Are you ready to start 2014 off with some fresh faces? We’ve updated a few fonts in our library recently—and added a new one we think you’ll love.

Petala Black (top) and Thin (bottom).

Gorgeous Petala from Typefolio is new to our library, and comes packed with 14 different weights and styles. Each weight shows off a slightly different side of this typeface’s character, which is pronounced without being overwhelming.

Foco Light Italic (top) and Effra Heavy (bottom) from Dalton Maag.

Here are a couple great typefaces from Dalton Maag, both featuring updates for even better performance on screen. Foco carries a lot of personality with its handwriting-like features—the “f” in particular giving a forward-leaning energy that’s accelerated in italics. And Effra is a dependable pick for clear text with an approachable, low-key attitude. You might already be familiar with these; republish your kits if you’re already using them, and if not, now’s a great time to check them out.

JAF Bernino Sans Bold (top) and JAF Bernina Sans Light Italic (bottom). All text from Project Gutenberg

We also updated JAF Bernini recently with TrueType hinting improvements, which means smoother performance on screen from this extensive typeface family. This is a well-balanced collection with a number of width variations to support various design needs, be it longform editorial work or punchy headers. It’s also worth taking a look at other typefaces in the foundry catalog with your projects in mind, because now you can sync any of them to your desktop too.

That should give you a few ideas for new typefaces to bring into your designs in the new year! If you’ve never given Typekit a try, sign up (it’s free!) and upgrade to a paid plan whenever you’re ready.

Kerning can refer to one of two things: spacing instructions that type designers put into font files to mitigate awkward character combinations, or spacing adjustments that graphic designers make as they typeset text. In today’s post, we’re talking about the former, though we’ve covered the use of Kern.js and Lettering.js here before for readers interested in learning even more.

Imagine each character in a string of text has a box drawn around its outer edges. Without kerning, characters would line up at the edges of these boxes. Kerning enables these edges to overlap so the space between each character can be adjusted to be tighter or looser.

The word “AWAY” without and with kerning set in JAF Facit.

In the illustration there are three kerning values: “A-W”, “W-A” and “A-Y”. The “A-W” and “W-A” pairs share the same kerning value, while the “A-Y” pair has a larger kerning value. All kerning values in this illustration are negative, but it is also possible to have positive kerning values, which increases the distance between each character.

Browser support for kerning is surprisingly good. With the exception of Chrome on Windows, all modern browsers support kerning. There are, however, some differences in how kerning is enabled, and whether it is turned on by default or not.

There are currently two ways to enable kerning in CSS. The first is the text-rendering property introduced by the SVG specification to give hints to the text rendering engine. It was adopted by Gecko and WebKit based browsers (such as Firefox, Safari, and Chrome) to control text rendering for HTML as well. The optimizeLegibility value of the text-rendering property not only enables kerning, it also enables ligatures and other typographic features. However, it is not an official CSS property.

The second way to enable kerning is by using the CSS font-feature-settings property. This property can be used to enable or disable specific OpenType features, such as ligatures, old style numerals, stylistic sets, and kerning.

Browser support for these two properties is shown in the table below.

Kerning is enabled by default in Firefox and Safari 7 (on both OS X and iOS). Surprisingly, the default browsers in Android 4.2 and 4.3 do not support kerning, while the default browsers in Android 4.1 and 4.4 do. This is caused by a bug in the support for the text-rendering property in Android 4.2 and 4.3. Android 4.4 uses Chrome as its default browser, which does not exhibit the bug.

To enable kerning in all browsers with kerning support, you’ll have to use a combination of the text-rendering and font-feature-settings CSS properties.

p {
  text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
  font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
}

Unfortunately, the font-feature-settings property is still new and requires vendor prefixes (and vendor-specific syntax for older versions of Firefox), so you’ll need to include those as well.

p {
  text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
  font-feature-settings: "kern";
  -webkit-font-feature-settings: "kern";
  -moz-font-feature-settings: "kern";
  -moz-font-feature-settings: "kern=1";
}

In the future, you’ll be able to use the font-kerning CSS property to enable or disable kerning. The font-kerning property accepts three values: none to disable kerning, normal to enable kerning, or auto to let the browser decide whether or not to use a font’s kerning. At the time of writing this, the only browser that supports the font-kerning property is Safari 7 (on both OS X and iOS). In order to write forward-compatible CSS, you could write your CSS to include the font-kerning property.

p {
  text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
  font-feature-settings: "kern" 1;
  font-kerning: normal;
}

Fonts served by Typekit include kerning data by default, so all you need to do is enable kerning through CSS. If you have questions about kerning or other OpenType features, please let us know at support@typekit.com.

Update 2014-07-31: This post was updated to reflect that Chrome on Windows supports kerning starting from Chrome 33.

Please join us in our excitement: Alverata, a new typeface from TypeTogether and designer Gerard Unger, is available today on Adobe Typekit.

Alverata presents a blending of historical typographic and artistic elements, rooted in the typographic forms of the Romanesque period and brought up to date for 2014.

Unger explains how he drew inspiration from capital letters that were engraved, painted, or chiseled into stone during the Romanesque period, which in turn were derived from multiple Mediterranean and Western European scripts. The contemporary trend in art and architecture was to embrace variety and the combination of disparate elements, and this trend appears to have carried over to the use of type; letterforms from those scripts were interchanged at random, creating a rich nonuniformity.

Alverata Irregular

Unger created alternate glyphs inspired by the caps from those varying scripts, and brought those characteristics to an extensive set of lowercase alternates. The Alverata Irregular set makes good use of the Contextual Alternates OpenType feature; when enabled, alternates will sub in as you type, seemingly at random.

