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LUC DEVROYE

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The best commercial typefaces of 2015: Luc's selection

This is my own selection of the best commercial typefaces published in 2015, grouped by category.

Text typefaces: Strato Pro (Olivier Gourvat). Trueca (Senso Type). Humanistic and very legible. Marco (Toshi Omagari, 2011; produced by Type Together in 2015). A humanist text family with calligraphic roots for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek. Brenta (Ludwig Ubele). A sharp-edged wedge serif typeface family. Neacademia Subhead (Sergei Egorov, Rosetta Type). Neacademia is Egorov's impressive revival of Aldine / Venetian types, first developed in 2009. Its Subhead subfamily for Latin and Cyrillic was added in 2015.

Sans typefaces: URW Geometric (Jörn Oelsner). Inspired by the German geometric typefaces of the 1920s. Cobalte (Jean-Baptiste Levée). Lapidary and flared, and very warm and legible in long texts. Quotient (James Montalbano). James describes it as Trajan Sans. Mallory (Tobias Frere-Jones). Comspot and Comspot Tec (Nils Thomsen at TypeMates). A useful and readable rounded sans for mobile devices and advertizing. Quenda (Marc Lohner). Gill Sans Nova (George Ryan, Monotype). A 48 weight extension of Gill Sans, with coverage of Greek and Cyrillic, and plenty of fancy styles such as Deco, Inline and Shadow. Setimo (Fernando Caro, at Dalton Maag). In the corporate sans category. Core Sans GS (S-Core). A rounded version of the earlier Core Sans G typeface family. Woodford Bourne (Paulo Goode). A 19th century grotesque family. Bill Corporate (Oliver Jeschke, OGJ Type Design). A geometric family inspired by Max Bill. Objektiv (Bruno Mello at Dalton Maag). Frygia (Stawix Ruecha and Kawisara Vacharaprucks). A soft industrial sans family. Akko Pro Condensed (Akira Kobayashi, Linotype). Abrade (Jason Vandenberg). A 12-style geometric sans with medium x-height and perfect rhythm. PF Centro Sans Condensed (Parachute). Vito (Thomas Gabriel, Typejockeys): Masculine and sporty for adrenaline junkies, reliable and elegant for serious typographers, but with a touch of bling for high snobiety. Diodrum (Indian Type Foundry). A great set of organic / spurless sans typefaces with inflated outlines and a friendly character. Druk, Druk Text, Druk Wide, Druk Condensed and Druk Text Wide (Berton Hasebe, Commercial Type). An unbelievable collection with extreme styles that will appeal to all tastes. My favorite in this bold collection is Druk XX Condensed Super. Canal (Étienne Aubert Bonn). A workhorse sans designed to recreate the atmosphere of blue collar America in the 19th and 20th centuries, named after the industrial Lachine Canal in Montreal. Muller (Radomir Tinkov, Fontfabric). Twenty styles from hairline to heavy, and a wider glyph projection than normal. Scandia (Eric Olson, Process Type Foundry). Geomanist (Atipo). Nine styles from hairline to black, clean and stylish---the geometric parent clearly dominated its humanist partner. Nordikka Sans (Luciano Vergara). Normally I do not like tall x-height or Scandinavian look, but I will make an exception for this one while waiting for a Norwegian ferry in the North Sea fog. Karlsen Round (Type Union). A 14-style rounded mobile device sans family. Panton (Fontfabric). A broad 34-weight sans family with softened geometric forms. With icons and a Cyrillic and a made-for-iphone look, this is sure to be a mega-hit. I mean a blockbuster. Amsi Pro (Stawix Ruecha). Inspired by Block Berthold, this rounded sans with dwarfy descenders shines in the narrow and ultra fat corner of the spectrum. Don Sans (Andreas Stötzner). Like good wine and Billie Holiday, anything Andreas touches sparkles. An industrial sturdy workhorse no-nonsense sans.

Type systems: Jornal de Notícias (Pedro Leal). A complete set of newspaper types with special attention paid to the condensed and agate (micro) styles. Karlo (Sans, Serif, Open) designed by Sofie Beier for Die Gestalten.

Art deco typefaces: Monaco Book (Carles Rodrigo). Miasto (Maciek Blazniak). Eleanor (Charlotte Kousgaard). Great student project work from Denmark's premier design school. Mint Julep (Patrick Seymour).

Hipster typefaces: Capri Pro (Felix Braden).

