Canada Type News | May 2005

Font Releases:

-Jojo: A little more flower and a litle less power, please. Fun, friendly, fashionable, and feminine to a fault, Jojo takes display typography to a whole new level, where eyes can't help but appreciate the day and the design at hand. It takes a graphic designer very little imagination to see these letters on posters, book covers, clothes, and craft paraphernalia. Or how about a sign over a bakery? A music sleeve? A romantic comedy titling? Cosmetics products? Pretty much anywhere! Jojo takes its name from a Beatles song about getting back to where we once belonged. It also takes most of its shapes from vintage photo-setting days, when an art nouveau typeface called Spring, by B. Jacquet, was putting happy times back where they belonged, which was everywhere. The original photo-setting face came in just 26 letters and 10 numerals, but once you check the character set you will see that Jojo has now been expanded to a full, complete font with punctuation, accented characters, and a whole lot of alternates and ligatures for maximum value. If your design needs art nouveau with a loving spin, retro but not too retro, Jojo is the font for you.

-Flirt: It's a very happy day when we stumble upon beautiful alphabets that were never digitized. It is even a happier day when the beautiful alphabet finds its way to us through friends and people who like our work. Some two months ago, the forms of this gorgeous font were pointed to us by a friend who saw it in an old Dover Publications specimen book showcasing historical alphabets. It was there under the name Vanessa, with nothing else to go by. We looked and researched for further information but found nothing else. So this gem comes to you like a coal that winked its way out of the ashes because it wanted to shine again. Flirt is very authentic art deco with a noticeable element of artistic pride, swashy delicate majuscules and very aristocratic, fashionable and flirty minuscules. The majuscules can be used as every other capitals usually are, or as initial caps. The minuscules can very nicely stand on their own quite independently from the caps whenever desired. These letters are quite similar to the hand lettering used on of the kind of theater posters, specifically burlesque and opera entertainment, which are now considered very retro-chic and fashionable to see hanging on walls in home or office. The initial specimen we worked from showed a single basic art deco alphabet with numerals which seemed as they belonged to another font. That alphabet became the base Flirt font, the numerals were redrawn to fit much better with the minuscules, and the character set was greatly expanded to include punctuation, accented characters, and many many alternates, especially for the majuscules. Majuscules with a descending right vertical stroke were a common artistic touch in the high days of theater posters, so we thought they would be great additions to the character set. These alternates can be found all over the font. So to maximize the design fun, have a character map or glyphs palette handy when you use Flirt. After the base font was finished, we thought it would be a good idea to give it a bold treatment unlike anything seen out there, and the farthest thing from the mechanical bolds seen everywhere now. This bolding treatment consisted of thickening the lowercase’s vertical strokes inwards, but leaving the horizontal stroke weight as is, and thickening only the thicker vertical strokes of the uppercase. The result is quite the visual feat. We encourage you to test both the regular and bold weights and see for yourself.

-Heathen: A few emails sent to Canada Type asked for more "bad scripts". A few others asked for "more Mascara-like treatments". And some asked for more fonts of "distressed elegance". Whatever you like to call this style of doubled-script font, sightings of designs using it have become common within the last few years. Such fonts have become the standard in expressing elegant confusion, old chaos in modern settings, recycled histories, and rebellious ideas. This style is quite seen on chic clothing, music packaging, some sports paraphernalia, surfer and skateboarder gear, even book covers. That said, the Heathen font was made to include an advantageous feature that other distressed scripts do not normally have: More intertwined over-swashing in the majuscules. This over-swashing is quite useful in settings where the stroke and fill colors differ, or complement each other. It is also quite the point of emphasis where the idea is to show elegance gone ancient, old thoughts in a modern wrapper, rust never sleeping, or the very basic limits of the world's nature.

May 2005 Notes:

- An OpenType version of Odette, our bestselling classic, was just released. Two fonts with the right alternates and ligatures in the right cells for the right push-buttons in the right programs.

- Adore is the top 10 and Dancebats in the top 20 of the MyFonts.com bestseller list! We've received many compliments about both fonts from many users. Thanks very much!

- Summer's knocking on our doors in this part of the world. This coming summer we promise to release some new material that raises the bar on what affordable fonts can do for you. Keep an eye out for our upcoming Pendulum Script for a very pleasant surprise, perhaps in late June, but July seems a likelier release date at this point. We are looking at a probable summer/fall blockbuster with this one. Rebecca's hard at work on it, and she may be convinced to show you a sample if you prod her gently.

- Congratulations to Louise Døssing from Denmark, Tricia Legault from the USA, Jukka Fordell from Finland, and Ted Fullona from Canada. They were the winners of our random customer draw for the month of April. The next draw will take place on June 1, and four from our May customers will receive their choice of any Canada Type font pack (excluding Value Packs) at no charge. Winners will be notified on the June 3.

Thanks for reading this Canada Type newsflash, and see you in June.