Why wouldn’t ASCII art, being over 50 years old, adapt itself to modern times? We are all familiar with ASCII art and we all know responsive websites. What happens if these 2 are combined?

We released a monospaced version of Zeitung yesterday, and we all know that monospaced fonts & ASCII art are a match made in heaven. Therefore our website has a new homepage, using responsive ASCII. Resizing the window will offer the full experience: the text size which displays the ASCII art remains the same, independent of the window size. As a consequence: the resolution increases once the window enlarges.

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Zeitung Mono is the monospaced companion to the Zeitung family, a sans serif which works well in small sizes on screen. This monowidth font family increases the functionality of the Zeitung font family, resulting in happy programmers, smiling ASCII-kids, razor-sharp journalists and finally: worldpeace.

Zeitung Mono is everything a contemporary monospaced font needs to be. A good monospaced font has a fancy italic for unmistakable distinction & lots of weights which supply a broad typographic palette. So you may guess once what Zeitung Mono has. Right, exactly that. Say hello to Zeitung Mono.

Introduction offer: Let’s Mono Together
Order Zeitung Mono complete, and get a free license for a friend.
This introduction offer runs until 31 July 2017.

26-30 June 2017: ASCII+ Week

For all ASCII lovers, and those who love to be surprised: next week, from 26 to 30 June 2017, it’s Underware’s ASCII+ Week. Microsoft wrongfully declared ASCII dead in the end of the 1990s. As real ASCII-kids it’s finally time to show our love. Every day some ASCII news. Stay tuned, more on Monday.

Four countries in four weeks. We’ve got a couple of presentations coming up, where we’ll present our latest findings. Hope to see you in of these cities:

18 May: Plug & Play, Porto, Portugal — plugandplay.pt
25 May: TYPO Berlin, Germany — typotalks.com/berlin
1 June: BNO Zwolle, the Netherlands — facebook.com/bnozwolle
10 June: IS Type conference, Istanbul, Turkey — istype.com

The associations a font has and the emotions it can evoke, are culturally defined. They change through time, vary around the world, and sometimes vary from one country to another. Recently our typeface Bello became associated with politically progressive movements in Ireland. The reason why this happened has been described by Robin Fuller in this article in the Dublin InQuirer: How Bello Became The Typeface Of Protest.

© photo Gerry Mooney

The Internet = cats. Pictures of cats. Videos of cats. GIFs of cats. Whatever, as long as it’s cats. Since a while all 3 our studios have The Internet at home. Our studios in Den Haag & Helsinki had a cat for some time, but in Amsterdam it remained pretty silent. But when the kids & partner vote for a cat, and Bas votes against, it’s a good democratic habit to end up with 2 cats. Because the difference between 3 pro votes and 1 against, is exactly 2. Yep. Those same kids don’t have a clue what Twitter (our only social media behaviour) or Facebook is about, but think that The Internet = cats = Instagram (or Snapchat). Because we have The Internet now everywhere, we decided to create an Instagram account, just to add some cats photos. And some lettering.

www.instagram.com/underwarefoundry/

These are exciting times in the font world. “Variable fonts” are the magic words in type technology these days, and interpretations of its meaning interpolate from one extreme to the other. This new, evolving technology offers as many possibilities as well as challenges and problems. Therefore this is the right time to question future conventions. At least, this is what we tried last Saturday in our talk If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old at TypoLabs, Berlin.

Within less than an hour we’re exploring the options of just 1 interpolation axis. And what happens if there are 26 axes to play with? And hey, what happens if we put 241 axes in the game? You probably can’t imagine yet what these possibilities are. And what can happen if you add the remaining 63759 axes to the game? How much could actually fit in a font? How intelligent can letters be? And aren’t there any other ways to design type? Or to use type? Questions, questions.

Note: because the word ‘variable’ should of course be differently pronounced every time, we’re already practising for next time.

Safari Typo Amsterdam at Athenaeum bookstore, Amsterdam

The new Safari Typo Amsterdam publication is currently on display in the Athenaeum bookstore at Spui square, right in the middle of the heart of the middle of the city centre. So very very very central in Amsterdam. It’s very touristic there as well, a perfect location to display a tourist guide. We love shop windows. We really do. In case you question this, no need to Google that, just search for shop window on this site. Tourists can now expand their mind by exploring the typographic side of the Dutch capital. This 50-year old legendary bookshop is a nice starting point.

Currently the Safari Typo documentaries of Thomas Sipp are on show in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, located in western wing of Palais du Louvre, Paris. In case you didn’t have the opportunity to be present at last week’s presentation in Amsterdam, the Graphic Design Festival in Paris might be the right opportunity for you. Accompanied by a small exhibition of our printed Safari Typo Amsterdam guide, all episodes can be viewed until 5 February 2017. Mais bien sûr!

And in case you hadn’t been able to make it to Amsterdam or Paris in time, the internet will save you. The French TV channel Arte has released all Safari Typo documentaries of Thomas Sipp at its own website: arte.tv/safaritypo

Amusez-vous bien!

Safari Typo Amsterdam is a brief typographic tour of letters in public space in the Dutch capital, presented by type designer Bas Jacobs. If you’re willing to leave the well-trodden touristic paths, let letters guide you across Amsterdam. If you have seen enough touristic traps, or don’t want to see them at all, this tour will take you to various parts of the city you would otherwise have missed. Discover how architects, artists and designers left their mark on the city by means of the letters they created on buildings, on bridges, on monuments and elsewhere. This pocket-size book is easy to carry with you as you explore the city. This book is only meant for tourists ready for a mind-expanding experience.

Filmed in Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Based on a documentary by Thomas Sipp

Part 1: Amsterdam school & its contemporaries
Lettering in public space by architects & artists

How did architects leave their typographic mark on the city during the interbellum period, and how do contemporary architects and designers respond to this? Featuring letter forms by Piet Kramer, Martijn Sandberg, Reinoud Oudshoorn, Anton Kurvers, Janno Hahn, Hijman Louis de Jong & Rene Knip.

Part 2: Letters with a story
The extravaganza uncensored tour

Can letters tell you a story which you cannot directly read from the letters themselves? The stories behind the letters are as interesting as the letter shapes themselves. This uncensored safari features letter forms by Adrian Frutiger, Jan van Krimpen, Hermann Zapf & Bert Johan Ouëndag.

Published by De Buitenkant, and presented last Friday in Amsterdam. Bookshops have it in store from today on, but it can also be ordered online in our shop.

Media coverage: local newspaper, tv & radio.

More about the publication Safari Typo Amsterdam.