#fontfriday

[hillcreative-blog]

Font Friday: 2018 World Cup (Dusha)

While soccer fans around the world watch the FIFA World Cup in excitement, designers usually tend to cringe at the font choices.

This year, FIFA chose to use Dusha (Russian for “soul”). The font was designed by Brandia Central, a Portuguese agency, in 2014. And it looks like they’ve designed fonts that other tournaments have used: 2015 Copa América in Chile, 2015 EuroBasket in Ukraine, and 2016 UEFA EURO in France.

The fonts they’ve designed aren’t terrible. And it’s not the font itself that we’re disappointed in. It’s the way FIFA is using the font during the broadcast that makes some of us designers want to bang our head against the nearest wall. Dusha actually looks pretty okay for the logo—where it says “Russia 2018.” But everyone knows that this year’s World Cup is hosted by Russia, so legibility doesn’t matter as much—you get to use weird fonts. But when the broadcast is highlighting a player or something else that’s important to the game, you’re most likely going to have to really focus to read it. That shouldn’t be the case.

So why Dusha? This stylized font has Russian characters. Hosted in Russia, so choose a font with Russian characters? Yeah, makes sense. But we’re pretty sure there are better font choices than Dusha that have Russian characters. It seems like the people in charge of choosing the fonts for the World Cup seem to be stuck in a rut. They like a sans serif font with some sort of slanted crossbar on a capitalized “A” and a wide glyph width. Sounds a little like a font we all hate—Comic Sans.

Will the font choices get better in the future? We’re already looking a little more sophisticated for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France. Maybe by 2026, when we co-host the World Cup with Canada and Mexico, they’ll have it figured out.

[literepedegeaba]

Argesta by Atipo Foundry / @atipostudio

Argesta is a powerful neoclassical serif font family with high contrast. The ideas for this font has a wide range of reference, from vintage, classic, until the modern era, making it the perfect typeface for an understated, modern, sophisticated look. Stylistically, Argesta is directly inspired by haute couture and it is well-suited to classy branding identity, magazine design, or for luxury product packaging design.

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Download — http://bit.ly/3749XFZ

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[uzunhikaye]

#fontfriday (at Gelibolu) https://www.instagram.com/p/B62SjqxlHOQ/?igshid=1p4q1zkfq5daz

[luxtypo-blog]

A first look at Biscuit—an addition to the font family ‘Colette’ due out just in time for summer vacation.

[juantorresdesign]

Old Soul #fontfriday #fontdesign #typedesign #illustrator #adobe #alphabet torresdesign.org #akachele

[hillcreative-blog]

Font Friday: Bodoni

There’s a reason Italians have led the fashion industry—while other countries have just followed in their footsteps. Not only is Milan the fashion capital of the world, but Italy has produced some of the world’s top fashion designers: Versace, Armani, Prada . . .

Italy doesn’t just have a good sense of fashion, though. The country is known for architecture, espresso, pasta . . . And you guessed it, typography.

Let’s talk about one particular typeface—Bodoni. You’ve seen it on the cover of Vogue Magazine, Armani ads, your Calvin Klein underwear, Elizabeth Arden products, Beyoncé’s album 4, all Nirvana albums, and Lady Gaga’s album The Fame.

Designed by Giambattista Bodoni in in the late 18the century, Bodoni has become one of the world’s most revived fonts today. Bodoni admired the work of John Baskerville, which included increased stroke contrast and more vertical axis. He took both of these characteristics and made them more extreme. Bodoni also studied the designs of French type founders Pierre Simon Fournier and Firmin Didot.

Bodoni and other typefaces were originally called “classical” designs because of their rational structure, but the fonts weren’t updated versions of Roman or Renaissance letter styles. They were totally new designs! Because of this, designers and print-makers started calling them “Didone” designs (or modern serif designs).

There are over 48 revivals of Bodoni since 1909 when the typeface was first used in America. AFT Bodoni, designed by Morris Fuller Benton of American Type Founders, was the first accurate revival of a historical face for printing and design applications. Some details in the revival were based on Didot to help with legibility for mass print production.

Bodoni is one of our favorites. It’s timeless.

[hillcreative-blog]

Font Friday: Gotham and Knockout

New Yorkers like to stay local—whether they’re catching a late-night comedy show, choosing a designer to build a website, scarfing down a slice of pizza . . . The list goes on. But really, can you imagine a New Yorker eating deep-dish pizza? It’ll never happen!

This blog isn’t really about pizza—although, we do have our opinions. Instead, we’re looking at the two fonts SNL has used over the past eleven years. If we went all the way back to 1975, when the show first aired, this blog would be way too long. Just look at how many fonts they’ve gone through!

If we go back to season 32 (when Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers hosted Weekend Update together for the first time) the show changed their opening title font to Gotham Ultra. This heavy, geometric sans serif was designed by NY-native Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000 when he partnered with Jonathan Hoefler. SNL used this font from 2006 to 2014, making color changes from white, to green, to blue.

Gotham is also used in international magazine GQ. The typeface was also selected in 2004 for the cornerstone of One World Trade Center.

At the time, the NY-based type foundry was Hoefler & Frere-Jones, until a conflict came up between the two partners in 2014 about the ownership percentage. Frere-Jones left and the foundry has been Hoefler & Co. ever since.

On their 40th anniversary (when Michael Che replaced Cecily Strong), SNL changed their opening title font to Knockout (67 Full Bantamweight). Knockout was designed in 1994 by the same foundry, but back then it was called Hoefler Type Foundry (HTF) since Frere-Jones hadn’t joined until 1999. The foundry was originally established as HTF in 1989 and created original typefaces on commission for Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New York Times.

Like we said before, New Yorkers like to stick to the big apple. And just to set the record straight, NY-style pizza is better.

[hillcreative-blog]

Font Friday: Belwe

Living in the digital age can be difficult sometimes. It's easy to become unbalanced. Seems like we're always on some sort of screen—sitting at a computer all day, carrying these small powerful devices in our pockets, and then we come home and watch Netflix.

It's hard to get away from our screens—to go outside and "play." But believe it or not, digital advertising can help us get out of the rut.

You scroll through your Facebook feed and see an ad. A muscular woman is covered in white dust. Her hands grip the earth. She's scaling a huge bluff. And the only word written is "Patagonia."

Good advertising can be inspiring, if there's a strong, reliable brand backing it.

You probably won't go out an buy a new Patagonia flannel shirt that instance. Maybe you go for a walk instead. A few days later you start a couch to 5k program. Maybe you try rock climbing. A couple months later you end up at an REI store and see a section of Patagonia flannels. You buy one.

Patagonia is one of our favorite brands. Founded in 1973, by a rock climber, Patagonia makes durable outdoor clothing—comfortable and stylish. The Patagonia brand is timeless. And their logo is the same—timeless and durable.

The font they used is called Belwe, named after it's creator Georg Belwe. Born in Germany, Belwe first trained as a lithographer under his father who was the chancellery secretary of Berlin. His father was responsible for all written government documents. Belwe later studied typography and became the head of the Department of Composition and Printing at the Royal Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade in Leipzig. He designed Belwe for Schelter & Giesecke in Dresden in 1907.

And ironically, the same font a rock climber decided to use for his company, is the same font a nerd decided to use in 1993 when releasing a card game—yes, we're talking about Magic The Gathering.

Go outside and play. Get off your screen and enjoy the weekend.