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.

Some more words on Zeitung in the OpenType Variable Font format, about Automatic Optical Size and Automatic Glyph Substitution.

The OpenType Variable Font technique is still in development, tools for making these fonts are still in development, implementation and support for these fonts are still in development. However, if you want to experience our recent release Zeitung as an OpenType Variable Font, visit our homepage www.underware.nl in a browser that supports this font format. At this moment that’s only Webkit Nightly, which explains the “Webkit Nightly Bonus” subtitle for a special section completely at the bottom of our homepage.

One more thing
The nerds, the lucky bastards and some geeks, anybody with that browser will see a demo at the bottom of the homepage which is invisible to other visitors using a less advanced browser. They can play with the tuners and experience how changing the size will automatically select the correct optical size of the font family. That’s what you’ve been waiting for, no? Some glyphs, eg. &, will automatically change shape when the point size becomes rather small. Additionally, changing the weight of the font will result in a change of shape of some other glyphs. See how the € swaps from 2 to 1 cross bar when the weight increases. Or how the tail of the Q suddenly doesn’t enter the counter anymore when its weight is too dark. This happens automatically while playing with the tuners, and happens live your browser. No fake news, no fake type. Man, this is 2016 and this is live. Not everything is bad this year.

Automatic glyph substitution depending on weight, live in your browser.

Automatic glyph substitution depending on size, live in your browser.

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A typeface like Liza is fully packed with technological novelties. At the time when Liza was released (July 2009), many of these were not supported everywhere yet. For example, only a couple of months after being released, Liza’s contextual alternates finally behaved nicely in TextEdit. (more…)

An evening full of short documentaries about typography in public space & book presentation

We all know the famous HOLLYWOOD lettering, but what makes these letters unique? Can the character of a city be told by the letters in public space? In which aspect is the typography in Barcelona different than in Berlin? And why do those strange, unorthodox geometric and decorative display letters perfectly fit to Amsterdam? Join us 20 January 2017 for an evening full of short documentaries about typography in public space.

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Recently we experienced some unwished-for developments at our mailing list subscriptions. During the last 6 months we sometimes saw multiple email addresses from a single company domain that subscribed all at once. Because we hate spam as much as you do, we decided to clean up our mailing list subscriptions over the last half year.

In case you didn’t receive yesterday’s newsletter, you have been unsubscribed accidentally. If so, please subscribe again. We only send a newsletter a couple of times a year, only when there is something interesting we want to share with you. Hopefully you won’t regret your subscription.

In a world full of discounts & dark horses, Underware’s Black Friday offer seems to be inevitable.

5 Black fonts for €99,–

This offer is only valid for 1 day, and ends at the end of Black Friday 2016, 25th of Nov.