Congratulations to Kris!

I prefer National to other recent types I have seen that aim at reviving the flavor of 19th century English and American grotesques. The others are often too quirky looking to my eyes. National has the human feel and charm of the old grotesques, with more balance. Franklin Gothic, also a regularization of 19th century grotesques, is also not quirky and is well balanced, but is more formal. So National offers a contemporary, alternative with a nice charm and balance.

I saw it yesterday or something like that, and I liked it a lot. I like the subtle details and quirks that it has.

Hey, thanks guys! Really kind of you to say such nice things.

—K

nice! congrats, kris. now i'm itching to spend the $$ i really should be saving. :^p

Congratulations, Kris. Really nice typeface. I purchased it.

Congratulations Kris!

I purchased it.

i'm jealous! heh

Thanks Akira—you might like to know that you were the very first to license it!

—K

Wow! :D

Major props, Kris, a huge achievement.
And congratulations to Chester Jenkins and Village as well, for the "big league" vision of what a typeface can be, in the styles, weights, features and languages that it supports.
Does National represent the Village encoding standard?
I note that H&FJ have an encoding standard, Latin-X™.
It seems that with the graphic elements, National could be WGL4, with Cyrillic and Greek added.

Some observations:

19th-century flavour, certainly, but two some distinction:
1. The capitals are small and light compared to the older sans faces: if National's caps were increased in size to ascender height, that height conformity, and the added weight contrast with lower case it would create, would be more like a 19C sans. In this respect, National follows the "Helvetica" paradigm of a smoothing out of cap/lc contrast.
2. The tailed "l" is, AFAIK, a 20th-century trend in sans faces. Interestingly, its curvyness harmonizes well with the rounded forms in National's "geometric" stylistic alternate, where one might have supposed that a straight l would be more minimally geo.

With regards to the stylistic alternate included: I wonder at what point a separate style emerges, both from a categorical perspective, and from a product perspective. Recently, Neutra has been extended to create Neutra 2, by changing a few characters. yet Hypatia and National, for instance, incorporate the alternate face as a Stylistic Set (or so I deduce from the National PDF) within one typeface, with the grotesque as the default and the geometric as the alternate.

Kris, i love that font. Congrats!

Congratulations Kris!

Outstanding work! But why separate OT fonts for small caps?

Best thing from NZ since the Chills. Well done!

I like it a lot. Providing the current slide on Wall Street subsides, I am gonna buy it.
(BTW: Great value: 24 cuts for 250 bucks…)

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Yeah, I thought the same, Bert. Great value. I'm definitely keeping National in mind for when I need a grotesque.

Yeah, esp considering the Dollar is at an alltime low vs the Euro ; ). 250 USD = 173 EUR.

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

AAPL on the rebound. Purchase of National coming closer…

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Thanks you all for your very kind words! A few answers:

Does National represent the Village encoding standard?

I am not too sure about that. I know Chester has an extensive encoding for his own work, and that is being added to & refined. I basically use whatever is his latest.

1. The capitals are small and light compared to the older sans…more like a 19C sans

Yeah, some interesting observations there. The National blurb says it "travels through, and touches on, a lot of historical material, it is designed to thrive in our modern typographic climate." I really wanted a sans that was relatively contemporary, not a slavish revival, with anachronisms like enormous, dark capitals. That might also explain the 'l' tail as well!

But why separate OT fonts for small caps?

Everything is in one font file, believe me! As a user, I cannot stand to have separate font files. I think Chester has done this to show that there are small caps for all styles.

Yeah, esp considering the Dollar is at an alltime low vs the Euro ; ). 250 USD = 173 EUR.

I quite like the quip at the top of the vllg.com site that says "our dollar is weak but our types are strong!".

Best thing from NZ since the Chills. Well done!

Woah! That is an enormous compliment Fredrik—not too sure if it is entirely justified, but thanks all the same!

It‘s on my hard disk ; )…
Gonna combine it with Sauna for my secondary identity (launch in January 2008).

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Hey Kris Nationals looking sweet as. I already purchased Gotham before National got released so I'm all out of funds for typefaces. Once I get a Job I'll have to add it to my collection. Congrats.

Ahhh National. I have to say I am rather sad to have it released after having it all to my self for about a year. I was testing this baby from before it even had a percent glyph, kerning, rounded punctuation or even the subtle ink traps. It seems strange how a typeface can grow like that.

I think the first thing to draw me to National was the extra bold weights, I thought they were slightly mad. I loved using the heaver weights in titles, headings and as such (and I loved how the tail of the lowercase 'a' remains from book to extra bold).
So I loved using National in larger text settings.

But now I'm appreciating the regular weights a lot more, National hides really well in longer text, but still has that warmth in the character to make the read interesting.
It works better in text than I thought it could.

So its become my studios little work horse. Always does its job as long as you treat it well (correct line length, 'actual' superiors nice rag and so on...), so look after it!

Good stuff Sowersby, make some more cool type! Go on.

kris, did i miss an official announcement from vllg? i was going to put it in the news section as soon as i got it (i believe i'm on the mailing list), but i never got anything. does vllg still do this type of thing, (i didn't get an announcement for stag either) or have i fallen off the list?

Kris, is it related to the sans you did for that museum?
And how absolute is your decision to have a tailed-l? (Maybe you should do an alt with a straight…)
I have been mucking around with National for a few hours & my main concern is the absence of a real 'light'. Is that in the works or…?

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

kris, did i miss an official announcement from vllg?

I think you did miss out there, mate! There was an announcement, perhaps you are not on the list?

Kris, is it related to the sans you did for that museum?

If you mean Victoria University, then yes, it is basically the same.

And how absolute is your decision to have a tailed-l? (Maybe you should do an alt with a straight…)

Very absolute at this stage. Where would I end with the alts!

I have been mucking around with National for a few hours & my main concern is the absence of a real ’light’. Is that in the works or…?

I imagine that I will, but I have many more pressing typefaces to attend to. I do not want to burn myself out on National, I am sure you understand.

—K

I imagine that I will, but I have many more pressing typefaces to attend to. I do not want to burn myself out on National, I am sure you understand.

I understand! Would you care to tell us how much time you spent on National? Ballpark?

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

Amazing work, Kris, Congrats! :-)

Would you care to tell us how much time you spent on National? Ballpark?

Sure! I started work as soon as the first issue of The National Grid arrived in my mailbox during March 2006. And by work, I mean a few hours a week to 14 hours a day, so it was by no means a regular, daily thing.

—K