It’s March already! An earlier draft of this issue started with the declaration, “It’s February already!” and that might tell you something about the time-dilating chaos that’s been going on between then and now. Oh boy. But still, the reason for all the month-exclaiming enthusiasm is so that I can now say this: my new book, Fine Specimens, is coming out next this month! This is exciting and terrifying equal measure — especially now that the pub date is in fact less than a week away.

Apparently pre-orders are what it’s all about when it comes to books, so I’ve entered full-blown ‘pre-order mode’ — even though I feel bad about mentioning it in virtually every sentence I write or speak. As part of doing the pre-order dance, my publisher suggested I make a video for Amazon to live on the book’s product page alongside the other preview images. Please send your sympathies to the long-suffering camera operator (my wife) because it took me about 17 takes to get that damn thing right.

Anyway, as well as the impending pub date for the book itself, I also want to tell you about the Fine Specimens book tour! I’ll be celebrating the publication’s release with five events across the UK and Europe, and I’ll be documenting the whole tour via a dedicated pop-up newsletter. Here are some dates for your diary:

📍 Bristol   🗓️ 10th March   🔎 Bookhaus
📍 Brussels   🗓️ 1st April   🔎 Waterstones
📍 Düsseldorf   🗓️ 27th April   🔎 beyond tellerrand
📍 London   🗓️ 14th May   🔎 TBA
📍 Paris   🗓️ 30th May   🔎 Now26

Will I see you at any of those? Whether you can make it or not, if you fancy galavanting around Europe with me in newsletter form, please consider lending me your email address — and it really is only lend, because the whole database will be deleted after the tour. That’s what pop-up newsletters are all about: being in the moment. When it’s gone, it’s gone! An email marketer’s worst nightmare.

Subscribe to the pop-up

Earlier this year, DJR launched his Glyph Navigator — an infinitely scrolling canvas through which you can explore individual glyphs from his type catalogue. Click on one to view its full info, including the exact axis values for the variable fonts. I accept no liability for the hours you might lose to this.

There are so many fascinating articles on type.today, I wish I had the time to read them all, and their latest interview with Morgane Vantorre is no exception. She’s a French type designer and calligrapher, who creates work in collaboration with her mother, Maryline Foucault. Maryline embroiders Morgane’s designs onto real-world surfaces — sometimes for pretty huge clients. If you’re a pixel font fan, this might resonate.

While on a French theme, I was going to tell you about TypeParis Now26 anyway, but I now have three personal reasons to spread the word about this wonderful event: firstly, I’ll be speaking on a panel about publishing with John Walters of Eye Magazine, Alexandre Dimos of B42, and a TBA guest from Slanted. Secondly, I’ll be selling copies of Fine Specimens during the breaks, as the event is also the last leg of the book tour. Thirdly, the TypeParis team have very kindly given you, dear reader, a special promo code that’ll get you €30 off the ticket price between now and 14th March. Just enter EJSNOW26 as the coupon code when buying your ticket.

Oh, and keep that date in your mind, as applications to the TypeParis summer course also ends on 14th March, too.

The other day I came across a very cool website for David Gonzalez’ Amateur Type foundry. Bold, brash, and, honestly, a little bit cheeky — just like the typefaces themselves. David also has a rather nice graphic design studio, too.

Okay, time for new or new-ish type releases. I’ve always had a soft-spot for DIN thanks to its use on early NIN artwork by Gary Talpas. Now, Fontwerk’s Neue DIN has recently been updated to include italics and retalics, bringing the total to 243 styles — or everything in one(!) single variable font. Gosh.

TypeMates recently put out Weymann Serif, designed by Marc Weymann. “Contemporary and classical, bracketed serifs nod toward manuscripts while an open structure brings editorial grace and stonecut clarity.”

A new font from Positype: Aegis is a wide and heavy sans with four optical sizes and five (all heavy) weights. “Designed for oversized typography, it tightens its apertures and strengthens its silhouette as scale increases, creating a sharp, architectural presence across the Standard, Display, Poster, and Super cuts.”

