Typewolf Blog

This is the 35th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for November here.

Foreign Policy

The type on the Foreign Policy site is a disparate mishmash of different aesthetics—Caslon is classy and dignified, Suisse Int’l is clean and modern, while Input Mono is contemporary and techy. There is also handwritten scribbled text scattered throughout the design. On most sites this would be too much randomness to take in, however, in this case, I think it perfectly complements the studio’s colorful design work, which is equally all over the place, never sticking to a single style.

CIRQ

Champion Gothic is a sans-serif from Hoefler & Co. that was inspired by late nineteenth-century woodtype. This style of woodtype predates the idea of a cohesive type family—instead, each different weight and width would feel more like a unique, one-off design. Therefore, each width of Champion Gothic feels like the “normal” width, rather than a condensed or extended variation. The CIRQ site takes this concept and mixes the various widths of Champion Gothic mid-word, which creates a unique, jarring effect that grabs the reader’s attention. Egyptienne, a slab serif from Adrian Frutiger, is combined with Champion Gothic and used in a more straightforward manner, balancing out the quirky, irregular-shaped display type.

We Are Not Sisters

Maria is a mysterious sans-serif that is hard to dig up much information on. It looks a lot like Helvetica or Akzidenz Grotesk, but the uppercase design takes on a more geometric appearance. It’s combined here with Times New Roman—the brutalist font of choice—and often mixed with it in mid-sentence. The bright red text seems like it should be harsh on the eyes, but it’s actually quite readable on the warm, beige background.

Where to get Maria →

Ward Heirwegh

This is another site this month that could possibly be described as brutalist. But this time it’s not using the brutalist-approved Times New Roman; instead, it features Nimbus Roman, a Times look-alike. As with the previous site, this design uses colors that could be described as “harsh” (the blue on green, specifically), but the text is still perfectly readable. Bold colors like these immediately create memorable brands, whether you want to call it brutalist or otherwise. An extended width of Univers is used for the navigation and prevents the serif from completely dominating the design.

Milk Street

I wouldn’t describe this design as brutalist or ultra-hip like the above sites—it just features solid typography that is beautifully executed (although the drop cap in the screenshot above looks a little undersized). The monospaced version of Klim’s Founders Grotesk and a condensed cut of DIN are set entirely in uppercase throughout, while the serif Minion is used for headlines and body text. Minion always works well as a classic serif choice—it has the Old Style appearance of Garamond but with more contemporary features such as a larger x-height and more open apertures. Freight Sans is used on the button labels, which may be an unnecessary additional typeface, as there are already three other typefaces used. But overall, this type looks gorgeous and refined and perfect for the Milk Street brand.

The Outline

The Outline is one of my favorite sites to come along in awhile from a typographic perspective. The type looks more like a designer’s portfolio site than a typical online publication (although seeing the Cadillac advertisements everywhere keeps throwing me off—is this really their target audience?). There are four different typefaces used and each one is used purposefully. The evil-looking serif Eksell Display and the quirky sans-serif Maria serve as the main branding typefaces. Both typefaces are memorable but neither work well at small sizes—Eksell Display has too much stroke contrast while the apertures on Maria are way too tight. Portrait is introduced as a companion serif to Eksell and features similar sharp, triangular serifs but with way less stroke contrast. Likewise, Fakt is used as a companion sans to Maria and works better for body text with its more open apertures. Using four typefaces allows the best of both worlds—distinctive display type while still having text that functions adequately in non-display settings.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 36th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for December here.

Purchase College Graphic Design BFA Program

Some people will probably find it ironic that the site for a graphic design BFA program uses lowly Arial as its sole typeface. I’m not sure if they are purposefully using it in an ironic manner or if they just wanted a fast loading site without having to deal with web fonts, but the type choice actually feels pretty fresh. Arial seems to be used way less often than Helvetica these days, so it comes across as much more distinctive, especially at display sizes. The terminals in Arial are angled rather than straight like in Helvetica, so it recalls older grotesques like Akzidenz Grotesk and Monotype Grotesque more so than neo-grotesques.

Xavier Hufkens

This is another site this month that uses a single typeface throughout the entire design. Bell is a Transitional serif from the eighteenth century that features a beautiful italic which you can see used for the artwork titles in the headlines. The numbers in Bell are rather ornate and are set at three-quarters of the cap height, which makes them almost feel like small caps. There is no bold weight used on this site which shows it’s possible to get sufficient contrast using only roman and italic.

Where to get Bell →

Matthew Boblet

The flashing and flickering type on Matthew Boblet’s site isn’t meant to be read as much as it’s meant to make a purely visceral impression. The logo is set with Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, an elaborate blackletter face, which combined with Romana, feels especially evil. An outlined cut of Eurostile is set with a soft glow, which adds in a dark, sci-fi sort of vibe. The design feels more like an art installation than a website and perfectly demonstrates the emotional impact that typography can create.

The Design Office

The Design Office site feels like it is stepping outside of current trends and doing its own thing. The grid is unusual, with none of the elements feeling confined to neat columns. The page titles are set in a fixed position in the center of the layout with the other text floating on top. The type choices are pretty unique as well, using two of the less-trendy fonts from the Colophon catalog—the serif Archive and sans-serif Basis Grotesque.

The Avery Review

As much as I love this site, I have to say that the typography is more creative and engaging than it is functional. The article pages are set with a line length that expands with the browser window, creating paragraphs that are too wide to read comfortably and the first-line paragraph indents are so unusually large that they become distracting. Maria isn’t ideal as a text face as it doesn’t contain italics and the author bios are set entirely in uppercase Perpetua Titling, which becomes difficult to read for anything that spans more than one line. That being said, I still really dig the general aesthetic and think the designers did a great job of creating something unique and memorable.

MailChimp 2016 Annual Report

MailChimp went with a fun, 80s-inspired theme for their 2016 annual report and I think their type choices perfectly complement this look. Cooper Black is the quintessential retro font that brings to mind the late 1970s and early 1980s and Grilli Type’s GT Walsheim pairs surprisingly well with it. The oversized dots on GT Walsheim’s i’s play off the bubbly, rounded shapes of Cooper Black, while the curvy tails on GT Walsheim’s lowercase g and y always make me think of smiley faces, which further adds to the playfulness of this design.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 37th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for January here.

