Typefaces In Time

My talk at Creative Mornings Vancouver on December 12, 2015

*Update: The talk video is now up on the Creative Mornings website!

*Another Update: I have another font-finding resource list over here from another talk I did.

My talk at Creative Mornings Vancouver was an amazing experience, but it went by far too quickly. I have so much more to share! I didn’t really get the chance to go over how you might go about finding all these wonderful modern typefaces, so here’s a few resources to get you started:

Where To Find Fresh Fonts

Most people end up on MyFonts when they are looking for typefaces, and while they do have one of the largest (and most overwhelming) catalogs, they’re not very choosy about what they include. They also keep 50% of what the customer pays to cover their costs of running, so if you are into paying more to the designer, you may want to shop elsewhere. I have a few favourite independent foundries for you to check out:

Lost Type Co-Op
Full disclosure: I will be releasing my upcoming typeface with this foundry! Lost Type is a Pay-What-You-Want type foundry full of unique and quirky typefaces. Mostly for display purposes, but a few great text typefaces as well.

Commercial Type
These guys have a full catalogue of amazing, high quality typefaces. Everything from text-appropriate to beautiful display and most come with larger families that are designed to go together.

Font Bureau
A well-respected foundry that’s been around for 25 years, and have diverse and beautiful typefaces to prove it. Their website is terrible though, so it’s probably easier to view their catalogue on the webfonts website.

Typotheque
Not only are the letters beautiful, the quality is amazing, if you need multiple language support, this is the place to go.

Bold Monday
A small but amazingly beautiful collection of type.

House Industries
A large catalog of fun typefaces, browse by style for some interesting finds. Also don’t miss their objects and clothing for the type-obsessed.

Village Type
Village is actually a group of small foundries that got together on one website. Especially check out the work of Klim and MCKL. You can browse by year which is useful for finding the latest and greatest.

If you still want more after that, Stephen Coles has an article about his favourite, trusted foundries and retailers.

Matt Smith has also pulled together a useful Foundry directory.

Reviews On Typographica

Speaking of Stephen Coles, he runs an amazing typeface review site called Typographica. If you are curious to know what the experts say about a typeface you are considering, this is the place to look it up. They also release a summary of their favourite releases of the year, so you can get inspiration on the best of modern type design.

Impending Release of Tofino

Sometime in the new year, I’ll be releasing Tofino, the typeface I’ve been working on for the last year. Sign up for my newsletter if you want to be in the know when that happens.

Further Reading And References

We don’t need new fonts
by Peter Bil’ak
“Still, there are typefaces which haven’t been made yet and which we need. Type that reacts to our present reality rather than being constrained by past conventions;”

Shaping Text
by Jan Middendorp
This book is the best introduction to using typefaces that I can recommend. It covers an amazing amount of information on how to layout and choose type.

Identifont - How Many Garamonds Are There?
A font database where you can search through almost every font in existence. What the font is also a great resource for font identification.

Adobe Garamond Pro PDF
The explaination of how Robert Slimbach’s version of Garamond was created.