Today we’re changing our name from Typekit to Adobe Fonts, with the goal of incorporating our service more fully into Creative Cloud and reaching the broader Adobe audience in new ways.
That means we’ll be posting over on the Adobe blog network from here on out. For news and updates (and the full story about what’s changing today), please visit the Typography channel.
While it won’t see any more updates, this blog will continue to live here as a reference. We’re already thinking about new ways to showcase the unusually concentrated expertise in web fonts and typography that we have here on the team. You’ll see a lot of it emerging in the Typography channel as we continue to add fonts to the library and build new tools for using type intelligently in Adobe applications.
We’re excited about what’s ahead. Whether you’ve just found this blog or have been subscribed for years, thank you for reading. Keep up with our new Twitter handle @AdobeFonts, and we hope to see you over in our new digs.
Hard to believe we’re nearly halfway through October. We’ve got a lot of updates for you this month, many of which you’ll hear about next week at Adobe’s annual MAX conference. Let’s kick it off with a look at what we’ve added to the library recently.
This week’s news comes from two of our foundry partners, Typofonderie and Underware. Both have just made their full collections available for desktop use in addition to web — that’s right, no more web-only fonts from these two!
Typofonderie
The collection from Typofonderie is full of winning options for all sorts of design needs. Now that all their fonts are available in more places, this cheat sheet might come in handy.
What’s your type? Consult the Typofonderie cheat sheet for quick diagnosis. Courtesy of Typofonderie.
The formal serifs are gorgeous, and easy to put to use. Le Monde Journal is a great one to start with if you need something flexible; the subtle Demibold and Book weights that fall between the usual Regular and Bold give you just a bit more volume without sacrificing too much breathing space.
A sampling of serifs from Typofonderie: Le Monde Journal, Mencken Text, Mencken Text, PS Fournier Petit, Apolline, Le Monde Livre Classic, Geneo, and Apolline. Courtesy of Typofonderie.
Let’s not overlook the sans options! Ysans Mondrian is a mesmerizing display font that could make for great logo design. Less obviously decorated options like Anisette contain a few surprises of their own.
Display sans-serifs from Typofonderie: Ysans Mondrian, Anisette, AW Conqueror Inline, Prosaic, AW Conqueror Inline, Ysans, AW Conqueror Sans, and AW Conqueror Carved. Courtesy of Typofonderie.
Underware
The Underware collection includes several outstanding and unique options that can make for unforgettable signage.
Bello literally takes up the whole room. Photo courtesy of Underware.
Bello is an all-time favorite of ours. You just can’t look away from it, and it’s supremely fun to work with. Use it big! This one’s meant to take up all the room you can give it.
The mono styles of Zeitung. Courtesy of Underware.
Zeitung is what we call a “superfamily”: dozens of weights and styles with the same name intended to work in tandem with one another. It’s a great option for all kinds of editorial use, and we’re particularly smitten with the italic monospace. Some people would say there’s no practical need for italic monospace fonts, but… we really want to use this one. Don’t you?
Let us know what speaks to you from this round of new fonts in the library. More to come soon! ]]>
From the UK to Spain to New York to San Francisco, we’re happy to support a handful of get togethers of font-loving folk this month.
TypeThursday San Francisco, photo by James Butler
ATypI in Antwerp
ATypI 2018 kicks off today, bringing its annual assortment of workshops, talks and symposiums to Antwerp. Find our own Frank Greißhammer on the Type toolmakers panel early on Wednesday. Later that morning Vinod Balakrishnan, our colleague on the Photoshop team, presents Evolution of digital typographic needs. Catch Frank at 9:25 am and Vinod at 11:40 am.
We’re also supporting the closing party on Saturday evening. Please join us there and hear some remarks from Frank and Taro Yamamoto around 10 pm.
TypeThursday in Barcelona — and beyond
TypeThursday adds its second European chapter this month, when Barcelona launches on September 20th.
Looking for a type event in a different city? Additional evenings of socializing and type crit continue in:
- Seattle (September 13)
- Los Angeles (September 20)
- San Francisco (September 20)
- New York (October 4)
- London (October 4)
Will you be joining in? Let us know, and see you soon!
]]>Just in time to get you sorted for a new school year, we’ve got more fonts in the library!