Healthyish

The Healthyish site combines two of the biggest trends in type at the moment—chunky, 1970s-evoking serifs and geometric sans-serifs. The fact that it’s used on a food/cooking site shows that this style is breaking through into the mainstream. ITC Grouch is set super tight with negative letterspacing—so tight that the letters are actually touching—which adds to that 1970s retro feel. Futura is paired with it while the open-source Crimson Text is used for body copy.

Typographics 2017

Each year, the site for the annual Typographics conference tries to do something unique with type and the latest iteration is no exception. Type Supply’s Ohm is set flickering and flashing to play off the typeface’s neon sign concept. One interesting thing about the site is that the headers set in Ohm swap out to a “dotted” style of Graphik on smaller screens, presumably because it’s easier to read when set small, yet still works with the flashing sign concept.

Serra (NSFW)

For a company that specializes in pot and pot accessories, Serra has surprisingly classy branding. The calligraphic sans Lydian is set entirely in uppercase and the geometric sans Neusa pairs very nicely with it as both share similar condensed proportions. However, Neusa is also used for body text where it doesn’t work quite as well—the body text inherits the letterspacing from the uppercase styles and feels a little awkward to read due to the wide spacing.

Flinders Hotel

ITC Lubalin Graph is a fairly popular slab serif font in the print world but this is the first time I’ve seen it used on the web. The design is essentially the same as ITC Avant Garde Gothic but with added slab serifs, so it pairs well with other geometric sans-serifs like Proxima Nova. This is another site this month that makes the typographic faux pas of letterspacing lowercase text—the small paragraphs of Proxima Nova look like they are inheriting the letterspaced styles from the uppercase. Uppercase type usually reads better with increased letterspacing but lowercase type almost never does.

October

October is a new spinoff of Pitchfork that focuses on beer culture rather than music. It was developed by the same creative team behind Pitchfork, which shows, as it definitely shares a related aesthetic with previous projects of theirs. The serif Romana is used for headlines (which is the same font I use for the Typewolf logo) and the body text is set in Akkurat. Overall, I really love the type, but this wouldn’t be Typewolf if I didn’t point out the improper apostrophes used in the headlines, which you can see in the screenshot above.

Brand New

I first saw the Brand New redesign mentioned on Designer News, where the almost universal reaction was negative. I was kind of surprised because I really dig the new look—I think they did something bold and unconventional with the type, and a site that is entirely about branding should have a strong brand.

I love the use of H&Co’s Operator—it’s a humanist design that was inspired by typewriter fonts but is actually proportional rather than fixed width. It’s such an unusual font that it will really contrast with anything, but here they are pairing it with Mercury, a classic serif from the H&Co catalog. I would have loved to see the italic styles of Operator used, as they take on a quirky cursive form which is rare for typewriter-inspired fonts. But the type here is probably distinctive enough as is. I applaud Armin and Bryony for doing something different and not just slapping a geometric sans on the site and calling it a day.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 38th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for February here.

Dallas Pierce Quintero

Times New Roman has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance on the web —it went from being a boring, default choice to a fashionable typeface over the span of just a few years. Life, the typeface used here, shares a very similar aesthetic with Times but differs in a few small details—notice the ball terminal on the ear of the g and a more calligraphic r. I love when designs appear to be going after a trendy look but differ in the subtle details. Recta, the sans-serif used here, fits that definition as well. It feels like a contemporary neo-grotesque/geometric sans but actually has a lot more history to it as it came out in 1958, right after Helvetica.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

This site is probably on the upper limit of what’s acceptable as far as using too many fonts—I count ten individual font files being downloaded—but the type is gorgeous. The lack of banner ads really gives the type room to breath, compared to most news sites. Tiempos, a Times-inspired contemporary serif from Klim Type Foundry, is used in both the text and display versions. Bebas Neue, the condensed sans used in the headlines, is a free font but one that you really don’t see used as much as it’s not on Google Fonts. Grilli Type’s GT America makes an appearance as well, adding to the font count. But despite the number of fonts used, the design still manages to feel cohesive.

For Good Measure

Sofia is a Futura-esque geometric sans available on Typekit that is starting to feel a bit overused. However, the condensed styles are used here which immediately makes the design feel fresh. Going with a less commonly used width or weight is a good trick to make your typography feel a little more distinctive.

Where to get Sofia →

Shotview

Helvetica Neue is a huge family available in a wide range of widths and weights, however, we almost always just see the standard styles used on the web, as that is what is commonly available as a default system font. The extended cut is used here—it’s not the most readable font but the text on the site is pretty minimal. The serif Weiss is paired with it, set entirely in uppercase. Weiss is unique in that it features a top heavy s that almost feels like it is upside down.

Offscreen

When I first saw the recently redesigned Offscreen, I felt a little disappointed in the type choice. Going with a single typeface—and a neo-grotesque at that—felt a little bland. However, the design has since really grown on me. Acumin has a simple, plain elegance to it and the more I look at it, the more I notice little peculiarities that make it differ from typical neo-grotesques such as the stroke on the J that terminates vertically rather than horizontally. Apparently, the typeface worked really well for the constraints of printing in a compact magazine format as well.

Where to get Acumin →

Maisonette

In the almost four years of running Typewolf, I don’t think I have ever seen a new typeface blow up as quickly as Canela has. Since its release in 2016, it’s been featured ten times on Typewolf (and I have received many, many other site submissions using it). It’s a beautiful typeface that fits somewhere between a serif and a sans-serif design. It really seems to have struck a chord with designers at the moment. As Canela was created as a display face, Plantin is paired with it here for body text. The addition of GT Walsheim adds a playful touch which keeps the design from looking too serious, which feels appropriate for a children’s brand.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 39th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for March here.

