Jorge Iván shares with us the design process and production of his Octothorpe font, plus some other things. He reviews the rise and fall of dry transfer lettering, focusing on the Stripes face, created for that technology, and reveals its unsettling in-use attributes. He finalizes by tackling the process of reanimation of Stripes by way of samples and specimens, and tells us how it ended up becoming a new digital tool, Octothorpe: a typeface with major visual impact that explores new ways of expression by using current resources.  Read

This detectivesque chronicle written by journalist Feike de Jong reopened the chests of the mysterious case of an early 17th century punch cutter from The Netherlands named Nicolaes Briot. Originally published by the Czech magazine TYPO, in their issue of Spring 2011, the editors have kindly allowed us to reproduce it here. Stay tuned, the second part of this story is under editing. (The Briot project is part of a wider revival program on historical sources carried out by PampaType since 2004. In the case of Briot, it has been so far the result of a collaboration between John Lane and Alejandro Lo Celso.)  Read

This short article touches on the issue of typeface revivalism. It describes the early enthusiasm of recovering type classics in the beginning of 20th century; then it states a revival case study under its multiple attempts; and finally discusses some polemic matters around the subject. This text was part of the output as a student of the MA in Typeface Design, at the University of Reading, in May 2000. The good parts shall be credited to my tutor at the time, Dr. Christopher Burke. On the contrary all the mistakes are mine. In further texts we shall come back to this extremely important subject.  Read