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.

The idea for the Generis type system came to Erik Faulhaber while he was traveling in the USA. Seeing typefaces mixed together in a business district motivated him to create a new type system with interrelated forms. The first design scheme came about in 1997, following the space saving model of these American Gothics. Faulhaber then examined the demands of legibility and various communications media before finally developing the plan behind this type system. Generis’s design includes two individually designed styles; each of with is available with and without serifs, giving the type system four separate families. Each includes at least four basic weights: Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold. Further weights, small caps, old style figures, and true italics were added to each family where needed. The Generis type system is designed to meet both optical criteria and the highest possible measure of technical precision. Harmony, rhythm, legibility, and formal restraint make up the foreground. Generis combines aesthetic, technical, and economic advantages, which purposefully and efficiently cover the whole range of corporate communication needs. The unified basic form and the individual peculiarity of the styles lead to Generis’ systematic, total-package concept. The clear formal language of the Generis type system resides beneath the information, bringing appropriate typographic expression to high-level corporate identity systems, both in print and on screen. The condensed and aspiring nature of the letterforms allows for the efficient setting of body copy, and the economic use of the page. A range of accented characters allows text to be set in 48 Latin-based languages, offering maximal typographic free range. This previously unknown level of technical and design execution helps create higher quality typography in all areas of corporate communication. Optimal combinations within the type system: Generis Serif or Generis Slab with Generis Sans or Generis Simple.

URW Geometric Condensed is the matching complement for the URW Geometric. Including 20 additional condensed styles the URW Geometric Condensed is the space-saving alternative in the URW Geometric family. URW Geometric is a sans serif typeface inspired by the German geometric typefaces of the 1920s but designed for modern usability. The character shapes have optimized proportions and an improved balance, the x-height is increased, ascenders and descenders are decreased. Special glyphs, which are often designed afterwards for the original geometric typefaces from the 1920s, are perfectly integrated in the URW Geometric. These design characteristics increase the usability and legibility tremendously. With its 10 weights ranging from Thin to Black, plus 10 additional oblique styles, it has a great versatility in mind. The extreme light styles shine bright in large sizes, the middle weights are perfect for body copy and the bolder variants for the use of emphasis information or bring a strong impact to headlines and information. The optically balanced styles are designed to work in perfect harmony together. URW Geometric is functional, strong, simple and harmonized in form, and at a glance appears as a modern variant of its predecessors. Apart from the basic characters the design has an extra focus on the special glyphs. These are designed for today’s needs. For example: the email glyph looks modern and unique, including a perfectly balanced spacing. The number sign, in modern use called “hashtag”, is space saving and optically balanced for body text. Additionally, various extra and alternate glyphs are designed to provide a friendly usability. Including a wide Latin language support and character sets, URW Geometric is perfectly designed for today’s requirements. Please have a look at the URW Geometric Type Specimen (PDF) for further information.

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.