Font Fizz

Can you name the typeface that has taken Vancouver by storm? It's Neo Sans, created by London-based type designer, typographer, and illustrator Sebastian Lester. Released in 1994 by Monotype, the font was designed to leave "an ultra modern impression," and it is used in various weights (and in a custom unicase version) for the identity of the Vancouver Olympics. "We selected Neo Sans because it felt contemporary and would represent Canada as a modern, progressive country," said Ali Gardiner, vice president of brand and creative services for the Vancouver Organizing Committee. "But it also feels like it will 'age well'...which is important for Olympic design because it's seen for decades and even centuries after the Games themselves."

Does Helvetica trump Futura? Is Avant Garde your ace in the hole? Find out by playing a hand of Type Trumps, a font-minded version of the game Top Trumps that uses special decks of cards created by London-based graphic designer Rick Banks. Each of the 30 cards in the original Type Trumps and the just-released Type Trumps 2 decks features a different typeface. Take on your opponents by making the most of the fonts you've been dealt. Players refer to the statistics on each card to trump others' typefaces in terms of design, the amount of weights, cost, and legibility. Banks also bestowed upon each typeface a "special power," ranging from Claes Oldenburg (Architype) to Dunkin' Donuts (Frankfurter). It's definitely our type of game.

It's 2010, do you know where your calendar is? Keeping track of time takes on a typographical twist with the Pentagram calendar, which sets each month in a different typeface. Now in its tenth year, the calendar is designed by Kit Hinrichs, who took his inspiration from Massimo Vignelli's iconic Stendig calendar (an all-Helvetica affair). The dozen typefaces celebrated in Pentagram's 2010 edition are all available from Veer, and in addition to major holidays, the calendar notes the birthdays of the type designers along with their brief biographies or explanations of what inspired the design. "So many people, designers included, have no idea who designed the beautifully crafted typefaces that are very much a part of our everyday life," Hinrichs has said. "I wanted to enable people to become more aware of type as a designed object."

Thanks to Swiss font junkie Tobias Sommer, we have a recession-friendly way to trim your tree (or pretty much anything) with typography. His latest font creation, Punched Out, is a set of cut-out layouts—print out the letters and numbers of your choice (try colored paper and a mix of cases), cut along the solid lines, and daub some glue on the shaded flaps to create a set of three-dimensional pixel-style letter ornaments. It’s the perfect way to add character to your holiday celebration.

After a prolonged invitation-only preview that successfully piqued our interest, Typekit is now available to the public. Billed as “the easiest way to use real fonts on the web,” the subscription-based service makes adding favorite fonts to a website as simple as inserting a line of code. Translation: no more trapping content in images or Flash. And it’s legal! The secret is a web-only font linking license and oodles of servers that keeps everything moving at lightning speeds. We suggest taking Typekit up on its offer for a test drive through a free trial.

Remember when creating handwriting fonts required time, software, and skill -- or at least money? Not anymore, thanks to Fontcapture.com. Launched earlier this fall, the web application allows anyone to create a font from his or her own handwriting. There’s nothing to download or install; simply print and fill in the font template, scan and upload it to the website, and then download your completed font. The fonts created by the online tool can be used on both Windows and Mac machines. The best part is the price: free.