Script typefaces: Bambusa Pro (Hanneke Classen). A bamboo pen script collection. Mostter Script (Agung Syaifudin). Frauen Script (Lucas Sharp, Incubator). Merengue Script (2015). A creamy script by Panco Sassano and Alejandro Paul. Hazel Script (Dave Rowland). Annabella Calligraphy Script (Emily Spadoni). Pieve (Alberto Di Santo). Joella Brush (Joanne Hewitt). Voltaire (Ksenia Belobrova). Based on illustrations found in a 1734 book by Voltaire. Sabores Script (Sofia Mohr). Stylist Pro (Hanneke Classen). FF Eggo (Lukasz Dziedzic). Gratitude Script (Alejandro Paul and Kathy Milici). Backlash (Molly Jacques Erickson, Dathan Boardman). The next step in gonzo splatter lettering scripts. Mela (Giuseppe Salerno, Resistenza). Smitten Script (Callie Hegstrom). In the watercolor brush genre, one of the best fonts of the year. Biplo (Mucahit Gayiran). In the watercolor brush genre, a beauty. Liebe Lotte (Ulrike Rausch: upright connected script), Jolie (Anton Scholtz). A calligraphic wedding script. Amsterdam (F Is For Fonts). An ink splatter script. Magellan (Anastasia Dimitriadi). ALS Finlandia Script (Julia Sysmäläinen). Aphrosine (Alexandra Korolkova and Alexander Lubovenko, Paratype). Approaching real handwriting... Mina Chic (Giuseppe Salerno). Auberge Script (Alejandro Paul). Gloss Drop (Roland Hürmann). A treefrog-style brush script. Pretty Script (Decade Type Foundry). Frost (Emil Karl Bertell, Fenotype). Journey (Emil Karl Bertell, Fenotype).

Sketched, Layered or Poster typefaces: Triump Rough (Enrique Hernandez at Latinotype). Balboa Plus (Jim Parkinson). An extension of his earlier condensed sans headline typeface Balboa (2001). Mrs Onion (Hipopotam Studio). Smile Pro (Rodrigo Araya and Andrey Kudryavtsev). Brim Narrow (Jamie Clarke). Intro Rust (Ani Petrova, Svetoslav Simov and Radomir Tinkov at Fontfabric). A 214-style roughened version of Intro. Le Havre Hand (Jeremy Dooley). A large sketched layered typeface family. Granz (Pintassilgo). Based on the beatnik style retro lettering on David Stone Martin's jazz album covers. Bazaruto (Brian J. Bonislawsky and Jim Lyles). Natura (Giuseppe Salerno, Resistenza). This has a fountain pen script and accompanying icons, stamps and notebook styles. Irrlicht (Ari Hausel, Aarhaus) is based on Christian Heinrich Kleukens's 1923 typeface Judith Type. The is pure German expressionism for the 21st century. Perfection. Babar (Oscar Guerrero). Crafty Caps (Art of Sun). Signpost (Keith Tricker).

Blackletter typefaces: Elfen Fraktur (Ralf Herrmann). A revival of Elfen Fraktur (1919, M. Beck). Luxus Gothic (Drew Melton).

Dingbats and ornaments: Goby Graphic (Amy Dietrich). Medical Icons (Thieme Verlag and URW++). FS Millbank Icons, part of the wayfinding font family FS Millbank by Stuart de Rozario at Fontsmith. Mr Stickman (David Kerkhoff) In David's own words, a happy clappy kind of font. Jabana Extras (Nils Thomsen). An excellent companion set for the poster typeface family Jabana Alt.

Garalde typefaces: Guillaume (George Tulloch). ATF Garamond (Mark van Bronkhorst, Igino Marini, & Ben Kiel). An 18-style family based on the Garamond designed between 1918 and 1923 by Morris Fuller Benton and Thomas M. Cleland at ATF.

Display typefaces: ATC Duel (Alex Sheyn). Salvaje (Cristian Vargas). An exuberant flashy in-your-face typeface family inspired by Birds of Paradise and designed at the KABK in Den Haag. Moholy Sans (Laszlo Mihaly Naske). Stolzl Display (Mariya V. Pigoulevskaya) and Stolzl. Named after Gunta Stölzl, the Bauhaus's only female master. Dalat (Kasper Pyndt). Escritura (Ricardo Santos). Display text type with renaissance elements. Emeritus (Galen Lawson). A lapidary typeface family. OCR-T (Martin Tiefenthaler). Proza Display (Jasper de Waard, Bureau Roffa). The flashy sister of Proza (2013). Gosdin (Andrew Walsh, TypeTrough). An elegant inline serif titling typeface. RNS Obesa Fat Font (Yorlmar Campos). Nord Form (Letterwerk). A beveled typeface with three accompanying styles. Piepie (Ryoichi Tsunakawa). Fat was never this beautiful. Blesk (Ksenya Samarskaya). Bautype (Malwin Béla Hürkey).

