Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game where players listen to short descriptions read aloud from a reader’s card. Each turn, players race to grab the matching card with the corresponding picture or text, and the player with the most cards at the end wins.

Font Karuta is a variation designed for typography enthusiasts. Instead of pictures, the reader announces the font name and description on the reader’s card, and players compete to pick up the card displaying that font. The player who collects the most cards wins the game.

This edition is the “extension package” featuring only blackletter designs.

From top left to bottom right: Respira Black, FF Brokenscript, a couple letters from Breitkopf-Fraktur, Blackmoor, Claudius, an e and an exclamation mark from Old English, Wallau, Amador, Fakir, San Marco, American Text, Caslon-Gotisch, Engravers Old English, Marian Black, Fette Fraktur, Lucida Blackletter, JAF Herb, Gutenberg Textura, Alte Schwabacher, Goudy Text, Fette Kanzlei, and a tiny bit of Fette Gotisch. Featured in the game but not shown in the images are Deutsche Schrift and Wedding Text.

The box front features the title in Amador, with Clairvaux for the list of included typefaces. The Japanese font appears to be DNP Shuei ShogoMincho. The Font Karuta logo is in Akko.

The German-language game instructions are set in Gutenberg Textura with a headline in Blackmoor, in caps of alternating colors.

In June 2008 Underware asked Orange Sunshine to record a 7 inch, inspired by the typeface Fakir. For the sleeve, designers and rockers were invited to propose a design. Out of 80 entries, an international jury selected Supergabi’s design, as the official Fakir-Rock-sleeve-winner.

The sleeve was risograph printed at Extrapool, and folded to sleeve format.
Blue vinyl, no label. Edition limited to 300 plus a special edition of 25 (numbered & signed by all band members).

Short Dark is a series of stouts by brewery Other Half, New York City. The labes are designed by Small Stuff with Underware’s Fakir Black in all caps.

“Berlin? Besser ohne Nazis” (Berlin? Better without Nazis). Banner shown by counter-demonstrators at Nazi rally on 7 May 2016 in Berlin.

Berliner Bündnis gegen Rechts is a local alliance fighting racism and nationalism. One particular target in the current state election campaign is the right-wing populist AfD party.

In front of the Reichstag, seat of the German parliament

“Nationalism won’t be recycled. Professionally dispose of right-wing agitation!”

“Berlin? Better without AfD.”

Campaign material

“Protest voting for AfD because you don’t like politics is like drinking out of the pub’s toilet because the beer does not taste.”

Leaflet cover

“First published in German in 1804, under the nom de plume ‘Bonaventura’, The Nightwatches of Bonaventura is a dark, twisted, and comic novel, one part Poe and one part Beckett.”

An intriguing cover by Matt Avery alludes to the macabre and voyeuristic themes. The atypical Blackletter, Fakir Display, blurs into the shadows as seen through a window.

This 300-page book, designed by Jaci Raia, juxtaposes Grimm’s classic fairy tales with eerie vintage photography. It is typeset entirely in Fakir except for some pixely blackletter display type set in New Hildegard Pro (as bundled with the Fraktur Mon Amour book).

“Twisted Rock-N-Roll, Exotica- & Proto-Beat Unknowns from Austria 1957–1966” — Konkord

When Wolf-Manufaktur asked Wehr & Weissweiler to design a catalogue that showcases its high-end printing and finishing services, the two young designers from Mainz, Germany came up with a striking solution. The Wolf-Musterbox is a sophistically designed cardboard box in glaring orange. Once you lift the magnetically affixed cover, the box slides open and reveals its content. 30 sample cards provide an overview over the available offerings. Eight different finishing techniques have been combined with eleven types of fine paper and board.

Wehr & Weissweiler aimed to create a tool that helps designers choose an advanced printing technique and convince their clients of its effectiveness. They further wanted to tell a little story that relates to the brand name: each motif contains some information about wolves. As you browse through top-notch examples of letterpress, gilding, or foil stamping, you learn why wolves howl, how fast they can run, or what the deal is with werewolves. The ingredients for the visualization are diverse: photography, illustration, infographics – plus a trio of fresh typefaces, namely FF Nexus Serif (2004), JAF Facit (2005), and Fakir (2006).

Each of the cards sports up to three tabs. Together with the legend that is printed on the inner side of the cover, this enables the user to quickly pick all the samples that illustrate, say, die-cutting.

The sample cards measure 17×12cm.

Two possible types of enhancement combined: rainbow-gradient edge coloring, and partial UV varnish application. The transparent small caps are taken from JAF Facit Extrabold, the heaviest member of the versatile sans-serif family by Tim Ahrens.

The back lists the type of paper and the printing and finishing techniques in use. It also holds some information about when and how these options are applicable. Headings are set in a lighter weight of JAF Facit, and contrast with text in FF Nexus Serif, which shows off its decorative ligatures.

On this card, relief embossing is shown alongside laser punching. The texts provide information about the tracks of wolves, their coat colors, and their scent. Designers will note the wise use of variation in text alignment.

FF Nexus Serif is used for most of the text. It is a distinguished choice, and reads well even at the rather small sizes. Although the fonts are equipped with many extras (including small caps, arrows and other symbols) and ligatures (from ‘fi’ to ‘ffl’ and ‘ct’), FF Nexus doesn’t offer a good solution for words where the overhanging ‘f’ is followed by a diacritic. At least, that is what the typographer felt, and kerned the ‘ä’ away, to prevent the characters from clashing. This is far from ideal, as it creates a gap. However, many Germans feel this is the lesser evil – me included.

The most eye-catching type choice is Fakir, a blackletter as reimagined by the Underware collective. When this 11-style fantasy was released in 2006, it has been met with enthusiasm in the design scene, and even was celebrated with one of the prestigious TDC² awards. Still, Fakir can rarely be seen in use, due to its extreme nature, and not least because of the difficult connotations of the blackletter genre in general. Wehr & Weissweiler successfully employed two of its Display weights on this fake calling card for the Brothers Grimm.

In many regards, FF Nexus can be described as an expansion of the ideas that Martin Majoor already incorporated in his first release, FF Scala. Both are superfamilies with a Sans and a Serif, and in the case of Nexus, also a Slab. Another feature that has been added in FF Nexus is a Swash Italic. The curly capitals and the flourished final forms can add a splendid calligraphic layer, as the Latin names for the various wolf subspecies demonstrate.

The Wolf-Musterbox can be ordered from the Wolf-Manufaktur website (which, by the way, is also designed by Wehr & Weissweiler, using JAF Facit Web). At € 89, the box certainly is not cheap, given it’s a promotional item. On the other hand, the amount will be refunded with the first order. If you want to know more about finishing techniques and wolves, and, to boot, are a sucker for beautifully staged contemporary type, it is a good investment anyway.

Is Not Magazine was a project initiated by (Chase & Galley founder) Stuart Geddes (with friends Mel Campbell, Natasha Ludowyk, Penny Modra and Jeremy Wortsman) in 2004. It was published as a four-sheeter (2m x 1.5m) bill poster on the streets of Melbourne and Sydney from April 2005 to July 2008. It published a range of fiction and non-fiction content in many forms including, but not limited to, 2000 word essays, 300-500 word columns, comics, illustrations, diagrams, and 160 character (text message length) 'flash fictions'. There was also a crossword.

Chase & Galley

The official publication of Nintendo of America, designed by Roger Black, Robb Rice for Danilo Black.