New fonts from Adam Ladd
Adam Ladd’s eye for graphic design is clear in the fonts he’s designed, and we’re excited to add these to our collection. For designs that might otherwise feel a little flat, Active adds a visual texture and contains plenty of alternate character styles to play with.
For a more personal touch than bold Active, try the gentle script Braisetto. This one stands up on its own, especially for packaging and branding uses, but can also be paired with bolder fonts to add a warm contrast. We’ve got two weights of this to work with, too.
See everything we’ve added from Adam Ladd on his foundry page.
Source Serif Italics
The long awaited Italic complement to our popular Source Serif by Frank Grießhammer. Why were the italics released four years after the upright style? See Frank’s blog post where he walks through the design process. Source Serif is available open source on GitHub as well.
Rounding out Hidden Treasures with Reross
The Hidden Treasures of the Bauhaus Dessau collection is now complete with all five typefaces available for you to use. If you need an excuse to try them out, the design challenge is open until September 9.
Hundreds more from Monotype
We’re still reeling from this, to be honest — we added over 600 new fonts from Monotype to our library last month. In our roundup we walked through a few of the highlights, but there wasn’t time or space to give all the fonts their due recognition. You may recognize quite a few classics in there! Check out the Monotype foundry page for the full rundown.
New foundry partners, new Japanese fonts
Our freshest news comes at the end — just this week we welcomed two new Japanese foundry partners to Typekit. Learn more about Kinuta Font Factory and Skill Information”S” in our blog post, or go directly to the foundry pages to check out the new fonts.
Looking for new inspiration? You can always sort our font collection by Newest to catch anything we’ve added recently.
We’re delighted to introduce two of our newest foundry partners, both based in Japan. Welcome Skill Information“S” and Kinuta Font Factory!
There are eleven new fonts in the library now from these two foundry partners.
Kinuta Font Factory
Kinuta has been producing fonts for nearly twenty years, and we’re pleased to add three of these typefaces to our library.
Among these is Iroha 32 Sakura Kana, a fresh take on the Gothic style that is commonly used in signage around Japan. Our Kinuta contact refers to this one as a new alternative for anyone needing to set Kana text in the Gothic style. Give it a try and let us know what you think.
Skill Information“S”
Known for its focus on software development, particularly for the health services industry, Skill Information“S” found itself in the font business through a collaboration with Techno Advance Co, Ltd, in 2007.
Kenji Miyazawa was a poet, renowned especially for his children’s stories – many of which have since been adapted into anime.
We are adding eight of their fonts to the library, including TA-Kai. Designed by Shintaro Ajioka, TA Kai is the result of Ajioka’s experience in logotype design in traditional calligraphic styles. The typeface exhibits a thoughtful balance between the straight, linear stroke formation and an overall sense of softness.
All the new fonts from both foundries are available in our subscription library. Sync them to add them to the font menus in your design applications, or add them to a kit to use them on the web. Enjoy! ]]>
At long last, Source Serif gets its Italics. This significant update to the Source family is available here on Typekit and also open source on GitHub.
When Source Serif was released in 2014, one of the first user requests was the addition of Italic styles. At the time, I had a complete Italic ready, which had been scheduled for release with the upright styles. After some deliberation with Robert Slimbach, however, we decided that its design quality was not a match to the Roman. It was a disappointing decision to hold the Italics back at the time, but in hindsight I can say it was a good one.
Drawing from inspiration, and history
My Italics for Source Serif were initially something of a free association, especially compared to the Romans, which were informed by the type found in Fournier’s Manuel Typographique. When working on a historically-inspired typeface, it is very tempting to polish the design over and over, and remove all historical reference. In this case that temptation led to a less harmonious, faceless Italic design.
In consequence, I decided to redraw Italics from scratch, this time more closely inspired by some of Fournier’s work. This exercise helped me to inject some of the characteristics found in the original specimen. I tried to stay true to the historical source where I could; the limp leg of the k, the terminal-less j and the unique shape of the g are all Fournier references.
Why it took four years
Using Italics is a natural expectation for any type user today, and I received no shortage of requests for this after the initial release in 2014. I clearly understood everyone’s frustration, being frustrated myself about the initial delay.
One explanation is the fact that Source Serif itself is a part of a much bigger project: Source Han Serif. Many glyphs (and months of work) were needed, and since CJK writing systems do not traditionally use Italic styles, the emphasis of my work was to expand the Roman styles as far as possible, which manifested in a version 2.0 release in 2017.
