Month: July 2016

Young Baroque was designed in 1984 by influential and well-regarded graphic designer, typographer, teacher and author Doyald Young. Young held the honorary title of ‘Inaugural Master of the School’ at the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, where he taught lettering, logo design and typography until his death in 2011. In 2009 he was honoured with the prestigious AIGA Medal. His AIGA biography states that: ‘An education with Doyald Young would be to learn from one of the most precise hands and knowledgeable eyes of our time. His understanding of the form of the letter, the arc of the curve and the subtleties of logotypes, is unsurpassed in North America.’ In addition to the numerous logos and trademarks he designed, he also had a swag of entertainment credits—typography and design for Sinatra, Disney, Prince, Carnegie Hall, the Grammy and Golden Globe Awards are just a few. His self-published books include Logotypes & Letterforms, Fonts & Logos and Dangerous Curves: Mastering Logotype Design, and as well as Young Baroque, he designed the typefaces ITC Éclat, Home Run, and Young Gallant.

How pleased I am that there is a legitimate typeface beginning with x, and that I don’t have to resort to using The X-Files Font or Xmas something or other for my alphabet letters, both of which seem like cheating. Real typeface it might be, but there’s not much information to be found, other than it was designed by the Benjamin Krebs type foundry in Frankfurt am Main in 1924, and is published by ITC and owned by Letraset. While it originated in Germany, it was unearthed in 1995 in a London printer’s reference book, and was subsequently digitised by Letraset. The chunky carved appearance of the typeface is reflected in its name—xylo being the Greek word for wood.

Wiesbaden Swing, created by German designer and calligrapher Rosemarie Kloos-Rau and released by Linotype in 1992, is based on her own handwriting. Kloos-Rau says that her typeface is ‘my contemporary contribution to the field of calligraphy, a headline font which offers a fresh and unconventional approach to typography’. Wiesbaden Swing is ranked as one of the famous Linotype fonts from the last decade, and in 2010 the drawn prototype was added to the Berlin Calligraphy Collection. This collection, founded in 1999 by the Berlin Academy of Arts, contains sheets of calligraphy, prints, reproductions, typographical clean copies, posters and poster designs, book covers and artist books—a selection of works which encompass calligraphic styles ranging from the classical to more expressive forms.