Alverata Irregular in Adobe Illustrator CC

The Romanesque caps also share some characteristics with contemporary type — namely, narrower forms with tighter spacing. It makes perfect sense to accompany those caps with a lowercase set with narrow body and tall x-height, in keeping with current trends of designing for readability across print and digital platforms — not to mention Unger’s personal preference as seen in much of his previous work. Unger also kept some meat on the bones of horizontal strokes that would normally thin out in written examples of the source scripts, opting instead for a sturdier structure that holds up better at small sizes. So while the Irregular set lends itself to display settings, the “regular” version of Alverata, complete with a full complement of italics (as well as Informal upright alternates) and a healthy range of weights, is well-suited for use at text sizes, whether in print or on screen.

Alverata (headline and body text) and Alverata Informal (subhead)

TypeTogether has a lot more information on Alverata. Read Gerard Unger’s introduction and background, and check out the extensive PDF specimen. Portfolio subscribers can add Alverata to kits for web serving today; Alverata is also available for desktop use on all eligible plans. If you’ve never given Typekit a try, sign up (it’s free!) and upgrade to a paid plan whenever you’re ready.

I like to start with type when exploring the aesthetics of a project. From there, layout and other design considerations can take their cues from the content itself. But how does a type-centered approach to layout look on the web? And how does such a process work with the fluidity of the web to produce unique, engaging compositions at any viewport size?

To explore these questions, I’ll walk through my process for building fluid compositions that reflect the characteristics of a typeface, using three exceptional web fonts from Typekit as examples: DIN Condensed Web, JAF Herb, and Chaparral Pro.

Note: on each layout you can hit Cmd + G in OSX, or Ctrl + G in Windows to see an overlay of the grid system.

View the layout, and the grid system.

DIN Condensed Web

The first incarnations of DIN were originally designed in 1931 for the Deutsches Institut für Normung, the German standards organization. DIN 1451 was most famously used on German road signage for decades, and in the 90s it gained a broader popularity due to being one of the first quality sans-serifs released in the PostScript format. DIN Condensed Web, cut by ParaType and delivered through Typekit, again deftly adapts these classic letterforms for a new context.

The type

Given the heaviness of DIN, I had to set a base font size of 20px to make it readable for copy, and gave it a generous line-height. The historical relationship to “standards” made me think of uniformity and simple mathematics, so to honor this, I kept the the size and spacing of the text to increments of 0.5em. The lead-in text is 1.5em, while the body copy is 1em. Margins are set in whole ems as well.

The one exception is the headline, “DIN Condensed Web”, which I set with the viewport width (vw) unit. I tweaked this font size at various viewport widths to align it with the grid, rather than using ems to relate it to the other font sizes. I felt this created a stronger connection between type and layout.

The grid system

In consideration of DIN’s historical relationship to standardization, I knew I wanted to build this layout on one uniform grid, which necessitates more columns to inject variety into the composition. To me, this sounded like a standard we’ve had in the web industry for a while: the 12-column grid. But to make it interesting, I ditched any gutters so the basic unit of the grid, the column, is given more exposure in the layout.

12 column grid, no gutters

The layout

I tried to build a composition that was dynamic and felt as bold as the typeface itself. Starting with a comfortable, mid-sized viewport (around 1200px wide), I tried to push DIN into a more radical tone, with asymmetry and interesting whitespace.

Layout decisions came directly from the needs of the content. For example, the “Overview” section is thinner and shorter, allowing the deeper “History” content on the right more space. The margins above and below the lead-in copy are echoes of grid column widths, exploiting how top and bottom margins in CSS are based on the width (not height) of the page. Once I felt the composition was working at one size, I then started looking at various sizes by resizing my browser window, adapting the layout where it started to feel pinched or stretched. Later, in my testing phase, I fine-tuned the layouts on real devices.

View the layout, and the grid system.

JAF Herb

I truly respect what Just Another Foundry has accomplished with Herb. A throwback (way back) to the broken scripts of 16th-century Europe, Herb is not derived from frakturs as it may first appear, but instead is uniquely inspired by gothic cursives of that era. By blending blackletter qualities with roman forms, Herb is at once historic, fresh, and surprisingly readable.

The type

The aesthetic power of proportions, such as the Golden Ratio, shaped design in the 16th century — both in architecture and print. Book dimensions have not veered far from this proportion since the mid-16th century, and I found even the proportions of Herb’s thin and thick strokes fall close to (if not right at) 1:1.618. For me, this seems like a logical way to tie together the characters, layout, and history of this typeface, so every font-size, padding, and margin value is derived from this ratio.

The thin to thick proportions are roughly 1:1.618

The line-height of the copy is set to 1.618, providing ample space between the heavyset lines of text, and margins and paddings are set to either 1em or 1.618em. The large drop cap is 1.618em of the heading’s font size, which is set to 25vw to align with the grid.

The grid system

Building up from the type, the grid system is also derived from the Golden Ratio, with the viewport size determining which grid to swap in. On viewports larger than 960px, the main layout grid comprises three columns, each 161.8% larger than the last. The largest column is used for the main text body, while the two columns on either side provide a cohesive asymmetry. The outer padding, applied to the body, is 61.8% of the smallest column in the layout grid, again pulling from my chosen ratio.

Layout grid for mid-ranged viewports, based on the golden ratio

Within the main body of text, modular content grids are used to set margins and to place the block quote on viewports larger than 530px.

Content grid for mid-ranged viewports, based on the golden ratio

The layout

By using an asymmetrical grid for larger layouts, I wanted to emulate the feel of a right-facing page from one of the Renaissance books that inspired this typeface and design. I pushed the Golden Ratio to tie the layout together as it expands and contracts on different viewports, showcasing the durability and character of Herb at all sizes.

