The Weekly Typographic

Love type: fonts and romance New workshop alert!! We’re so excited to partner with our very clever friend Thomas Jockin and give you the chance to dig into his amazing business brain when it comes to selling custom type projects to clients. He’s pitched (and won) type projects with big names like Microsoft and Google, and has a decade of experience in crafting the perfect pitch, all of which he’ll be sharing with YOU on 28 Feb. Register for this one to go away with heaps of tips for your next type pitch. In this week’s articles we’ve got two industry topics, one on the recent move by Dribbble to bring Fontspring into their growing family, and another from Nuclear bits on what they’re seeing as a result of Hoefler&Co joining Monotype last year. In a typographic tribute to Valentine’s Day, we’re getting squishy and talking about rrrrromance. Ok, it’s not a day we’re actually fans of, but we did love the excuse to talk about some type and design trends in popular culture… even if they’re trends that Olivia H

Books for the brain It’s book week here at the League and we’re getting nerdy talking about some of the best type design books around at the moment, particularly some more recent releases we’ve enjoyed. Steph’s joining us on the podcast to chat about books about making fonts (Dan Cederholm’s Twenty Bits I Learnt About Making Fonts, OH no Type Co’s Type School zine, and Sofie Beier’s small but mighty Type Tricks), books about a very specific category of typography (Arcade Game Typography by Toshi Omigari), and an absolute beauty of a book that has a very typographic influence (Spike by Spike Lee, designed by Tré Seals). Olivia and Steph share everything they love about these books on the podcast, and if this piques your interest to add to your design library, you can find out more about these books, or buy your own copies with the links we’ve included in this week’s newsletter. If you’ve grabbed any other recent type books that we’ve missed, hit us up on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll find us @theleagueof on bot

An interview with Olivia King, design director and type designer It’s a double dose of OK this week as our own Olivia Kane is interviewing the Australian design director and type designer, Olivia King. We promise it’s a fun and insightful conversation, and not confusing with all the Olivias! We talk about broaching the subject of bespoke typefaces with clients, the joys of open source, the art of creating a typeface that encompasses the essence of a whole geographic area, accessibility, and some mental health and career thoughts for designers. A great conversation to kick off 2022’s interviews. We’ve also got some reading for you this week; something different from Bauhaus, a neat rebrand, some inspiration about the longevity of typography, and a bit of eye-candy in the form of some book spines. If you spot anything cool on the web that you’d like us to chat about, hit us up on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll find us @theleagueof on both platforms. Weekly Typographic Newsletter Links Find out more at http://podc

What's with all the death metal lettering?! Ok, strap yourselves in, we’re talking metal this week. Late last year Olivia noticed the curious ‘trend’ of metal-esq lettering being used in all sorts of places. This inspired her to go DEEP into type detective mode and got into the stylistic musical and aesthetic differences in the sub-genres of metal, the logo legend behind so many metal logos, and why we’re seeing this crop up in some pretty unlikely places right now. It’s a dark, loud, and fun ride in nerd alert this week as we explore all of this, and more. Meanwhile, in the type and design news and articles we’re talking about a brilliant project championing the many unsung women throughout the history of typography, fixing all your murky CSS gradient woes, checking out a very funky type-heavy brand identity, and being inspired by a cool project by a friend of the League. What have we missed? If you spot anything cool on the web that you’d like us to chat about, hit us up on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll find

Woo! 2022! We’re baaaaaack! New year, new podcasts, interviews, workshops, newsletter features, and of course, new type + design news. We’re super excited to be back on air with our first podcast of 2022, where we talk about a cool piece of work that Micah worked on with Google, a suuuuper inspirational project from Do-Hee Kim, a very exciting update to League Spartan (it moves!), some client conversation tips, and a good old revival project. Micah and Olivia also give you an exclusive sneak peek into some of the topics we’ve got coming up in future nerd alerts and workshops, AND Olivia shares some of her expectations on trends that might fly, or die, in 2022. What have we missed? If you spot anything cool on the web that you’d like us to chat about, hit us up on Twitter or Instagram, you’ll find us @theleagueof on both platforms. Weekly Typographic Newsletter Links Find out more at http://podcast.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

