A Tale of Two Typefaces

FF Thesis

Cousins and second cousins abound in this font family, branching out into 6 variants from each of the 3 “distinct letterforms” – TheSans, The Serif and TheMix. That’s a staggering 144 incarnations!

Officially released in 1994, Parenthesis, as it was originally called, was born in 1989 and adapted in 1991 by Dutch-designer Luc(as) de Groot, who was reportedly dissatisfied with the lack of good typefaces available for corporate use then. The font grew out of a project that de Groot was working on for the Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management.

The Sans has been my personal favourite for use in corporate identity projects since discovering it 7 years ago (!), so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that it was indeed developed with the intention to provide a “total solution to corporate needs”.

Characteristics

available in 8 weights 
• Extra Light, Light, Semi Light, Normal, Semi Bold, Bold, Extra Bold and Black

6 variants in each weight 
• Plain, Italic, Small Caps, Small Caps Italic, Expert and Expert Italic

different sets of numerals specific to each weight 
• for eg. hanging figures when used in lower-case text and lining figures when used in small-caps (where the figures share the same height space)

letterform based on writing with broad-nib pen

true italics 
• individually designed, not directly adapted from the roman versions

low-contrast typeface 
• defined as having differences between thin and thick strokes that are not very pronounced

Strengths

extensive font family

good ‘readibility’

Weaknesses

not easily modified 

Interesting anecdotes

“…when you type ABCD you get the name of the ministry in Dutch; type EFGH to get the name of the first department and so on for five other departments. Then if you apply text-style bold, you will have the English translation. If you apply italic you get French and with bold-italic it's all German!” – www.fontfabrik.com 

INBETWEEN

 

On the other side of the spectrum of fonts (pun alert! – the word antithesis springs to mind), the experimental form of INBETWEEN just screams to be used in less conventional projects.

Conceived by Berlin-based design group Jutojo, the font was originally constructed for Jazzanova album’s “Inbetween”, but was confined to making a humble appearance in six 3D letters for the spelling of Jazzanova instead. This then led to the completion of the rest of the alphabet from the existing six letters, all made of wire covered in plastic tubes, and released in 2004.

The visually exciting INBETWEEN sprung forth from Jutojo’s desire to “create a font that fits into a three-dimensional space”, which sounds suitably apt considering that they view design as an image of space. With work that spans graphic design, visual installations and the music scene, it seems only natural that they arrived at this typographical solution. 

Characteristics  

• 3D display ‘wireframe’ type, angled at 40 degrees

• no upper case but alphabet is angled at -40 degrees instead, allowing users to “build spatial letter formations on two axes”

Strengths
visually arresting

Weaknesses

not easily readable  

limited use