Golden section applied to book proportions, left and right-facing pages. Source: Wikipedia

Continuing with the 16th century inspiration, I fully justified the type, but also adjusted the grid and breakpoints to make sure that the measure mitigates rivers and holes in the text. To emphasize the dense, monolithic effect blackletter texts can impose, I ran the P tags inline and used pilcrows to break each thought, as was the (waning) fashion of that era. Perhaps unsurprisingly, JAF took the time to design a beautiful pilcrow for Herb. As unusual as this reading experience may be at first, the strengths of Herb allow for adapted Renaissance techniques to shine in a responsive environment.

View the layout, and the grid system.

Chaparral

Carol Twombly’s Chaparral is the most capable typeface I’ve worked with on screen, besides maybe Georgia. It is elegant at display sizes, distinct and readable even when tiny, and its italic is stunning. Those chunky semi-slab serifs also make it perfectly suited for backlit, pixel-based displays. Originally released by Adobe in 1997, Chaparral Pro still feels contemporary for web use.

The type

For this composition, I chose to take inspiration from the forms of Chaparral itself; specifically, I measured the proportion of the x-height to the cap-height, which is roughly 66:100. This correlation to the font’s x-height gave me the idea to experiment with CSS’s ex unit. Unlike the em unit, which is defined in CSS by the set font-size only, the ex unit is derived from the x-height of the font (as determined by the browser). Browser rendering of ex sizes is surprisingly consistent, as illustrated in this Codepen example highlighting ex-based line-heights on various fonts. By using the ex unit, I can keep the type size and spacing tied to both the layout and the typeface proportions.

The cap-height to x-height proportion is roughly 66:100.

The grid system

This grid system was less of a preconceived plan, and more the result of adapting to the needs of the content and composition. To start, I approached the grid system in a similar way to my Herb layout, using the 66:100 ratio to derive a scale for creating both layout and content grids. To create a dynamic, novel layout worthy of showcasing Chaparral, I wanted to push the asymmetrical possibilities of the available space with the arrangement of columns. I revisited the grids numerous times while working on this layout, adapting it as needed to improve the balance of the design and provide enough readable space for the text.

The resulting layout grid for mid-sized viewports.

The layout

The long, tapered slab-serifs of Chaparral made me think of outdented headers, which grew to be a general theme of creating text overhangs. For a more comfortable measure and efficient use of space on larger screens, I split the body text into two uneven columns, using a short, thin left column paired with a wide right column. This leads to a text shape that again nods to Chaparral’s tapering serifs in the first two sections, and keeps the text comfortably within the height of the viewport for the last.

The resulting layout grid for mid-sized viewports, showing content.

A foundation in type

By building up from the smallest component of our design — the type itself — we can more fluidly adapt our compositions from the smallest viewports to the largest, giving our content and type priority from the start. Pulling together a layout from the type may not always be practical, but this exercise has shown that on the web, we have unique new space to explore in the connections between layout and typeface, and this is just a start. What type and layout correlations can you find in your next design?

Resources

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451
2. http://typekit.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/herb.pdf
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canons_of_page_construction
4. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-origin-of-the-pilcrow-aka-the-strange-paragraph-symbol-8610683/
5. http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=1717

Spring is on the way, and if you’re in mind to check out some fresh typefaces in your next projects, here are a few we’ve added or updated recently that might encourage a bit of spring cleaning.

Lust Script

From Positype, Lust Script starts with the bold calligraphic strokes from Lust and adds a flourish that makes this decorative display font extraordinarily memorable without feeling overdone.

Clavo Extralight Italic and Medium

Clavo is a truly stylish new addition from Dada Studio, and we’re delighted to offer it in 16 different weights. The serif marks look especially charismatic in lighter weights, while the bolder options feel a bit tidier—though still solid and full of character.

Sharik Sans Regular Italic and Medium

Also from Dada Studio, Sharik Sans is an approachable and adaptable sans-serif, and adds just a touch more character than the average sans with that lowercase “k” — especially in italics.

Adriane Text Regular and Italic. All text samples from Project Gutenberg.

Some of you may already be familiar with Adriane Text from Typefolio, and may even be using it already on your websites. We’ve recently updated this to cover desktop use as well, so you can now enjoy it in even more of your projects. Its bookish regular style is a classic pick anytime you need a great serif, and it includes an absolutely beautiful set of italics.

If you’ve never given Typekit a try, sign up (it’s free!) and upgrade to a paid plan whenever you’re ready.

We are pleased to announce the release of Source Serif, a new open source typeface which is now available here on Typekit — as well as directly from SourceForge, for anyone who feels inspired to dig into the original font files.

Source Serif was designed by Frank Grießhammer as the serif counterpart to our popular Source Sans family. In addition to being Adobe’s third open source typeface, Source Serif hits another important milestone as the 100th typeface from the Adobe Originals program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Adobe’s principal type designer, Robert Slimbach, consulted with Frank on the design of Source Serif, helping to ensure its compatibility with Source Sans. With its simplified, eminently readable letter shapes, Source Serif is well-suited for digital environments, and shines when used for extended text setting on paper or on screen.

Typographic background

A careful match of letter proportions and typographic color establishes the close relationship between Sans and Serif. While attaining harmony with its Sans counterpart, Source Serif has a very unique style. Following the work of Pierre Simon Fournier, it draws from a distinctly different period in type history than Source Sans.

Type sample from Pierre Simon Fournier’s Manuel Typographique, 1766

Fournier’s model has served as a basis for very versatile interpretations, such as Matthew Carter’s Charter family (1987), which was optimized for low-resolution output devices of the time, and Joshua Darden’s Corundum Text (2006), a contemporary revival. A fresh take on the transitional style, without trying to be purely historical, Source Serif takes cues from Fournier’s designs and reworks his aesthetic for the modern age, echoing some of the idiosyncrasies typical to his style.

