A tour of the level of detail that goes into Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ fonts.
In the middle of Gotham, our family of 66 sans serifs, there is a hushed but surprising moment: a fraction whose numerator has a serif. So important was this detail that we decided to offer it as an option for all the other fractions, a decision that ultimately required more than 400 new drawings. Why?
As you’ll read below, it’s something that we added because we felt it mattered. Even if it helped only a small number of designers solve a subtle and esoteric problem, we couldn’t rest knowing that an unsettling typographic moment might otherwise lie in wait. We’ve always believed that a good typeface is the product of thousands of decisions like these, so we invite you to join us on a behind-the-scenes look at some of the invisible details that go into every font from H&FJ.
Aspirational.
I mentioned Daily Drop Cap before but now Ms. Hische has pressed her project into new territory. Namely, creamy, 100% cotton, two color letterpress territory, and it’s beautiful!
From her blog: “I hand printed these two color letterpress posters at The Arm in Williamsburg and it was The Most Painstaking Registration Process Ever. I ended up destroying my plates while trying to make it perfect, which means that this small first edition of 75 will also be the last edition.”
A new font family from my favorite type designers Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones was released today. They made Gotham, Obama’s campaign font.
H&FJ is delighted to introduce Vitesse®, a new slab serif in twelve styles.
Slab serifs are one of typography’s most vibrant categories, yet they remain dominated by two ancient forms: the nineteenth century Antique, and the twentieth century Geometric. Both are vital and living genres—we’ve explored each of them, in our Sentinel and Archer type families—but what of the twenty-first century slab? Vitesse revels in the tension between organic letterforms and mechanical grids, and offers designers a distinctive new voice that’s suave, confident, and stylish. Engineered for responsive handling and a sporty ride.