Our favorite free font finds of 2021 This week we’re wrapping up for the year by looking back at our favorite free fonts that we’ve found this year. We’ve dived back into the shares from the last 12 months and have enjoyed revisiting some of the ones we still can’t get enough of. We’ve got everything from workhorses to fancier scripts, and something pretty creative too. So scroll down and listen in to find out what freebies we loved this year. We hope they fit nicely into your own catalogue (or gazillion open tabs, if you’re like us) of great type for future projects. This is our last podcast episode for 2021 as we enjoy a break over the holidays. But don’t worry! The newsletter will still drop into your inbox every Friday to keep you up to date on the latest in type and design news. It’s been a wild year, we’ve hosted seven workshops alongside our amazing guest teachers, shared five interviews with other type and design creatives, collaborated with the team at TypeWknd for their daily wraps, released a new o

This year's most share-worthy font reads It’s (somehow?!) December and we’re wrapping up for the year by looking back on some of our most share-worthy type related reads of the year. We’ve trawled through our newsletter archive (ok, Micah wrote some code that pulled out the most popular articles) and revisited some of those topics and ideas that stuck with us. So scroll down and listen in to find out what topped the links this year. There’s everything from evaluating type, awesome custom type projects, wingding history, logo design tips, and watches. We hope you enjoy them all over again! Weekly Typographic Newsletter Links Find out more at http://podcast.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

Know Your Value: Three Pricing Traps Creatives Fall Into We’re back chattin’ type and design this week, and there’s a lot to cover! There’s another rebrand to add to the ever-growing fast-food rebrand list of 2021, Jony Ive has created something unexpected, WeTransfer have done a fascinating research piece on the state of creativity in 2021, and Monotype have gobbled up some more fonts

An interview with Sarah Hyndman of Type Tasting It’s interview time this week as we fully nerd out with Sarah Hyndman. Sarah is the founder of Type Tasting and use typography to create unique experiences that transform what people think, feel and do. We loved our conversation about type trends, semiotics, the emotions of type, and why sometimes a game of ’snog, marry, avoid’ is all it takes to help non-designers understand the emotion of type. We hope you enjoy the conversation (we could have talked for hours). If it left you wanting more, check out Sarah’s latest Adobe Max talk (there’s a link in the articles to make it easy for you). Whilst we’re not talking about articles this week, we are still looking at and thinking about type and design news to share with you. This week we’ve got an AMAZING piece of work by our friend Tré Seals, some ideas on the relationship between design and writing, a look at the way Adobe is so intertwined with design work, and a thought provoker on perfectionism. Weekly Typograph

The Look of Luxury We’re super excited about this weekend’s workshop, Bettering Your Lettering with Alanna Flowers. We’ll be nerding out on getting started in lettering, and how to use these skills in your own lettering, type design, or even graphic design practice. It's totally beginner friendly and you'll be able to create a complete lettering piece over the two days. We love having something to show from a learning experience. This week we’re getting into some deep type design news, there’s an interview about launching a foundry, a quirky article about digital fonts, and a cool typeface project including everyone’s favorite toy; LEGO. Over in nerd alert we’re talking about luxury (dahhhhhling). It’s a fun extension of the conversation we touched on a few weeks ago when discussing the branding (or blanding) of so many luxury fashion houses. So we thought it deserved a whole nerd alert of its own. We’re talking why certain products or brands have developed the luxury tag, how that drives consumer behavior, a

WTF is font mastering?! New workshop! We’re delighted that the ever-so-skilled lettering artist Alanna Flowers is joining us for our next workshop (20-21 Nov). Wittily titled Bettering Your Lettering, you'll learn type & lettering basics that will give your work a strong foundation. It's totally beginner friendly and you'll be able to create a complete lettering piece over the two days. Perfect timing for your holiday cards! This week we’re going behind the scenes on a cheesy, gooey piece of brand and packaging work that Olivia has been working on at JKR, getting into a fresh approach to font licensing (that we are definitely here for), and taking a cheeky look at some of the unhelpful turns of phrase that are pervasive in the design world. It’s a fun one. After Olivia’s grilling on lettering vs type design in last week’s nerd alert, it’s time for Micah to go into the hot seat and explain the mysteries of mastering; or finally finishing that pesky font... Weekly Typographic Newsletter Links Find out more

