Font Fizz

The Japanese art of paper-folding meets the digital age with Typogami, a new typeface from Calango. The Amsterdam-based design studio has created animated and static versions of their fun font, but opt for the former (which requries Adobe After Effects CS3 or higher) to fully customize aspects such as color, fold angle and shadows. The static version consists of a font with three styles that can be stacked to form the complete typeface. The best part? Getting into the fold is as easy as downloading the typeface (at no charge) from Calango's Facebook page.

Whether you live in a mansion or a studio apartment, we've got your number: typographically distinctive house numbers from Sausalito, California-based Heath Ceramics. Designed with House Industries, these three-dimensional clay tiles feature numerals based on the design legacies of Charles and Ray Eames (jaunty, stencil-ish, available in earthy hues including "paprika") and Richard Neutra (crisp, elongated digits in your choice of "mid-century white" or "museum black"). Not in the market to upgrade your address? Brighten your desk with an Eames-style star, asterisk, or ampersand.

Swiss style. International fun. That's the promise of Helveticards, a deck that plays it sleek with the help of Max Miedinger's famed typeface. The king, queen, and jack are dethroned (and defaced) by capital letters -- K, Q, and J -- while two corners of each card feature not numerals but words ("Five of Clubs"), a touch that creator Ryan Myers describes as "a tongue-in-cheek celebration of Bauhaus-style Swiss design." As for those that grumble about the cards' aesthetics trumping their functionality, the designer takes it all in stride. "Design for design's sake? Sure, to a certain extent," says Myers. "What isn't? If that weren’t the case, we'd all be driving tear-drop shaped cars. But, we appreciate individuality and beauty in color, texture and shape."

Watch out Words with Friends, there's a new Scrabble variation in town, and it's fontastic. California designer Andrew Clifford Capener set out to reinvent the beloved board game in a way that would excite people about typography. His concept was to replace the familiar bleached-wood, monofont letter tiles with rich walnut versions in a variety of typefaces. An additional design tweak: all of the game components would be magnetized, an innovation that anyone who has lost that lone "Z" or "K" can appreciate. Hasbro was impressed and tapped one of its licensees to manufacture Scrabble Typography in a limited edition of 1,200. Slated to ship in August, the sets ($199) are going fast, but have no fear, font fans: we hear that a lower-priced version is in the works.

More than a century after its creation, Frederic Goudy's Copperplate Gothic Bold is still turning heads and garnering new generations of devotees. CGB lovers unite at I Love Copperplate Gothic Bold, a kooky blog devoted to the font that "rises above the noise and clatter of common man, transcending space and time." Click on over to catch up on recent CGB sightings (Fenway Park, the packaging for Hebrew National hot dogs), commentary, and "courtesy redesigns," in which non-CGB logos are brought in line. "When you need to communicate trust, love, and the American way, CGB is the font of choice," notes the blog, which recently startled readers with a declaration that it was changing allegiances: to Comic Sans. A glance at the April 1 post date set minds at ease.

Will Avenir live happily after in the strong yet graceful arms of Adobe Garamond Pro? Can Martha Stewart-y Archer ever make it work with Eurostile? See for yourself by playing Type Connection, a fontastic online dating game created by Aura Seltzer, an MFA student at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Choose a single and get ready to mingle by selecting one of four strategies for finding a good match for your bachelor or bachelorette typeface. In addition to honing typeface-pairing skills, players explore typographic terminology and brush up on type history. Meanwhile, you'll never look at Gil Sans the same way again -- the British octogenarian is revealed to be an emotional eater who wears quirky spectacles.