Story

Caxton is one of those typefaces that I like to describe as evil—something about its heavy, concave serifs makes it feel rather forbidding. It’s balanced here by the warm colors which make the design feel a bit more open and inviting. The headers using Graphik are set tightly with negative letterspacing, a treatment that tends to give neo-grotesques more of a retro-1970s feel.

Increment

Increment is a new publication from Stripe with gorgeous illustrations and beautifully-set typography. The headlines are set in Px Grotesk, a unique neo-grotesque that features abrupt, right angles. The body text, using Tiempos Text, is set with obvious attention to detail—proper dashes, apostrophes and quotation marks are used and they even implement hanging quotes on the blockquotes on this page.

Santa Fe Institute

I think high-contrast, calligraphic sans-serifs like Chap are going to be the next big trend in type. They seem to be gaining in popularity and this style of typeface feels so much fresher than the quotidian neo-grotesques that dominate design at the moment. I love the type on this site but I’m not too sure about the pairing of Chap with DIN. Sometimes pairing two sans-serifs together can work, however, in this case, the aesthetic of the two typefaces doesn’t really match. DIN tends to feel modern and techy, while Chap has more of an organic, human feel. Chap actually reads pretty well as a text face, so perhaps they could have gotten away with using a single typeface family throughout rather than introducing a second sans-serif.

XXXI

The XXXI site uses a single type family and an innovative technique where different fonts are loaded depending on the screen width. The expanded width of GT America is loaded on desktops, but on smaller screen sizes, the compressed width is loaded. This technique makes more efficient use of the screen real estate available on different device sizes. In the future, this technique will be accomplished using variable fonts, but for now this is a pretty cool solution and hopefully a preview of what we’ll see more of in the coming years.

Where to get GT America →

wildness

Cormorant is a newish family on Google Fonts, so it hasn’t really spread across the web too much. It was designed as a display face and is described as having “scandalously small counters.” This makes it a poor choice for body copy as small counters tend to fill in at text sizes. However, the Cormorant family is available in several variations and the version used here, Cormorant Garamond, was designed with slightly larger counters and is thus more suitable as a text face. The body text here actually reads pretty well. The line height is set with generous spacing which feels appropriate for a literary journal, as open spacing slows down reading and gives type more of a poetic feel.

Where to get Cormorant →

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 40th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for April here.

Twin Pickles

Hawthorn is a typeface that falls squarely in the “evil serif” genre with its razor-sharp, blade-like letterforms. It’s the only font used here and is strong enough on its own to create a solid brand with not much else needed. Rather than a pure white background, the type is set on a lightly tinted green background which helps create cohesion with the bright green used in the logo.

Where to get Hawthorn →

The Hill

The Hill uses Commercial Type’s Graphik almost exclusively throughout their site. Hoefler & Co.’s Chronicle Display makes a brief appearance in the footer, however, that appears to be the only place it is used. The logo looks like it is set in Chronicle Display (or something very similar), so it may have been nice to bring the serif typeface into the design a bit more. That would help to create a little more unity between the logo and the rest of the type on the site.

The Pudding

A few months ago, I wrote about how Canela, a typeface that isn’t quite a serif and isn’t quite a sans-serif, has been blowing up lately. Since then, it’s continued to become even more popular with four more sites on Typewolf using it. It’s paired here with the serif Publico and sans-serif Atlas Grotesk—all from Commercial Type. The type on this site is unique in that there isn’t really a consistent template used between the articles. The content focuses on data visualization and each article seems to be individually art directed to best match the visuals. Some of the pages even have their own unique type choices, using fonts from both Google Fonts and H&Co.

Romance Journal

High-contrast sans-serifs are making a comeback and Optima is considered a classic of the genre. It works nicely here with the subdued photography to help create a solemn mood. An extended cut of GT America is set in uppercase for the subheaders—usually it’s standard practice to add letterspacing to uppercase type, but the uppercase here actually has slightly negative letterspacing which is odd. I imagine that the font is already so wide that a tighter setting just felt more appropriate.

Man Repeller

The Man Repeller redesign features bright colors combined with elegant typography. A condensed style of Chronicle Display is used for the headlines—condensed faces always work well for headlines as they allow more words to fit comfortably per line. Knockout is used for the logo as well as subheaders and auxiliary text. As much as I love the typography, I think the body text suffers from a few flaws—faux italics are used, the line length is a little too wide and there is an unusually large gap between paragraphs which breaks up the reading flow.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 41st installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for May here.

Pavel Kedich

Morion is a quirky serif that combines razor-sharp terminals with a decorative Art Nouveau influence. It’s paired here with the sans-serif Fabrik, used in navigation and captions, which adds a contemporary touch to the design. The typographic grid on this site is unique in that the headlines are aligned with the paragraph indent rather than flush left. This helps break up the grid and makes the layout feel a little more dynamic and engaging.

B4XVI

Using extended widths of typefaces is starting to become a hallmark of the brutalist design trend. Here, an extended cut of Helvetica Neue is mixed mid-sentence with Perpetua Titling. The cap heights of both typefaces match up nicely, so the effect isn’t too jarring.

The Ringer’s 2017 NBA Draft Guide

Timmons NY is a condensed sans-serif that features angular corners in place of curves. This style of typeface always gives off a sporty, athletic vibe—the lack of curves feels masculine and the condensed proportions would make a last name fit well on the back of a jersey. So it’s definitely an appropriate typeface choice for this NBA draft guide. The tall and narrow structure of the letterforms makes reading difficult, so the typeface is used sparingly with GT Pressura Mono making up the bulk of the text on the site.

Restate Media

I love this effect of combining two contrasting styles of design. Space Mono feels futuristic, with the dashed line dividers further adding to the techy, computer terminal aesthetic. Caslon feels classy and refined. Together these two styles create a dissonance that feels right at home with the sarcastic tone of the site’s copy.

A Constellation

Orpheus is a serif typeface available on Typekit that sees little use compared to other more popular serifs on the service. It makes for a distinctive headline face on this style blog. It’s paired with Garamond for body text and P22 Underground for navigational elements.