Where to find Source Serif

Source Serif, like Source Sans, is available with any level of Typekit plan (including the free level). It can be used on the web or synced for use in any desktop application.

If you haven’t tried out desktop font syncing before, it’s pretty simple; Greg Veen demonstrates the process in this video, where he opens up an InDesign file and syncs Source Serif as he works.

Join the community

There is more to come for Source Serif. Frank is working on additional weights and italics, and plans to add Cyrillic and Greek language support. We are also looking forward to seeing contributions to the Source Serif project on GitHub and SourceForge, which will help to make the typeface even more versatile. If you would like to get involved, see the Source Serif project page for details.

We are thrilled to announce a full shelf of new releases at Typekit today. You can now get your hands on new fonts, extended families, and added desktop availability from two longtime Typekit foundry partners: TypeTogether and Rui Abreu. Let’s get to it.

Essay Text from TypeTogether

The lovely Essay Text by Stefan Ellmer is a serif text face comprised of an upright and an italic. Drawing from the historical context of the Renaissance, the italic can act as a complement to the upright, or stand on its own as a text face. Both carry a calligraphic slant, more comparable to each other than is typical of this pairing. Don’t miss the stylistic alternates and other typographic and ornamental goodies hidden within. Both styles are available for desktop sync for Creative Cloud subscribers.

Abril Titling from TypeTogether

Welcome the newest addition to the Abril family: Abril Titling. A well-stocked font family in its own right (eight styles in four different widths), the letterforms, contrast, and spacing are revisions of Abril Text — sturdier than Abril Display, while more suitable than Abril Text for larger sizes, and more varied in available widths. All 32 styles are available for desktop sync!

We’ve also updated two other TypeTogether families, with italic versions of the geometric sans serif Soleil, and the casual slab serif Bree Serif. Both families are available for desktop sync.

Signo from Rui Abreu

Also new to Typekit is Signo from Rui Abreu. Signo’s reverse contrast letterforms (the horizontal strokes are heavier than the vertical strokes, contrary to most type designs) stand out when set in headlines and in editorial environments. The heavier horizontals also help the visual continuity of characters in lines of text. Aided by a high x-height, open counters, and TrueType hinting for some older Windows browsers, Signo also performs well in body copy. Select styles available for desktop sync.

Grafolita Script from Rui Abreu

Rui’s warm, inviting Grafolita Script has an easy fluidity achieved by careful design of glyph-connecting finials and contextual alternates where connections make less sense. Grafolita Script comes in three weights, with alternate superscript underlines and special ligatures for “and” and “or” to lend it a touch of sign-painted whimsy. Grafolita Script Medium is available for desktop sync.

Azo Sans Uber and Azo Sans Bold from Rui Abreu

Azo Sans Uber is the ultra heavy display weight of Rui’s Azo Sans (shown in the last line of the sample above). It’s packed with personality, with contextual alternates like the R and Ys above that give the chunky sans serif an air of playfulness. Some styles of Azo Sans are also now available for desktop sync.

Rui’s popular typeface Gesta has now also been extended for use in Creative Cloud desktop sync. Check out Nick Cox’s excellent About Face article on Gesta.

Font families mentioned in this post, and their availability for web and desktop at Typekit, can be seen in the table below.

Have at ‘em! If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up (it’s free!) and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

Typekit is happy to introduce TypeCulture as our newest foundry partner. Designer Mark Jamra is now offering a number of new families at Typekit for web, with select styles available for Creative Cloud desktop sync, and a few more font families to come soon.

Expo Sans Pro and Expo Sans Pro Condensed

Expo Sans performs wonderfully in both display and text. Its contemporary humanist proportions and letterforms read well at smaller sizes, while it has a decidedly quirky edge when set larger, thanks to unique glyph characteristics like triangular i-dots and angled terminals and crossbars. Expo Sans is also available in a Condensed width. Multiple styles of each are available for desktop sync.

Latienne Pro

Latienne is a serif face inspired by the 19th century Latines, with a gentle, slightly playful character. Go all-out with the swash caps if it’s a big, swooping header you’re after, or scale it down for body text. The triangular serifs give a sense of gravity to the letters. Select styles are available for desktop sync.

Tacitus Pro (“The Black Stars”) and Alphatier Pro (“Les Elephants”)

Tacitus is based on a fifth-century brush-written letterform (the Capitalis Rustica) and painstakingly adapted for our modern alphabet. The all caps typeface has soft brushy edges and gentle curves, while retaining a rigid verticality exemplified by its condensed width. Meanwhile, Alphatier takes inspiration from runes, shorthand, and archaic letterforms — among other sources. While it’s an experimental departure from most traditional letterforms, the result is casual, loose, and accessible.

We’re excited to welcome TypeCulture as a new foundry partner, and this set is just the start — more fonts are coming soon. If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and take a look around, and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

Last month we announced a number of new fonts available from TypeCulture, including Expo Sans and Expo Sans Condensed. Today we’re happy to announce the release of another member of the family: Expo Serif.

Expo Serif by TypeCulture

Expo Serif was of course designed to complement Expo Sans, sharing a sturdy but narrow frame, open, legible counters, and playful details like the tipsy triangular dot on the ‘i’. But Expo Serif brings some new tricks to the table, like a full regiment of swash capitals, and discretionary ligatures as seen in the sample above. It also includes small caps and a wide range of language support.

The eight-style family is available for web to all paid Typekit subscribers. Select styles are available for Creative Cloud desktop sync. If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and take a look around, and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

We’re pleased to announce the addition of Phoreus Cherokee to our library of fonts. The entire Phoreus family is available on Typekit for the web, and select styles are available for desktop sync. This is another addition to our offerings by Mark Jamra of TypeCulture; many of you may also be aware of Adobe’s popular Kinesis family, which he also designed and will be coming soon to Typekit.

