Font•A•Day: A Brief Look at Attractive and Modern Typefaces

[Gare]

I thought I'd start this thread because there's an interesting back story to just about every font I've been attracted to since I began in advertising. If anyone has a "Font Story", I encourage you to post it here!



My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

One of the first "Euro Fonts" I discovered and accidentally collected when I bought my first "Value Pack" from Adobe was VAG Rounded, in four weights.

It looks sort of like a serious version of the novelty font "Frankfurter", but in reality, the four designers (yeah:4!) were striving for a friendly typeface than their client at the time was using. VAG Rounded gets its name from a condensation of Volkswagen AG, it was a corporate font until the owners got sick of it in the 1990s.

What happened was Volkswagen acquired Damier-Benz, who most notably manufactured Audi. The newly merged car conglamorate couldn't decide on a new official typeface. Some factions on the new board hates Futura, which VW used, while other insisted the new logo shouldn't be a serif font (Times), as Audi was using.

So it couldn't be a straight sans serif and it couldn't be a serif. So the designers rounded the ends of a sans serif creation in hopes it would be seen as a kinder, gentler font.



You decide. I like it as an alternative to Futura, and I believe there's a Xara knock-off called Valken you might want to take for a spin.

My Best,

Gary

[angelize]

That's really interesting Gary. I have a font called Salina that I like to use sometimes for fancy headings I can't remember where I got from, though I think it may have come with an older version of Xara. I wonder what kind of story it has the only information I've been able to find so far is that it was created by FontBank Inc.

[jon404]

I grew up in San Francisco. My Mom had a small bookstore, and I learned many years later that her letterhead designer picked the most absolutely obvious typeface in the world, given the store's name --



Folio was a mid '50s contemporary of Helvetica and Univers, never as popular as the other two. But it sure worked for her bookstore, and I keep the font on my PC out of sentiment -- though I have to confess (sorry, Mom) that I never used it on a job.

[Gare]

@Frances—

Salina is a look-alike name, actually a very popular one, for the font originally named Tango. In fact, it's quite easy to do a search on the web to get a free copy of Salina. Most versions of this free look-alike tend not to have the correct stylized upper case letterforms that almost self intersect and overlap with their swashes. However, the font is so stylized, no one is ever going to recognize your Salina font as a knock-off. You want an exaggeration of this typeface, I could recommend Octopus, scroll down. But I won't...

Still, you got yourself a $25 clone for free, in my estimation. And because there are no coincidences in Life, Frances, Barbara and I live on the border of the Town of Salina (derived from the word "salt").

Tango: Designed by Colin Brignall in 1972, first digital version available in 2002 from Elsner+Flayke, Bitstream, Linotype, URW. Currently owned by Letraset, which strongly suggests it was a dry transfer lettering font, and I think I used to have a page of it.


My Best,

Gary

[Gare]

@Jon—

Folio is one of a Font Quartet. I myself will confess that I have a love/hate relationship with Helvetica, and Folio shares some of the same roots as Folio, much in the same way Arial is a web-optimized version of Helvetica.

Pull up a chair! Back in the 1890s, when Hermann Berthold took over the Prussian Foundry in Berlin, Akzidenz-Grotesk had already been used for typesetting scientific publications for more than a decade. The font was retooled and readjusted, a condensed version was cast, although the exact origin—who originally created the font—is speculation today.

Flash forward and Max Miedinger at the Haas Foundry used Akzidenz-Grotesk as a model for the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk, released in 1957 and renamed Helvetica in 1960. Also in 1957, Adrian Frutiger's Univers and Bauer and Baum's Folio, were released, both clearly inspired by a Grotesque Accident.

You'll notice that there are very small variations in certain characters, when you compare Akzidenz-Grotesk to its siblings. For example, the cross on the capital A is dropped, and the stroke on the capital Q doesn't go inside the "O" component.

If you want to get a free Truetype version of Akzidenz-Grotesk in four weights, go to A-Z Fonts

What the Helvetica; go for it!

My Best,

Gary

[wizard509]

That's really interesting Gary. I have a font called Salina that I like to use sometimes for fancy headings I can't remember where I got from, though I think it may have come with an older version of Xara. I wonder what kind of story it has the only information I've been able to find so far is that it was created by FontBank Inc.

That's very interesting, all the more so since I was born and raised in Salina (Kansas that is).

[Gare]

I always knew you're the Salt of the Earth, Larry!

-g-

[mwenz]

sometimes stories have little meaning to people other than the individual.

i usually purchase fonts based upon visceral feeling rather than rational thought. eplica was one of those types of purchases.

i think the only font that i have purchased that fits the bill of having a story and is a modern take is hoefler and frere-jones' slab serif font, archer.

once upon a day, i use to add a cross bar at the top of certain letters, the cap a being one of them.



take care, mike

[Gare]

I love Hoefler Text, Mike, and I have a few other gems from this foundry.

Is this the same font you're talking about? There's a corresponding Pi set, did you know? Hoefler Ornaments.