Författare: Nyhetsuppläsaren STG

Chiavettieri is utterly comfortable in his own skin. Broad of beam, yet subtly sculpted. Clipped but not mannered. Evenly proportioned, low in contrast and with weighty limbs, his relaxed gait belies his formidable capabilities.

He is a citizen of the world, fluent in all manner of European tongues, and brimming with tales of adventure, far and wide. With a rich accented delivery, his understated confidence hints at so much more beneath the surface. There’s talk of daring undercover missions across Prague, diplomatic decadence in misty Vienna, and his lectures at the University of Belgrade are legendary. The most interesting man in the world? Maybe not, but he’s an enviable dinner guest nonetheless.

Or, to put it another way, Chiavettieri has character. Perhaps it’s stating the obvious when discussing a typeface, but there’s a fine line between character and eccentricity. Subdued details neither distract nor demand attention, but instead give the letterforms a solid approachability. Repeat viewings each reveal something new, yet taken as a whole, the face looks as unassuming as so many others.

Chiavettieri is unapologetically a text typeface, with a generous set, smooth rhythm, and complemented by an energetic italic, perfectly proportioned small caps, and full suite of numeral styles. Nikola Kostić has masterfully synthesized many references to create something distinctly new — but completely familiar. Even with his extra girth, Chiavettieri stands on the shoulders of these giants, and does it as a worthy compatriot. He may not be Bond but he’s certainly not bland.

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I have a weakness for font families that are colorful — each face a character of kinfolk, unlike the inflated and identical thick-to-thin twinning that defines our digital-type times.

César Puertas’ Buendia makes a harmonious melody its trait, sounding over the predictable tonal scale of ups and downs. My appreciation of this family stems not only from its jovial look-and-feel, but also from its conscious conceptual effort to offer typographers garden-variety versatile tools without forfeiting consistency.

This family, with its deceptively minimal range, cont­ains a complete text and display suite, each with a clear application in mind. Small footprint indeed, the weights provided are spot-on! All six Buendia styles share the same underlying framework, differentiating themselves with various characteristics and narratives. This unconventional family includes three sans weights (Thin, Medium and ExtraBold), two serifs (Regular and Italic), and one Bold slab. Each weight takes a measured cue from the brush for movement and stroke definition, while the romantic and vivid italic serif embraces the brush, the fullest lending top and bottom stems little swashy loops.

This is a family you want to befriend, not only for its kindness, but also for its endorsement of multi­generationality. Each affiliate connotes a hint of different time periods — from the serifs, which allude to a past era of leisurely picnics-at-the-lake-in-elegant-clothes (minus any austerity), to the Sans and Bold, clearly anchored in contemporary roundedness.

The type flaunts some enchanting informal idiosync­rasies. Take a look at the lower case ‘a’, with its low bowl and inward bowing top terminal; this latter feature recurs throughout the system, which gives the face in aggregate a confident and stable upright position. The assertiveness of the top serifs of the uppercase ‘T’ is almost theatrical in the way it demonstrates their repetitive unilateral mechanics. The type plays hide-and-seek with slightly outward arched sans stems, barely visible in the thin, and most apparent in the extrabold.

I look forward to seeing this type employed with a vision, as no twin will willingly stand in for another. There have been some contemporary type releases that might be compared to one or another weight of this crowd, but none comes close to being part of a bigger idea.

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Stolzl Display is angular movements turned into type, the Bauhaus ideal turned into letters.

Clear shapes, no ornament, keeping designs as simple as possible: basic Bauhaus rules were adjusted to design this typeface. Stolzl Display is dedicated to the memory of Gunta Stölzl (1897–1983), one of the few female Bauhaus master artists with far-reaching influence. She was the first female teacher of weaving at the Bauhaus Dessau and later became the director of the weaving workshop.

Stölzl developed her own designs, carpets, and textiles, as well as woven covers for furniture by her Bauhaus colleague Marcel Breuer. In 1928, she travelled to Moscow and attended the Russian art school Vkhutemas. Here is a connection to the typeface and its designer, Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya, rooted in graphics, illustration, and the Russian language. Also, Mariya is “passionate about the Swiss style” that Stölzl contributed to: she left the Bauhaus in 1931 for Switzerland and founded the handweaving company S-P-H-Stoffe in Zurich (with former Bauhaus members Gertrud Preiswerk and Heinrich-Otto Hürlimann). Stölzl’s works are to be found in museums in Basel, New York, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, among others. Find out more in the book Gunta Stölzl: Bauhaus Master — and just look at the cover to get an impression of her aesthetic. It leads directly to Stolzl the typeface.

Stolzl Display is a strange combination of strong and somewhat bulky, straightforward forms (no subtle curves or ornaments) contrasting with an astonishingly harmonious overall impression. Designer Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya aims at capturing the original Bauhaus idealism; obviously she is committed to their experimental, conceptual approach. It works. The resulting letterforms are characterized both by an air of nonconformity and a well-balanced self-esteem, it seems, losing neither their playfulness nor a certain jaunty, boisterous impact. The font family is meant for headlines, titles, and subtitles, Stolzl Display being the first subfamily to be released. It comprises six weights, 480 characters, alternative glyphs, and OpenType features.

