The Month in Type: Fun type

For those who missed our first Font Fashion Week — and it was a huge success — you can now catch all of the talks on our YouTube channel. We also have some blog posts (with more on the way) about brand new typefaces released during the event. And mark your calendars! Our next Font Fashion Week kicks off October 3.

Type crit with a twist: You’ve been Georged!

First up, something that will surely make you smile. It made my day. ‘Type crits’ are a crucial aspect of type design, with type designers becoming so obsessed over the details that it’s sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees. Enter Sir George Edmondson, father of James Edmondson of Oh No Type Co. fame. I’m thinking he should be invited to type conferences across the world. Watch it here.

Design Inspiration

You know bold? You can’t handle the bold! This beast via Posterlad.

Hoping these come with the dog!

36 days of type

Some favs from the recently concluded 36 Days of type:

Cuteness overload from studiomuti from Cape Town:

This alphabet by Andrew Footit!:

Get to the point

Ever wondered about points and picas and how we came to measure type in these units? Then head over to  the The League podcast, where Olivia explains how they came to be.

The wisdom of Na Kim

A great audio interview with Na Kim, associate creative director at the book publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

RECOMMENDED READING

The Daily Heller: Saul Mandel’s Illustrative Design. Suzy Mandel-Canter discusses the brilliant creative legacy of her father.

The best fonts?

The best fonts for online reading. Interesting, but of course comprehension suffers with increased speed. Is our only goal to read faster? Interesting research nonetheless.

Faking it!

From the Wired archives: Meet the Font Detectives Who Ferret Out Fakery

Design research

Another thought-provoking piece over at Design Regression: Do we remember the visual appearance of words?

BOOKS

A new book about making type — from our friends at TypeTogether. Building Ligatures: the power of type.

Discover the meaning behind emojis in the new book, EMOJISM (Vietnamese). And kudos to Print for highlighting books written in languages other than English!

Sign Painting: A practical guide to tools, materials and techniques by Mike Meyers.

BRANDING

I’m liking the fun rebrand for M&M’s: For All Funkind.

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Cool branding for Petit Planet by Studio fnt:

SOME NEW FONTS!

An interesting 4-axis icons font from Google. Very clever and pretty darn useful with the four axis: fill, weight, grade, and optical size. Congratulations to those who worked on this cool project: Thomas Phinney, Lisa Huang, and Vassil Kateliev (let me know if I’ve left someone out!)

Deep breaths, please

Exposure, by Federico Parra Barrios, making the most of variable font tech.

EVENTS

Typographics

Typographics festival is a con­fer­ence about the the contem­porary use of type. Book your tickets now. It takes place June 17–18 at Cooper Union in New York City.

Ascenders

Ascenders portfolio-based competition. Regular deadline is April 30th!

Granshan

This year’s Granshan conference, Sign of the Times, is a two-day hybrid event. There is a fantastic roster of speakers, including our very own Nadine Chahine! Get your tickets soon — the conference kicks off on Friday, May 20th. Catch the full schedule here.

Learn with ILT Academy

We are excited to announce the launch of ILT Academy. The courses will encompass different script systems and will be taught in a variety of languages in order to be as inclusive as possible. ILT will also offer courses that are centered around the business of running a foundry such as font production, sales, and marketing. The academic program will be curated by our CEO, Dr. Nadine Chahine, and the teaching staff will consist of award-winning designers and expert specialists who are leaders in their own fields.

We launch with two courses in Arabic and Latin type design. Check out our ILT Academy page for more. With have so many more fantastic courses to come, but I won’t spill the beans just yet!

And one more thing…

With all that’s going on in the world, I’d like to end on a lighter note:

Thanks for tuning in!

The ILT team.