Canada Type News | September 2006

Font Releases:

-Lexington: A revival and major expansion of a 1926 Ludwig Wagner Schriftgiesserei typeface called Titanic, Lexington is the ultimate art deco expression of the high times of signage and theater during the first half of the twentieth century. Big feminine caps and cozy direct minuscules make for a unique combination rarely found in other deco faces. Topped off with the humorous and quite suave tall and pointy ascenders and descenders of the alternates, Lexington makes for a versatile and uniquely eye-catching display face beneficial to poster art, book covers, classy menus, product packaging and music paraphernalia. The original specimen Hans van Maanen worked from showed the majuscules, minuscules, figures, and 4 alternates of some ascending minuscules. This new digital version includes all of the above, plus many more additions: 1) Plenty more alternates, for some caps as well as for all the ascending and descending lowercase, 2) Three different size variations for the comma and the period, 3) Oldstyle figures, 4) A full complement of accented characters to support more Latin-based languages than ever, including Baltic, Celtic, Turkish, and Central/Eastern European languages, and 5) A Handtooled style variation that covers both the main character set and the alternates. Lexington was named after ManhattanÕs Lexington Avenue, home of the some of the most famous and polished art deco architecture of the 1920s and 1930s.

-Fantini: Fantini is the revival and elaborate update of a typeface called Fantan, made in-house and released in 1970 by a minor Chicago film type supplier called Custom Headings International. In the most excellent tradition of seriously-planned American film faces back then, CHI released a full complement of swashes and alternates to the curly art nouveau letters. Fantan didn't fare much among the type sceneÕs big players back then, but it did spread like electricity among the smaller ones, the mom-and-pop type shops. But by the late 1980s, when film type was giving up the ghost, most smaller players in the industry were gone, in some cases along with little original libraries that existed nowhere else and became instant rarities on their way to be forgotten and almost impossible to resurrect for future technologies. Fantini is the fun and curly art nouveau font bridging the softness and psychedelia of the 1960s with the flirtatious flare of the 1970s like no other face does. Elements of psychedelia and funk flare out and intermix crazily to create cool, swirly letters packed with a lot of joy and energy. This is the kind of American art nouveau font that made its comeback in the late 20th century and is now a standard visual in the branding drive of almost every consumer product, from coffee labels to book and music covers to your favorite sugar or thirst-crunching fix. Alongside FantiniÕs enormous main font come small caps and three extra fonts loaded with swashy alternates and variations on plenty of letters. All available in all popular font formats. Fantini Pro, the OpenType version, packs the whole she-bang in a single font of high versatility for those who have applications that support advanced type technologies. In order to make Fantini a reality, Canada Type received original 2" film specimen from Robert Donona, a Clevelander whose enthusiasm about American film type has never faltered, even decades after the technology itself became obsolete. Keep an eye out for that name. Robert, who was computer-reluctant for the longest time, has now come a long way toward mastering digital type design.

September 2006 Notes:

- We are honored to welcome Dutch designer and prolific science writer Hans van Maanen to the roster of Canada Type talent. Hans's first offering is this month's Lexington release, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. He has quite a few delightful surprises up his sleeves. Stay tuned for more great stuff to come from him.

- Philip Bouwsma is polishing off another master work which will be released next month. We promise those of you who like calligraphy quite the visual treat in October.

- Congratulations to Kim Vallee from Canada, Boris Kralj from Slovenia, and Jennifer Erickson and Jackie Rice from the United States. They were the winners of our random customer draw for this month. The next draw will take place on October 2, and four from our September customers will receive their choice of any Canada Type font pack (excluding Value Packs) at no charge. Winners will be notified by email on October 3.

Thanks for checking out Canada Type this month, and see you again in October.