C and S are drawn more open, terminals slightly shortened.

The K-Type font adds a new lowercase which is also made more monolinear so better suited to signage, loosely based on Univers but also taking inspiration from the Transport typeface both in a taller x-height and character formation. The lowercase L has a curled foot, the k is double junctioned to match the uppercase, and terminals of a, c, e, g and s are drawn shorter for openness and clarity.

A full repertoire of Latin Extended-A characters features low-rise diacritics that keep congestion to a minimum in multiple lines of text.

The font tips the hat to signage history by including stylistic alternates for M, W and w that have the pointed middles of the earlier MOT street sign typeface.

Incidentally, Alistair Hall (‘London Street Signs’, Batsford, 2020) notes that when the manufacturer of signs was changed in 2007, Helvetica Bold Condensed was substituted in place of the custom design, “an unfortunate case of an off-the-peg suit replacing a tailored one” and a blunder that has happily since been rectified, though offending nameplates can still be spotted by discerning font fans.





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Sugar Flash
Sugar Flash Sugar FlashSugar Flash

Designed by Jakob Fischer, Sugar Flash is a hand display and kids font family. This typeface has two styles and was published by Bogstav.


Sugar Flash is my grungy comic handmade font: I suggest that you use it for something that has to do with a partyinvitation or maybe products for kids…and sweets…in fact anything that needs a sweet angle!





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Undulate
Undulate UndulateUndulate

Designed by Robert Schenk, Undulate is a display sans and novelty font family. This typeface has two styles and was published by Ingrimayne Type.


Undulate was designed as an alternating-letter font in which two sets of characters alternate. The alternating is done automatically in applications that support the OpenType feature contextual alternatives (calt). Some individual characters look strange in isolation but they fit into a wave-like pattern in which shapes that bulge up alternate with shapes that bulge down.

Undulate has monospaced and monoline letters. The letter spacing is very tight to accentuate the ripple pattern. The family includes an outline style that can be used in a layer above the regular style to add color. Undulate was not designed for any particular use but as a challenge to fit letters into a particular geometric shape. The unusual patterns that a result are eye-catching and may be useful for advertising or signage and in other places where one wants attention-grabbing lettering.





Monday, November 8, 2021

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Classike
Classike ClassikeClassike

Designed by Eduardo Manso, Classike is a display sans font family. This typeface has thirteen styles and was published by Emtype Foundry.


Classike is a high contrast squarish display typeface. Inspired by the Art Déco period from a modern perspective. Refined and elegant yet with a mechanical vibe, it is ideal for pairing with any functional font, it works especially well with Geogrotesque, from which it inherited its proportions and soul. Classike adds an exclusive touch and helps enrich your graphic voice. A Variable Font version is included with the family or as a separate style.





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Exit Punch
Exit Punch Exit PunchExit Punch

Designed by Jakob Fischer, Exit Punch is a hand display font family. This typeface has two styles and was published by Bogstav.


What exactly is an exit punch? I have no clue! :) I named the font after a wordplay with random words, and somehow I found the name suited the font perfect. The letters are awkward and unpredictable in a legible but playful manner. I’ve added ligatures for the most common double letters, such as bb, cc, dd etc.





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Miragem
Miragem MiragemMiragem

Designed by Ricardo Santos, Miragem is a serif font family. This typeface has eighteen styles and was published by Vanarchiv.


This serif typeface was designed to be simple and neutral on text sizes, there descender proportions are short and the x-height is large. The loop form from the lowercase (g) is open which give more personality to this particular letterform. The lowercase italics contain different structure from roman characters, but the most differentiation detail is the fact the ascender and descender strokes don’t contain serifs. Italics characters are slightly more narrow and condensed than roman letterforms.





Friday, November 5, 2021

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Perva
Perva PervaPerva

Designed by Emerson Eller, Perva is a multiple classification font family. This typeface has three styles and was published by Eller Type.


Perva is a suite of three eye-catching fonts inspired by display types from the 19th century. This unconventional family has three different font styles that can be used individually or combined to build a playfulness multi-typeface design system. It is suitable for titling, posters headlines, book covers, packaging, social media, and branding.
Perva brings together a Slab serif font, a.k.a Antique or Egyptian; a Reverse-contrast or Italian; and an Old English Blackletter.

The design is inspired by the display types listed as “Typographic monstrosities” in Thomas C. Hansard’s book Typographia (1825).
What he found absurd was understood here as interesting and enjoyable to introduce a contemporary approach of the types widely sold by foundries such as Bruce’s New York Type-Foundry and Caslon Foundry.

Each of the three fonts holds around 400 glyphs, covering the languages of Northern, Western, Central, and Southern Europe. Opentype features include case-sensitive forms and a couple of alternates for the Blackletter style.





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