June 14, 2007

Zapatista Released

Buy it now from Myfonts.com and YWFT.

Zapatista is derived from a typeface that I designed in 1998 but never released. It is a playful slab serif with a texture that is sometimes subtle and reminiscent of the irregularities of letterpress printing. Like a fine wine, this face has been aged to perfection and is now ready for public consumption. It includes a full character set with accented characters as well as a second full set of alternate uppercase, lowercase, and numbers. OpenType makes it easy to mix and match the two sets of letters to create custom designs. It's like having 2 fonts in one!

Posted by matt at 09:36 AM



April 19, 2007

Quantico Released

I'd like to announce the release of my latest type family, Quantico. Quantico is an angular typeface family that was inspired by old beer packaging and military lettering. It utilizes 30 degree angles and completely straight lines to form unique character shapes. Equally at home in text or display settings, Quantico contains the standard MADType character set and includes 3 alternate characters as well as several ligatures.

Buy now at Myfonts and Youworkforthem

Posted by matt at 10:24 AM



January 23, 2007

Pacioli Released

Available for purchase at Myfonts and youworkforthem on Jan 25th, 2007.

My latest release is part revival, part interpretation. It's a geometric display font based upon Luca Pacioli's 1509 alphabet of "divine proportion."

Luca Pacioli (1445-1514 or 1517) was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar who lived during the Renaissance. While he was the chairman of mathematics in Milan, he collaborated with and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci.

He published his second important book "De divina proportione," in 1509. This book discussed topics including mathematical proportion, geometry, and architecture. Along with beautiful three-dimensional renderings by da Vinci, Pacioli included diagrams detailing the geometric construction of the Roman alphabet.

Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes.

I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Posted by matt at 05:06 PM



January 10, 2007

New Stencil Fonts

While arranging my office, I rediscovered several sets of stencils that I had forgotten about. While inspecting the details of these stencils, I realized that they are unlike anything available digitally today. I decided to reproduce these styles in a manner which is faithful to their Mid Century handcrafted charisma.

Since most stencils only contain letters and numbers, I had to do quite a bit of fabrication to flesh out the full character sets. I believe it was worth it. One of my biggest pet peeves about some fonts is that they may have beautiful letters, but then the punctuation looks like it came from another font.

Findon is an all caps bold sans, Madison is a slab serif, and Wolfsburg is a textura (or Gotisch in German) blackletter. I'm particularly excited about Wolfsburg, as I can only recall seeing one other blackletter stencil out there.

These fonts are available for $19 each or $39 for all three. As always you may purchase them via Myfonts or Youworkforthem.

Posted by matt at 12:33 AM



January 04, 2007

Marble Roman - New Free Font

I was going through my unfinished fonts folder today and found this gem. It is inspired by a handmade sign I once saw in California. It has an off kilter and somewhat naive feel. So go download it and enjoy!

Posted by matt at 05:51 PM



December 10, 2006

Mercado Sans & Display

Happy Holidays from MADType! Despite being swamped with never ending custom type projects, I've released some new fonts! I have added to the Mercado family with new Display and Sans versions. They can be purchased + viewed at youworkforthem and myfonts. In other news, I have updated my services page with some of my latest custom type work for aerie.

Posted by matt at 11:23 AM



July 07, 2006

Vexed Released

I have added a showing and information page on Vexed today. Check it out!

Posted by matt at 01:20 PM