Typography

Vernacular Typography Featured in
2012 Typography Calendar

Some typefaces aren’t meant for everyday use. They often aren’t readable as running text or even for headlines. Most will never be licensed for public use nor are they commercially available. But they set the mood, add their own graphic interest, and tell their own slice of the story. That is the case with several of the typefaces featured in the 365 Typographic Calendar for 2012.

Take Girder, for example. Asked to create the identity for the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge next year, Kit submitted an alphabet as part of his presentation. The alphabet took its inspiration from the riveted girders that formed the unpinning of the bridge. The immediate association with San Francisco’s most famous landmark offered a visual linking device in the visitors’ gift shop, and made a distinctive image for all kinds of tourist souvenirs, from key chains to coffee mugs.

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Design Quizzes

Quiz: MoMA’s Newest Type Acquisitions

This January type fonts earned long overdue recognition as “designed objects” when the renowned Museum of Modern Art in New York City acquired 23 digital typefaces for its Architecture and Design Collection. Except for its acquisition of Helvetica, this is the first time typefaces made it into MoMA’s permanent collection.

This quiz is to see if you can name the 23 faces inducted into the MoMA permanent collection — and three more classic faces we added just to round out the alphabet. To help you along, we included a clue alongside the font letter, and can tell you that the type designers chosen for the MoMA collection are Wim Crouwel, Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, Zuzana Licko, Jeffery Keedy, Erik van Blokland, Just van Rossum, Barry Deck, P. Scott Makela, Jonathan Hoefler, Neville Brody, Jonathan Barnbrook, Tobias Frere-Jones, and Albert-Jan Pool. Good luck! (Answers on next page.)

MoMA Type Quiz
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