dot-font: Hauling Freight

dot-font was a collection of short articles written by editor and typographer John D. Barry (the former editor and publisher of the typographic journal U&lc) for CreativePro. If you’d like to read more from this series, click here.

Eventually, John gathered a selection of these articles into two books, dot-font: Talking About Design and dot-font: Talking About Fonts, which are available free to download here. You can find more from John at his website, https://johndberry.com.

Josh Darden’s new typeface family for Garage Fonts, called Freight (“designed for heavy lifting”), is one of those designs that’s meant to be all things to all people. It’s a super-family that comprises both serif and sans serif versions as well as a third version designed specifically for use at very small sizes; and each version comes in five weights, with all the usual bells and whistles. (One detail that I particularly appreciate is that every weight in every style includes italic small caps. Italic small caps are not part of the historical typographic tradition; they’re a modern invention, but a very useful one.) Although Freight may not quite provide a solution to every problem, it is an impressive array of related typefaces.

Freight’s related Sans, Micro, and Text families.

The most interesting branch of the Freight family tree is the Freight Micro series, a wide, robust slab-serif design that holds up under “inclement text conditions onscreen and in print.” The italic, especially, looks sharply carved; its angular shapes make it stand out legibly in tiny sizes, and they give it a chiseled sparkle when it’s used as a display face. Its effect reminds me a little of Zuzana Licko’s excellent Journal Italic, though the basic letterforms are quite different. Freight Micro roman is somewhat square, with thick slab serifs that are flat-topped on the left but sloped on the right—an oddly asymmetric effect. In its generous width and its sturdy thickness, the roman has a bit of the feel of Bookman (the original rather than the ITC redrawing), or of another of Zuzana Licko’s faces, Fairplex Wide. But Freight doesn’t resemble either of these in style.

Dutch Influence

The Freight family is inspired by historic typefaces, though it could never be mistaken for a revival. In particular, Darden says that he was influenced by the types cut by Nicholas Kis in the 17th century and Johann Michael Fleischman in the 18th—both based in the Netherlands, although Kis was Hungarian and Fleischman was German. The visual style of Freight “comments upon the influence” that these two punchcutters had on later English type designers, from William Caslon to Stanley Morison. Darden says, “I based Freight upon a common set of qualities that are conducive to text setting: a balanced tension of form and counterform, a warm manner, a marked horizontal thrust, and a general economy of space.”

Freight Micro Black used as a headline face with Freight Text Medium.

This influence is most apparent in Freight Text, the serif version intended for long passages of ordinary text; it’s a typeface firmly in the Dutch/English tradition: compact, upright, sturdy, and readable. Although presumably Darden means the Book weight to be the workhorse text weight, I find that the slightly darker Medium works best as a text face. Maybe this is just a reflection of how tired I am of thin, light text faces, but Freight Text Medium looks as though it could stand up happily to being the text face of a very long book. I would save the Book weight for short passages of larger text, or for display.

A Nearly Neutral Sans

Freight Sans is harder to pin down, simply because it has fewer distinctive characteristics. It’s not quite a humanist sans, but it’s certainly not geometric, and it’s not really a grotesque. I suppose it could be called an everyday jobbing typeface with humanist features. It doesn’t have a strong style, but it’s not purely ordinary either. Darden describes his sans as suitable for “text, display, and wayfinding.” I can imagine the heavier weights working well in signage, and the lighter weights supporting them in short bits of text.

For text, however, the lighter weights—especially the Light and Book, but even the Medium—cry out for a looser fit than Darden has built into the fonts; the characters are too tightly packed (to match the serif version, perhaps?); a little looser tracking renders them much easier to read.
At large display sizes, some subtly odd details of Freight Sans come into their own: particularly the many slanted stroke endings and edges where you’d expect flat and straight ones. But it’s generally a neutral-looking face, without the spiky peculiarities of Freight Text or Freight Micro. I can’t help wondering what a sans serif “micro” version might have looked like, with some of the same broken curves and deeply cut wedges that Darden gave his seriffed Micro.

In all three Freight families, the heaviest weights stand out most strongly. For contrast, added weight works better here than a change in style (especially in the Sans, which uses a sloped roman as its italic). The Black and Black Italic of all three families have visual punch; the Bold and Bold Italic have almost as much. They are well fitted, and the contrasts of stroke weight within each character, even in the Sans, work very nicely to give the face an inviting texture.

A few of Freight’s various weights and styles, freely mixed.

Togetherness

The obvious question, in a multi-style family like this, is, “Which design came first?” Surprisingly, Darden insists that none of them did. “Initially,” he says, “I experimented with a sort of snap-and-shave relationship between the fonts (in the manner of Thesis or Officina); I ended up moving back and forth between the three designs so often that I’ve forgotten where certain salient features (e.g. the forward tilt of the lowercase t) originated.” The typefaces can be used together as a typographic system, but it may be that each of them will find different uses in the long run. “It’s rather nice in a way—instead of starting from a single point and building outward, each design maintains a distinct identity, while suspending a certain sensibility between them. More like a real family, I think.”

John D. Berry is a typographer, book designer, design writer, editor, and typographic consultant. He is a former President of ATypI, and he is the founder and director of the Scripta Typographic Institute.
  • Terri Stone says:

    Thanks for this thoughtful treatment of Josh Darden’s new Freight family. He’s a remarkable young type designer, and I’m pleased to hear–and see–what he’s been up to.

  • >