Since FontFont was founded in 1990 by Erik Spiekermann and Neville Brody, FontShop International’s typeface library has been exploring unknown territorities in typography.
From the outset, the library covered both extremes of the typographic spectrum: practical and useful new text typefaces with an “edge” for editorial design, corporate design and signage; and weird and wonderful letterforms for the adventurous and the restless.
Fonts for independent minds
When you wander through this exhibition, many of these fonts may seem familiar to you. That’s not just because you see them all around you in print and other media. It’s also because the ideas in them are now common property.
Many FontFonts were more than just a set of well-designed letters. There were ‘intelligent fonts’ which by combining glyphs from different alphabets, made it possible to layer or link characters or create more interesting word images. Some FontFonts even have inbuilt scripts for varying letterforms on-the-fly.
FontFont pioneered the development of certain genres in type design that are now taken for granted: legible sans serifs; complex mega families with sans and serif variants; typefaces based on hand-writing and ‘found’ lettering. You will find descriptions of the individual typefaces in the exhibition brochure.
15 years on, 3500-plus fonts later with hundreds of new releases every year, FontFont is still setting standards, pushing limits and influencing new generations. This exhibition is a celebration of those achievements and the talented designers who make it possible. Erik Spiekermann (fsi founder and type designer) and Jan Middendorp (designer-writer and author of the acclaimed book “Dutch Type”) have curated this exhibition. It has been shown in the UK, Germany and the USA so far and will continue to travel through Europe and the United States.
There is an accompanying booklet to the exhibition, followed next year by a full-colour guide to the FontFont universe.
Venue: School of Visual Culture, Graphic Design Centre, 5th Floor, University of Art and Design, Hämeentie 135 C, HELSINKI, FInland
Date: 15 September–14 October, 2005
Press contact – Veronica Hamer – ve******@******nt.de – +49 30 695 96 507
Websites – www.fontfont.com – www.fontshop.com
This article was last modified on January 10, 2022
This article was first published on September 8, 2005
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