Almost all of the type on this site is center aligned, which originates with the logo (set in Albertus). Once you decide to center align a logo, then it feels natural to center align the navigation as well. Then headlines start to look better centered. And on and on, all the way down the page. Fortunately, the centering stops with the body text in the longer articles, which switches to a standard flush left setting. Centered text looks elegant but can become tiresome to read when used in longer form content. I think this site strikes a nice balance.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 42nd installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for June here.

Seals

Tré Seals’ site uses five typefaces (six if you count what appears to be Obsidian used for the “S” logo), all from Hoefler & Co: Ideal Sans for the navigation, Ringside for the headers, Surveyor for pullquotes, Tungsten for dates and Operator for body text. Is that too many fonts? Maybe. But I absolutely love the design. It feels engaging. It feels like a brand. It doesn’t look exactly like every other site on the internet. This falls more in line with the Bethany Heck school of thought, which essentially comes down to use as many fonts as you want, just be consistent and use each font for a specific purpose. The web would be a much more interesting visual medium if designers went with this advice.

Wealthfront

A geometric sans paired with a chunky, high-contrast serif. This isn’t groundbreaking stuff, but for a financial services company it feels pretty fresh. Glosa Display from DSType has never been featured on Typewolf before, so it’s a little more distinctive compared to other high-contrast serifs we see used all the time like Freight Display. Calibre from Klim Type Foundry feels like it is starting to become the new Circular—I’ve been seeing it everywhere lately and it fits that similar “geometric sans that doesn’t look like Futura” description.

Creme Guides

It is becoming rare for the sites I feature here to use solely Google Fonts, but this site is a nice exception. There are still good fonts on the free service, even if they are becoming a bit cliché and overused. Cormorant was created as a display face, but the designer created a variant called Cormorant Garamond with larger counters to make it suitable as a text face. That’s the version used here and it reads decently despite how delicate the letterforms are. Montserrat is paired with it set in uppercase for the headers.

Brandless

Neutral is a sans-serif that was designed to be “free of all connotations or associations,” which the designer admits is an impossible task. But it does look about as plain and neutral as a font can get, at least based on my own personal cultural associations. It’s the perfect choice for a brand that doesn’t want to be a brand. But the absence of a brand is still in itself a brand—and a pretty strong and memorable one in this case.

Where to get Neutral →

The Century Foundation

When I first saw this site I thought it looked like the work of AREA 17, one of my favorite agencies, and sure enough, that is who designed it. It feels similar to their work for Scientific American and Library of America: flawless type, ample whitespace, contrasting colors—just good graphic design. Two optical sizes of Matthew Carter’s Miller are used—the display version for headlines and the text version for body copy, as you would expect. H&Co’s Verlag rounds out the design, set in slightly letterspaced caps.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 43rd installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for July here.

Tom Ross

This site is more type-focused than your typical photographer’s portfolio which helps to set the mood before the visitor actually explores any of the photos. The logo is set in Introspect, a hippie-esque font that was popular in the 1970s—it’s actually the same font used in the Albertsons grocery store logo, but here it’s artificially skewed to the left in a reverse italic style which makes it less recognizable. Extended cuts of fonts have been trending lately, but we usually see neo-grotesques used like Helvetica Neue and Nimbus Sans. So seeing something from the gothic genre, like Trade Gothic used here, is a bit different.

Mile-End

I almost didn’t recognize the display face used here as Gill Sans—the ultra bold style is so different from the rest of the family that it no longer feels like Gill Sans. When font weights get super heavy like this, all kinds of compromises need to be made to prevent the counters from filling in and to keep the letterforms legible. The dot on the i is tiny and the distinctive lowercase double-story g is changed to a single-story version.

Normally mixing another sans-serif with Gill Sans wouldn’t provide enough contrast, however, here Basis Grotesque provides more than enough of contrast with the fat Gill Sans. The body text is set justified which you don’t see all that often on the web. It creates a nice even edge for the text but comes at the expense of inconsistent word spacing, especially without hyphenation.

Linda Huang

Linda Huang has an amazingly good collection of book covers in her portfolio which shows type being used in all kinds of clever and creative ways. The font used on her site, The Stroke Sans, is unique as well. It draws on similar calligraphic influences as Frauen, the font I used for my own personal portfolio, but combines that style with a “computer-generated” pen stroke. Notice the unusual connecting strokes on the letters w and M. It’s definitely a distinctive font, however, the kerning looks to be a little off—notice the gaps in the words graphic and covers in the above screenshot.

Where to get The Stroke Sans →

Sarah Sampsel

Most designers are aware that the optimal line length for reading is between 45 and 75 characters, however, it still seems most sites have paragraphs that are much wider than that recommendation. So it’s refreshing to see a site that sticks to the lower end of that range. The two column grid helps with this, but rather than draw a line all the way down the middle of the page, the content breaks out from the grid which makes the layout feel more dynamic. The headlines are set in Canela, paired with Freight Text for body copy and uppercase Freight Sans for smaller headers.

TASTE

Upstatement always does awesome design work and their new site for TASTE is no exception. The type pairings here are really well thought out. The serif Tusar is used for the large titles. Tusar has lots of character but isn’t very body text friendly due to its quirks such as the tight aperture on the letter a. Domaine Text has similar proportions to Tusar but reads much better, so it’s paired with Tusar for body text. GT Eesti rounds out the design, set entirely in uppercase. Together the three type families feel very cohesive, with everything sharing a similar sophisticated, early twentieth century aesthetic.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Enter your email below if you want to be notified when it is published.

This is the 44th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for August here.

Inside the Head

Center-aligned text is often misused on the web, but in this instance it’s entirely appropriate as this is a poetry project. The poem text is set in the display cut of Farnham, as opposed to the text version, yet it still reads perfectly well for the short poems. Windsor, the lumpy serif used for the headers, was originally released in 1905 but seems to firmly recall the 1960s and 1970s as it was popular on album and book covers from that era. It has a warm, vintage feeling, especially in the bolder weights where the rounded corners make it feel soft and friendly. Poppins, a geometric sans-serif that is freely available on Google Fonts, is set in uppercase for the navigation, contrasting nicely with the other two typefaces.

