First of all, a très grand merci to everyone who came along for the ride that was Notes from a different (type)setting, the pop-up newsletter I ran while travelling to, attending, and travelling home from TypeParis Now24. This was very much an experiment, but one I really enjoyed. Apparently a fair amount of you enjoyed it, too, so I’ve decided to run it again when I head to Berlin Letters in three weeks. If you’d like to join me for that one, please head over to the signup form. Even if you subscribed to the Paris edition, you’ll need to sign up again, since I kept my promise and deleted the database after the last issue was sent.

As well as deleting the list, the other part of ‘the deal’ with the pop-up newsletter was that it’d be self-contained, with no online archives — the idea being that it’s all about being in the moment. However, there were so many talented folks I met, and so much amazing work shown, that it would be remiss of me to not make something of a summary here in the main newsletter. So let’s kick off this issue with some of my favourite pieces of work that I either saw on stage while the speakers were presenting, or on their websites while researching them a little later on.

Twin sisters Victoria and Vitalina Lopukhina, who work together as VikaVita, presented a breathtaking library of work during their talk. Lettering, calligraphy, illustration, client work, personal projects… it’s hard to pick a favourite.

Violaine Orsoni and Jérémy Schneider run a design studio and a type foundry — both super inspirational — and now I’m looking for any excuse to try one of the display-centric typefaces, such as Dahlia.

Marta Cerdà Alimbau showed so much amazing work in her talk, Type to image. I didn’t realise at the time, but her book of the same name was published by the wonderful Counter-Print and this is an official reminder to treat myself to a copy (and perhaps a few other books while I’m at it).

Leslie David also showed a ton of inspirational projects, including her work for Sowvital. I went over to Jamie’s the other day and he’d picked up their House Plant Elixir shortly after Leslie’s talk. Nice move, mate! (More Jamie action below, by the way.)

Zoo’s branding work for Musée d'Orsay resulted in a custom typeface called Orsay Elzevir. After a bit of digging, I found that it was designed by Rafael Ribas, with font mastering by Jérôme Knebusch — two type designers I’d personally not come across before.

I have come across Carolina Laudon’s work many a time, but hadn’t realised she designed Oatly’s bespoke typeface.

I was reminded of Jeremy Tankard’s truly impressive catalogue of typefaces and the depth of his knowledge of type history. Brucker caught my eye and its accompanying issue of Footnotes makes for a fascinating read.

Phew! Okay, now onto the non-TypeParis stuff:

As promised, more Jamie action! My talented mate is about to release his latest typeface, Nave. This is the one that’s been 11 years in the making, as mentioned during our chat on the last episode of Hello, type friends! (Apple | Spotify | etc.). I can’t give you a link yet, but I will say that you should keep your eyes on your favourite font-y places on Monday!

I really enjoyed this short video interview with Emma Marichal, winner of Type Together’s Gerard Unger Scholarship for her refined slab serif typeface Ploquine.

Speaking of Type Together, it’s lovely to see that their Primarium project earn Gold at the ED Awards “in recognition of its excellence in depth and breadth of information, as well as its simple presentation.” The project also picked up two Indigo Awards. Congrats, everyone there! More info on the Type Together blog.

NaN are offering a Back-to-School font pack; in other words, a way to get the foundry’s entire library for €50 instead of €6,000 if you’re a student. As it says at the bottom of the graphic: wow!

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get to attend Future Fonts’ recent Hyper Talks 2.0 event, so it’s nice to see that the video recording is now online for all to enjoy. It’s all great, but especially worth tuning in for Erik being on top (nu)form.

I’ve mentioned Lisa Huang’s Words of Type project before, but she’s recently updated the site and is also now offering a membership program, which is a great way to support the project, especially as you can set the price to match how much you (or your organisation) can afford. Lisa has also started hosting a number of events via Words of Type, and she’s running a very affordable online lecture, Chinese Hanzi, the script and its typography, next Saturday (22nd).

Speaking of online events, on Monday and Tuesday this week, I ran the first two (of five) sessions in my ‘Typography Masterclass’ workshop for SmashingConf. All sessions are recorded, so it’s not too late to join. If you buy a ticket now, you’ll get the recordings from this week and be all set to join us on Monday.

I’m so pleased to see that my good friend Ty is restarting Public Type Works. Super interesting model here: you pay for a license to the fonts, then when they hit a certain financial target, he open sources them; i.e. they become free for anyone to use. It’s kind of like Kickstarter meets Future Fonts meets something else entirely.

New typeface: SFT Schrifted Serif from Schrifteria — a foundry from TypeType’s Art Director Yulia Gonina, and a new discovery for me. (Hat tip: Fresh Fonts.)

This one’s not new, but I was talking to someone about it at TypeParis and it reminded me that I hadn’t yet mentioned it in the newsletter: Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance got a great rebrand (by Marcin Wolny and Weronika Trębacz), along with a really lovely custom typeface designed by my friend Borys Kosmynka (who’s sadly now moved from Bristol to Warsaw).

While chatting to Borys about the above, I realised that Capitalics, the foundry he’s now part of, have released a lot of beautiful typefaces — and three of them are even available on Google Fonts: Brygada 1918, Półtawski Nowy, and Bona Nova.

Tomorrow(!), legendary designer and design historian Paul Shaw (who I had the pleasure of meeting at TypeParis, too) is doing a talk at the Society of Scribes and Illuminators. Paul’s actually been in London all of this week doing talks, but this is the only one left on his itinerary that this issue is still just in time to announce.

Lastly, and sadly, as you may have already seen, Fine Specimens was unsuccessful in hitting its fundraising goal on Kickstarter. But hey, we raised just shy of £14,000, which is not to be sniffed at. That’s still a lot of goodwill and belief in bringing this book to life, and I’m very, very grateful. A lot of people have been asking me what I plan on doing next (sorry if you’ve reached out and I’ve not yet replied), and I do want to find a way of bringing this project to life in a slightly different guise. I need a bit of time, but this is the best place to hear about it when I’ve decided what the way forward will be.