Type History 2
Featured here is the second part of a small history of type. This history, normally told from the Anglo-Saxon point of view, is from a French perspective, allowing the reader to form one’s own opinion. Part One, covering the origins to the twentieth century is also available.
Type History 1
Featured here is the first part of a small history of type. This history, normally told from the Anglo-Saxon point of view, is from a French perspective, allowing the reader to form one’s own opinion. Part Two, covering the twentieth century and recent history, is also available.
Ladislas Mandel
Le créateur de caractères typographiques Ladislas Mandel est mort à son domicile du Paradou (Bouches-du-Rhône) samedi 21 octobre. Il était âgé de 85 ans. D’origine hongroise, né le 26 mai 1921 à Oradea (Roumanie), il arrive en France en 1936 et étudie aux Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Mandel est engagé chez Deberny et Peignot en 1954 et devient l’assistant d’Adrian Frutiger, alors jeune directeur artistique de la fonderie de Charles Peignot.
Ambroise typeface in details
The typeface Ambroise is a contemporary interpretation of various typefaces belonging to Didot’s late style, conceived circa 1830, including the original forms of g, y, &; and to a lesser extent, k. These characters are found in Vibert’s typefaces. Vibert was one of the appointed punchcutters of the Didot dynasty. Punch cutting at the time was a hard and long task.
A type family story
Unless you are a typeface designer it is unlikely that you are paying much attention to the shapes of the letters that make up this sentence. This is at it should be. Letterforms in text should not attract attention to themselves. They should be quiet, orderly, & familiar so that the focus can remain on reading.
ATypI survey 2004
In recent years many changes have taken place in the word of type. Indeed, ATypI had learnt from that; as one example, in 1993 the fringe conference TypeLab appeared, which continued as an integral part of the annual conference, in one guise or another.
Parisian type underground
The quarries below the city of Paris have been a mirror and memorial o events for nearly 300 years, with a long tradition of writing and painting on the walls. Parisian Art Underground explores the diversity of the visual statements that successive generations have left behind in these fantastic and often phantasmoagoric images and words.
The value of type
While perhaps not visible to everyone, in type design there are an infinite number of ways to make variation, innovation and improvement, and opportunities to express personal preference. To a lay person the differences between typefaces might be difficult to spot, that does not mean that these differences do not exist, it does not mean that the differences are meaningless
The latin alphabet in latin hands 1
As France is categorized as Latin country, we’re always interested to see what happens in other Latin countries. It looks like we have something in common, culturally, with respect to Italy, Portugal and Spain, perhaps; but in fact less with Latin America countries.
2003’ Relaunch
In December 2003, typofonderie.com was relaunched after a major redesign from scratch for the first time in its existence. This new version of the website is a major step who let us able to manage the content online directly and more easily. It was the only way to propose in the future, OpenType families too. This time, rather than doing most of the design himself, Jean François Porchez asked to Jérôme Vogel to do it. So, we contacted him to learn more about the process.