Phoreus Regular and Italic examples in English and Cherokee

Phoreus Cherokee is the first font we’ve offered at Adobe which supports a Native American writing system, and one of only two multi-weight Cherokee type families in existence. It is also completely unique in containing the first true cursive italic types ever designed for the Cherokee syllabary.

The genesis of Mark’s effort was also unique. As Mark tells the story, he was at a type conference in 2011 when two representatives from the Language Technology Office of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, were speaking about their efforts to integrate the Cherokee language into current technologies. They finished their presentation with a request asking type designers to create Cherokee typefaces. They explained that new digital types were required to build the resources they needed to preserve their language and culture.

Mark was evidently very inspired by that talk. Shortly after the conference, he chose a Latin design he already had in progress as the proportional basis for the 85 glyphs of the Cherokee syllabary. He started reading available research, analyzed existing types, and produced form studies from manuscript images provided by the Cherokee Nation and the James Mooney manuscript collection of the Smithsonian Institution.

Hand written example using the Cherokee syllabary

“Since there were no useable multi-weight Cherokee type families at the time of their presentation, my initial strategy was to create a family of upright fonts in various weights. But when the light and bold were nearing completion, I asked what they thought of my creating an italic – not just an oblique, but a real cursive italic inspired by Cherokee handwriting. With their encouragement, I researched and culled the forms I needed from almost 180 years of manuscripts. The result – the first Cherokee cursive italic typeface design – was given a very positive evaluation by the Language Technology Office.”

- Mark Jamra

Mark Jamra of TypeCulture – Image by Dean Merrill

A key component of any language preservation effort is the degree to which one can successfully teach it to children, and influence young people to continue everyday use. Adoption by succeeding generations is critical. To help with this, Mark focused particular attention on making the glyphs distinct and uncomplicated. This resulted in type which is not only easier to read and learn, but also in a typeface with traditional Latin forms that are beautiful in their own right, and can stand on their own. We can’t stress enough that one does not need to speak or write Cherokee to get value out of these fonts.

Early proofs of Phoreus Cherokee

With the designs finished, Mark discovered that there were some unique technical challenges and some decisions to be made. Currently the Cherokee language uses only capital forms for each glyph, so Mark created small cap glyphs as well. This allows bilingual texts to be set so that the Cherokee text attains the same color as an English text set in upper and lower case. Since Unicode doesn’t yet provide for a Cherokee lowercase, the small caps are treated as alternates of the capitals. Additionally, the use of Cherokee and English glyphs together presented a need for specialized kerning.

Note the small caps which follow the first character in each sentence. Thunder and the Uk’ten’ by Willie Chopper, with translation by the Cherokee Bilingual Program, Tahlequah, OK. Cherokee Nation Newsletter, September 5, 1972.

Mark reached out to Adobe and was paired up with Miguel Sousa, one of our type designers. Working together, and using the Adobe Font Development Kit for OpenType (AFDKO), they were able to work through those issues. Ultimately they decided to place the small cap characters into typical small cap code points. Part of the full complement, they can be accessed via the Small Caps OpenType feature in products like Adobe InDesign.

Why “Phoreus”? Well, according to Mark, the name Phoreus is the ancient Greek word for bearer or carrier, and refers to type (and the Cherokee syllabary) as a vehicle of language and visual culture. We hope you will enjoy using it.

Where to find Phoreus Cherokee

Phoreus Cherokee is available for desktop and web use from Typekit. It comes in four weights, each with upright and italic styles. You can also purchase the desktop fonts on Adobe.com.

A new font family is now available on Typekit: Kinesis, an Adobe Originals typeface, designed by Mark Jamra.

Kinesis, as the name suggests, is full of energy. Non-uniform counter shapes, significantly flared terminals, and active serifs lend to a sharp and sprightly expression in the uprights, especially in heavier weights and at larger sizes. Kinesis also works well in text sizes; sturdy shapes and active texture make it a good pick for body copy. Distinctive characteristics, like serifless ascenders and big sloping serifs on descenders, are well balanced and do not distract from the content. Kinesis’s italics are narrow and even sharper than the uprights, and evoke a sense of urgency, like they are in a hurry to get somewhere — excellent for emphasis in text, and uniquely expressive in headlines.

Big serifs on descenders, none on ascenders. “Squipled” is not an actual word.

The ten-style family is available for web to all paid Typekit subscribers. Select styles are available for Creative Cloud desktop sync. If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and take a look around, and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

We’ve been extremely happy to see such rapid worldwide adoption for Source Han Sans, Adobe’s open source Pan-CJK font. With seven weights, support for multiple languages, and over 65,000 glyphs per font, the Source Han Sans family is naturally complex – so even when we first released it, we expected that improvements and minor adjustments would be necessary. 

After further testing, and with some great input from our users, we are happy to announce an updated version: Source Han Sans version 1.001. This release features:

• Slight modifications to some glyphs to further improve their design and readability.
• Bug fixes. You can get a list of them, along with extensive technical information in our downloadable release notes.
• Some new configurations. We’ve provided additional versions of the full OTF (OpenType format) fonts for each language. Additionally we’ve added a new “Super OTC” font, an Open Type Collection format that allows you to install the entire set of fonts at one time.

All flavors of this new Source Han Sans version are available for download on GitHub, and a subset is available on Typekit for desktop sync.

Adobe, in partnership with Google, is pleased to announce the release of Source Han Sans, a new open source Pan-CJK typeface family that is now available on Typekit for desktop use. If you don’t have a Typekit account, it’s easy to set one up and start using the font immediately with our free subscription. And for those who want to play with the original source files, you can get those from our download page on GitHub.

