January 8, 2014 – 10:20 PM
Bringing us a type palette with a subtle bounce today is the pairing of a long-held personal favorite, Mitja Miklavčič’s FF Tisa, and Satya Rajpurohit’s recently released Pilcrow. Though Satya’s work through his own Indian Type Foundry focuses mainly on Indic scripts such as Devanagari, Tamil, or Gurmukhi, his latest release demonstrates a developed understanding of the Latin alphabet, and a new perspective at the intersection of geometric and industrial gothic.
Pilcrow offers enough structural reinforcement to complement well FF Tisa’s casual demeanor. Unifying the two is Pilcrow’s own playful take on what would otherwise be featureless curves and joins. This is particularly evident in the heavier weights of the blunted variant, Pilcrow Soft.
As Tisa progresses in weight, the face advances from a relatively narrow fit to a comfortably wide stance.
That’s all. Catch Great Pairs here each Wednesday.
November 20, 2013 – 9:32 PM
Today we pair a couple of Jean François Porchez’s masterfully understated faces, Le Monde Journal and Parisine.
From Le Monde Journal emanates a certain strength, mostly due to its forceful rhythm and its forms’ careful balance between robust gestures and delicate details. The face is designed to set compactly both horizontally and vertically, with a narrow fit, a large x-height and modest extenders. It also comes in a range of tightly-stepped weights to accommodate various factors of scale and output. As a companion to Le Monde Journal, Parisine operates as a sophisticated humanist sans, adding a softer dimension to the pairing. Together the two create a versatile set that lends care and credibility to its message. Should you require something even more playful, see Parisine Plus.
Great Pairs continues here Wednesday.
November 13, 2013 – 7:42 PM
Today we look at Xavier Dupré’s FF Yoga and Jörg Hemker FF Sero.
FF Sero’s understated humanized gothic, fully capable of text setting on its own, puts the emphasis on FF Yoga’s statelier qualities. Together the two create a warm, firm, yet flexible feel, suitable for contemporary work. If FF Yoga looks familiar, it’s because the face is heavily influenced by Eric Gill’s Joanna, but not without a fresh take all its own.
Great Pairs continues here Wednesday.
November 6, 2013 – 9:53 PM
October 30, 2013 – 6:21 PM
Today we look at Jonathan Perez’s Colvert with Mark van Bronkhorst’s MVB Solitaire. I guess I should also mention Natalia Chuvatin, Kristyan Sarkis, and Irene Vlachou; Colvert covers four scripts — Latin, Arabic, Cyrillic & Greek — each drawn natively, though we’ll look most closely at the Latin.
Colvert’s rich, French Renaissance texture is unmistakeable. In creating this work Perez updates the tone, leaving behind something fresh and familiar. Solitaire achieves a sophisticated humanist feel both thanks to and in spite of its wholehearted pursuit of generality. Together, the two create a versatile partnership with a feel that covers the spectrum between the ancient and contemporary.
Colvert’s bold has a nice bite to it.
Adding to its versatility is the fact that in this pair, either typeface is quite proficient at setting text.
That’s it. Great Pairs continues here Wednesday.
October 23, 2013 – 10:06 PM
October 16, 2013 – 4:51 PM
October 9, 2013 – 10:39 PM
October 2, 2013 – 4:44 PM
September 25, 2013 – 9:08 PM
A quick look today at Nick Cooke’s Sovereign and Dino dos Santos’s Global; well, it’s that, and also a made-up reason to talk about free fonts. If you’ve kept up with our weekly New Fonts posts, you’re likely already aware that certain foundries, such as exljbris or Hoftype, commonly offer a single weight of a new release free. As it happens, lots of other foundries do this too, so today I’m limiting our pairing to just fonts that appear on our new, site-comprehensive Free Fonts page. All the type shown here is available from FontShop for $0.
Sovereign is an extensively developed, relaxed-fit, semi-serif. As a text face, it offers a nicely open texture, with surprises here and there. Global’s wide-stanced, simply stylized monolinear forms serve as a support to Sovereign’s quick-stroke humanist quirks.
In addition to Global’s OpenType fonts being available free in the three styles above, the same faces are also free as webfonts.
That’s all. Great Pairs is a regular Wednesday thing here on the blog.
September 18, 2013 – 8:59 PM
September 11, 2013 – 6:39 PM
Fun one today. Let’s look at Slávka Pauliková’s FF Dora, paired with Nick Cooke’s Chevin.
Both these, while quite capable of communicating their message in a clear, straight-faced manner, let you know they’re enjoying it. FF Dora flirts with unconventional constructions while flaunting a confident mastery of roman and italic pen-derived forms. Chevin’s pleasure comes from its rigid adherence to the templates from which its shapes are derived. Together, the two harmonize well in their text weights, and don’t hold back in their ability to dazzle with their display cuts.
Great Pairs continue here Wednesday.
September 4, 2013 – 9:35 PM
Today’s great pair is Jarno Lukkarila’s Tanger Serif and Cyrus Highsmith’s Relay.
Up close, Tanger Serif’s playful handwork is undeniable, but at size it softens nicely into a vigorous overall texture. With Relay, its texture is enhanced with size. The nearer you get, the clearer the liberties taken with the strokes of its geometric construction. Together, the two create a nice tension between social fluency and awkwardness. And this might be a first: Our extensively developed secondary face, Relay—no slouch mind you—even with five weights across three widths is outnumbered by the styles available in the primary body text face Tanger Serif, with 48 styles spread across three widths in eight weights.
Tanger Serif sets economically, but comes in an even narrower width should you need it. For the samples, I play it down the middle.
Great Pairs flow in each Wednesday.
August 28, 2013 – 10:10 PM
Let’s take a quick look today at the pairing of Christoph Dunst’s Novel and Underware’s Auto (that’s Akiem Helmling, Bas Jacobs and Sami Kortemäki).
Novel prominently displays its calligraphic roots, particularly in its compact italic. This naturally extends a close relation to Auto, a low contrast sans with a well-developed calligraphic flair. That’s understating it. Auto is to my knowledge the first typeface to initially ship with multiple sets of italics, each in a distinct style.
Together, Auto’s young voice and Novel’s classic finish strike a chord full of depth and interest.
As is somewhat commonly the case with newer text faces, Novel has its own companion sans already, Novel Sans, complete with a condensed weight, and rounded and monospaced variants.
August 22, 2013 – 2:15 AM
It may surprise you to find out that Cooper Black is only one weight of Oz Cooper’s self-titled work, Cooper, which also includes a light weight, and a medium weight for text. Today we pair the Cooper family with Hannes von Döhren’s Brandon Grotesque.
Together, the historic influences and softened details of each serve as a solid enough area of cohesion, while the overall difference in tone allows Brandon to ably direct the reader’s path. Just one note on Cooper—consider spacing the type more loosely to perform better at smaller sizes. The below example is set without any added spacing.
Brandon Grotesque additionally comes in a text variant, Brandon Text, for setting body copy. Inverting our relationship, here’s Cooper in the role of display face, with Brandon Text’s refit lowercase ably handling the opposing task.
Great Pairs land here each week.
