As a layman I would like to through in a question for the forum: In fashion around the world the Grunge genre and the early 90s have now a revival for at least a year already. Does this trend spill over to the graphic design world? Did it impact your type sales if you have something in that category? Did you notice this trend?
I hope I am not hijacking this thread, I just thought it would fit.
best

Thanks for the post. I am very happy with the sales of display fonts, specifically Egyptian, Clarendon, most of the slab genre, etc. For me, this has been a good year and I hope that it will continue. So to answer your question, yes display fonts of the older sort, i.e., nineteenth century in origin have been good for me and if I see a trend in this direction, it certainly is in the slab genre, if evidence of this can be found at myfonts. I like to divide the type world into display and text. A few can make great or at least very good text faces but this is hard. If they are good they will find an audience, and some on myfonts and other places developed in the past year are quite good. The display genre is important because many designers, I think, are always looking for unusual display types, thus for example the development of very heavy slab or sans serif fonts. I also see a proliferation of calligraphic types, many quite good.

I hope this is an adequate answer. Thanks Nick.

The “naïve geometric look”: http://typophile.com/node/83588

Trends seem to come from customer needs. It seems that display faces may have a shorter life span but a more current need for projects. What I mean is, a display face may be used for fewer projects by its purchaser but there will be more need for options in the display area by that same user.

>In fashion around the world the Grunge genre and the early 90s have now a revival for at least a year already.

I wonder if this is related to the "occupy" movement? would the 99% use Helvetica or Gotham on their placards and banners, or something a little more Portlandia?

Si, they would use Boulder ;-P

or Squeeze, if they felt pinched!

There's an ongoing spate of slightly-funked-up grotesques: Supria Sans, Air, Calibre, Neue Haas Grotesk, Synthese; Type Together is working on Tablet Gothic, and I have a feeling we're going to see lots more.

One of the delights of the Occupy movement, in my experience, is the prevalence of hand-made signs. I'm off to the UK next week, and looking forward to visiting some of the Occupy sites there. In London, I'm planning a long walk from St Mary's, Putney Bridge,* to the Occupy camp at St Paul's Cathedral.

*Extra points to anyone who knows the significance of St Mary's Putney without consulting Google.

Is that where they dumped the type into the water?

Chris you're confusing Tea Party signs with Occupy signs. All I can say is...

:-)

At last, someone who spells worse than me ;-)

significance of St Mary's Putney

Where the Golden Types were dumped?

I certify I did not Google it

Sorry, I think you and Chris are thinking of Hammersmith Bridge, from where Cobden-Sanderson dumped the Doves Press type into the Thames. The association of St Mary's Putney doesn't have anything to do with type, but rather, in a way, with the Occupy movement. At least, that's the reason for starting my walk there. In 1647, the church was the site of the Putney Debates, where the Grandees and Levellers in the New Model Army debated the constitution of post-Civil War England. It is one of the great moments in radical history, when the notion of electoral suffrage independent of property were given voice, famously in the statement of Colonel Rainsborough:

For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put Himself under.

I figure a walk from one of the early sites of radical political history to the most recent, 365 years later, will have something of the flavour of a pilgrimage. Ironically, the route takes me up the King's Road and past Buckingham Palace. London's good at imposing historical significance.

John, Yes, that is what I was thinking! Too bad it was wrong :-)