閱讀該文章的繁體中文版本 (Read this article in Chinese Traditional)

阅读该文章的简体中文版本 (Read this article in Chinese Simplified)

日本語の記事を読む (Read this article in Japanese)

한국어로 이 글을 봅니다 (Read this article in Korean)

Source Han Sans, available in seven weights, is a typeface family which provides full support for Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, all in one font. It also includes Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic glyphs from our popular Source Sans family. All told, each font weight in the family has a total of 65,535 glyphs (the maximum supported in the OpenType format), and the entire family rounds out at just under half a million total glyphs. Never before has a typeface family of this magnitude, development scope, and value been offered via open source — which makes it a no-cost solution for designers, developers, and everyday users who need a font supporting a broad set of languages. Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences, and the release of Source Han Sans is yet another way we can forward that vision by giving to the community.

This is a rather large undertaking for any type foundry, and we couldn’t have done it without Google as a key partner. Our discussions with the type team at Google started more than three years ago when they identified a need for an open-source typeface that covered a broad set of East Asian languages. They reached out to Adobe, where we had recently started development on our own open source typeface family. It was a good match; Google contributed significant input into project direction, helped to define requirements, provided in-country testing resources and expertise, and provided funding that made this project possible; Adobe brought strong design and technical prowess to the table, along with proven in-country type design experience, massive coordination, and automation.

Ryoko Nishizuka, a Senior Designer on our Tokyo-based type team, created the underlying designs for the new typeface family. The key requirements were daunting: the family had to cover the broad set of languages mentioned above, and also support regional glyph variations from the regions using those languages. (In some cases, glyphs based on an original Chinese pictograph might have as many as four regional variations.) It was also very important that the typeface perform exceptionally well for print, and across the screens of the many tablets and mobile devices in use today.  Finally, Adobe planned on including Source Sans for the Latin glyphs, and Google needed the font to work well with their Roboto and Noto Sans families.  The new design needed to complement both, since Google is also offering their own version of this font.  More information on Google’s Noto Sans CJK family is available on their blog.

Ryoko created a typeface that is moderately modern in style, with simplified strokes and a monolinear quality. This makes it more readable on smaller devices such as tablets and smartphones. But despite its simplification, it retains much of the elegance of a traditional sans serif typeface design, providing a high level of readability for text consisting of single lines or short phrases as found in software menus, or for longer text blocks such as those found in ebooks.

Original sketch by type designer Ryoko Nishizuka.

An early draft of a Kanji character.

Type designer, Ryoko Nishizuka, drawing some of the characters for Source Han Sans.

With Ryoko’s designs in progress, we knew that to develop a truly successful Pan-CJK font, we would require expertise that could be found only in type foundries with years of in-country design experience. We chose to partner with Iwata to expand our Japanese glyph selection. In Korea, we went with Sandoll Communication, who also designed the Korean hangul (the native alphabet of the Korean language) and in China, we partnered with our longtime friends at Changzhou Sinotype. Our project had now grown to become a collaborative effort between five companies — something somewhat unprecedented in the world of type design.

Why was it important to get this expertise? Well, the writing systems for each language, particularly their ideographs that are based on historical Chinese forms, took different paths over time. While some characters remained unchanged and common across the languages, others morphed into regional variations. One can see these in the glyphs represented below. While the variations may be subtle, especially to the Western eye, they are very important to the users of each language.

Ideograph U+9AA8 (“bone”). From left to right: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese/Korean (shared).

Ideograph U+66DC.  From left to right: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

The final requirement was for someone to pull it all together — and that person was Dr. Ken Lunde. Ken is our world-renowned CJKV type expert, and he ultimately managed the specification of the glyph set and Unicode mappings, the interaction with our partners and consolidation of their glyph content, and the creation of the final font resources. Acting as the primary contact with Google, Ken spent thousands of hours reviewing designs, delivering intermediate releases and overseeing the testing of the family. It is largely due to Ken’s efforts that we are able to release Source Han Sans, our 101^st Adobe Originals typeface, as we celebrate our 25^th Anniversary.                                                                        

Where to find Source Han Sans

Source Han Sans is available in the following weights: ExtraLight, Light, Normal, Regular, Medium, Bold and Heavy. It is available for desktop use with any level of Typekit plan (including the free level), and can be synced for use in any desktop application. If you haven’t tried out desktop font syncing before, it’s pretty simple; Greg Veen demonstrates the process in this video.

Source Han Sans is made available under the Apache 2.0 license. Downloadable versions of the full multi-language font family, individual language subsets, and original sources, are available on GitHub. Google will release their own version of this font under the name Noto Sans CJK as part of their Noto pan-Unicode font family.

Note: We have updated some links in this post for clarity; Adobe open source projects are hosted on GitHub, but no longer on SourceForge. (10/23/2014)

Good news for your desktop (and your websites): We’ve added a boatload of new typefaces from Hamilton Wood Type Foundry to the Typekit library. Hamilton Wood Type is a partnership between the P22 type foundry and the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, bringing 19th-century wood type designs into modern font formats.

We’ve long been supporters of this cause at Adobe Type, conducting fundraisers and making donations, as well as by helping with the digitization effort. Members of our team digitized three of the designs in the HWT collection: Gothic Round by myself, Tuscan Extended by Frank Greißhammer, and Bulletin Script by Paul Hunt.

The bulk of the HWT Collection is made of digital revivals, but also included are two original designs made by Erik Spiekermann (HWT Artz) and Matthew Carter (HWT Van Lanen).

We included just a couple of HWT fonts in our library prior to this release, but now we’re all caught up: All of the font families of the current HWT collection are now available at Typekit, and you can use any of them on your desktop (and, in most cases, on the web) with a Portfolio plan or higher.

This initiative not only helps the dissemination of fonts that were previously only available as wood type, but it also helps the preservation of wood type history since a portion of proceeds from all sales of the HWT digital fonts goes toward supporting the mission and operation of the The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum.

