Award-Winning Fonts

Undeniably, both awards – the Type Directors Club’s TDC² and Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces – are always long awaited by the design community. The selection of world’s best published font releases are highly respected for years. While the TDC award is the traditional top dog, Typographica is the aspiring spring chicken, asking 25 high-ranking international designers to pick from the year’s fonts. Both lists give a useful view on what is new and hot in type design. Fortunately, if you’d like to increase the quality of your own projects this year, most of the “Best of 2007” typefaces are available at FontShop:

FF Beowolf OT and FF BeoSans OT, designed by Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland, published by FontFont, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. The OpenType version of world’s first typeface with a mind of its own: with 1,000s of alternates as well, the new Beo are as close to achieving the original idea of randomization as nearly any composer can expect today.

BistroScript, designed by Tomáš Brousil, published by Suitcase Type Foundry, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. This contemporary calligraphic script was inspired by promotional art in the 1960s. Thanks to OpenType features, a variety of ligatures and alternative glyphs allow the user to create more authentic and varied connections between letters.

Dancer, designed by Morten Olsen, published by Fontpartners, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. The FP Dancer type family combines softness and friendliness with more strength. In comparision to his former FF Olsen the designer tuned-down the serifs, and, in general, gave the whole face more humanity.

Gloriola, designed by Tomáš Brousil, published by Suitcase Type Foundry, Winner TDC² 2008 and Typographica’s OFT 2007. The typeface is a monolinear sans serif with an extremely broad cut range. Their cuts with corresponding italics are suited for the needs of common typesetting thanks to the open character of letters, to the sufficient x-height and clear forms, combined with the full possibilities of OpenType.

Greta Text, designed by Peter Biľak, published by Typotheque, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. It is a contemporary typeface family specifically designed for the demands of newspaper printing. Greta Text consists of four primary text weights that each comes in three grades and is optimized for use at small sizes.

Kinescope, designed by Mark Simonson, published by Mark Simonson Studio, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. This dashing 1940s-style brush script face was inspired by hand-lettered titles in Fleischer Brothers’ Superman cartoon series. Kinescope comes with beautiful OpenType stylistic sets.

Malaga, designed by Xavier Dupré, published by Emigre, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. Named after a port city in southern Spain Malaga is inspired by ideas ranging from blackletter to Latin fonts, and from the Quattrocento’s first Venetian antiquas to brush stroke types. This makes it a richly animated typeface saturated with unorthodox detail.

FF Meta Serif, designed by Erik Spiekermann, Christian Schwartz, and Kris Sowersby, published by FontFont, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. Finally the long-awaited serif companion to the most influential sans serif of the digital revolution is available in four weights: Book, Medium, Bold, and Black, each with Italics.

Purista, designed by Tomáš Brousil, published by Suitcase Type Foundry, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. The strict, orderly typeface bases on a well-tried principle of geometric sans serifs from mid-20th century. Its obsession with technological precision makes it perfect for use in corporate systems and visual communications of technocratic businesses. Thanks to its broad range of cuts, Purista is also ideal for display advertising.

MVB Sacre Bleu, designed by Mark van Bronkhorst, published by MVB Fonts, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. This OpenType release with a raft of alternates and ligatures, is certainly the most flexible and accessible informal script of the last year, and rivals some of the best faces in this vein from the past decade.

TAZ III, designed by Luc(as) de Groot, published by LucasFonts, Winner Typographica’s OFT 2007. The third incarnation of the TAZ family has a shocking 15 weights, more then ever before. The carefully adjusted hairline fonts let you safe ink in small to huge sizes.