The Pelican Press, founded in 1916 by British printer and activist Francis Meynell (1891-1975) -- who also founded the more well-known Nonesuch Press in 1922, used a wide range of typographic ornaments and borders. The press published this specimen book, Typography: Type Specimens . . . of the Pelican Press in London in the 1920s for the benefit of their customers "to assist the amateur to a right appreciation of type-forms." Furthermore,
. . . it shows what can be commanded into his service by any buyer of printing; and it attempts to demonstrate what a commercial press can do to enrich the craft by ransacking the treasure houses of the past and breathing into old bodies the living spirit of our day.
Here are a few specimen pages that serve as examples. Typography. . . . is a donation from our late friend Jerry Buff (1931-2025).
Something I love is how typefaces are often designed to replicate certain line shapes that are innate facets of making certain kinds of strokes with certain kinds of writing implements. It is a beautiful reminder, I think, of how even mechanized systems are still ultimately the work of Human hands.
Today we have text that is simply stored as electronic binary patterns, yet some part of that text, when displayed, is still replicating someone writing with a quill or a brush or a chisel. We may be writing with lightning now, but our texts and their shapes have been forged over millennia through countless inventions and dreams.
What’s Your Type? A Reading List on Typefaces with Wild Tales to Tell
Follow Kanya Kanchana down the typeface rabbit hole! Today, she bring us a reading list of seven stories highlighting our love affair with typefaces.
I found out early that I had a love for letters, scripts, and the art of making them. As a student of architecture involved in literary-type activities in college, I drew posters for years, made design drawings, read a lot, discovered a dubious ability to write in a great number of convincing hands, resisted putting it to criminal use, and stumbled upon a body of knowledge about type. I had caught the bug. I had fallen in love with Aldus Manutius, if not with Johannes Gutenberg. And when I became a programmer, I got to play with type. If it was good enough for Steve Jobs, it wasn’t perhaps all that mad.
HEY. do you remember when Nintendo made a typeface for Splatoon 3's Side Order and never elaborated? It looks a little bit like this:
Well I went over to the lovely @splatoongamefiles and asked for the font file. They gave me the file, all nice and simple, BUT it was completely unfinished... I really liked it, so I finished it myself!!! (files and images under the cut <3<3)
This is what it looked like when I started:
and this is what it looks like now!!!!!!!
It took me 6 months because I apparently started working on this in february, but it only took that long because of my laziness! I did, however, know nothing about this kind of thing before except for my vague interest in typography and fonts. I used a free font-making software called FontForge and I had to learn it from scratch and with no help. So I think all in all, it turned out pretty good!!
I also decided to name the typeface since when I downloaded it, it was called something silly and just for the files so I named it Spire after the Spire of Order which I think works very nicely!!
Now I'll talk about what's changed because I did upload beta version 0.2 of this recently!
added all the accents you can see above, but not ALL of them because im lazy
fixed lowercase k so now it looks like a normal letter
B - adjusted sizes of the upper and lower sections as well as sharpened corners of the lower section
K - slightly lowered the crossbar
L - curves of the corners are now slightly smoother
z - raised the top right corner by 1 pixel so its no longer 1 pixel wonky...
@ - increased the gap on the left side
deleted all the original file's kerning and did it myself >:)
and lastly! here's the link to download the typeface!!!!!! if you do use it somewhere credit is always appreciated :)))) and do let me know because i'd love to see!!! <3
p.s. if there are any specific characters/glyphs that I haven't added but u really need please dont hesitate to let me know!!!!
https://www.myfonts.com/pages/whatthefont is a handy web page that'll identify a font from a picture. The clarity should at least be decent for good results, but it's helped me out more times than I can count!
