Don’t believe the type
It is the eve before three day conference Typo London starts and with typography front of mind, we cast an eye over new book Type Navigator: The Independent Foundries Handbook.
As both a manual of reference and a piece of print design, this is likely to strike a chord with those that buy, commission, or make type.
Font purchasing and licensing are explained clearly after a slightly waffley isn’t-type-wonderful-introduction, before a Types of Type Foundries section does a great job of setting out how the foundry has developed.
At the top end, type foundries are gatekeepers, and one company in particular, Monotype – appropriately named it would seem – owns most known fonts.
This book then, concentrates on the work of the independents, often graphics studios which have developed typefaces as part of a commercial design project but then ended up selling them.
A trove of examples unfolds across the book, organised alphabetically , including the likes of A2-Type from London, Andre Baldinger from Paris and Optimo from Geneva.
There are plenty of visuals for inspiration and in the back an index of global foundries.
If you give the CD a spin there’s a free digital collection of typefaces to use – choice fonts picked out by the book’s editor Jan Middendorp.
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Many thanks for the excellent write-up. One little correction, though: my co-editors TwoPoints.Net and I did not actually hand-pick the free fonts. We invited all participating foundries to contribute any fonts they felt could be offered for free (which isn’t as obvious a thing to do as many people would like) and the foundries, generously, picked the fonts. — Jan