LNM

Amerigo is an inscriptional typeface with flared stroke endings designed by the famed Dutch designer Gerard Unger. It was released in 1986, but for some reason has been popping up out of nowhere on Typewolf lately, with three uses in the last month. It looks somewhat similar to Albertus but feels much smoother due to the less angular counters. It looks beautiful on the LNM site set against the solid blocks of color and even reads nicely for a few paragraphs of text. Post Grotesk, a sans-serif that fits somewhere between a neo-grotesque and an early pre-Helvetica grotesque, is used for the rest of the copy where its clean forms balance with the dramatic appearance of Amerigo.

Misfit Juicery

Elephant is an unusual sans-serif that applies geometric shapes to the “irregular” grotesque genre, resulting in super quirky letterforms. The quirkiness of the shapes isn’t as prominent in the uppercase (the lowercase g from Elephant is one of the most unique letters I’ve ever seen), which is how the typeface is used on this site. It still feels pretty distinctive though and helps create a memorable brand for this juice company. The rest of the site is set in Monospace 821, which is essentially a monospaced version of Helvetica. Setting body text in a monospaced font isn’t usually the best option for readability, however, the copy on this site is pretty minimal, so it’s not much of an issue.

The Cut

Canela is probably the most fashionable typeface of the moment, with 18 uses on Typewolf in less than a year. The light weight is used for the headlines here, where it looks elegant and refined. Calligraphic sans-serifs like Chap are also pretty fashionable right now, so it makes for a nice pairing with Canela for the navigation and bylines. The bylines, which you can see an example of in the above screenshot, have added letterspacing which is generally considered a typographic faux pas for lowercase text. Sometimes adding letterspacing to smaller lowercase text can make it more readable, but in this case it may just be inadvertently inheriting the spacing from the uppercase style.

The body copy uses Georgia which feels a little uninspired—once you scroll down away from the headlines, some of the branding is lost and the design starts to feel more like a generic blog template. However, Georgia always reads well and it saves needing to load additional body copy fonts which often requires regular, italic, bold and bold italic styles.

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This is the 45th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for September here.

Taylor Franklin

This is the first use of Louize I’ve featured on Typewolf, but I’m sure we will see more of it in the future. It’s a beautiful typeface with an inscriptional quality similar to the ultra-popular Canela. The display version is used here which shows off some of the distinctive quirks of the face such as the diamond-shaped dots on the letter i and the unusual a with its small bowl and wide aperture.

Where to get Louize Display →

Biannual

A common logo design technique I’ve noticed lately is setting the brand name in a font and then artificially skewing it to the left, almost like a reverse italic. It’s a quick way to give type a weird, offbeat appearance. Biannual uses that trick here for their logo set in Lydia. Lydia is a contemporary interpretation of Lydian, a calligraphic sans from 1938, but with more condensed proportions. It’s combined here with Arial Black, which when used at large sizes like this, actually looks quite a bit different than Helvetica—notice how the terminals are angled rather than straight like in Helvetica.

Where to get Lydia →

Chrissie Abbott

This is the style of designer portfolio site that Dropbox seemingly drew inspiration from for their recent redesign (see below), with its colored text set in an extended grotesque on top of a colored background. However, in this case the design feels much more appropriate as the harsh colors perfectly match the style of work in the designer’s portfolio. This type of aesthetic isn’t for everyone, but I’m sure it attracts the type of clients the designer wants, which is the whole point of a portfolio. The grotesque used here, Titling Gothic, has been around since 2005, so it’s a bit older than some of the other wide-bodied grotesques that have been popular with designers lately like GT America, Druk and Sharp Grotesk.

Where to get Titling Gothic →

Dropbox

My eyes hurt seemed to be the typical response to the new Dropbox redesign. People either love the colored-text-on-a-colored-background look or hate it with a passion. I personally dig the new look, but I can understand the negative reaction—it’s a strange aesthetic for a cloud storage service. It feels more like a trendy designer portfolio site (see above) than a tech company. But at least it doesn’t look like a Stripe knockoff with zero personality like almost every other Silicon Valley startup. The unconventional look makes Dropbox stand out from their competitors and it got people talking, so it is a successful design in that regard.

As far as the type, this is the question I had: if their new brand typeface, Sharp Grotesk, is as versatile as touted with its 259 individual styles, then why is the body text set in Atlas Grotesk, an entirely different sans-serif family? My guess is that the woodtype-inspired Sharp Grotesk just had too much personality and quirks when used at text sizes, leading the designers to go with something a little more conservative for the body copy.

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This is the 46th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for October here.

Sweet Studio

Big Caslon, a Caslon revival from Matthew Carter, was inspired by the display faces of William Caslon and is intended for use at large sizes only due to its high stroke contrast. It’s used for headlines here paired with the grotesque FF Bau for body copy. The logo text is offset at an angle onto two lines, which plays off the angular, rotating shapes used throughout the rest of the design.

Trstn

Times New Roman is available in condensed styles, but that isn’t what is used here. Instead, this site breaks one of the traditional rules of typography: don’t artificially distort type. The Times font used here is simply the default system font, set in bold with negative letterspacing and then stretched with CSS using scaleY. The use of Arial is distorted as well, this time being squished down. The letters look completely unnatural and deformed, but I thought it was an interesting technique to get a unique look using only system fonts.

Witten Kitchen

Apart from the body text set in FF Mark, nearly all of the type on this site is set in uppercase. It’s common to see uppercase text used for navigation, however, setting headlines in uppercase is more rare, as it can make reading more difficult. In this case, I think the headlines are short enough to get away with this treatment without impacting the readability too much. The uppercase headlines also create a nice rectangular shape that makes the gradient overlay effect on the text more prominent, which is a key part of the site’s branding, as it mirrors the gradient in the logo. The distinctive logo is using Commercial Type’s gorgeous Dala Prisma face, while the headlines are using Austin, also from Commercial Type.

