Font Men - An Interview With True Juggernauts Of Typography

In terms of a niche industry, typefaces are probably among one of the most niche fields to get into, and a fiercely competitive one at that. Font Men is an intimate look at two friends who delved into the field early and have dominated it for decades, amassing a client list that made my jaw drop. They also happened to own the domain for Typography.com, which served as their company homepage. Unfortunately the pair had a major falling out following the filming of this documentary following 25 years of business, and are currently embroiled in a massive 20 million dollar legal battle over the ownership of their company as we speak. It's too bad that money ultimately soured their entire relationship, they definitely did some amazing work together.

You may not have heard of Jonathan Hoefler or Tobias Frere-Jones but you've seen their work. Before their recent split they ran the most successful and well respected type design studio in the world, creating fonts used by everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the President of the United States.

Montserrat

I've seen people express their love of typography, but rarely with these production values. Directed, designed and animated by F. Lazzari, Montserrat is a haunting demonstration of a typeface set to the rather unsettling poem by Jorge Luis Borges titled Break of Day, take from his 1923 book titled 'Fervor de Bueno Aires.'

This is a tribute film to the amazing Montserrat typeface, recently designed by Julieta Ulanovsky. A tribute, also, to the Montserrat neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, which inspired the font. 

Franchise - Animated Typography

Created by Animography, Franchise Animated is an amazing endeavor that enlisted the talents of 1 type designer (Font creator) and a total of 110 animators from around the world assigned to each and every character. Each participant was assigned a total of 4 colors, 24 frames and a template canvas to work their magic in After Effects, and the results speaks for themselves- A pretty damn amazing mashup of two different mediums into something altogether new.

The folks at Animography are offering all the After Effects files for Franchise on their website, at the very reasonable price of free. 

The History Of Typography

Created by Ben Barrett-Forrest, The History of Typography is a charming, informative stop motion short created using 2,454 photographs, 291 paper letters and 140 hours of work. Some really cool trivia in this short, including how italics were developed off of roman type to save money by fitting more letters on a page, or what 'serif' actually means (I've wondered about that for years now).