TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Fri Sep 11 00:41:29 EDT 2015

FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

Nils Types [Nils Thomsen]

Nils Thomsen (Hamburg, Germany) is a graduate of the Masters program in type design at KABK, 2010. Before that, he did a Bachelor of Arts in 2009 at Muthesius Academy of Arts and Design Kiel, Germany. From 2011 Nils Thomsen worked at Bureau Johannes Erler in Hamburg for two years.

During this time he participated in the redesign of the German daily, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, ca. 2012, contributing to its new corporate typeface, SZ (Serif, Sans, Sans Condensed, Text, 40 fonts in all). Nils writes: In 2011 and 2012 I participated on the corporate typeface for the Ggermans daila, "Süddeutsche Zeitung", at the office "Bureau ErlerSkibbeToensmann". Hand in hand with type designer Henning Skibbe and art director Christian Tönsmann the different styles and weights were carefully designed. The technical part was edited by fontshop.com. SZ Text is based on Excelsior (Chauncey H. Griffith, 1931). The new typeface got narrower and the capitals smaler and lighter. To this we added lots of new details, which worked better and made it overall more efficient in tight columns and line spacing. SZ Serif is based on SZ Text and replaced the "Times" (Stanley Morison, 1931). Higher contrast and slightly narrower letter shapes makes it more useful for headline typography. SZ Sans is designed for strong headlines and replaces "Helvetica" (Max Miedinger, 1957). Simple and silent shapes gives the right touch to the neutral character of "Süddeutsche Zeitung". SZ Sans Condensed is made for tables in the sport or economy segment. It replaces FF Unit (Erik Spiekermann & Christian Schwartz, 2003-2011).

Nils lives in Hamburg now, where he set up Nils Types in 2013. His typefaces:

• Conto Compressed, Conto Narrow, Conto Condensed, all made in 2015.
• Jabana (2014), Jabana Alt (2015) and Jabana Extras (2015). A compressed rounded font family, with dingbats, designed for menus. It is the first font in his own foundry, Nils Types, est. 2013. It was inspired by having a Schorle at Hamburg's coffee bars.
• Meret (2010) was his KABK graduation project. Meret is a typeface family for news, designed for tight columns and narrow interlinear space. The family includes six weights from light to black in upright and italic style. Christian Schwartz selected Meret in 2011 for use in the American magazine Fast Company. Meret won an award in 2013 at the Communication Art Magazine competition, and in 2011 at the Letter.2 type design competition, organized by the Association Typographique Internationale. It is now part of the OurType foundry collection.
• Perpetua (revival): Done at KABK in 2009-2010.
• Tretton (2009): an elliptic sans that constituted his Bachelors graduation project.
• Conto (2014). A minimalist sans family. Extended some time later in 2014 to Conto Slab.

MyFonts link. Creative Market link. Behance link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Nils Types
 [Buy fonts]
 [Designer info]
Behance page
Creative Market page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Lapidary typefaces ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿ Typefaces with arrows ⦿