Good news! Today we released Zeitung, a new sans serif font family. And that’s good news for various people.

Type lovers will have their day made when they look at that lowercase e in the Black weight, will be happy there is a new style to bring their message across, and will enjoy playing around with the interactive newspaper on our homepage.

Designers will appreciate the versatility of this extensive sans serif font family, its thorough execution, and all it’s features. If 8 weights and 5 figure styles are not enough, then maybe optical sizes or grades will meet the demands. Besides of the standard Zeitung font family, Zeitung Micro is developed especially for smaller point sizes. Screen typography requires optical sizes at larger point sizes than print, so web and app developers won’t be left in the typographic cold. Grades can be very handy for selecting the optimal weight, especially on screens. The way letters are displayed on screen can vary a lot between different circumstances. Maybe the interface of your next app requires a different grade of the text than your latest website? Zeitung allows you to change the weight of your text without any reflow of your text. Zeitung will help to bring your message across in many different circumstances, from large text in print to small type on screens. Zeitung has many features.

Pioneers, the most demanding users, the ultras, the geeks, and all those others who don’t take things for granted, will be happy to meet and greet Zeitung Flex™. With its almost endless amount of weights, Zeitung Flex™ takes you anywhere between Thin and Black. Either in case only one, but exactly that specific weight is needed, or when all weights should play a whole new game together. This game can be played not just somewhere in the future, but already today, on everybody’s computer. Flex fonts are not just supported by the most recent browser, but also by all those older browsers. Zeitung Flex brings unlimited styles all over the web. In the future, and also already today. What’s even better is that Zeitung Flex™ also brings these possibilties now to desktop apps like Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator. With the help of CC-Extensions you can easily apply and combine those styles. This can be handy for selecting just a single, but exactly the right grade of text for your next project. Or this extension allows you to apply some of those fancy effects using all styles from Thin to Black on a line, paragraph or complete document. Relax, you can Flex.

Please welcome Zeitung.

Yesterday Ben Mitchell wondered if there are examples of nice manicules which are drawn in the same style as the rest of the font.

Wanted: examples of typefaces with exceptionally nice manucules drawn in keeping with the style of the letters.

— Ben Mitchell (@OhBendy) September 28, 2016

What many people don’t know, because it’s not easy to spot, is that many type designers enjoy refining many details of their fonts. For example by creating manicules which fit to the style of a font family. A special pointing hand allows extravaganza typographic subtleties in your book, website, identity or whatever you are making.

Also our fonts are equipped with matching pointing fingers. Because we enjoy drawing them, this is a nice moment to put them in the spotlights. No manicule is the same, or even close to being similar. Because no font is the same either.

The sturdy stencil font Tripper has a sturdy stencil index:

The female hand is clearly visible in Liza:

Fakir’s manicules are as edgy as the black letters themselves:

Bello & Sauna are typographic mates, and share manicules:

It’s been too long to remember probably. Therefore we will help you out. We had some previous episodes of Bello Goes Freestyle on this blog in the past. It all started with episode 1 in 2007, where Dutch graffiti artists interpreted Bello on a wall. This freestyle interpretation of Bello was followed 2 years later with episode 2. Then 3 years ago we posted episode 3, about a selfmade lettering in a bikeshop in Toronto. And today, oh boy, it’s 2016, we are happy to present the 4th episode of “Bello Goes Freestyle”. There are quite some do-it-yourself versions of Bello around, but this one especially appeals because of its dedication. In last weeks post you could read about the consequences of removing a mural, originally made by graffiti artist Maser. One of the consequences was that the removed mural was resurrected at other locations throughout Ireland. That’s hipper-dipper for graffitis or murals, which are temporary by nature. This mural is not vanishing, but multiplying. Some of the replicas were very smooth. This one however is a bit fluffy and chubby, but painted with lots of love. Disguised, but still Bello.

Who doesn’t know Maser, the street artist who grew up in Ireland? We wrote about Maser’s noticable murals before on this blog. One of his murals has been making the news again this summer.

During the current campaign for repeal of the Eighth Amendment (abortion ban) in Ireland, things got wild this summer after the Dublin City Council Planning Department demanded a mural from the Irish street artist Maser to be removed. His work would violate planning regulations, so they decided to paint the wall blue again.

In the short time before being painted over, the mural had enough impact to stir up controversy and debate. Well, actually removing the mural and painting the wall blue again resulted in a strong and widely supported counteroffensive. Various people started to recreate the mural on other locations throughout the city, and later on throughout the country. Seriously, how many murals or grafittis have that honour?

