The first that popped into my head is Sophisto

I like House Industries’ Simian for it’s rounded, modern forms, it’s weights and capital alternates. It also has a text companion.

Jan,

Thanks for mentioning Sophisto. It could very well work together with this product. Sophisto have a modern and rather slick attitude, if you ask me. And J Fry, you’re welcome with further questions regarding Sophisto if you have any? Good luck!

FF Max, the antidote to Eurostile.

Slightly Off Topic.: Just a note.: Linking to / Accessing direct links at FontShop doesnt seem to work any longer, for me.. ( Maybe I am the only one, but.: It seems I am trapped in an infinite loop between Typophile and the FontShop portal page.. :)

Dav, formlos

Thanks for the report, formlos. There seems to be an issue with our new traffic cop software that directs folks from different regions to their correct FontShop. If others are having this problem please let me know.

Fontshop: I had the same problem, but after reloading the initial page and selecting the country, the link from Typophile works fine.

a high end speaker/components company (think bose, infinity, JBL etc)

This is actually “mid-end”, for want of a better term, and the domain of fairly predictable corporate identities. Hi-fi manufacturers are generally good candidates for undistinguished and boring identities. But the deeper into hi-end territory you get, the more contrived and “faux craft” the identities become, ranging from your little nephew’s attempts at geometric cool to pink marble mantelpieces with gold leaf borders. Try http://www.ear-yoshino.com/ for the chintzy version, or http://www.wadia.com/ and http://www.wilson-benesch.com/ for the techie version. There’s only one truly hi-end manufacturer who manages to translate sonic performance into an at least inoffensive identity, (http://www.lavardin.com), but they’re French, so that doesn’t count (just kidding, J-F). Mind you, they all have 1998-vintage websites.

Hm. Better get my anorak off, this will get out of hand.

I’m thinking Storm’s Andulka might be good, perhaps combined with one of his other fonts.

Storm has some new faces on his site. Elektra and Staromat might be useful. Sorry, I can’t link to those new ones; they’re not on MyFonts yet, and I’m having trouble getting onto http://www.stormtype.com/ for some reason.

You might also have a look at Warnock Pro.

wow! look at Elektra! I just love storm for continuing to put out fresh faces. This one has a slick feel that might work well for what you’ve described, j.

Try Mario Feliciano’s Garda. It’s classy and contemporary at the same time, especially with the alternative characters. His own site, with a nice showing of Garda, is down at the moment, but you can try the name of the company in the ‘mud typer’ at Village, in the three versions.

I’d think of a custom job.

Check the Sota for reference. They’ve been around for a while.

http://www.sotaturntables.com/images/Millennia.jpg

Interesting - Elektra is like a Klavika/FF Dax mix.

FF Max is an great choice for this type of thing. As I recall the XBox 360 guys were looking at it for a while. However setting the word “PlayStation” using the font it’s a bit too close to that product’s logo. Makes you wonder why Sony picked the Xbox-style Spiderman font for the PS3.

> Fontshop: I had the same problem, but after reloading the initial page and selecting the country, the link from Typophile works fine.

Still broken for me. Clicking the FF Max link takes me to portal page, clicking USA & Canada brings me back to typophile. Only link that doesn’t is the Australia link on the protal page.

awesome, some of your suggestions are faces i had not known about before. thanks so much.

>clicking USA & Canada brings me back to typophile

that’s what it did to me too! very strange…

clicking USA & Canada brings me back to typophile
that’s what it did to me too! very strange…

Same here…I thought it was just me!

those ‘high end’ audio sites / identities are a bit nasty. Why? Don’t they sell anything?

I have to agree w/Paul on Elektra.

those ‘high end’ audio sites / identities are a bit nasty. Why? Don’t they sell anything?
They do, quite a bit. But this is one of the few markets where the internet did not much change the business model: sales are still based on in-store auditions, which may easily extend over a few days for a whole system.

“…sales are still based on in-store auditions”

I think the true audiophiles who buy the high-end stuff have a real need to talk “woofer-and-tweeder” talk for days to in-the-know sales staff to savor as long as possible the moment of purchase. Perhaps it is foreplay to be followed by the orgasmic experience of actually playing music on the hot new stereo gear at home.
:-)

ChrisL

In hi-fi there are many companies that don’t last. Also, most of the shops don’t have enough product line to really match components. I’d think that if you were spending several thousand dollars on a cartridge for your turntable you would want to do some research. I’ve only met a few people that can do a good job of matching systems.

That’s why I linked to the Sota page. McIntosh is another hi-fi brand that has been around. Look at their mark.
http://www.audioclassics.com/

Seems trendy type may give an impression that there won’t be a company to service your amp in a few years.

Hi-fi is like good type design in some ways maybe. Lots of pretenders and few people with enough skill to get all the details right. An esoteric persuit yes, but not to be dismissed as simple vanity. If you’ve noticed, our standards for high-quality music reproduction are doing down fast. It looks like information in the brave new world will be digital and highly compressed.

I’m ranting and getting off topic.

Just have to add some support for Elektra, that is one niiice face!

You could even pair it with a more traditional modern text font like…
Electra and get the added bonus of a harmonized stereo word pun!

(or something like that)

{n.a–b}
est.1971