When other projects weren’t a factor, there was also the nature of the design process to consider. Some days, progress is made very quickly; on other days, it feels like the ability to properly see the typeface just isn’t there. Over those years, I had plenty of both kinds of days.
Supported character sets
At the moment, the Roman styles of Source Serif support the Adobe Latin-4, Adobe Cyrillic-2, and Adobe Greek-1 character sets. They were initially released with just Adobe Latin-3 support, and gained the new character sets with the 2.0 release in early 2017.
The Italics have Adobe Latin-3 support today, just like the first release of the Roman did. Naturally, the plan is to align the character support across all styles, so that there are Greek and Cyrillic italics as well as AL-4 support for it. With Google’s support, we’ve been able to enlist the help of Irene Vlachou and Emilios Theofanous to help draw the Greek Italic.
It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of Source Serif’s Italics today. Sync the fonts directly from Typekit, or visit GitHub for the full range of downloadable versions, including variable fonts.
Creative Cloud customers now have access to 665 new fonts from 41 different type families, thanks to new additions from Monotype.
Many of these fonts were designed in the earlier 20th century and have since inspired a number of other typefaces in turn, which makes them valuable to have in your design toolkit. They’ve also seen a number of refinements over the years as they were all gradually adapted into digital type.
In short, we’re happy to add these to your Creative Cloud subscriptions. There’s a lot to browse, so here are a few highlights you might start with.
ITC Benguiat
Yes, it’s the Stranger Things font! ITC Benguiat was also a classic used in a lot of 1980s book covers, and it’s not unusual to catch it in signage today. Designed by Ed Benguiat, this font looks iconic even if you don’t make any further changes to the typesetting.
ITC Avant Garde Gothic
This one also involves the design work of Ed Benguiat, though in this case he was working from original designs by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase to expand the font they designed for the cover of Avant Garde Magazine in the 1970s. It’s insanely flexible, with a personality that comes through with thoughtful use of the alternate glyphs.
Gill Sans Nova
Mind the gap! Inspired by the type used in the London Underground, Gill Sans will definitely fit the bill if “midcentury train glam” is your desired aesthetic, but it’s also much more versatile beyond that. In the decades since Eric Gill’s initial work, several other designers have stepped in to design extended alphabets, making this a true typographic system with a Condensed width and even some fun shading and outline variants.
Plantin
This font celebrated its 100th birthday not too long ago, and it still holds up — in fact it was an inspiration for Times New Roman. Named after a 16th-century printer by the name of Christophe Plantin, the original cuts for this revival typeface were made in 1913 for hot-metal typesetting. Now we’ve got the tidy digital version of that.
Rockwell Nova
What would happen if you took a geometric sans typeface like Futura and added serifs? Designers at Monotype posed this question in 1934 and the answer was Rockwell. This has been a popular choice for decades of titles and branding, sometimes used for graceful, organized paragraphs and other times sized up for strong, commanding headlines. It fits right in almost anywhere, especially if you employ the Condensed width for tighter spaces.
Sabon
Sabon was designed precisely to spec, with a series of constraints that might sound pretty odd to type designers today:
- must work identically for Monotype, Linotype, and manual typesetting systems;
- no kerning (the letters all completely self-contained, with nary a crossbar bumping into the neighboring letter);
- italic and bold styles must not take up any additional space;
- also it needs to look like Garamond.
Lucky for us, Jan Tschichold was up to the task. The typeface released in 1967 ended up becoming enormously popular, especially for book typesetting.
Trade Gothic Next
There’s always a place for a typeface like Trade Gothic in a designer’s arsenal. It’s a go-to for clear headlines and fantastic in infographics. The Soft Rounded option is a great way to scale back if the regular style feels a little abrupt.
These fonts are all part of your Creative Cloud subscriptions now. Some may appear in a font pack in the future, so stay tuned for that — and in the meantime, enjoy getting these into your designs.
Our team has been bustling about this past month adding new fonts to the library. There’s something to suit nearly any project in this month’s roundup — see for yourself and let us know what you think.
New scripts (and more) with Cyrillic support from ParaType
ParaType has added several new families to the library, all with Cyrillic support — including some handwritten-style scripts, a rare find for Cyrillic type. Zakhar Yaschin designed Kapelka to resemble the effect of writing with a soft pointed brush, and the stylish result is perfect for friendly headlines and would also work nicely for packaging design.