With over twenty fonts new to the Typekit library from HWT, we’d be here all day if we profiled each one. Here’s just a handful to give you a sample. (And check out the full list when you have time.)

HWT American

HWT American Chromatic was the first design in the collection to be digitized. Being a chromatic family means that it’s made up of fonts that act as layers, to which different colors can be applied — resulting in rich, attention-grabbing headlines. The family has a total of eight styles that can be arranged in multiple combinations for an almost endless number of variations. Try layering the styles on a web page using CSS, or create interesting hues in print by letting the colors overprint. The Behance gallery from Hamilton Wood Type goes into more detail about the work that went into digitizing this one-of-a-kind font family.

HWT Gothic Round

It’s hard to believe the contemporary-looking HWT Gothic Round was originally designed almost two centuries ago, in 1838. The round edges of this gothic (or sans-serif) give the design an undeniable warmth and bubbly quality, particularly noticeable in the lowercase letters. The design’s heavy weight will provide plenty of impact in applications that demand the readers’ heightened attention, such as a magazine masthead or a store sign. This typeface was a 2013 Typographica favorite. See more about the work that went into digitizing this typeface.

HWT Unit Gothic

First shown in a magazine advertisement in 1907, the HWT Unit Gothic series includes a breadth of weight and width styles rarely seen in wood type designs. Seamlessly organized as a system of fonts, this family is believed to have been the predecessor of the neo-grotesque collections — Helvetica and Univers — released around 50 years later. Besides supporting extended Latin, HWT Unit Gothic also includes Greek and Cyrillic, thus providing broad language coverage for a wide range of applications, from newspaper headlines to logos. Read more about the digitization process for this typeface on the Hamilton Wood Type Behance page.

HWT Van Lanen

In 2002, the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum commissioned typeface designer Matthew Carter to develop a new wood type design as a way to help promote the newly established facility. Part of the project included the fabrication of actual wood blocks. Named after Jim Van Lanen, the museum’s founder, this bold wedge-shape serifed design of HWT Van Lanen is reminiscent of the Latin Extended style popularized in the late 19th century. Included in the family is a reversed font style, called streamer, that can be used on its own or in combination with the default style to create interesting chromatic effects. See the Hamilton Wood Type Behance page for more details about the making of Van Lanen.

Let us know what you make with these new fonts; we love seeing cool type in action. If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and take a look around, and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

The Source Serif family has grown thanks to the work of Adobe Type designer Frank Grießhammer, who added three new weights (Extra Light, Light, and Black) and made updates to the Semibold and Bold. All these updates are now available on Typekit.

Along with these additions, Frank made changes to the Semibold and Bold weights, making both slightly heavier in Version 1.017 in order to better complement and harmonize with the other weights in the newly-expanded family. With these updates, the weight range of Source Serif is now matched to that of Source Sans, which was Frank’s intention from the beginning. The character set itself has not changed, but this will be one of the next areas for expansion.

Where to find Source Serif

Source Serif is available with any level of Typekit plan (including the free level). It can be used on the web or synced for use in any desktop. Downloadable versions and original source files are available on GitHub.

Join the community

Frank’s work on Source Serif is ongoing, and we are pleased to see that people have already been contributing and discussing on GitHub. If you’d like to get involved, see the GitHub project page for details.

Happy Holidays! Here’s a gift for you all: New fonts on Typekit! We’ve added these to our full library, and they’re all available for web and desktop sync.

Bookmania from Mark Simonson Studio

Bookman Oldstyle, designed in the early 1900s, has been revived a few times in the past century. But never has it been given the refinement, embellishment, and liveliness as Mark Simonson’s revival, Bookmania. It comes in five weights and accompanying non-cursive italics, and is packed with a dizzying number of swashes and stylistic alternates — outlined in the specimen PDF. Exercising restraint may be necessary when you dive into Bookmania’s OpenType features, where all of the goodies reside. Every alternate glyph is available in one of the 20 stylistic sets, as well as through other OpenType features.

How do you get at those features? For web, be sure to check out our documentation on syntax for OpenType features in CSS, as well as The State of Web Type for information on browser support. Also, be sure to read up on our web font subsetting Early Access feature, which will help keep your Bookmania web font files leaner. For desktop, our partner Typofonderie has a good primer on OpenType features, and we’ll have more resources coming your way in the future.

Servus Slab from Dada Studio

We’re delighted to add this versatile typeface from Dada Studio to our library. Available in nine weights, Servus Slab can perform in nearly any setting where you want a touch of personality without dominating the page. The bold weights make for powerful displays — don’t be afraid to really size this one up.

Madre Script from Typefolio

Madre Script from Typefolio is charming, while tastefully steering away from feeling too saccharine. (It also avoids looking slightly too much like actual handwriting.) Even at display size, this font feels soft-spoken — which might actually make it well-suited for persuasive text. For more advanced use, turn on contextual alternates and ligatures to get all those great character connectors in place.

Let us know how you like these new fonts; we love seeing how you use them in your work! If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and take a look around, and upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

Mozilla has long been a leader in the open source software community. With the 2012 development of Firefox OS, an open source operating system for mobile and home electronics devices, came a new open source type system for its identity: Fira Sans.

Type designer Erik Spiekermann, alongside Ralph du Carrois and his Carrois Type Design studio, were commissioned by Mozilla to create an original type family tailored to mobile user interfaces, while maintaining the approachable humanist design aesthetic integral to Mozilla’s image. Spiekermann’s landmark typeface FF Meta is at the core of Mozilla’s identity, used for the wordmarks of its various divisions and products (including Firefox), and was used as a starting point for the design of Fira Sans.