Catich Color, by Dual Type, is a colour font that uses different colours to expose the strokes that construct the letterforms made famous on Trajan’s column. And I did not know this:

“Catich’s investigations into classical Roman inscriptions revealed that their forms were first shaped through brush strokes, not carving. By carefully studying enlarged photographs and physical impressions of the capitals on Trajan’s Column, he exposed the calligraphic decisions embedded in what had long been considered purely sculptural work.”

When Ty launched his latest site redesign, the first thing I did, of course, was open up my browser’s Inspect tools to see what funky typeface he was using. Turns out it’s Token Sans, part of the Token family currently on Future Fonts. Token is designed by Jean-Baptiste Morizot and published via his Phantom Foundry — a new discovery for me. Also interesting to see that Jean-Baptiste is part of Velvetyne, who I’ve mentioned before, but whose fonts I keep forgetting to properly check out.

You might know by now that I’m more than a little partial to a microsite. The GT Canon microsite does not disappoint. In particular, the interesting specimen controller. It’s kind of hard to get to — hit the “typewriter” button in the bottom-left — but very cool.

The excellently named Clauthbound from SimpleBits is “a gently-stressed display sans inspired by the foil-stamped, cloth book covers from the early-mid 20th century.” I especially love what Dan calls the “arguably random” icons.

How about another project with a fantastic name? xheightable is a free tool for pairing typefaces using their x-heights, drawing from fonts in the Adobe Fonts and Google Fonts libraries. I came across this tool a while ago, but just the other day realised that I’d yet to link to it, so here we are. When pairing type, there are many factors at play, but balancing physical proportions such as x-height is a good start for sure. (For more type pairing tips, check out this blog post that my friend and colleague Jake wrote back in 2023.)

Oh, speaking of Jake, he recently interviewed John Roshell of Comicraft and Swell Type about his type design journey. As a massive comics fan, it was great seeing those early sketches for type designs used in Generation X — I remember really noticing how boundary-pushing that was at the time, when I was a young teenager, even though I didn’t even know what type was back then. (Jake’s post was also republished on the Adobe Design blog.)

I had the great pleasure of talking to Marc on his beyond tellerrand podcast about the motivations behind Fine Specimens — namely, to give a physical home to graphics would’ve otherwise been lost to the scroll. Marc has generously given me an official ‘side event’ at beyond tellerrand in April to act as the third stop on the book tour. (See you there?)

Laura Worthington’s website has recently been redesigned and, oh my, that editable specimen! Being able to pick alternate glyphs in the browser like that is a real game-changer, and essential for Laura’s fonts, with their generous supply of swashes. Hats off to the folks behind this site: Claire Jakiela and Ian Callaghan (and Alena Linnask for the graphics).

I recently told you that Universal Principles of Typography has a Spanish edition; now, it has a Hungarian edition, too: A tipográfia egyetemes elvei! It’s funny how you find out about these things — in this case, it was through seeing an extra line on my latest royalty statement for a second ‘co-edition’. What a nice surprise!

The Hoodzpah team have recently restarted doing their type design livestreams. I’ve managed to miss every single one of them, but thankfully they’re immediately available to watch on YouTube after the live broadcast, so I’ve been catching up on them there. Watching some design type live is a bit like watching someone draw — a little bit meditative, a little bit educational, and just plain ol’ fun.

Not technically typographic, per se, but Luis Mendo — a very talented illustrator and extremely lovely person — recently released Mundo Mendo, Book One, and I can thoroughly recommend it, not least because of its adorable ‘bunkobon’ (I had to look it up, too) size. It collects all of the comics he’s put out as part of his Mundo Mendo membership programme and hey, you know how I feel about putting online things in print. Oh, and just before hitting ‘send’ on this issue, I saw that Luis has announced that all members of his programme will now get a book a year for free!

And now it’s time for me to return to the chaos of book promotion. If you’re in or near Bristol next Tuesday, please do come down to Bookhaus to celebrate the release of Fine Specimens with me. And maybe consider joining me on the tour by subscribing to the pop-up newsletter? Oh, and of course it’s never too late to place a last-minute pre-order for the book itself. Hey, how’s that for email marketing?