the portfolio of steve mackley
Hoefler & Frere-Jones has posted links to all of its old email circulars. Topics covered include — how to choose fonts for information-heavy projects like annual reports being an especially hot topic; though he also encourages his students to dig deeply in the character sets of their fonts; and to look for value when building their own font libraries.
There has been a lot of buzz lately about webfonts. The new WOFF proposal is a step in the right direction, but getting your head around things is like herding cats. Thankfully Technology Review has published a nice article summarizing things. A Note on the Type: Font designers imagine a better-looking Web. If this article is too much I recommend H&FJ’s recent Show and Tell entry: FONTS ON THE WEB. It is distilled goodness.
Hoefler & Frere-Jones have just announced the availability of their newest font family: Tungsten. Tungsten (I love that name) is a flat/square-sided sans. To me it is evocative of the sign paintings seen at the local butcher/grocer growing up in central Pennsylvania. It is available in 4 weights: Med, Semi, Bold, and Black. I wold also be remiss is I didn’t mention the support for what H&FJ calls its Latin-X® character set. What is Latin-X? It is an H&FJ OpenType font whose character set covers more than 100 languages throughout the world — including all of Central Europe. A nice trend that I intend to emulate in my own type design efforts.
H&FJ describe Tungsten as such: (via their blog)
A few years ago, we started wondering if there was a way to make a flat-sided sans serif that was disarming instead of brutish, one that employed confidence and subtlety instead of just raw testosterone. It was an unusual design brief for ourselves, completely without visual cues and trading in cultural associations instead: “more Steve McQueen than Steven Seagal,” reads one note; “whiskey highball, not a martini” suggests another.
The result is Tungsten®, a tight family of high-impact fonts in four weights: muscular and persuasive, without sacrificing wit, versatility, or style. Now starting at $99.
Always a fan of H&FJ, they recently emailed a great primer on the features for their various fonts as it relates to financial and annual reports.
H&FJ Tabular Figs
They highlight tablular figures, indices (numbers in circles), graded fonts, and extended character sets. The full e-Blast can be seen here.
If you have not been following the recent .webfont proposal by Tal Leming and Erik van Blokland check it out. The proposal is rational and workable. Quite a few foundries have voice their support including (these were gleaned from the H&FJ twitter feed)
Typotheque has an excellent expalnation and demo here.
My name’s Steve MacKley, and I’m a creative director & designer with leadership experience in graphic, type and interactive design—plus a solid grounding in IA, strategy and research. My industry experience includes online retail, consumer electronics, as well as pharma / healthcare. I also have a strong interest in fonts and type design. Oh and I shouldn't forget to mention my bike infatuation.
