Our good friend Lauren loves golf. She believes that sports belong to everyone but recognizes that the barriers to entry and surrounding culture aren’t always kind to newcomers. So, she created Chip + Birdie’s Virtual Golf Club to welcome both beginners and seasoned players.

We chose Learning Curve Bold for its easy elegance, balanced with straightforward DIN Alternate Bold (a version of DIN 1451). A closer look at classic-feeling Lastik reveals unexpected playful details. The color palette is soft, warm, and welcoming. With vintage qualities and a touch of bright athleticism, we drew inspiration from the elements characteristic of a great day out on the course.

Poster for the vampire-themed song “Bite Me”

Enhypen’s new identity for their EP Dark Blood showcases the Romie typeface, reflecting a blend of style and modern typography.

Enhypen, a renowned K-pop group, brings a distinct aesthetic to this release. The fonts used are Romie Regular and Italic, including some customization. Romie is designed by Margot Lévêque and published by Margot Lévêque Studio.

[More info on Discogs]

Full version of Dark Blood, containing CD, photo book, photo card (random 1 of 7), message photo card (random 1 of 7), sticker, post card (random 1 of 7), bookmark and poster with lyrics

The titles of the six songs on the mini album are presented in a mix of Romie Regular and Italic, with customized swashes and terminals.

Track list presented in the form of book spines. Credits are added in a Helvetica, possibly Neue Haas Grotesk, and Sandoll GothicNeo.

Announcement of the Enhypen world tour Fate in Japan. The secondary fonts include DIN 1451 and an unidentified serif.

Dates for the Enhypen world tour Fate

Tour shirt

In 2007, the University of Chicago in cooperation with the Hoover Institution and other benefactors issued this new, “definitive” edition of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom including extensive additional material for context shedding light on the profound impact of this work: two prefaces, two forewords, two introductions, six appendices, acknowledgments, and an index, though no Knopfesque “Note On The Type.”

The rear blurb copy is set in Hoefler Text with some DIN.

Body copy and footnotes are in Monotype Baskerville with lining figures.

Title and author are in DIN with its telltale capital M, possibly URW DIN Semi-Condensed Bold. Remainder of the text is in Hoefler Titling.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover featuring lettering based on DIN 1451, Bodoni, and Narrow Roman Stencil JNL

Please note!

Given the abhorrent war Russia is engage in in Ukraine this project is of course cast in a different light than when it was first conceived.

Like many neighbouring nations, Finland too has a troubled past with Russia. At the time of our journey our aim was to try to cast aside past wounds and try to get to know the people. But some three years later old fears and prejudices have unfortunately resurfaced and been proven valid.

For this we are truly sorry, as the people we met during our voyage were anything but the rabid warmongers we now encounter in the daily news. But let us be clear, we do, in no uncertain terms, condemn the unlawful and completely senseless occupation of Ukraine that Russia is presently absorbed in.

Despite this less than cheery disclaimer we hope you can appreciate this project for what it is – an attempt to build bridges instead of burning them. Something we feel the world is in dire need of.

*

It was not a very well thought out idea, but very few adventures start with being meticulously planned. At least our adventures. But at least we had a rough outline of what we would attempt to achieve:

Our aim was to paddle from the small town Kem located on the shore of the White Sea all the way to St Petersburg.

These two places are connected by a number of locks, rivers, and lakes to each other, and upon learning that it was at least theoretically possible to kayak from one to the other we decided it was well worth trying. On the 9th of June 2018 we set sail southward.

But enough about the background, you are here to read about fonts. And we’re getting there. Just one quick thing we need to mention first:

During our voyage Kaisa kept a diary in which she recorded what happened during the trip. When we reached St Petersburg seven weeks later she had filled four small journals with drawings and text.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Title page, with the custom digitization of Secession’s Cyrillics and LTC Remington Typewriter

In 2020 we published these diaries in book form under the title Русские Дневники (Russian Diaries).

