Chris Dickman (bio)

Heroine
Swedish-based foundry Fountain is known both for its custom type work as well as its growing catalog of fonts, available for purchase online. The latest offering is Heroine, designed by Göran Söderström. This was inspired by the circa 1905 Windsor typeface, which apparently is often used for the titles of Woody Allen movies. Available in nine weights, four of which are shown below, the design was brought up to date and given flexibilty via the addition of swashes and alternate characters, easily accessible thanks to the OpenType format. The font will be released September 15 for purchase on the Fountain site, but you can catch a sneak preview thanks to the odd little video above.

Bonesana
I've covered the typographic offerings of Gestalten here before, which is probably best known for its idiosyncratic books devoted to art and design. Although Gestalten doesn't release many fonts, they're typically interesting enough to warrant attention. Matthieu Cortat's Bonesana is not only the most extensive font family to be released thorough Gestalten, it's also (finally!) the first one to include OpenType features. We're told that it was initially created for a new edition of the 18th-century title On Crimes and Punishment, by the Italian philosopher Cesare Bonesana, and as a result echoes such attributes as "utilitarianism, clarity and reason." The font can be purchased in single weights or as a collection on the Gestalten site, which also provides a detailed interview with Cortat.

Allotment
British design partnership Kapitza has been making a name for itself, thanks in part to a steady flow of new picture fonts. The latest release is Allotment, which again consists of hand-drawn illustrations that provide clean outlines with the minimum number of vector points (making modification much easier). The inspiration for this set came from the partners being allocated an area for a vegetable garden in the London Docklands area. Provided as an OpenType font containing 56 characters, Allotment can be purchased on the Kapitza site.

Neue Swift
Did you know that Swift is one of the most popular 20th-century serif typefaces? Well, don't feel bad, neither did I. Created in the 80s by Gerard Unger for use in newspapers, he updated this series of fonts in 1995 under the name of Swift 2.0. Now Linotype has worked with him to move Swift to OpenType format, describing Neue Swift not as a redesign but as a "significant upgrade." Swift 3.0, in effect. Not only has the character set been expanded, adding dozens of glyphs per font, but small caps and oldstyle figures can now be easily addressed, thanks to the wonders of OpenType. Neue Swift is available for purchase on the Linotype site.

MISO
And in closing, a modest freebie. Mårten Nettelbladt's MISO is positioned as "a heavy duty typeface for the construction industry." It's available for free download in three weights: Light, Regular and Bold, in TrueType and OpenType formats.

Chris Dickman
Founding Editor, Graphics.com