Some replicas of the removed mural:

Some other people were clever enough to bring the mural back to its original wall, but then through augmented reality. On the pretext of “You can’t paint over an issue”, a QR-code brings back the mural if you point your phone to the meanwhile completely blue wall. Even better, the mural can virtually appear everywhere, once somebody glued the QR-print to the wall. 8mural.com: Technology for the win.

The mural ban paved to way for mementos, nicknacks, t-shirts, bumper stickers, buttons, people changing their social media profiles, all showing the removed mural. Anything which helps to keep the campaign alive and raise awareness for the 8th Amendment suddenly popped up. We don’t have any political voice in Ireland, but we are more than happy that Bello is helping the campaign with its visual voice. That feels like a small contribution after all.

More images at our fonts-in-use section.

Lately we were wondering about the fact that despite the concept of a typewriter dates back at least to 1714, not much changed in the meantime. Why is that? Why do we accept digital type to be as primitive as it is? Why don’t we just make a lettering ourselves, instead of pressing keys?

As soon as we do not accept things to be as they are, everything becomes possible. Just try it out yourself. Say hello to Liza Lettering™.

We all know that it’s not money but love which keeps the world turning. And fonts of course. Therefore we want to reward all orders placed this week (8.02 — 14.02) with an extra free font of your choice for the person you love. No worries, everything is super-simple: Just place any order this week in our shop and we will get in contact with you to arrange the additional free license.

After supporting us with office work and the shipment of publications for over 10 years, it was definitely time to affirm our love for Lucy with her own logotype stamp. Lucy’s reaction: From now on no document will leave the office unstamped. Thank you for everything Lucy!

Giving presents is nice (for both sides), but giving presents you made yourself is even nicer. In such a case you give a little bit of yourself. If you love drawing letters like we do, it’s pretty predictable that these presents are build up out of letters. Here are a couple of typographic presents we made recently.

Autobahn
When our friends of Autobahn celebrated their 10th anniversary, they asked some fellow designers and type-lovers to design them one letter of the alphabet. What do you do when you get asked by two guys which are deep into type to make the letter “S”? Right, you give them what they are: 2 guys deep into type.

Abel
Arriving on earth is a milestone in everybody’s life. When Abel was born, he got an almost abstract poster which actually looks much better if rotated 90 degrees. Hey, he can’t read anyway yet.

Rigoberto
Every artist needs his own monogram. So when we discovered that Rigoberto had to do without one for almost 80 years already, we sat down and send him a stamp.

We received a drawing in return, of course signed with his meanwhile inevitable monogram. Thanks Rigoberto!

Tijl

Tijl, well, when Tijl was born last year we gave him a quickly painted poster that neither Tijl nor his parents could read. That’s okay. It can still be a nice wallpaper decoration thingie for the baby’s bedroom. Shiny nice colours are half the job anyway.

Kees
Every carpenter has his own habit. Kees, who helped us a lot this year, tends to write “Made by Kees” on everything he builds. His eternal fame is however mostly deeply buried underneath layers of concrete or wood. This skilled woodworker deserves more eternal fame, so we made him a stencil. Now he can spray his characteristic motto on everything he builds. Fast and easy. Yes, even his own kids will not be safe anymore with his new stencil.

Is there something you only love, without hating it a little? Can you hate something completely, without any love? Can love exist without hate?

Exactly 100 years after Edgar Rubin created his famous Rubin’s vase – the godfather of all figure-ground illusions – this poster is published as a typographic tribute to the Danish professor of psychology. If cannot read anything, you still have a nice heart to look at. Silkscreen printed in a super bright red color, this übersized poster requires some empty wall space. Seriously, this poster is pretty big.

This poster is an example of a (typographic) figure-ground illusion. These kind of optical illusions have a long history, we didn’t invent the concept. Read more about these kind of optical illusions in Everything is black and white.

Sometimes our fonts are being used big and bigger. As type designers we create our work on computer screens, and therefore especially enjoy the large scale of some applications. This weekend Bello was used in a large banner at the Dutch football club FC Twente. It ain’t easy to be a fan of FC Twente at this moment. Although the football level radically collapsed this season at FC Twente, and the organisation is currently a disaster, the typographic taste of the fans still stands strong. (The fans of Twente are for example typographically known for their use of Roger Excoffon’s Banco typeface.) Culture in rough times. Our compliments!

We ♥ Twente!

See more of that FC Twente banner.