In 2021 our small book was included in the collection of the most beautiful books of the year in Finland. It also received the Hopeahuippu prize (silver) in the annual Finnish design competition Vuoden Huiput.

As for the typefaces, we came upon the Cyrillic version of Secession in an old type specimen book in our library and felt it fit our purposes perfectly. The problem was that we couldn’t find a digitised version of it.

Here our friend Teo Tuominen came in the picture. As an accomplished type designer it took him little time to render beautiful versions of the needed letters from a scan we provided him with.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The specimen book on which Teo Tuominen based his digitization

As for the body copy we went with LTC Remington Typewriter, a nice typeface that also came with the much needed Cyrillic characters.

For more information about the project and our journey you can pop over to the project website.

Alongside with the book we also made a poster in which we posed with our expedition flag. It was a horribly cold and miserable photoshoot (you can see the frost on the rocks in the foreground!) but the picture itself turned out really nice. At least we think it did.

(Oh, and for all the real maritime design nerds out there: On the cover of the book, as well as on the poster we spell out “Русские Дневники” in the Soviet Signal Alphabet. Admittedly not a font, but still interesting for letter lovers.)

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction of an illustrated spread in the original diary, with lettering

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction of an illustrated spread in the original diary, with lettering

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Poster showing the mounting of our expedition flag, as well as the title “Русские Дневники” spelled out in the Soviet Signal Alphabet

Akkordeon (Emtype Foundry) in use for the redesigned visual identity of Ontruck. From Soluble Studio:

Ontruck is clearly one of the most powerful startups in the Spanish entrepreneurial landscape. La Nevera Roja founder, Íñigo Juantegui, launched this project three years ago with other big names in the ecosystem such as Javier Escribano (Tourist Eye), Gonzalo Parejo (iContainer), and Samuel Fuentes (Delivery Hero).

Well-know for testing their idea for free on a Telegram channel, the company has grown exponentially. From just 10 employees in 2016 and trials in a Madrid site to over 150 team members in offices in Madrid, London, and Paris three years later, the company operates a network of over 2,000 drivers and has secured €36 million of investment.

The website uses URW’s version of DIN 1451.

The eightArt online platform shares art, cuture and design through Instagram TV and YouTube. This project originated during the confinement for the Covid-19, with the aim to help artists and creators of all types, giving them a voice to share their art and thoughts and creating an international community.

Paula Pons was approached by the eightArt team to create their rebranding.

Each artist has a different voice and makes unique things. Paula Pons designed the logo with a different font for each character. Each font has a unique expression and a unique voice, representing the variety of artists, designers and creators that are in eightArt platform.

From studio1500:

An identity and signage system was designed for 100 Hooper, a development in San Francisco’s Mission Bay district that sought to attract companies with a Maker Spirit. The solution aimed to seamlessly fit in with the architecture, bringing an industrial and playful feel that echoed the landscape of the neighborhood. An adjacent building—150 Hooper—was integrated into the system.

The font in use for 100 Hooper is Vtg Stencil DIN by astype. 150 Hooper features the Halftone style from the same family. The stencil fonts are complemented by solid DIN 1451 for smaller type.

Second Guessing’s new EP Tijd Verdringt – a single sided 12″ record with screen print on the B-side – covers themes such as loss of a loved one, mental instabillity and recovery, written and recorded through a very witheld and internal lens. Metaphorically rich, Tijd Verdringt references themes such as Dutch architecture, the functions of the human body and more, to articulate the negatives and positives of personal experiences/struggles that are otherwise difficult to express.

I chose both typefaces to show contrast between modern and old, big and small, and rough and straight – using IM Fell DW Pica for the band name and DIN 1451 Medium and Light for the other text. Keeping this type of contrast works well with the rough and angular collage work and the contrasting theme's of the EP.

