Typophile

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Fortune, Volta, Consort, Farao, PNM Caecilia... I've been on an Egyptian bender recently, but I keep coming back to Clarendon and its wonderful curves and contrasty stems. After spending all night looking at the diifferent versions of Clarendon available digitally, I'm wondering if there's any meaningful difference between them in terms of quality or elegance of the typefaces themselves. URW has a billion different weights, AGFA/Monotype has both Monotype Clarendon and Monotype New Clarendon, and Elsner+Flake offers their version in OpenType, albeit with no OpenType goodies as far as I can tell.

Fred Showker says egyptians should have slightly concave feet; do any of the digital cuts actually do this? Which, if any, of the metal types do? I looked in my Encyclopedia Of Typefaces and Rookledge's, and I think I see what he means, but maybe I'm just suggestible.

Why can't I find Fortune or the expanded weights of Consort available online / in digital form? They sure are pretty... instead I've grabbed Volta and Farao. It generally doesn't take much persuading to get me to buy Storm fonts, and Farao manages to be warm and feminine and understated all at once.

unknown

Take a look at Sutro by Jim Parkinson at www.typedesign.com

unknown

Personally I really like - and licensed - Stefan Hattenbach's Oxtail.
It is very of the now, but subtly, without shouting it into your face.
The unexpected thinning of certain serifs and some quirky design
accents makes it stand out beautifully. And you gotta love that 's' !

No concave feet though. You'll find those in Humanist Slabserif 712,
not in Egyptienne F, the really poor digitization offered by Linotype
which frankly is a disgrace! Source of the Originals my @$...

unknown

Concave feet are to be found in Egyptian 505 as well.
That one's Hrant's favourite.

unknown

Sutro is nice, but it loses much of the quirkiness of Clarendon and feels too much like what it is, which is a Jim Parkinson face for use in magazines. It's clean and effective, but looking at it gives me bad flashbacks to boring profiles of alt.country bands in Rolling Stone and Magnet. The same goes for Humanist Slabserif 712 and Egyptian 505, although those seem like they'd be useful in a lot of the same situations as PNM Caecilia, with a slightly less reserved character.

Oxtail is brilliant. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Yves! It's as playful as Farao but goes in a different direction. Since I just licensed Farao, though, I think I'll hold off on Oxtail for now.

Still, what I was really looking for was feedback on the various digital cuts of Clarendon itself. I'm attached to the weird thin stem of the r with its fat ball terminal, just like I'm attached to the upturned tail of the a�all the features, in short, that Farao plays up to the point of parody. URW, Agfa-Monotype, Elsner+Flake, Bitstream, Scangraphic, Mecanorma and Linotype all have their own cuts of Clarendon, and the only real differences I can identify between them is that the Monotype and Mecanorma versions use the inferior Monotype cut rather than Haas's recut for Linotype. Do any of you have any preferences from aomng that bunch?

unknown

I love belizio, true to the Clarendon look, but with gorgeus italics.

unknown

I've licensed both Belizio and Oxtail. Had to have 'em both because I'm such a type slut. Both are beautiful and highly recommended.

unknown

So you got both, huh? Can I, uh, borrow them? I'll give 'em right back!

Calm down Yves, you know I'm just kidding.

unknown

Type Slut. I like that . That should replace the 'I like type' shirt.

unknown

I would wear* a shirt that said that. Eheheh!

Giza has my vote.
Farao has my vote as well.

*Long weekend in Vegas. I do know the difference between where and wear.

unknown

Consort in metal; its the original and its the best. A little bird has told me that its going to be out in the next year or so in digital form

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