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ABOUT

Suitcase Type Foundry [Tomás Brousil]

Suitcase Type is a Czech foundry, est. 2003 by Tomas Brousil (b. 1975), who lives in Prague. He graduated from the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (Type Design and Typography, MgA. 2009) where his graduation project was the 96-family Tabac typeface system, published in 2010. He teaches in the Type Design and Typography department of the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design.

The Tabac family started with Tabac Sans in 2010. It was augmented in 2012 with Tabac Slab and Tabac Mono, which have a full range of weights from Hairline to Black. Tabac Glam, a fashionable Peignotian high contrast sans, was added in 2016, and Tabac Micro in 2018. In 2019, he published Tabac Big Glam, Tabac Big Sans, Tabac Big Slab and Tabac Big.

Other typefaces from 2008-2010 include Monopol (a six-weight condensed sans that includes a hairline weight), Idealista (2010, organic, a mix of styles), Nudista (2009, a multistyle take on DIN with a superb fashion mag hairline, Nudista Thin), Kulturista (2009, a part slab part serif extension of Nudista), Comenia Sans (2008, a 12-style complementary family to Storm's Comenia Serif for school textbooks), Metalista (2008, unicase octagonal metallic face).

2007 was a successful year. Brousil created Bistro Script (2007, fifties diner style script), Corpulent (2007), and Gloriola (2007, a sans in 14 styles, including a hairline. The last typeface family won an award at TDC2 2008 and at Typographica's Best of 2007. Stephen Coles likes its position between the cool sterility of de Groot's monolinears and the warmth of Latin designers: With a broad range of weights, a complete Western character set, and a sack of ligatures and alternates, Gloriola has the depth required for complex identity systems and publication design. This shrewd response to the fashions of today is going to be useful for many years to come.). The year 2007 also saw Purista (a 10-style cousin of Eurostile), which includes hairline weights. Ellen Lupton says this about Purista: I've been feeling hungry for a stylish, edgy sans who enjoys evenings out on the town and long mornings of crisp conversation. In other words, I've been craving a font who likes to party but who can also help out with the dishes.

Production in 2005-2006: Teimer's Antiqua (2006: a didone family based onn unpublished 1967 design by Pavel Teimer), Rokoko (2006, an octagonal custom typeface for the Rokoko Theatre in Prague), Sandwich (2006, a lively display caps set), Vafle (2006: based on an original concept by Marek Pistora from 1997, with minor adaptations and 11 new weights), Dederon Sans and Serif (2005, the sans version being inspired by TypoArt's Liberta; see also here for a comparison with Underware's Dolly), Dederon Serif.

Typefaces from 2004 or earlier include Fishmonger (2004, a sans family), RePublic (a 2004 revival, done with Radek Sidun, of Public by Stanislav Marso, 1955. Note that Public was used to set the text of a Czechoslovak Communist party newspaper, Rudé Právo), Botanika (2005, a sans family including many typewriter styles and several mono weights), Atrament (2003, a narrowed grotesque inspired by the lettering used on the title of the almanac "Devetsil - Revolucni slovnik" (1922) edited by Karel Teige, in 30 styles!), Magion (2004, a simple geometric font), Fishmonger (2004, a broad 50-weight futuristic family), Katarine (2004, a warm sans family with appropriate dingbats added in), and Orgovan (2004-2005, a punk/brush family).

Typefaces from 2013 include the roundish sans family Ladislav: The Ladislav font revitalises Sutnar's legacy, while not explicitly copying any of his original fonts. It however keeps true to their technicist character and initial principles of character creation - a simple modular system of combined geometrical segments. This approach affects all round shapes of capital and lowercase letters, as well as the shapes of the majority of numbers. The g consists of two disjoint circles.

Typefaces from 2014: Urban Grotesk (a very airy, open grotesque typeface with large x-height and uniform grayness).

Typefaces from 2015: Pacifista (stencil).

Typefaces from 2016: BC Novatica (by Tomas Brousil and Marek Pistora (Briefcase Type): Novatica was created based on a commission from the Czech commercial television station Nova in 2007. Marek Pistora worked with Tomas Brousil to create an alternative to a readable, simply designed sans. They naturally called the typeface Novatica. In 2014 TV Nova decided to abandon Novatica for good, and in so doing it released the exclusive licence it had been using. Novatica thus became a new typeface offered by Briefcase Type Foundry.

Typefaces from 2017: Jaroslav (monolinear sans, named after Jaroslav Benda, followed in 2020 by Benda), Pepi and Rudi (a sans and slab pair based on basic shapes such as circles, rectangles and triangles).

Typefaces from 2020: Atyp BL (+variable), Atyp (+variable). A 25-style sans family remotely influenced by Bauhaus.

Typefaces from 2021: Crabath (a 72-style transitional typeface family based on the 1761 specimen book of Czech typefounder Vaclav Jan Krabat; this family covers several optical ranges, from Subhead to Display to Text, and features wonderful initial caps).

Typefaces from 2022: Atyp Kido (a 6-weight and variable rounded sans family for Latin, Greek and Cyrillic).

Brousil made many corporate or identity fonts. Examples include Brzda (a custom font for Czech artist Pavel Brazda), Budovatel (a custom font for the Bohemian National Hall in New York), and Union (custom webfonts for the Czech graphic design union).

MyFonts page. Behance link. Klingspor link. MyFonts interview.

View Tomas Brousil's typefaces.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Suitcase Type Foundry
 [Buy fonts]
 [Designer info]
Behance page
Klingspor Museum page
MyFonts search
Monotype search
Fontspring search
Google search

INTERNAL LINKS
Type design in Czechia ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Typewriter fonts ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿ Very thin (hairline sans) typefaces ⦿ Octagonal typefaces ⦿ Unicase type design ⦿ Brush script typefaces ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿ DIN ⦿ Monospaced fonts ⦿ Fashion mag typefaces ⦿ Stencil fonts ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Variable fonts ⦿ Ornamental caps typefaces ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