7 unusual fonts created in 2017
Some of the fonts listed below explore new technologies in font engineering, other push boundaries of “regular” font developing process, but all of them are one-of-a-kind hallmark of 2017.
FIT by David Jonathan Ross
Fit is one of the first typefaces available in the brand new OpenType variable font format. This format allows multiple font styles to coexist within a single file. A family of 10 widths, from Skyline to Ultra Extended and offer you 1001 instances fonts to do magic you can see above when your browser doesn’t support variable fonts.
Decovar by David Berlow
Decovar is a modular parametric display font with a variety of skeletons and terminals, which explore possibilities of variable fonts, designed by David Berlow for Google. While Decovar’s default sans-serif letterforms may look like they’re drawn with a single contour, they’re actually assembled from dozens of smaller contours that follow a complex, modular template inspired by early twentieth-century Art Deco lettering. Decovar is free and open source.
Galapagos by Felix Salut + Dinamo
The Galapagos Typeface is based on the Galapagos Game invented by Felix Salut. For the Galapagos Typeface, Felix Salut and Dinamo composed the same 9 modules into 7 alphabets of different styles: Rounded, Straight, Angular and their crossings Rounded-Straight, Straight-Angular, Rounded Angular and Rounded-Straight-Angular. The result is a total of 70 individual typefaces: each style comes in 5 weights, with Grid and No-Grid versions. Using Stylistic Sets, all characters can be moved up and down along the vertical grid. This release is accompanied by the launch of the App, which allows for a playful entrance into the modular Galapagos cosmos.
Calcula by Shiva Nallaperumal
Calcula is a display typeface that uses smart OpenType features to explore the space between lettering and typeface design, creating maze-like spaces between letters. Calcula is inspired by the geometric Kufic style of traditional Arabic calligraphy. Its maze-like complexity is created by the fixed width of the white spaces between and within letters, a feature which required complex OpenType programming and the creation of over 6,000 ligatures per style. While Calcula is a functional typeface, its design principles are rooted in lettering, in that each letter reacts to neighbouring letters, adapting to its context. Calcula is great for creating patterns from single letters, combinations of letters, or even entire words.
Wind by Hansje van Halem
This typeface is highly experimental, it uses vivid colours and intricately detailed patterns to create unexpected optical illusions, and its various layers can be combined and overlaid to create vibrant, hypnotic patterns. In addition to four static styles, NE, SE, SW and NE, Wind also includes variable fonts capable of a full 360° of rotation, (one clockwise, the other anti-clockwise), offering unprecedented possibilities for the exploration of repetitive textural patterns.
Brief by Briefcase Type Foundry
The design of each character is strictly obedient to technical/drawing parameters and makes its own shapes this way. Each character is created using a maximum of two points. It simply takes a few handles and what would otherwise be annoying vector segments of rotated curves, and masterly moulds them into shapes of the Latin alphabet. A group of five styles — the default full-filled style and four outlines that match so perfectly that they can be combined at will — is what advances Brief from the original experiment into a fully fledged type family.
Bitcount by Petr van Blokland
Van Blokland’s new type system, Bitcount, springs from his fascination with systemization and programmatic design. Bitcount pushes design systems with defined parameters beyond their apparent limitations. The Bitcount superfamily is built on three spacing systems of different proportions: Bitcount Grid, Bitcount Mono, and Bitcount Prop. Basic package offers five principal pixel shapes per variant: Circles, Squares, Pluses, Line Squares, and Line Circles. These five pixel shapes each come in a range of different weights, sizes, and line thicknesses. What is more all Bitcount fonts come in two more variants: Single and Double. There is so much possibilities, necessarily read whole description (link below).