Kickstarter

My first impression of the Kickstarter redesign was that it was a little bland. The homepage is pretty much stark black-and-white and the font sizes are uniformly small, which doesn’t give any real hierarchy to the content or convey any sense of personality. Clicking around the site, though, I discovered there is more interesting design within.

The interior pages, such as the About and Jobs pages, have much more character with their bold use of color and large type. The body text is set in Cooper, a type family that recalls graphic design of the 1970s. Cooper is famous for its bubbly black weight, however, the light weight is used here, giving the design a warm, slightly retro feel. Maison Neue, a trendy sans from Milieu Grotesque, is paired with Cooper, adding a more contemporary touch.

On a technical note, only a single style of Maison Neue and Cooper are loaded, which leads to numerous instances of faux bold and faux italic throughout the site. Faux bold tends to look blotchy and fuzzy, as you can see on the navigation of the interior pages. Loading just a single font style may save bandwidth, but it usually isn’t worth the potential tradeoff of poor type rendering.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

I’ve distilled everything I’ve learned from writing these articles over the last four years into a single, definitive resource—the Flawless Typography Checklist. Read it straight through as a complete master course and then continue to use the checklist as a tool on every design project to ensure your type will always be flawless.

This is the 47th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for November here.

Designer That Reads

This site is set entirely in Romana with everything center-aligned all the way down the page. The designer implements a super simple trick here that has a huge impact on the site’s typography—rather than letting text flow freely, manual line breaks (<br>) are inserted to break up the lines into readable chunks. This prevents awkward line wrapping and words floating by themselves. I definitely wouldn’t recommend using this technique on paragraphs, however, for large display type like this (and especially for centered text), it can be a nice touch that improves the flow of reading.

Civilization

Larish Neue is a chunky serif with thick stems and heavy, bracketed serifs. Its quirky letter shapes pair nicely with the eccentric forms of Gill Sans, especially with the letter a which feels top-heavy in both typefaces. The quotes here are set well with proper quotation marks and em dashes, although the uppercase text below the quote attribution may benefit from a slight amount of added letterspacing.

Pre_Invent

Tacite is a distinctive typeface with long, spindly serifs that give off an evil sort of vibe. All of the type here is set tightly, with the paragraphs using a line height of just 1.2, which is much lower than the oft-recommended value of 1.5. This tightness gives the layout an uneasy, claustrophobic feeling which may very well be what the designers are intending to evoke.

Holiday Correspondence Aid

A wide cut of the sans-serif Druk is paired here with an italic cut of the Old Style serif Quarto. Mixing typefaces in mid-sentence is a challenge, but the designers here did an admirable job. The x-height of Quarto matches up perfectly to the cap height of Druk, which creates an even texture to the paragraph.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 48th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for December here.

Penguin Modern

The Penguin Modern book covers are probably the single best use I’ve ever seen of ITC Avant Garde Gothic’s extensive ligatures. The typesetting really shows off some of the more exuberant letter combinations and everything lines up in such a typographically pleasing way. This level of exact typographic control would be difficult to accomplish using pure CSS, so it looks like this was integrated using SVG images rather than text.

Post Typography

A design studio with typography in their name better have type that is on point and these guys certainly do. I really dig the typographic grid on the about page—the body text is offset from the headline with an indent, which helps keep the line length readable while also giving the layout a more dynamic feel. The headlines and body copy are set in Okay Type’s serif Harriet, with prominent use of the beautiful italic cut, while the subheaders are set with Process Type’s sans-serif Colfax in letterspaced all-caps. This type system is used consistently throughout the site, giving the design a cohesive feel.

Grayes

Canela and GT America are probably the two hottest typefaces from 2017, but their use here comes across as classy and professional rather than trendy. Canela feels inherently fashionable, especially in the lighter weights, with its subtle, delicately flared serifs.

The screenshot above shows an awkward line break with a single word floating by itself that could have been prevented with a simple trick: manually add a <br> tag between a and point. This would balance out the two lines of text and would read much better. With dynamic content spit out of a CMS this isn’t always feasible to implement, but it could be worth training writers on the client-side to watch out for weird line wraps like this.

Bond

This is the first use of Basic Sans I’ve featured on Typewolf, which is surprising as it’s a trendy-looking grotesque that is available to anyone with a Typekit plan. It’s paired here with Schick Toikka’s calligraphic sans-serif Chap. Combining two sans-serifs isn’t usually recommended, but these two are different enough from each other to create sufficient contrast. The layout is built entirely around Lisa Tegtmeier’s gorgeous illustrations, with the color of the type matching up perfectly with the bold colors from the artwork.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 49th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for January here.

Creative Leadership Salon

Antique Olive is a unique typeface in that it has reverse stroke contrast, meaning the horizontal strokes are thicker than the vertical strokes. This is the opposite of standard typefaces, which gives the letterforms a wonky, off-balanced feel. Here, a condensed cut is set entirely in uppercase which makes the reverse contrast not quite as noticeable. The “evil serif” Romana is paired with it, which starkly contrasts with the quirkiness of Antique Olive.

Smalls

Nimbus Sans, a Helvetica-inspired neo-grotesque, is the sole type family used on the Smalls website. The navigation and subheaders use an extended cut set in uppercase, which helps create hierarchy and breaks up the “sameness” of using a single font.

The lowercase text has added letterspacing, which is usually considered a typographic faux pas. I’ve noticed other sites doing this lately and it feels like it is starting to become somewhat of a trend. To me, this loose typesetting gives designs an almost childlike quality, feeling friendly and open like a learn-to-read book.

Book of the Month

Kris Sowersby of Klim designed Untitled Serif to be a neutral book face that blends into the background. So it is interesting to see it used here as a prominent display face. Graphic designers always end up using typefaces in ways not originally intended by type designers. Grilli Type’s GT America is used for the rest of the site, while the logo is set in Farnham Display italic, showing off some of the gorgeous swash characters.

