An exclusive family of typefaces as a unifying element for a community, freely available to all members of that community, is a fascinating concept for any type designer. Matthew Carter applied this idea to Yale University.
Yves Peters is a graphic designer / rock drummer / father of three who tries to be critical about typography without coming across as a snob. Previously a columnist for Typographer.org and editor-in-chief of The FontFeed, he currently divides his time between teaching at the Communication, Media and Design department of Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, and publishing at Adobe Create and writing for a variety of type foundries, weaving pop culture and design trends into foundational typographic stories. His ability to identify most typefaces on sight is utterly useless in daily life.
What a lot of alternate versions for different formats/usages: Yale better have some good font cops!
With the big x-height, kind of an “ITC Bembo.” Nobody has done this before, surprisingly (at least, as far as I am aware). Even Headliners International, which had “Neo-Mini-Bodoni” etc., didn’t dare “chop and channel” Bembo!
I particularly like the serifs at the top of the ascenders (which, incidentally, contradict the publicity’s claim that the serifs are simplified).
BTW, isn’t it about time we started calling this face Griffo, after its originator?
I go to an art school, and I get syllabus after syllabus in Comic Sans, of all things. Stupid Yale with their stupid typeface. >:O
Comic Sans at an art school? Ouch. I only went to technical college, but at least I got documents set in Palatino. ;-)
Comic Sans?! Are you at a low-end art pre/nursery school?
*:)
I didn’t go to one of those ?art schools? and still managed to had a lot of syllabuses? in ITC Garamond.
What I’m wondering is where?s the ligatures? Did the illustrious MC forget that even Yaley law students are sensitive to proper character combination flows?
RTFA, Ben.
The “f” stuff is there*, so I guess you mean ligs like “ct”?
Those are even less important than smallcaps…
*
BTW, look at the “f”s in the three different cuts of the font. You’ll notice that the one in the Admin has a modest beak while the other two have full beaks. The reason must be that you want laymen to be able to set non-clashing “fi”, etc. since they don’t know what ligs are, while “designers” do, so the juicier “f” is not a problem.
hhp
>since they don�t know what ligs are, while �designers� do
Irony duly noted.
Maybe it’s just me, but the new Yale typeface reminds me a lot of ITC Galliard. The lowercase “a” has quite a lot of similarity. I only noticed this since I use Galliard quite a bit.