Looking for something new for setting powerful headlines? Need a font that can create logos with ease? How about something masculine, a design with authority and panache? Then ITC’s newest typeface, ITC Sportbet™, may be the perfect choice. ITC Sportbet is a design that should be set tight, creating an arresting graphic image as well as words. Although a capital-only typeface, it benefits from a large suite of alternate characters that enable individual words and headlines to be customized with a distinctive personality. In addition to the obvious power of ITC Sportbet’s square-jawed character shapes, it’s fun to use. Exchange one or two letters with their alternative designs and a brand new headline or logo appears. ITC Sportbet was designed by Dane Wilson, the principal of the London-based design firm of Dane Design. Although this is his first commercial typeface design, Wilson has ample experience creating logos and custom typefaces for corporate branding. In fact, Sportbet grew out of such a project. “The idea initially came from wanting to provide a client with a stylish, modern and graphically impactful corporate identity logo font,” recalls Wilson. “Although the first sketches looked promising as a typeface, because of time and budget constraints, developing an entire alphabet would be overambitious.” Not to be deterred, Wilson continued to work on the design when time permitted. He eventually completed the font and started final application tests. The results looked good to Wilson, but he felt that the design was missing something. “I hit upon the idea of breaking out the left side of all the closed counters,” Wilson wrote about the design. “This simple device gave Sportbet the kick it needed.” Although one weight and a capital-only typeface, Wilson’s ITC Sportbet should prove to be a powerful and versatile communicator.

A sturdy workhorse with the grace of a gazelle, the FF Pastoral typeface family marries pure craftsmanship with rapturous excesses of form. With his fifteenth release under the FontFont brand, prolific French designer Xavier Dupré has filled a typographic toolbox with plentiful options ranging from a tender, feathery Thin to a robust, healthy Black. At a glance, FF Pastoral appears deceptively simple, particularly in the middle weights. That surface serenity is intentional and allows for easy reading and quick comprehension of short blocks of copy. Upon closer inspection, FF Pastoral is complex and nuanced, carrying a balanced tension in its forms. This plays particularly well in magazine spreads and corporate logos, where uniqueness is a virtue. In creating his latest design, Dupré drew inspiration from a tasteful mix of references, combining diverse elements with a deft hand. While its letter shapes were informed by humanist-geometric hybrid Gill Sans, FF Pastoral’s proportions have been optimized for contemporary typography. Slightly condensed but generously spaced, FF Pastoral features a tall x-height, open counters, and subtle, sprightly italics slanted at just 5°. Proportional oldstyle figures are the default in the family, with tabular and lining numbers and fractions accessible through OpenType features. Elegant details evocative of calligraphy judiciously pepper the FF Pastoral glyph set. The ‘e’ bears an oblique crossbar, while the right leg of the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ are insouciantly curved in both the upright and italic variants. Further flourishes appear throughout the italics, notably in the ‘T’ and the ‘Z’, the gloriously looped tail of the ‘G’, and an extraordinary ampersand. Sharp-eyed fans of Dupré’s work may feel like they’re in familiar territory, and they would be right. An early version of FF Pastoral sprang to life in 2017 as Malis, a family in four weights on the heavier side of the spectrum. Over time, Dupré refined his original design, expanding it with four lighter styles and including true italics for all. The lightest weights are ethereal, with exquisitely delicate strokes drawing the eye in and across a line of type. The most substantial styles are tremendous in their power, allowing text to make a deep impression in print or on screen. Fully fleshed out, FF Pastoral works sublimely in a vast array of text and display settings. Dupré sees his latest FontFont offering as a ‘cultural’ typeface, perfect for the pages of an oversized coffee-table book or business communications where warmth and informality will win the day. Born in Aubenas, France (1977), Xavier Dupré is a gifted user of type as well as an award-winning type designer and lettering artist. After training in graphic design in Paris, Dupré studied calligraphy and typography at the Scriptorium de Toulouse. Since releasing FF Parango in 2001, Dupré has published such FontFont classics as the FF Absara and FF Sanuk superfamilies, FF Megano, FF Tartine, and FF Yoga. A designer of Khmer fonts as well as Latin typefaces, Dupré splits his time between Europe and Asia.