Originally designed by Otl Aicher in the late 1980s, Monotype Imaging has revised and expanded the Rotis Sans family to cover a broader range of weights and styles.

Anyone designing in Europe in the 1990s would have encountered the original Rotis, and thanks to its popularity (especially in corporate branding) would have grown to love it or loathe it. The heavy ‘back-end’ of the c and e are instantly recognizable, the non-traditional terminals on sans and semi-sans letters and the unusual mix of serifs on the semi-serif all contribute to make the typeface particularly controversial among designers and typographers.

Corporate types loved it as it was traditional in its overall form and legible while having enough unusual and non-traditional characteristics to suggest innovation and modernity in a brand. The face gave designers a ready-made solution to finding a serif and a sans serif that would work together well. However, as the different faces were designed to be used together, each style only had a limited number of weights, which was frustrating for designers who wanted to stick to a single style.

The expanded Rotis II Sans family extends the style of the typeface that arguably has the most use and global appeal. Suggesting a monoline style with subtle stresses, and keeping a wide letterspacing and fairly condensed letterform, the sans serif continues the idea of the face being legible and efficient.

Technically improved and enhanced with a range of styles, the Rotis II Sans family provides greater flexibility and appears fresh and new.

Like Rotis, the ITC Stone® typefaces share the same proportions and characteristics across the family, and like Rotis, the sans serif design has now been extensively refined and expanded, to great effect.

The chunky bold weight of ITC Stone Sans is frequently used for headline and titles, and a popular choice for technical books and manuals; the humanist letterforms and terminals clipped at right angles to the strokes give the face a friendlier sense without being undignified or comedic.

Recognizing this, Sumner Stone (with Delve Withrington and Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging) planned to extend the ITC Stone Sans family to give it greater versatility and a couple of condensed weights, but instead revitalized the whole family with extensive design improvements. ITC Stone Sans II has greater legibility and more refined character shapes and proportions to reflect the original design intentions.

This studio has produced a series of decorative fonts, ideal for headlines or short passages. The Mrs White™ Regular design is well-suited for simulating schoolbook-style handwriting. The numbers are pleasant in their own right, and the studio has thoughtfully included a ‘No.’ glyph to use with them. If you’re after a numerals face, you should give this one a go. This script font has broad appeal.

Named from the Portuguese word for ‘wire’, the Arame™ design is a family of monoline faces, with three proportional styles and one monospaced version. The face brings to mind the traditional ‘machine readable’ fonts, such as OCR-A and B, and will find obvious appeal for science fiction and technological settings. It may also see successful use in magazine layouts, especially those aiming for a late 1990s early 2000s vibe.

Born in Westerham, Kent, England, in 1947, Robin Nicholas has worked with fonts and typefaces nearly all his adult life. Following a brief stint as an apprenticeship draftsman, he joined the Monotype Type Drawing Office while still a teenager. After his initial training at Monotype, Nicholas redrew master artwork for typefaces licensed for the company’s phototypesetting systems. He spent another two years training in punch cutting and the preparation of metal fonts for design proofing. Over time, Nicholas became manager of the Type Drawing Office, and today he currently serves as the head of typography at Monotype Imaging in the UK.

During his career, Nicholas has designed important commercial designs such as the Nimrod® Arial®, Felbridge™ and Ysobel™ typeface families. He design-directed projects that yielded typefaces such as the Clarion® and Columbus® type designs and supervised the digital revival of important Monotype typefaces including the Bell®, Centaur®, Dante®, Janson®, Fournier™, Van Dijck®, Walbaum™, Bulmer®, and Pastonchi™ families. Nicholas also works on projects through the company’s custom fonts program, designing many new faces for corporate branding.

When asked about what inspires him to create new typefaces, Nicholas replied, “my goal is to overcome communications problems and technology restrictions. With Felbridge, for instance, I wanted to make a sans serif design that would work well on screen and would avoid some of the character recognition problems that affect so many sans typefaces. In designing Ysobel, I wanted to design a serif typeface with a large x-height that would work well as a text face for publications – but which would also have elegance and a clean, incised demeanor.

Nicholas continues to offer solutions to typographical problems and is happy to share his knowledge acquired over four decades in the type world. He speaks at conferences on the creative, technological and business aspects of type, and he lectures to students on type design and font production.

Originally designed by Tobias Frere-Jones for Font Bureau in the 1990s, the Interstate™ design is based on the alphabets used for the U. S. Federal Highways System. Frere-Jones adapted and refined the letterforms to expand their use beyond signage and ensure the typeface worked particularly well on screen as well as in print, making it a popular typeface at a time when many brands were moving online. Having a wide range of weights and styles, Interstate is a flexible and adaptable typeface, ideal for use in logotypes, advertising and signage.

The Benton Sans™ design was begun by Tobias Frere-Jones as a reimagining of Morris Fuller Benton’s 1908 News Gothic design andwas continued by Cyrus Highsmith. Benton Sans is now a crisp, legible super family with 128 styles, from extra light to black with corresponding italics, small caps and small cap italics. Additional suites of condensed, compressed and extra-compressed weights mean that Benton Sans is extraordinarily flexible. From applications using a single font to entire brand and publication style guides, Benton Sans has the breadth to cover the lot.

Evocative of early metal type, the Mayflower Smooth™ design is a variant of the Mayflower typeface by P22, which itself was based on the type styles in a 1604 Bible carried by the pilgrims on the Mayflower. The earlier face reproduced the rough appearance of old inked metal type. Mayflower Smooth removes these artifacts and suggests a use on cleaner, more modern designs.

A novelty decorative font family by Anton Scholtz, the Dufour™ design suggests various retro uses. However, many of the glyphs, especially the numerals, can be used large either individually, or in short settings as graphic elements containing photography or other type. The heavy slightly melted appearance of the capital G and the numeral 3 create some interesting shapes worth playing with.

Jason Cranford Teague writes about the trends he sees in Web typography for 2012. He documents an emerging new aspect of Web design and shows how some of the technical possibilities of Web type are leading to interesting creative challenges and solutions. Some of the trends, however, such as larger type sizes and responsive typography, we can only hope are less trends and more emerging norms.

The P22 Underground™ font is the original typeface designed by Edward Johnston for the London Underground. It’s available for the first time as a commercial font in an exclusive arrangement with the London Transport Museum. As a Web font it works well, with the book weight particularly suited for short and medium length settings. P22 Underground is also available as a desktop font.

Inspired by the German signage face DIN, the Hanseat design was created by Ralph Unger in 2010 in response to a desire for quality industrial-inspired typefaces among designers. Now available as a Web font, the lighter weights of Hanseat work well at large sizes, while the medium and bold remain clear and legible at small sizes across browsers and systems. Hanseat is also available as a desktop font.

Club Nintendo redesigned its website using the classic geometric sans Avenir® Black typeface from Fonts.com as a headline and call-out font. The chunky strokes and familiar generous letterforms make this a particularly good choice for games and fun. Check it out on ClubNintendo.com.

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