While it is clearly kin to FF Meta, Fira Sans is optimized for a different experience. It has a higher x-height, wider frame, and looser letter spacing, all in support of rendering on small screens. A few of FF Meta’s characteristic bendy and diagonally sliced terminals occur naturally in Fira Sans, but the latter is generally straighter laced and sturdier than its cousin.

You may already be using Fira Sans through Typekit, as the initial four weights have been available for some time. This week we filled out the family with a whole slew of new weights — 16 in all, and too many to fit into a single CSS weight-defined group. (See Fira Sans and Fira Sans 2 for the whole set.) If you’ve been looking for a new super light-weight sans serif, look no further, as Fira Sans has a huge range of them, all the way down to a two-em stem width.

The lightest of weights are considered experimental, and will continue to evolve. As an open source project, these fonts are subject to change; Carrois and his team of designers continue to tweak and optimize Fira as they go. Extensive language additions are in the works, as well as varying widths, and perhaps a serifed version down the road. There is a monospaced version currently available, which you can also find at Typekit.

All Fira Sans and Fira Mono fonts are available at all levels of Typekit plan, for web and desktop. If you’ve never tried Typekit, sign up and start working with Fira today. You can upgrade to a paid plan when you’re ready.

Today we are pleased to announce the release of the latest addition to our Indian fonts program. Adobe Bengali was designed by Neelakash Kshetrimayum, with Indian fonts expert Fiona Ross consulting on the design. The Adobe Bengali fonts are available via sync to paid Creative Cloud subscribers.

We were lucky to find Neel for this work, as he is a native Bengali reader and a trained typeface designer. Having received his Masters degree with distinction from the University of Reading program, Neel came highly recommended to us by his instructors as well as by his student typeface project, Frijky, which featured an exquisite, original Bengali design.

As with Adobe’s other Brahmic fonts, the brief for the design of Adobe Bengali was to harmonize with Adobe Devanagari, both in terms of apparent size and style. This can be seen in the general proportions of the Bengali letters, as well as in design details such as the slight flaring of exit strokes. The primary intended usage — for printed outputs, particularly continuous text settings — guided the design direction. In an interview with 8 Faces magazine, Fiona characterized the resulting design as “well-crafted [with] well-proportioned energetic typeforms that owe much to the decorative calligraphic tradition.”

Calligraphy sketches for Adobe Bengali by Neel

It has been our pleasure to work closely with Fiona on all of our preceding Brahmic fonts projects. My excitement has been particularly keen in having her oversight on the development of a new Bengali design, as she has played a large part in the development of Bengali type design since she began her tenure at Linotype in 1978, and she has literally “written the book” on Bengali type technology and design: The Printed Bengali Character and Its Evolution. All of this is not to say that Neel needed much guidance in designing for Bengali; but his considerable design skill combined with Fiona’s eye for detail has resulted in a highly sophisticated typeface for one of the most beautiful writing systems in the world.

Fiona spoke on her perception of the significance of Adobe Bengali in a 2014 interview: “Adobe Bengali is going to add a new voice, which is very much needed,” she said. “It’s hard to overestimate the importance that something like that has. … [Bengali is] not a minority script; it has over 300 million speakers.”

We hope that the Adobe Bengali design will be a welcome addition to the existing canon of digital Bengali fonts. If you have any questions about using Adobe Bengali in your work, feel free to send an email our way at support@typekit.com and we’ll be happy to help.

Extensis has long been one of the few developers of typographic tools, centering primarily on font management with their popular Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server products. They also founded WebINK, a web font service that offers a great selection of fonts.

WebINK is unfortunately shutting its doors later this year. Our friends at Extensis have been pointing their users, and foundries, over to Typekit for continuing web font services. We’ve built upon our own library and added a ton of fonts that will not only accommodate folks switching over from WebINK to Typekit, but also give existing and future Creative Cloud users a much more extensive selection of fonts to choose from.

Our first step in that direction is a big one: today we’re thrilled to have added three new foundry partners, and over 300 new font styles, to the Typekit library. Welcome Canada Type, Mostardesign Studio, and Isaco Type to Typekit!

Gibson, Orpheus, Memoriam, Clarendon Wide

Canada Type was founded in 2004 by Patrick Griffin and Rebecca Alaccari, and features an expansive and diverse selection.

Filson, Sofia, Metronic Slab

Mostardesign Studio, also founded in 2004, is the agency of Olivier Gourvat. You may recognize Sofia, a quirky and popular alternative to Futura.

Cantiga, Mayence, Monarch

Isaco Type is the work of Isac Rodrigues, featuring aesthetically vibrant type design augmented by extensive OpenType alternatives — like the flamboyant discretionary ligatures of Mayence.

All new fonts from Canada Type, Mostardesign Studio, and Isaco Type are available for web, and most are available for sync.

We will be focusing on each of these foundries in blog posts coming soon. And we’ll continue to expand our selection of fonts to help WebINK users make a smooth transition.

Before we get into our regular Sites We Like programming, we wanted to mention a neat new corner of our own website: Our revamped Gallery page, where you can now see all the websites we’ve profiled here in one place.

Thanks to our designer Jake for pulling this page together!

Elsewhere on the web, we’ve spotted a couple new contenders to add to the Gallery in the near future.

Burning of Columbia

On the occasion of its 150th anniversary this year, this website is dedicated to the burning of Columbia, South Carolina, during the Civil War, detailing the history of the event and noting other sesquicentennial events around Columbia this month in commemoration. Headers and navigation are in Proxima Nova and Alternative Gothic No. 3 D; the serif text is Galaxie Copernicus.

Queensland Ballet

The Queensland Ballet website features P22 Underground for the navigation and body text, which goes into impressive detail with the history and backstories for each of the ballet performances on their 2015 schedule. The whole site is thoughtfully organized, with lovely photography throughout.

That’s it for this week; share sites you like in the comments!