WePresent

ITC Clearface continues to be popular as of late—it made an appearance on the recent Chobani rebrand and has been featured quite a bit on Typewolf recently. I feel like it’s losing some of its retro associations and starting to feel contemporary again. I credit OKREAL with helping to revitalize this typeface, as their influential site design from 2014 made prominent use of it (in addition to being one of the first sites to do the whole colored-text-on-a-colored-background thing).

The WePresent site may have possibly been inspired by OKREAL but manages to do its own unique thing. The headlines mix in the sans-serif Fakt mid-sentence, giving a distinctive look to the story titles. And I love how some of the stories are individually art directed with their own custom color palettes. The body text is set beautifully in a readable line length with proper apostrophes, quotation marks and dashes used throughout.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 50th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for February here.

Sophie Haig

I thought this was Times New Roman at first, but it’s actually Riccione, a design that is super similar to Times but with wider proportions and thinner, sharper serifs. They could have saved a webfont download by just using the default system font instead. However, it does add a slightly different feel to the design, so maybe it is indeed worth the extra bandwidth. A wide cut of Titling Gothic is paired with the serif, adding a contemporary touch to the layout.

11 Honoré

Canela continues to be wildly popular with fashion brands—it’s beginning to feel like the twenty-first century version of Optima. Size-inclusive clothing company 11 Honoré make use of the lighter cuts here for their logo and site design.

Some of the type is a little on the small size, particularly the thin weights of Canela, which feature delicate strokes that can become brittle if used at too tiny of a size. Smaller type tends to look more elegant though, especially when contrasted next to a larger heading. An expanded cut of Favorit is used at sizes as small as 9px, but it holds up decently due to its sturdy strokes and wide letterforms.

Mr. Leight

This is another site using the fashionable Canela, but this time a heavier, less-delicate cut is used. The logo looks to be loosely based on Canela as well, but with some strokes erased and triangular shapes tacked on. ITC Avant Garde Gothic is paired with it, used at a tiny size for maximum contrast with the large headlines.

Paradiso

So we are four-for-four this month on designs using the trendy peachy-pink color. I’m not sure if I specifically seek out this color to feature or if it’s just too popular as to become unavoidable. But hey, it’s a nice color and much more interesting than the default black text on a white background…

The Paradiso site is all over the place with its type choices. Windsor gives off a laid-back 70s vibe. Europa feels sleek and modern, but it’s set with generous letterspacing, which gives the geometric sans a more open and friendly feel. The use of Optima adds a refined, classy touch. And Graphite, an upright script face based off an architect’s pencil, seems to be scrawled randomly throughout just for fun. It’s a lot of type to take in, but it makes the entire design engaging and full of personality.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 51st installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for March here.

Checkout.com

GT Super was officially released by Grilli Type just a few weeks ago, but some designers have been able to get their hands on the font early as there have been uses on Typewolf going all the way back to mid-2017. My prediction is that this typeface is going to blow up this year. It ticks all the boxes of what is trending with designers right now—high contrast, 1970s-evoking and sharp, blade-like serifs. The Checkout.com brand feels a bit corporate to adopt this look, but it shows that this style is going mainstream.

You might notice that the body text on this site (as shown in the paragraph in the screenshot above) is set pretty tight—the letters and words all seem kind of smushed together. However, it’s not the CSS letter-spacing or word-spacing causing this but the particular version of Neue Haas Grotesk being used. Rather than using the text optical size, everything is set in the display optical size which has tighter spacing built-in. I’m not sure of the reasoning behind this decision, as the type is set pretty small and definitely not used at the kind of large display sizes that would warrant the tighter setting.

Herb

Eksell Display is somewhat similar to GT Super, mentioned above, with its razor-sharp serifs and general all-around evil appearance. It was originally drawn by someone who was a graphic designer rather than a type designer, which no doubt contributes to its oddball, off-kilter appearance. The body text is set in Commercial Type’s Styrene family which reads surprisingly well despite its quirky features, such as the overly wide crossbars on the t and f, as well as the prominent curve on the J.

Gaimo

SangBleu Empire, a member of the SangBleu collection from Swiss Typefaces, is yet another typeface that may fall into the “evil serif” category with letters that look like they could be used as weapons. It’s a very distinctive typeface that helps create a strong identity for the Gaimo shoe brand. The pairing with Roboto feels out of place though—it makes me think of Google and their suite of products, as well as generic website templates that rely on the Google Fonts service. Another member of the SangBleu family could perhaps have been used instead to create a more unique visual identity.

Dwell in Other Futures

Beatrice Display is a coming-soon release from Sharp Type, so there isn’t much information available on it yet. I’ve noticed lately that foundries have been making their upcoming releases available early to select designers, perhaps to create buzz ahead of the official launch. I’ve seen designers fawning over Beatrice on Twitter, so this strategy may be working.

I think this typeface has a visceral appeal to designers due to its striking visual qualities—the ultra high contrast, hairline horizontal strokes and the dot on the i that is just a straight line. It feels very avant garde. Its real-world usefulness, however, is probably quite limited. The hairline strokes completely disappear at small sizes—even at large sizes they are barely there. But that won’t stop designers from reaching for it in situations where aesthetics and emotional response trump pure readability.

A much more neutral and legible typeface, Programm, is paired here with Beatrice Display. Programm is a sans-serif that originated in the 1960s and has since been revived through Dinamo Standards, a branch of Swiss foundry Dinamo that focuses on revivals and interpretations of forgotten typefaces.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 52nd installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for April here.

Jonesy

The 1970s-evoking Windsor typeface continues to be popular here on Typewolf. It gives off a warm, vintage aesthetic which feels like a perfect fit for a brand selling high-waisted underwear. The serif Plantin is used for the text set at smaller sizes where Windsor might be a little too ornate for optimal legibility. Calibre, a geometric sans from Klim, is paired with the two serifs, making the overall design feel a touch more modern and contemporary.

