SteveMacKley design

The Guardian Collection by Paul Barnes &amb Christian Schwartz is now available from Commerical Type.

What is the Guardian Collection:

A large family intended for editorial design and situations requiring complex typographic hierarchy, Guardian was designed for Mark Porter’s groundbreaking 2005 redesign of The Guardian. As a text face it exhibits a rational and clear disposition, lending a serious air to the text, while the display components capture a wide range of moods with their comprehensive range of weights.

Currently made up of 4 related families – a Headline size in both Sans and Egyptian; a Text size in Egyptian; and an Agate Sans – this superfamily was designed to fulfi ll every possible typographic need throughout the daily paper: serious news headlines, expressive features, readable text, tiny financial listings, information graphics, and everything in between.

Now at $1200 for the entire collection, this is clearly intended for a larger institutional buyer.  Yet without the Agate San, you have a very robust and more affordable superfamily  that is easy to recommend to a client. Plus I am always taken in by well executed slabs/egyptians.  In particular, I am enthralled by the alternate R in Guardian Egyptian Text.

FontShop has just posted a story on the FontFeed about the creation of FF Unit Slab.  For  those interested in gaining insights into developing font super-families it is a great read.  Plus, it highlights the work of some of most respected contemporary type-designers—namely Erik Spiek­ermann and Christian Schwartz with Kris Sowersby.