Create + Explore is a conversation between mediums from visual to auditory, providing an intersectional platform for beat-makers and photographers to create and explore the power of artistic collaboration. Each project is created through a process of pairing a beatmaker and a photographer. The beatmaker creates original music and sends it off to the photographer as an impetus and inspiration to generating a pictorial exploration. This process links two of our most indelible sensory experiences through a photographic interpretation of original music. — createandexplore.co

Create + Explore is a collaboration between Braden Lee and Matthew Lawless. The straightforward typography (centre-aligned white capitals from Gotham, paired with a logo and a tag line which uses DIN 1451) provides a clean and unobtrusive branding for the images in their Instagram feed. In the videos, the same typography is brought to live with animation.

Branding and poster design for Origin NYE Music festival 2014.

The branding for the festival was based on Attitude Inline, with some letters modified to create a cleaner typeface.

The Tokyo 2020 Games emblem is the outcome of an open competition, totalling almost 15,000 design entries. The selected emblem was designed by Asao Tokolo and references a chequered pattern dating back to Edo period, known as “ichimatsu moyo”. The "Tokyo 2020" word mark is set in a version of DIN 1451, with what appears to be some mechanical condensing. Another DIN interpretation, Monotype’s DIN Next, was used for the cherry-blossomed candidate city emblem.

Candidate city emblem

Poster campaign by Publicis, London for homeless charity DePaul UK Nightstops using one of the various available DIN Condenseds or DIN Engschrift, like FF DIN, DIN 1451, or Linotype DIN.

The designers Dan Kennard and Ben Smith write: “Depaul’s Nighstop service places homeless young people in the spare rooms of volunteers for a night or two, until permanent accommodation is found. But worries about personal safety stop many people getting involved. To change perceptions, we placed posters on either side of the street corners where homeless young people are found. The left hand poster sums up people’s preconceptions. When both posters are read together the message transforms to show that there's another, more positive side to volunteering.”

A 12 inch single for ’90s soft-tech pioneers System 7, fronted by Steve Hillage, previously guitarist for Prog Rock band Gong. The front cover was photographed by Trevor Key. The System 7 Altitude type was part of the photograph, not added in post production.

The front cover lettering is a prototype version of Metsys, used with phototypeset Linotype DIN Mittelschrift, on which it was based.

The key feature of Zuzana Licko’s Soda Script is its looping tendrils connecting the lowercase, but the designers for Showtime’s Dexter (2006–2013) saw something in its caps that worked for their logo: probably it was a blade in the ‘T’.

I don’t know for sure who designed the logo, but Digital Kitchen is credited with the Emmy-award-winning main title sequence used throughout the run of the series. Lindsay Daniels is listed as the designer.

Egyptienne F is not commonly used these days, and it’s even less expected on a whisky bottle. anCnoc (pronounced “a-nock”) makes it work, along with hand-drawn illustrations, for their atypical brand. The identity is carried through from the packaging to the website using self-hosted Egyptienne F webfonts.

The built-in apps in Apple’s newly announced iOS 7 use Neue Helvetica almost entirely. This is not a change from previous versions of the OS (other than a system-wide switch to lighter weights), but the typeface is all the more front-and-center in iOS 7 now that the depth, chrome, and button outlines have faded away.

There are a couple of exceptions from this Helvetication, however. One is the Newsstand app icon, and another is in the UI for the new Camera app. While the rest of the system uses Helvetica for buttons and navigation, settings in the Camera app are conspicuously exempt from the overarching style. At the moment, the type appears to be a slightly modified DIN 1451 Mittelschrift, the mechanical typeface created as a standard for German signage and industry — though they may have based the controls on one of the other (more typographically optimized) variants of DIN.

I assume the goal here was to simulate the typical routed lettering on a classic metal-bodied camera, such as a Leica. The allusion is subtle and effective, but this is a curious departure from Apple’s new stand against skeuomorphism. Perhaps there are certain brands (like Braun and Leica) that are simply too loved by Ive and company not to be emulated.

Painted on the wall. Looks like hand lettering, but it's Eagle, ITC Conduit, and DIN 1451 Engschrift. Not bad.