“What's new?” We ask this question daily. Ask it of a friend and you might find out about a new love interest. Ask a co-worker, and you could learn about an impending organizational change.

But if you’ve ever wondered what answer you would get if you asked Matthew Carter, Erik Spiekermann, David Berlow—or any of a number of other typeface designers—“What's new?,” the following should satisfy your curiosity.

DAVID BERLOW
David Berlow is president, co-founder and number-one type designer at The Font Bureau. Since its inception, the digital foundry has developed more than 300 custom type designs for well-known clients such as the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Esquire, Rolling Stone and Hewlett-Packard. Berlow has also drawn hundreds of commercial typefaces: Bureau Roman, Eagle, ITC Franklin, Rhode and the Titling Gothic and Vonness families, to name just a few.

When asked, “What's new?” Berlow responded, “I’m making a boat font.” (Yes, you read it correctly.) “It’s a custom type-face family,” Berlow explained, “to be used for signage, analog control panels and computer screens as well as for printing hard copy material like manuals and menus for a 190-foot boat under construction in the Netherlands.” For this unusual project, he commented, “The client was looking for a type design that would become part of the branding for the boat and would meet the strict rules of shipbuilding.” Berlow outlined some of the unique aspects of this project: “Making fonts work down to 9 or 10 point on backlit control buttons in a variety of colors was a new and problematic design challenge. We also had to make the typeface perform equally well in a variety of weather conditions above deck. In addition, the design had to be exceptionally legible and readable, demanding clarity and brevity in any emergency situation that might arise.”

Berlow said that the fonts-and the boat-are due to be completed early this year.

VERONIKA BURIAN
Born in Prague, Veronika Burian received a degree in industrial design from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany, before moving to Austria, and later to Italy, to work as a product and graphic designer. Discovering her true passion for type, she later graduated with distinction from the masters program in typeface design at Reading University in England. Burian is now fully dedicating her time to TypeTogether, the type design studio she co-founded with José Scaglione. The young studio has already distinguished itself. Karmina, the team’s first collaborative work, won recognition at the European Design Awards competition in 2007.

Burian and Scaglione are currently engrossed in designing a typeface for newspaper use. Burian explained, “The type family, called Adelle, will cover both text and display ranges. It is being developed as a flexible family, and will benefit from many weights.” Burian and Scaglione’s goal is to create a very legible design that has a neutral look when used in text sizes, but will show more personality as it is set in larger display sizes. “Our objective,” she said, “is to have the energetic personality that is particular to slab serif typefaces become evident as the design is used at larger sizes for subheads and main titles.” Burian also acknowledged that creating such a broad type family for a wide range of uses, while also factoring in the many technical restrictions inherent in newspaper printing, is quite a challenge. She is hopeful that the family will be completed in the first half of this year.

MATTHEW CARTER
Matthew Carter is one of very few type designers who has designed typefaces for fonts in metal, in photo and for the digital medium. Carter’s genius lies in his ability to perfectly balance the aesthetic and functional requirements of type. From his early apprenticeship as a punchcutter-to creating designs such as Snell Roundhand and Charter, Verdana and Miller-Carter has proven himself a master of both the art and craft of type design. He has also produced custom typefaces for clients as diverse as Wired magazine, Apple and the Washington Post.

Carter’s newest project emerged from his attempt to design a sans serif version of his roman family Charter. “That led nowhere,” he said, “but along the way an unrelated form suggested itself, which took me in a different direction. The sans serifs I have designed in the past (Helvetica Compressed, Bell Centennial, Verdana) have been pared down and rigorous in their form and responsive to technical demands. The form for this new typeface is less constrained and more gestural in its drawing.”