Typography Weekly #143

“The MyFonts app enables designers, marketers, and creative teams to discover real, licensable fonts inside ChatGPT using natural language prompts.”

Born of analog typesetting constraints, optical sizing is once again relevant in digital design

“fonts.xyz is our little internet village for independent type foundries and designers.” The platform by NaN just launched with 27 foundries and 877 fonts.

Before Linotype revolutionised typesetting in the 1880s, compositors set texts by hand — and they set them fast. Alex Wright rediscovers the thrilling world of typesetting races, which drew crowds in the thousands, offered huge cash prizes, and helped women “Swifts” fight for workplace equity.

Version 16 brings a deeper layer model to the editor, a real subtractive design tool, parametric component reuse, and a refreshed editor surface unified across Windows and macOS.

A video by Jectives demonstrating the interface in Affinity to override the default color palettes in color fonts.

A small and currently free font management app by Josh Puckett offering logo previews, color themes, full OpenType support, custom collections, one-click activation and watch folders.

Type designer and typography researcher Anya Danilova and our editor Adelina Shaidullina talked to the library’s deputy head for science, Benjamin Guichard, about how and why institutions like BULAC and type designers or typography researchers should collaborate.

Moving from metal to digital type compromised much of our typographic heritage. To build digital fonts for the future, we must return to their physical origins.