Still too formal for you? Try Alexandra Korolkova’s Bowman for something a little different. She designed this to look as though it was written with a marker, and it’s fun to see in use. You’ll find these and many other new scripts on ParaType’s foundry page.
New from Sudtipos
Envelove by Yanina Arabena
The idea of writing letters with an old-fashioned pointed nib sounds charming, until you end up with a hand covered in ink. Yani Arabena took the messy part out of the process for us, and her amazing pointed-nib calligraphy became Envelove — an expressive and spontaneous script font that we’re excited to offer for purchase in our Marketplace.
Don’t miss the other new Marketplace addition from Sudtipos while you’re in there, Speakeasy. Five variations offer almost every option you might need for stylish design, including a gorgeous script, all-caps wide “Modern” with serifs, and even a sans-serif.
Find these and even more from Sudtipos on their foundry page; we’ve added nearly 100 of their fonts to the library that were previously for additional purchase only. With even more fonts now included with your Creative Cloud plan, it’s a great time to peruse their whole collection.
Fort Foundry ships out Shackleton
Don’t be fooled by the Victorian theme — Shackleton by Brian Brubaker isn’t stiff or stodgy. Rather, it’s ready for stylish adventure; it even comes in four widths for added versatility. The flared serifs add a wonderful quirky edge.
Typefolio adds Obvia
Obvia
Marconi Lima designed nine different weights for powerhouse Obvia, making this a great option for developing a whole typographic hierarchy in your design. He classifies the font as “geohumanist,” meaning that he started with the distinctive square shapes but then refined small details to soften these edges and make the font a bit friendlier for typesetting.
Get IBM Plex
Plex
Plex from IBM is more of a type superfamily, seeing as it contains a serif, a sans, a mono width, and a Hebrew version, each with multiple weights of their own. In fact, we’re thinking this qualifies as a full-fledged typographic system. Now the whole collection is in your library and ready to try out!
That’s it for this month’s roundup. Let us know what speaks to you here! ]]>
This year TypeCon celebrates 20 years and the Adobe Typekit team is so there for this party in Portland, Oregon!
Here’s a breakdown of where to find us during the week:
Throughout the Conference
As part of our partnership with the Hamilton Woodtype & Printing Museum we will be supporting an exhibit of 10-12 vintage posters from the museum’s collection. The posters are rare circus and entertainment advertisements made from hand-carved wood blocks that date from the 1930s to the 1950s. They were acquired in 2016 from the Enquirer Printing Company in Cincinnati Ohio. The folks from Hamilton will also be bringing along some original blocks from the collection and printing them during conference breaks for attendees to take home as souvenirs!
Friday, August 3
Around lunchtime, our own Steve Ross will join Wayne Hoang from the Adobe Illustrator and InDesign team to give attendees a sneak peek at upcoming new type tool features.
Friday evening sees the return of the SOTA Spacebar and we’re happy to support this “a game, wrapped in a conversation, finished with a selfie” once again. Complete the challenge for fun prizes!
Saturday, August 4
Don’t stay in 
, grab some 
and 
, and join us as Paul Hunt kicks off Saturday’s program with “Language, Culture, Emoji” at 9:30 a.m. 
Of course, most of our team will be attending all the sessions and events throughout the week, so look for us and say hello.
Tim Brown is one of our most treasured minds on staff, and we couldn’t be happier to see his new book, Flexible Typesetting, released for sale today.
Tim has been with Typekit from the beginning – figuring out type rendering on the web, helping us practice, and exploring new concepts – and in that time he has talked with a lot of people who use type and make fonts. This experience brought Tim to the conclusion that the web has changed typography.
Yes, the green matches on purpose — thanks to Typekit alum Jason Santa Maria.
So he wrote a book about it — available today from our good friends at A Book Apart. Here’s how they describe it:
For the first time in hundreds of years, because of the web, the role of the typographer has changed. We no longer decide; we suggest. We no longer simply choose typefaces, font sizes, line spacing, and margins; we prepare and instruct text to make those choices for itself. In this book, Tim Brown illuminates the complex, beautiful world of typesetting—arguably the most important part of typography because it forms the backbone of the reading experience—and shows us how to parry the inevitable pressures that arise when we can no longer predict how, and where, our text will be read.
Grab a copy today, and keep up with Tim on Twitter, where he offers a few fun pairing suggestions for your next study session.
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