Lettering versus type design skills Look, we couldn’t cover this week’s type and design news without mentioning the big one… the meta-verse. What does it mean for designers? How will the future of a virtual universe change And what about that new logo?? Away from that and back into the real world(!), we’re talking about a great behind the scenes interview with the Sharp Type co-founders, the news about PostScript Type 1 support being dropped by Adobe, and a super cool piece of design / visual communication by the clever folks at The Pudding. We’re having more of a conversation in this week’s nerd alert, where Micah and Steph grill Olivia on her experiences practicing both type design and lettering, the lessons she takes from one to the other, and how those skills help her more generally as a designer. We had fun, we hope you enjoy the conversation too. If you have more questions on the topic that we didn’t cover, drop us a note on Twitter or Instagram @theleagueof. PS. If you want to hear our previous conver

An interview with Nadine Chahine of I Love Typography Wow, what a weekend of learning with Dan Cederholm last week. Dan was so generous with his font design knowledge and we loved the snippets of wisdom he shared. We also loved seeing everyone's work produced across the two workshops and the blossoming enthusiasm for type design

How to describe a typeface Don’t forget! This weekend we’re joined by Dan Cederholm, one of the OG founders of Dribbble, who will be sharing his empowering, positive, and practical insights into making your first font. Even though he’s a super experienced designer, he only made his first font in 2020, when a pesky pandemic gave him the gift of time and local inspiration. This week’s articles and podcast conversation have a bit of a theme; in preparation for a special interview episode next week

Why is Victorian typography so spooky?! We’re fresh off of a great workshop last weekend with our friends at Spline. Big thanks to the many, many people who showed up to learn more about 3D type; we can’t wait to see what you create (make sure you tag us on Instagram and Twitter with what you learnt).

The world of syllabics and why they matter now What a few weeks! After interviews, conferences and collaborations, we’re back and chatting about some type and design news. Including the big story about Monotype purchasing Hoefler&Co and taking over the H&Co collection as part of this. We’re also obsessed with the Gucci type project as they celebrate their centennial with ten stunning typefaces (that you can download to play with!). And then we’re revelling in this verrrry geeky article about Finnish type design - with a focus on the development of a font for Nokia. Also, last call for this weekend’s FREE workshop with our friends at Spline. If you were inspired by our interview with Alejandro and Feride two weeks ago and want to see the tool in action, make sure you join us. Go register right now. Go on, we’ll wait. In this week’s nerd alert we’re taking inspiration from last weekend’s Typewknd talks and looking into syllabics. What they are, why they matter. We learnt a lot about syllabics as part of

Typewknd 2021: Highlights from Day 4 What a weekend! We’ve been dropping into your podcast player all weekend because we’re at TypeWknd 2021! Today's episode is our best bits from the final day of the conference. If you haven’t heard of TypeWknd, it’s an online-only type conference for everyone who sees, draws, makes, studies, and sells type. They want to remove the barriers that so many people face when progressing their type and design careers, and so the whole event is COMPLETELY FREE!

Typewknd 2021: Highlights from Day 3 Surprise! We’re dropping into your podcast player all weekend because we’re at TypeWknd 2021! Today's episode is our best bits from day 3 of the conference. If you haven’t heard of TypeWknd, it’s an online-only type conference for everyone who sees, draws, makes, studies, and sells type. They want to remove the barriers that so many people face when progressing their type and design careers, and so the whole event is COMPLETELY FREE!

Typewknd 2021: Highlights from Day 2 Surprise! We’re dropping into your podcast player all weekend because we’re at TypeWknd 2021! Today's episode is our best bits from day 2 of the conference. If you haven’t heard of TypeWknd, it’s an online-only type conference for everyone who sees, draws, makes, studies, and sells type. They want to remove the barriers that so many people face when progressing their type and design careers, and so the whole event is COMPLETELY FREE!

Typewknd 2021: Highlights from Day 1 Surprise! We’re dropping into your podcast player a whole 24 hours early this week because we’re at TypeWknd 2021! Today's episode is our best bits from day 1 of the conference. If you haven’t heard of TypeWknd, it’s an online-only type conference for everyone who sees, draws, makes, studies, and sells type. They want to remove the barriers that so many people face when progressing their type and design careers, and so the whole event is COMPLETELY FREE!