Cup of Couple

The Cup of Couple site uses four type families, but it doesn’t feel like too many as each typeface is used in a consistent way for a specific purpose. Displace, a high-contrast calligraphic sans, is used for the page headers. The article headlines use Perpetua Titling, a display cut of Perpetua that is available in uppercase only. Franklin Gothic is used for navigation and the body text is set in Garamond. Everything except the body copy is set entirely in uppercase which creates even more contrast between the text areas.

Swallowtail Tea

Louize Display is an inscriptional typeface from French foundry 205TF that is somewhat similar in style to the ultra trendy Canela from Commercial Type. It isn’t used nearly as much though, so it feels a bit more fresh and distinctive. The monospaced cut of GT Pressura is an unusual pairing choice as it feels more techie and industrial compared to the classical look of Louize, but I think it still works nicely.

Texas Monthly

Condensed typefaces make for excellent headline choices as they allow for a larger font size while fitting more words per line compared to a standard-width face. The end result is a more efficient use of space with less awkward line breaks. The Texas Monthly site uses Grifinito, a compressed member of R-Typography’s Grifo family, for the main titles with the regular width used for the smaller headers. Hoefler & Co.’s Ringside and Chronicle Text round out the design, used as workhorse faces for navigation and body text.

Stay Tuned for Next Month’s Post

I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Join my monthly email update list if you’d like to be notified when it is published.

Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

I’ve distilled everything I’ve learned from writing these articles over the last five years into a single, definitive resource—the Flawless Typography Checklist. Read it straight through as a complete master course and then continue to use the checklist as a tool on every design project to ensure your type will always be flawless.

This is the 53rd installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for May here.

Jerome Harris

This site uses two freely available open-source fonts—the serif Cormorant and the sans Gothic A1—but still has a distinctive look. The headline type is set tightly with negative letterspacing, recalling the tight-but-not-touching vibe of 1970s typography. The designer of Cormorant actually commented on Twitter how he wasn’t a fan of the tight setting here, but I think it matches the look of the rest of the design and gives the type a less formal and more raw aesthetic.

Long Lean Club

Canela and GT America are two of the hottest typefaces of the moment, and they are both combined here. I really love the overall branding—the logo, type choices, colors and photography all feel spot on. However, I feel like the execution on the website could have been better. The paragraphs extend the full width of the browser window, which makes reading difficult on a large screen. And the introduction of a second sans-serif here—Futura—feels unneeded. Perhaps a different width or weight of GT America could have been added instead to keep the design more cohesive.

An Interesting Day

Norwegian design studio Bakken & Bæck host a one-day conference every year, with each event getting its own unique website design. This is the fourth feature on Typewolf (check out the 2017, 2016 and 2015 versions), so it’s an interesting way to watch design trends evolve over the years.

The 2018 site is a perfect representation of what is on trend at the moment—wide-bodied sans-serifs, heavy borders and quirky illustrations. An extended cut of GT America is used throughout with an even wider expanded style used for the main headline. Will the extended sans still be all the rage next year? We will have to wait and see…

Whittle School & Studios

I get the occasional complaint from people who think I feature too much harsh, brutalist-inspired design on Typewolf while passing over anything that takes a more timeless and classy approach. The Whittle School & Studios site should please this group. Nothing about it feels overly trendy—it’s just solid typography executed in a tasteful manner.

The huge headlines set in the Big optical size of Freight contrast nicely with the smaller text set in GT Walsheim. GT Walsheim is a unique geometric sans that is full of personality, but it still reads quite well at smaller sizes. And it helps that the line lengths of the paragraphs are kept at a narrow, readable width that fits nicely in the oft-recommended 45–75 characters per line range.

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Learn How to Get Truly Gorgeous Typography

This is the 54th installment of my monthly feature on Typewolf where I share my favorite type-driven websites from the previous month and then write a little about the typographic details behind the designs. You can check out last month’s post for June here.

Twin Soul

The Twin Soul site combines two fashionable, contemporary sans-serifs—Adieu, a wide-bodied sans with high contrast, and Sneak, a quirky grotesque with an s that looks like it is flipped upside down. The addition of the serif ITC Clearface adds a warm, retro touch to the design which harmonizes nicely with the colorful geometric shapes. My only critique is that the type sizes continuously scale up based on screen size, so on a large monitor like mine the headlines end up with gigantic text that fits only one or two words per line when the browser window is at full width. Update: this minor issue has since been fixed.

Emergence Magazine

Windsor, together with ITC Clearface mentioned above, are two of the more popular typefaces leading the resurgence of 1970s-evoking serifs. I think they add a welcoming feeling of warmth to the design landscape, amidst the cold sterility of neo-grotesques and geometric sans-serifs. The serif Ogg, used for headlines here, has fairly wide proportions, so it was a clever idea to pair it with the extended cut of GT America. When stacked on top of each other, they feel balanced and even.

Emergence

Emergence (completely unrelated to Emergence Magazine featured above) is a venture capital firm with a brand that comes across as stylish and classy in contrast to the techie look that is stereotypical of VC companies. The illustrations help with this as does the type. Canela feels chic and elegant, while Styrene adds a more modern touch. Neither Styrene nor Canela are ideal for body copy (although a text version of Canela was actually just released by Commercial Type last month), so the ever-popular neo-grotesque/gothic hybrid GT America is added into the mix to set the body text.

MIT

The MIT redesign was lead by the talented folks at Upstatement, who are one of my favorite design agencies at the moment. It seems like I end up featuring almost all of their projects on Typewolf (they also did the Emergence site above). The entire site is set in Luzi Type’s Messina Sans, with typographic contrast coming from different sizes and weights rather than different type families.

The Spotlight section on the homepage features colorful text that switches to a different color theme every day. Some people really despise this kind of type treatment, as evidenced by the “this must have been designed by the same color-blind folks that did Dropbox” comment I saw on Designer News. But that seems to be a common complaint of a certain subset of people whenever a site strays too far from default black text on a white background. I personally love the look and think it adds personality to brands which is sorely lacking on the web these days.

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I’ll be publishing a new type-driven design roundup post like this at the beginning of every month. Join my monthly email update list if you’d like to be notified when it is published.