15th Annual Fall Fonts Festival

Fred’s back on the path, looking for font, type and typography treasures for this year’s Fall Fonts Fest — and he’s finding ten-times as many great resources as before! Here is just the beginning of this year’s surf…

…where DTG magazine presents the coolest and hottest in typography

This year’s fest seems to have taking on an entirely different personality — with 50,000 sites and blogs all bantering to be “your” typography site, it’s a little difficult to decide which way to go. One thing we did find, and that’s the proliferation of ‘replicator’ sites — those sites that are based on the content of other sites just to generate traffic and revenue, much like the clip art and Photoshop tutorial sites. Keep in mind, many of the fonts we found will be available in the Publishers’ Warehouse for download. We’re having a great time anyway — and we invite you to follow along…

First stop: Jungle Rock — boy, do we ever love the fonts conjured up by Jessica Slater, a rare talent in typography. Unfortunately, the font knock-off sites have so mungled the names and origins of thousands of fonts, finding Jessica for comment because an unattainable challenge. Oh well. But like hookers at the cowboy rodeo, the stalker font sites are all along the highway waiting to snare you.

This totally unique freeware font has special characters that help you fill in the type. You will need to know these characters. There are 4 spaces, 4 left edges and 4 right edges as well as a complete blank like a real space. So you can configure the type to fill the entire block area. Very cool.

With the holidays just around the corner, we know you’ll also find the “SnowBiz” font to be a real hoot. It’s another one from Jessica

This is the third in a series of six handwriting fonts for the main characters in the webcomic Dubmarine. Previously were Ruth Script, Terry Script. These are the works of Vic Fieger an uncelebrated font designer with some rather unique fonts up his sleeve. We liked the Daisy Script Font, and it led us to some of his others. (Here’s a more complete look at Daisy)

We love the broken effect of “Breakaway” also by Vic Fieger. It’s really well done, and has a lot of impact for those occasions when you’ve got to hit’em between the eyes.

Vic also produced the Azudings font based on Japanese cartoon characters! It’s a hoot and there are a lot of characters. You can see them all, here.

For those who like Vic’s work, he does offer a CD of 75 of his most prized fonts including five brand new fonts exclusive to this disc. You can purchase in his online store at www.vicfieger.com. While you’re there, do not miss his “Go Oogle” project … guaranteed to bring some laughs!

Those Remarkable Typography Students

We often talk about student work, and we’re always on the look-out for great up-and-coming typographers.

Henning Skibbe is one we ran across who shows a marked talent in the typographical skills. He studied communication design at the university of applied science Potsdam and Lucas de Groot. In these classes he created the Arctic and Nautik font families. In 2007 he graduated from university with distinction. Part of his thesis project was the Haptic family. On your visit, don’t miss his kalligrafie (Calligraphy) department.

The Nautic typeface is a display family that comes in five weights and has a rather distinctive look and feel. You can see the sell sheet for the font, and Henning invites you to download it for free!

Don’t forget, we will be adding, and the Fonts Fest continues in OCTOBER. Had enough? No? Okay, then just follow along as we turn the page …

… and thanks for reading!

Fred Showker, Editor / Publisher of DTG Magazine