The skill has its advantages: 1) An ‘a’ is a common letter, so even a small quantity of text is likely to contain one; 2) Lowercase ‘a’ is often a rather distinctive letterform in a typeface, so it requires only a small fraction of my visual memory to retain a great number of them; and, lastly but importantly, 3) It’s impressive. Much like those contestants on the TV program “Name That Tune” who could identify a song in one note, I can often identify a typeface by one letter. If only this magnificent skill helped me make new friends at parties, I’d be all set.

However, there are a few faces that render my typeface identification abilities rather underwhelming. Calibre is one of them. The lowercase ‘a’ in this typeface is so distinctive and unlike any other in its category that anyone would recognize it in a second. I must admit, it was not an ‘a’ I loved easily. But as I’ve been setting the face quite a lot in the last few months as a typesetting consultant for WIRED magazine’s redesign, it’s grown on me. Now it seems like anything other than this quirky little ‘a’ would leave the face flat and colorless and, possibly, far too similar to others of its genre.

Calibre is one of a pair of typefaces designed by the [superlative goes here] Kris Sowersby in New Zealand. Calibre and Metric are two distinct typefaces designed simultaneously that share a number of characters, including A, B, E, T, X, b, f, i, l, m, u, x, and y. Then by a clever switch-a-roo of the glyphs C, G, J, K, M S, Z, a, c, e, g, k, s, t, z and 3, Metric takes the tone of a rational geometric whereas Calibre inclines towards the Neo-grotesque. Genius. (Note that each one has its own lower case ‘a’, which I’ve emblazoned in my cerebral database, of course.)

Calibre pays homage to the seldom-seen typeface Recta, designed by Aldo Novarese in 1958. Like Albert Jan-Pool’s FF DIN and Tobias Frere-Jone’s Interstate, both Calibre and Metric were inspired by the hyper-rational letterforms on street signage, proving, as Sowersby says, “typefaces can successfully originate from outside the canon of book-centric history.” Thankfully so.

Carolina de Bartolo is a typography and design history educator as well as the author of the book “Explorations in Typography”. You may regard any of the above claims for her extraordinary typeface identification skills to be vainglorious and largely unsubstantiated.

We are after something wider, sharper, maybe with a sense of Old English spirit. We aren’t worried about what is in fashion — we never have been — we want our read to be interesting, not vogue boring.

We want our book covers and art catalogues to have a marked unevenness, a tension with subtleties that start to pierce your eyes with the sharpness of a Baroque knife but end with terminals like the middle-aged spread of a Dutch comedian.

We need these subtleties, they are the spirit of the time mixed with the spirit of our time. Warm? Sure, but not an attack of the friendlies. Even in the bold, where it has more prominence, it keeps a low contrast grounding. And what of the figures you say? Oh, the figures. They are less restrained than the letters, a youthful experiment. Indeed, a beautiful collection of letters.

This is what we want, but can not have. No. Not yet.

Duncan Forbes is one half of the design duo The International Office in Wellington, New Zealand.

Inspired by the very best of the Dutch types, it is however, no redrawing or revival. All too often, types with such distinguished pedigrees make recourse to bells and whistles, to incongruous embellishments, in an effort to differentiate themselves from their forebears. Newzald shuns these in favour of refinement, clarity, and sobriety, alloyed with a maniac’s attention to detail, and spacing.

When Sowersby describes Newzald as “a text typeface [of] economical rigour”, he’s spot on. It’s economical without ever feeling claustrophobic; and rigourous without coming off as overbearing or overly dark in colour.

A broad character set, well-drawn and well-proportioned small caps, a warm and unfussy italic, and plenty of everything else to make this one hell of a typeface.

John Boardley is a graphic designer and writer living in Japan. He likes type, and is founder of ILT and WLT.

While there is a hint of grotesk, it does not simply copy but is truly a reflection of the present — type made in and for the digital age (of course!).

National is slightly mannered, which becomes more apparent in the heavier weights yet it still remains simple, subtle and serious. A digitally carved Opentype wonder, it has everything the modern designer needs for modern typesetting. Rather than dwell on the amazing OpenType features, it’s the typeface as a whole that should really be given attention. It has a human charm that gives such warmth and learned beauty to text and after seeing paragraphs and pages set in it I’m sure the reader will agree too.

While National is only the second retail typeface from KLIM it has already been awarded a Certificate of Excellence from the TDC in Typeface Design 2008.

Duncan Forbes is a designer — and occasional type critic — at the studio Experimenta in Wellington, New Zealand.

So it was quite surprising to discover Feijoa, a new text face hailing from the other side of the world that displayed that same trait in its forms. Its most distinctive feature is the almost complete absence of straight lines, which makes for a warm and sensuous design. Those gently curved straights and rounded corners lend the design a beautiful organic, almost calligraphic quality. Yet there is nothing frivolous to the typeface, it all is functional and looks very self-assured.

Feijoa is an accomplished design in three text weights and a display version: a lean, efficient type family with no fat on the meat. The typeface comes packed to the rafters with typographic goodies like numerous figure sets, arrows and dingbats, and an extended set of Licko-style ligatures, only better. It is indeed hard to believe that Feijoa was Kris Sowersby’s first venture into serious book face territory. I would be tempted to say this looks promising for the future, but frankly that would be patronizing, even insulting towards a designer as talented as Sowersby.

Yves Peters is a [typo]graphic designer, rock drummer and father of three. Besides writing for Typographer.org and Unzipped – his blog for FontShop Benelux — Yves moderates the Type ID board on Typophile.

However, it always did need a serif complement, something with the same color and characteristics. I’ve often used Concorde with it (Erik Spiekermann has also suggested Minion, FF Clifford, and Swift) but now the true companion face exists, designed over three years by Spiekermann with Christian Schwartz and Kris Sowersby.

Meta Serif is far more than a Meta-with-serifs, it’s an entirely new face that carries all the characteristics of Meta; solid, clean and modern, but offering a new expressiveness and verve, a sense of pace and energy. The face is flexible too. As body type, Meta Serif appears as an especially readable book face, the curvy refinements of those lovely hybrid terminals only becoming apparent at display and headline sizes.

The italics are more of a departure from Meta. Where Meta’s italics provided a restrained, almost imperative tone, Meta Serif’s are warm, welcoming and homey. I would even go so far as to describe the Black Italic as being sign-painterly.

Meta Serif is going to be a huge hit with designers of magazines, reference books, and corporate identities, either combined with Meta or on its own. Now, if we can just persuade Spiekermann to include support for Cyrillic and Greek, its status as a pan-European brand face will be assured.

Aegir Hallmundur is a graphic designer whose brilliant blog Ministry of Type is a well-kept secret, but won’t be for long.