A special mention goes out to Stolzl Display’s Cyrillic. Whether it’s that the Bauhaus design concept works tremendously well with Russian and/or that the designer’s cultural background comes to the fore, the Cyrillic glyphs are an extremely pleasant surprise. They appear so self-evident, so matter-of-fact. They just look natural. (Is “natural” a proper term to use for Bauhaus style?) Reading the Cyrillic seems to work well (I’ve been told), whereas the Latin letters need some getting used to: you stumble, tripping on the edgy forms. You are irritated maybe, and challenged. Which is not the worst effect of art and (type) design (at least with display fonts).

The only thing I regret is the fact that the designer chose to skip the umlaut in Gunta Stölzl’s name and call the typeface family Stolzl. Even with the umlaut turned into an “oe”, it would have fitted much better (not so nice, perhaps, but halfway correct). “Gunta” would have worked perfectly, both in its sound and its uniqueness. (I’ve never heard of a woman or a typeface named Gunta.) Also, Stolzl in German is close to the word “Stolz” (pride, boastfulness); but the ‘l’ at the end makes it sound like a diminutive to us. But then naming is an adventure in itself …

Nevertheless, viel Glück! Hopefully both Gunta Stölzl’s work and Stolzl Display will continue to gain attention.

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I’m not ashamed to admit it: I love Brush Script. You secretly love Brush Script, too. We all secretly love Brush Script. It’s like ice cream. Sure, it’s not great on every occasion or in unlimited quantities, but at the right time and in the right amount, ice cream is … amazing. Brush Script is just like that.

But! Lots of us turn our noses up at Brush Script. We sneer, “That typeface looks … amateurish.” And we dismiss it with a curt, “It’s so … overused.” The thing is, we have to separate the typeface itself from the things that have been done to and with it. For decades, Brush Script has been mistreated by font bundling marketers who lumped it in with 9,998 other fonts and sold it for fractions of a cent. That is what has led to it being overused. That overuse is what has given typo-intellectuals¹ an aversion to it. None of that has anything to do with the design of Brush Script.

The reality is that Brush Script is a marvel. Scripts are tough to get right even with all of the contextual substitutions, elastic spacing and sophisticated drawing tools that we have to throw at them today. A fluid, brushy, animated script cast in little metal blocks in 1942? My goodness, that sounds impossible. Yet, Brush Script totally works and is completely beautiful. Robert E. Smith was a magician.

ATF Brush is a loving revival of everything that is great about the original Brush Script. It has those graceful curves, the playful bounce, and the gutsy capitals that we all cherish in the most private parts of our hearts. ATF Brush brings lots of new stuff as well. It has a range of weights from the surprisingly spry Light to the pull-no-punches Black. It has some clever alternates and ligatures delivered automatically via OpenType substitutions. It supports a bunch of languages and has the latest and greatest monetary symbols. It’s also drawn really well (that can’t be said of that “Brush Script” that already shows up in your font menu). ATF Brush is Brush Script, but better and new.

It’s time to show how we really feel about Brush Script and start using it with care and respect. Don’t just trot it out when you want something to feel nostalgic. Use it because it still feels fresh. Don’t hide behind irony when you use it. Use it because it looks great. Use ATF Brush because it’s all of that and so much more.

Notes

1. Hi! That’s you. And me. I’m writing an essay about Brush Script. You are reading it. We’re probably overthinking this.⤴

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I am a sucker for bodacious headline typography — the sort that is over the top, tight, bold, in your face, and set solid. Who’s with me?

Nitti Mostro makes me wish I had a bunch of 200pt headlines for an ad. Or magazine spread. Or poster. Or banner. Or billboard. Or movie title for an IMAX theater! Can you see it!? Pieter van Rosmalen did not mess around when he expanded upon his Nitti Grotesk Ultra for Bold Monday. This is not a typeface for the timid; neither is it another twee* chromatic design. Eighteen fonts, four subfamilies, and more potential combinations than I can wrap my head around.

Generally I am very skeptical of any typeface that comes locked and loaded with so many bells and whistles. I mean, why include them when there are so many ways to make them on my own, right? But for this family, I can really see that time was spent on exploring ideas and drawing meaningful and useful shapes. For starters, it has solid, shadow, inline, inline solo, gradient, gradient solo, stripes, stripes solo, chrome, chrome solo, comic, comic solid, comic shadow, disco inline, disco floor, disco shadow, stencil solid, stencil shadow, stencil rough, and — sheesh I’m out of breath just typing that — last, but not least and possibly coolest of all, actual wood type. Squat and square, short ascenders and descenders, set alone or layered, Nitti Mostro is positively ready to handle any grandiloquent words I might have in mind.

* You know, I’ll wager someone could use Nitti Mostro Inline Solo to do something really quite experimentally classic. But it would still be bombastic.

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