Slab serif typefaces: Calanda (Dieter Hofrichter). Clarendon Graphic (François Rappo, Optimo). With 26 styles including stencils and all necessary Opentype features, this optically optimized typeface family replaces all previous Clarendons.

Copperplate: Dolcetto (Drew Melton). Glade (Alison Argento). A formal calligraphic copperplate script a useful suite of widths. Valentia (Olcar Alcaide). Barracuda (Vates Design).

Wood type revivals: Titular (Latinotype). Not a revival, but a large headline family inspired by wood type. Gothic Open Shaded (Matt Braun, Wood Type Revivals). After a typeface shown in George Nesbitt's 1838 catalog.

Letterpress emulation: Racon (Ahmet Altun). Sucrose (Ryan Martinson). Bronn Rust (Fontfabric). Caston (Gearwright). A revival of Morris Fuller Benton's Card Litho (1917). True North Textures (Cindy Kinash and Charles Gibbons).

Didone typefaces: Flabbergast (Tyler Finck). Essonnes (James Todd). Télémaque FY (Jean-Baptiste Morizot). Pure extreme Didot, by the French for the French. Perfumed and ironed. Encorpada Classic Compressed and Encorpada Classic Condensed by Eduilson Wessler Coan. Kalnia (Freda Medrano).

Fashion mag typefaces: D'Lotus (Kevin He). Rastignac Black (Tomato Kosir). A fat face didone. Grandesque (Julian Hrankov). Lingerie (Moshik Nadav). Revista (Paula Nazal Selaive, Marcelo Quiroz and Daniel Hernandez, at Latinotype) is a fashion mag typographic system. It has Revista Script (connected style), Revista Stencil, Revista Dingbats, Revista Inline and the didone Revista all caps set of typefaces. Poster (Inigo Jerez, Textaxis). A fat face didone. Developed between 2008 and 2014 and published in 2015. Glam (Rakel Thomas). This typeface is used in Glamour Iceland Magazine. Giaza (Anthony James). A fashion mag didone with a free Stencil style. Jules (Dino dos Santos and Pedro Leal). This fat fashion mag didone in 45-styles is inspired by several plates from Portuguese calligrapher Antonio Jacintho de Araujo. Lince (Typomancer). A 16-style display family rooted in didones. Coco Gothic (Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini, Zetafonts), a small x-height geometric fashion mag sans family named after Coco Chanel: elegant, beautiful, wonderful. Lust Hedonist (Neil Summerour), with Didone, Italic and Script sub-styles. The ultimate fashion mag typeface. Model (Maximiliano Sproviero). Couture (Neil Summerour).

Stencil typefaces: Trepa (Josep Patau). Inspired by commercial signs and the 1960s French art movement Graphie Latine. Secca Stencil (Andreas Seidel).

Multilingual typefaces: Croogla (Sergiy Tkachenko). An informal rounded sans with an almost unicase Latin part that harmonizes perfectly with its Cyrillic companion. Koppla (Minjoo Ham). Her graduation typeface at KABK, Koppla covers Latin and Hangul in multiple styles. Molsaq Pro (Ali Almasri). An Arabic / Latin rounded poster typeface family with perfect interplay between the different scripts. Noort (Juan Bruce). For Latin, Greek and Bengali. Another superb effort by the graduates of the University of Reading. Lida for Perso-Arabic and Latin. By Borna Izadpanah at the University of Reading. Levnam (Manvel Shmavonyan, Paratype). A flared terminal sans of wide proportions for setting small text. Covers Latin and Cyrillic. Kazimir (CSTM, Ilya Ruderman and Yury Ostromentsky). A didone family for Latin and Cyrillic, designed for short texts and headlines. HS Headline by Gunnlaugur Briem and Hasan Abu Afash. This fat calligraphic didone display typeface covers Latin (Briem's contribution) and Arabic (by Afash, based on the simple lines of Naskh calligraphy). Finos (Anastasia Dimitriadi and Iordanis Passas). A gorgeous typeface family based on Greek retro cinema.

Technical drawing: R&C (Jean Boyault).

Wonderful, adorable, refreshing typefaces: Marquesa (Mario Mimoso). Stuffed Crust (Drew Melton). Described by Drew as follows: Big and greasy never looked so good.

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Best typefaces of 2015 ⦿ Articles on type design written by Luc Devroye ⦿