Now even more design possibilities with the popular DIN Next. With its technical and neutral character, DIN Next has earned a permanent place in contemporary typography. Now, DIN Next Slab expands the font family further, offering new design potential. Now comes the next step, DIN Next Slab, also produced under the direction of Akira Kobayashi. On a team with Sandra Winter and Tom Grace, Kobayashi is creating the new font variant based on the optimized shapes of DIN Next. The expansion will make the popular font all the more flexible and versatile. Apart from that, the geometric slab serifs underline the technical and formal nature of the font and emphasize a central design element of DIN Next. However, the team did have some challenges to overcome. While it is relatively easy to imagine DIN Next Light with slab serifs, the amount of available space quickly disappears when it comes to the Black styles. Winter explains that many tests and trials were necessary to find a compromise between space, letters and the serif shapes. Experiments with modified contrast in the weight or only one-sided serifs were quickly abandoned. The central, technical and powerful character of the font changed too much. Nevertheless, it was necessary to simplify slightly the shape of some letters, such as the ‘k’ or ‘x’, for example. These changes, first developed in the Black styles, were applied to all weights in order to lend the font a consistent appearance. Like DIN Next, DIN Next Slab also has seven weights, which cover the range from Ultralight to Black, each with matching italic. There are various character sets in all of the styles and the four middle weights have small capitals available. DIN Next Slab harmonizes perfectly with the styles of DIN Next: the basic letterforms and weights are identical. Both versions of the font can work together perfectly, not just in headlines and body text, but also within a text; they complement each other very well as design variations. With the new DIN Next Slab, Monotype expands the DIN Next super family consistently. With DIN Next Slab, you can underscore the technical and formal nature of the understated font not only in headlines, but in texts, as well. In this way, you have new and diverse potential for application, thanks to the way the different styles of DIN Next combine perfectly.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

Sortie Super is a take on one of the kings of display lettering - Caslon's high-contrast, reversed stress 'Italian' style. It looks great at big sizes and in short flurries... and shouldn't be used in confined spaces.  When compared with the original face, the weight and contrast of Sortie Super has been exaggerated. To add gravity to the letters I've increased their width overall and reduced the spacing to a hair-line fracture for added visual impact. Characters like 'S', 'E','O' and 'Z' are relatively close to their historical precedents - however the terminals on the 'C-G-S-З-Є', which have been drawn so to be more consistent. Other aspects, such as the leg of the 'R' and 'Я', the apex of the 'A' and the spur of the 'G' are revised and simplified, to help spacing and optical weight across the alphabet. Also, to reduce visual noise terminals in characters like 'C', 'J' and 'R'' are horizontally aligned. Meanwhile, the central horizontal strokes in the 'B', 'P' and 'R' etc are reduced to a hairline, so as to create a more simplified system of thick-to-thin.  The temptation when drawing this kind of esoteric display alphabet is to start to rely on modular components. Which, while copy-paste-repeat is a sure-fire way to make the face more visually consistent, it's a lazy method that risks allowing the font become soulless and mechanical. An early experiment I made was making a monospaced version, which was useful in headlines, but it lost that loving feeling. So, by maintaining a handful of flourishes – the tail of the '?', the inky drop of the '!', the bulbous gloop of arms of the 'Ж' and 'К', the swirling legs in the 'R', 'Я' and 'Л', the big-bowling weight of the 'J' and 'U' – plus a few in-built inconsistencies and a bit of its own silliness, Sortie Super retains some of the organic warmth of its ancestor. Conversely, the counters, apertures and negative space are largely rigidly geometric, which helps give the revival font a bit of a modern touch. Sortie Super is an uppercase-only display font that comes with Western, Central and East European Latin, extended Cyrillic, Pinyin, as well as a set of hairline graphic features and symbols.

Among the countless typefaces available today, the Modern Face style is relatively underrepresented. During the 19th century and then later with the competition from the mechanized hot metal types and film setting, a number of attractive headline types appeared in this style. For text, however, the available types were limited to those based on tried and true classics like Walbaum, Didot and Bodoni, which were created between 1780 and 1830, as well as a few variations from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The demand for new Modern text types remained nonexistant until the 1960s. Such was the situation when the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) commissioned me to come up with a concept and sketches of a new hot metal type. I was able to convince the director of the foundry that there was a niche to be filled with contemporary Modern typography. Another reason for the production of a new type was of a technical nature: the introduction of a new setting technique should not be limited to existing typefaces, but instead should lead to innovative text types suited to the demands of the new applications. André Gürtler, Basilia's designer: I began to work on the concept and initial designs of the new text type in 1968. I wanted to give the type a classical look, expressed above all in the strong stroke contrast between the robust verticals and fine horizontal strokes and serifs. This is one of the main characteristics of Modern typography.""This new typeface, Basilia, is distinguished by its soft, open appearance as well as a number of details which together mark a departure from historical models. For example, it has nothing of Bodoni's round letters and their angular, narrow spacing, and displays instead round forms with a much softer stroke in the curves. It was very important to me to avoid the Modern characteristic of stiff, vertical, grid-like strokes and to create instead a lighter, more transparent type. I retained the Modern style by using straight horizontal serifs at right angles to the strokes to still give the type its sense of rigidity." Three sketches for Basilia (normal, italic, and bold) were finished in 1973. Only the 9-point size was produced at first. In the following years, basic weights were made and adapted to filmsetting."