Hello and welcome to an issue of Typographic & Sporadic that’s been composed in and sent from beautiful Trondheim, Norway (where last night I had the pleasure of doing a little talk). As I decided — after considerable internal turmoil, I can tell you — to not run another edition of my pop-up newsletter, Notes from a different (type)setting, while in Norway, this issue instead attempts to incorporate some of that newsletter’s travel-ish flavour into the ‘regular’ format you’ve come to expect over here.

Where better to start, then, before we get to the fonts, than a few words about the street where I’ve been staying these last couple of days?

I was so happy to find an Airbnb on Bakklandet, because this particular street is very dear to me: when I lived in Trondheim in the summer of 2008, I worked from a café (whose name I’ve forgotten, and which is now a restaurant) on this street every single weekday — and my Airbnb is directly opposite that building.

Back then, it was a time of real change: my then girlfriend (now wife) and I had decided to permanently say goodbye to London — and our jobs, too, which for me meant making the jump to go full-time freelance. While Sam did some travelling around Asia, I headed to Trondheim, where I had some friends, and started life as an independent designer — and this café was effectively my first remote office.

Soundtracked by Neil Young’s Harvest, Bell & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, and The Beatle’s 1 — three albums the café had on repeat, all day, every day — I’ve got very fond memories of my Norwegian summer and first foray into freelance. These were the days before affordable or reliable mobile data, so my online activities were completely restricted to the hours I spent in that café, which resulted in an unintentionally healthy work-life balance. It’s been fun to reminisce.

At the end of the last issue, I teased that I had something exciting to share, and now it’s time to announce that Fine Specimens — the big ol’ coffee table book of type inspiration that I tried to fund via Kickstarter last spring — is alive and well! Although the campaign didn’t hit its funding target, I was approached by Quarto (the publisher of Universal Principles of Typography), who said that, with a few small tweaks to the core concept, they’d be interested in publishing the book.

The book won’t be out until spring next year(!), so I was originally going to hold off from mentioning it until nearer publication date, as I did with UPoT. However, I’ve also realised that I should’ve done a better job of drumming up pre-release excitement for UPoT to get more pre-orders in, having read Craig Mod’s thoughts on the subject. And Craig even has a pop-up newsletter devoted to documenting his book creation journey, which I’ve been thoroughly enjoying. Should I do a similar thing? Would you subscribe to that if I did? Please let me know by hitting ‘reply’!

Here’s a reminder of the Kickstarter edition cover — but the new one will be totally different:

Speaking of books, Revealing Recording Reflecting: Graphic Women from Southwest Asia and North Africa looks like a fascinating new title, edited by Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFares, Yasmine Nachabe Taan, Bahia Shehab, and Soukeina Hachem, and published by Khatt Books. I like that the publisher’s site gives a really decent preview of the book, too.

Let’s keep going with this gigantic book thing: I see that the recently update and expanded edition of Emigre Fonts: Type Specimens, 1986–2024 is back in stock. What a tome!

I enjoyed the video for the ‘making of’ the Cheetos font. A nice little bit of fun-poking at all the self-aggrandising marketing videos inflicted upon us all the time.

Noir Blanc Rouge is an independent type foundry established by Bastien Sozeau in 2019 and based in Paris — but new to me. Really cool site, too.

Another new foundry discovery: Oslo’s Smuss Type Kiosk. I like the on/off switches that showcase the OpenType features on each family detail page.

Henmania is an in-progress typeface by Bea Korsh, currently at v0.1, but looks set to be a really fun one. A must for all fans of OpenType-powered interlocking!

I missed this entirely and, as far as I can tell, you can no longer buy copies online, but Collletttivo’s 300-page Type Tales — “15 enchanting stories brought to life by open-source typefaces and illustration” — looks (looked?) like such a great idea.

Werkdruck is a new release from Identity Letters: an industrious serif typeface and companion to the foundry’s popular sans, Werksatz. You can currently save 40% on all ‘Werkfonts’ with the coupon code Werkfonts-40.

TypeTogether are offering a bundle of 4 type specimens for free — you just have to pay the shipping costs. Bargain! I have a couple of these on my shelf and they’re gorgeous.

I was chatting to Stephen Coles the other day and he mentioned Type Foundries Today, which “combines historical events with a 2013 census and in‑depth analysis of contemporary foundries, offering insight into the sometimes obscure world of typeface drawing and font making.” I’m embarrassed to say had totally passed me by when it was released in 2013, but it remains a fascinating project — especially the timeline.

Atlas of Type — the excellent site that documents new type releases, which I featured a few issues ago — now has images! This is a pretty huge upgrade and makes the site an even better resource. Nice one, Dan!

Not type-specific, but very much in keeping with this issue’s accidental book theme, did you see the news that Bookshop.org is now selling ebooks (in the US, at least)? This is exciting to me, partly because I’m always happy to see someone take on Amazon, but also because it extends their current model, meaning that physical bookshops will still earn commission from ebook sales. Oh, and if you’re a US-based Bookshop.org customer and need a recommendation for your first ebook to buy, I have just the thing.

I’m currently taking a temporary break from social media and (kind of) the news. I made that decision / announcement before I read The Social Media Sea Change by Anne Helen Petersen (linked in this week’s Dense Discovery), but what she said really resonates:

The amount of space these technologies take up in our lives — and their ever-diminishing utility — has brought us to a sort of cultural tipping point. I’ve sensed it over the last year, when my social feeds seemed to finish their years-long transformation from a neighborhood populated with friends to a glossy condo development of brands.

She argues that although we all know social media has a very real negative effect on us, you have to feel that first-hand in order to do something about it:

After years of people yelling at me in books, think pieces, and tweets (lol) to “break up with my phone,” “delete your social media accounts,” and “f**k Mark Zuckerberg,” turns out the thing that I needed was a whole conglomeration of quiet arguments and technological shifts that made my phone and the social media accounts on it feel less precious. Put differently, I haven’t come to value it less; instead, it’s become less valuable.

I think that technological shifts bit is especially relevant when combined with the political and cultural shifts we seem to be in the midst of right now. You know, the scary stuff. I’m fully aware that burying one’s head in the sand isn’t going to solve anything, or bring about a single bit of change, but for me it’s a little escape hatch I’ve been happy to use this last week or so, even though I know I’ll end up poking my head back out of the hatch in the near future.

(More importantly: the typefaces used in this graphic are Ivy Presto Display and IvyEpic Sans, both designed by Jan Maack.)

Being off Instagram also means that this newsletter is (currently) the only place where I can post my Trondheim photos from yesterday and this morning, like these ones:

Hope you enjoyed this little detour through the snow. Oh, and if you’re new here, don’t forget that as a subscriber, you’re entitled to 10 free chapters of my book in PDF form. Just hit ‘reply’ to get it!