14th TDC2 winning typefaces

These are some of the winners from 14th 'Type Directors Club squared' competition. These are the ones that I particularly liked :

Typeface Designer: Hannes von Döhren, Berlin
Foundry: HVD Fonts
Members of Typeface Family/System: Thin, Thin Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic

My father gave me some magazines from the 1920s and 1930s, which he had found at my grandfather’s; he thought I should have a look at the hand-lettered advertisements. I was fascinated by the surface feel and by the general atmosphere of these magazines; the way the body type was set and the various combinations of typefaces and hand-lettered headlines.

I absolutely wanted to create a typeface with that kind of feel. A geometric face that nonetheless would possess a certain softness and warmth. Because of “bad” printing, the text faces in those magazines had slightly rounded corners, lending them an emotionality that today’s clean-cut type lacks. So I decided to give Brandon slightly rounded-off corners to allow it to radiate warmth in spite of its geometric clarity. Although Brandon with its 12 styles is a relatively large family, each weight has its own aesthetic, for while the weights are based on each other they were all drawn separately in order to give each variety its own details — like the various ‘g’ variations or the perfectly round counters in the Black weight. A real italic was designed to provide additional individuality and to distinguish the font from most other geometric sans faces, making it even more ‘human’.

Typeface Designer: Erik van Blokland, The Hague
Foundry: House Industries, Yorklyn, Delaware

The Eames Poster Numerals are numerological necessities punctuated with a pulchritudinous parade of pachydermic power whose circusized woodcut-inspired shapes were drawn in three stackable weights and boast a broad range of color choices limited only by the imagination, RGB or CMYK spectra, and the availability of custom pigmented emulsions.

Typeface Designer: Hubert Jocham, Lautrach, Germany
Foundry: Hubert Jocham Type

Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular and Italic

When letterpress started with the Gutenberg Bible, the typeface was like a texture. Before humanism, type did not really need to be legible. The letters were rather drawn in an ornamental way. It filled a space. My idea for Matrona was to create a similar structure. I wanted it to be very bold and still as legible as possible. The result was a headline typeface that can fill spaces. You can even fill it with a picture. Or you create an ornament with contents. There are three weights to extend the usage to different sizes.

Typeface Designer: Alex Rütten, Berlin
Foundry: FSI FontShop International
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular, Regular Italic, Light, Light Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, and Black Italic

Suhmo is inspired by classic Egyptian and typewriter fonts such as Courier and American Typewriter, which feature headline and text use. This impressive duality was a guideline for the concept. At the same time, many formal details were derived from the typical neon – lettering you can find on aged Italian restaurants in Germany. Suhmo has short ascenders and descenders and a generous x-height, making it a good choice for editorial design. It combines simplicity and functionality with playfulness, offering interesting details such as loops and swashes and a slight stroke contrast. Its varied details are unobtrusive in text sizes while developing character and sparkle in headlines. Suhmo’s extensive character set includes numerous special characters and ligatures, several figure sets, and small caps throughout all styles. The Suhmo family consists of four weights: Light, Regular, Bold, and Black, each with an Italic. The weights were staggered to complement each other within a layout, the Black corresponding to the Regular and the Light corresponding to the Bold weight, allowing words or phrases to be clearly stressed within a text. The Italics are lighter than the Roman and have a relatively slight angle of slope. The forms are derived from a manual writing process and often cross the base-line or the x-height.

Typeface Designer: Jeremy Mickel, Providence, Rhode Island
Foundry: Mickel Design
Members of Typeface Family/System: Extralight, Extralight Italic, Light, Light Italic, Book, Book Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, and Black Italic

Shift is inspired by American slab-serifs from the late 19th century. In its lighter weights, it takes on the personality of a typewriter face, with flared terminals and prominent serifs. In the heavier weights, it acts as a titling Egyptian, with thin spaces between characters and small counters. Designed as a display face, it also works well for text.

Typeface Designer: Vera Evstafieva, Moscow
Foundry: Infonta
Members of Typeface Family/System: Latin and Cyrillic

Amalta is a Display typeface with calligraphic background. It inherits weight and letter constructions from the original brush lettering. Amalta’s Latin and Cyrillic sets were designed simultaneously with an equal attention to details and overall pattern. They both include initial and final swash forms, which can be used as a typographer chooses. Amalta is suitable for large size typesetting headlines, few-line texts, etc.

Typeface Designer: Erik van Blokland, The Hague
Foundry: House Industries, Yorklyn, Delaware
Members of Typeface Family/System: Regular, Regular Italic, Book, Book Italic, Light, Light Italic, Thin, Thin Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extra Bold, Extra Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic, Stencil, and Stencil Cameo

Charles and Ray Eames did not design a typeface and this project was not about creating fonts that they would have drawn had they felt the need or inspiration to do so. It was about creating a tool that had the same universal appeal as monuments to the Eames aesthetic, many of which have been so ingrained in our visual landscape that we barely notice them. Eames Century Modern is crafted in the same vein; its dignified legibility effectively transmits the message without overpowering the medium while devilishly intoxicating details in words, letters, serifs, spaces, stems and tapers find their way into the subconscious of even the most casual observer. Much like waiting in a departure lounge on Eames system airport seating; you don’t know why you’re comfortable, you just are.