Hello from New York, where I’ve been spending the week for some Adobe work, and where there’s been barely a hint of ‘fall’ weather at all, despite me being in full-on hunting-down-pumpkin-beer mode. (The pumpkin beer has indeed been acquired, in case you were wondering.) It most definitely is autumn back home in the UK, though, and despite the torrential rain arriving abruptly and rudely outstaying its welcome, it was preceded by a lovely summer. For my fellow northern hemisphere dwellers: how was your summer?

My daughters are seven and ten, and even thought it’s now been a number of years since they’ve been going to school — and therefore having six-week school holidays every summer, while both my wife and I attempt work — there haven’t been quite enough annual cycles in this routine for my brain to rewire itself to sufficiently anticipate the juggling required every summertime. Now, I love the juggle. We’re lucky we get to do the juggle. But to add to this year’s chaos: the final throes of Fine Specimens, my next book.

If you were here for the last issue, you’ll know that squeezing book production work around all the things has been my life recently, and stupidly — oh god, so stupidly — I’ve added to that significantly these last few weeks by addressing a bunch of book-related paperwork that I really should’ve got sorted about eight months ago. Third-party permission forms aren’t particular interesting to write about or read about, so I’ll save you the agony, but what it does mean is that the book is very, very, very nearly done now.

Perhaps ever so slightly more interesting (although not much) is the act of actioning some final typos and small typesetting tweaks that I found while reading through a lo-res printed copy while we were on holiday in Greece a few weeks ago. I’d vowed not to do any work while away — and I did manage to leave my laptop at home (the first time, ever, I think, that I’ve managed to do that) — but it seemed prudent to at least give things a once-over on-paper. And oh my, here’s another lesson I’ve still not yet managed to learn: if you want to find mistakes, print it out. There’s nothing quite like the magical power of analogue media to reveal spelling mistakes, grammatical weirdness, missing styles, unnecessary line breaks, and sentences that — thanks to the omission of one very important word — make absolutely no bloody sense. Seriously, it’s magic.

So was finding an error on pretty much every other page (for context: that means on around 100 pages) a good thing or a bad thing? Ultimately, a good thing — because there’s no way I’d want the book going to print in that state — but urgh, what a slog to get to the finish line. That whole 80/20 rule… I’m not sure it applies to books. With books, it feels like the vast majority of that intense, mission-critical, frenzied work really equates to the last 5% of the process. And, once again, no matter how many times I’ve been through this process, it’s still something I’ve yet to learn. Maybe my next book will successfully handle my brain’s rewiring?

First things first on the news-ish front: enrolment is once again open for all of Viktor’s courses at Type Design Class — the Font Making Course, the True Italics Course, and the Script Fonts Course — but only until the end of today. Yes, today. Apart from the year-round Glyphs Basics mini-course. As I’ve said before, I have affiliate links for the main three courses, so I’ll get a little financial kick-back if you book a course via those URLs. And, as I’ve also said before, I took the Font Making Course myself with my own money, so my recommendation is a genuine one. But again, enrolment closes today, so be quick!

Speaking of timely events, I’m speaking at The Kernference next week! Specifically, the session on Friday. I want you to come along anyway, of course, but also just a heads up that that’s also an affiliate link. Sorry, apparently I’ve gone full capitalist today.

Now to some type newness: I’ve been following Petra Docekalova’s type design work for a while now, so it’s nice to see her launch her very own foundry: the aptly named Petra-D Type Foundry, which specialises in handwriting fonts. Some great stuff in this nascent library, including variable fonts, and a lovely website to boot.

Dan’s at it again with another very fun display face: Turbeau was initially inspired by Knight Rider’s end credits (fellow children of the 80s, rejoice!), with further influence from the type on the controls of the Sequential OB-6 synth (fellow synth nerds, rejoice!).

Gregory Grotesk is the new and very handsome companion to TypeMates’ Gregory Poster. The Grotesk “matches the smooth texture of familiar system fonts, but showing a real, offbeat personality up close, Gregory’s a joyful take on your usual go-to sans serifs.”

Lost was designed by Federico Parra Barrios and published by 205TF (a foundry I discovered thanks to the free bookmarks in the swag bag from TypeParis Now24 — see issue #31). This one was found via Flavia Zimbardi’s newsletter, Contraforma.

Nice write-up on the Fontwerk blog about their most recent release, Tausend. Grab yourself a coffee — this goes deep.

I recently came across Type Everything, a foundry from Andrei Robu. Some lovely stuff here, including some typefaces from other foundries I already know and love, such as Beasts of England — which I guess also makes them a distributor…? Nice to have another place to check for inspo.

This one caught my eye for the sole reason that it’s a fantastic name for a foundry: Alphabets Patrick Nell. If I ever start a foundry, would Alphabets Elliot Jay Stocks ever work? I’m kind of tempted. Anyway, his APN Chora is very nice indeed.

I think I’ve linked to it before, but Wentin’s Typogram Studio project has come a long way since I last looked. This browser-based tool bills itself as “a fresh way to create logos, social graphics, and brand assets, all with typography at its heart.” I really like how easy it is to see what OpenType features a font contains — and then use them.

There are many type foundry directories out there now and I’ve linked to a few, but I don’t think I’d come across Type Foundry Directory until now. The importance of these indexes can’t be overstated, since I know so many of us are guilty of returning to the same foundries again and again. This one’s run by Matthew Smith, founder of Morning Type.

It’s been a while since I’ve collected together some of my current favourites in the Adobe Fonts library, so here you go: Elliot’s current faves (4th edition). This one features eight faces (IYKYK): Envelove Script, Hagrid, BC Vajgar (there’s Petra again!), Gardein, Aquavit, Redonda, Peridot PE Variable, and Arsenica Variable.

Let’s move onto some web typography: Jen Simmons has a great piece on the new-ish line height unit in CSS. It’s enjoyed mainstream browser support for the last couple of years, but I must admit I’d either not encountered it, or discovered it and then immediately forgotten about it (quite likely). Either way, I intend on implementing this on my personal site quite soon. This appears to be the closest we’ve ever come to (simply) implementing a baseline grid on the web. Oh, the heady delights of web design!

That reminds me: I keep meaning to revisit Jake’s experiments with baseline grids using the cap-height unit. Maybe both methods could be combined? I’ll report back with findings.

Ariel’s blog post, Typography for user interfaces, is now nearly 9 years old(!), but everything in it is 100% relevant today. ’Nuff said.

A bit of a tangent for the last one: who’s a Raycast fan out there? If you are, you probably don’t need any tips from me, since I feel like I’m only just scratching the surface. But if you’ve yet to be tempted to try this app that is so much more than a Spotlight replacement, let me help you along the way: the extensions directory has a quicklink that allows you to search the Google Fonts library, and I’ve duplicated this to create a quicklink that searches the Adobe Fonts library. Here’s how to set it up yourself (and you can use a similar structure for any website that has a search function):

First, create a new quicklink. Then, in the ‘link’ filed, insert https://fonts.adobe.com/search/fonts?query={argument} and save. Optional step: create an alias to launch this quickly — I use “af” to launch this query (and “gf” to launch the Google Fonts one).

With that done, launch the quick link from Raycast, tab into the query field, type your search text, hit return, and the search results will show up in your browser. Handy!

As always, there was more I had planned for this issue, but to be totally honest, I need to get this one published before I check out of my hotel and go in search for presents to get the kids. And you wouldn’t want me to go home empty handed now, would you?