Font Fizz

Get your 2012 off to an organized and creative start with Dutch type foundry and publisher Typotheque's slim calendar/sketchbook. "Every year we make a small edition of this simple pocket diary combined with the sketchbook," designer Peter Bilak tells us. "And every year there are small improvements in binding and inside of the book." The 2012 limited-edition thing of beauty includes a year overview, week overviews on double pages and a dozen different pre-printed sketchbook grids, while a listing of international holidays and design events ensures you won't miss Walpurgis Night (April 30) or the HOW Conference (June 20). A bonus we particularly liked: the book is specially bound so that it lies flat when opened.

Font fans will delight in Codex, a new journal-magazine hybrid "for people seriously in love with type." Founded by writer, designer and publisher John Boardley, the visually entrancing periodical celebrates and analyzes "the people, tools, and type associated with this craft, from the man carving beautiful cherubim into wood blocks in the 1400s to brilliantly formed modern interpretations and departures." The first issue features contributions by the likes of Paul Shaw, Stephen Coles and Erik Spiekermann. And, since we know you're wondering, Codex is designed by Vancouver-based Working Format and set in Lyon Text and Display from Commerical Type, Knockout from H&FJ and Akkurat Mono from Lineto.

When Ludvig Bruneau Rossow discovered an old model train set in his grandmother's basement, he did the obvious thing: made letters out of it. The Norwegian designer's "self-initiated typography experiment" resulted in Train Set, a zippy typeface dotted with tiny houses and the odd caboose. Rossow photographed his font and laid it out with a choo-choo twist, replacing the usual fox-jumping dog with another pangram: "The quick brown supertrain travels from Oslo to Grua." All aboard!

Target has teamed with Wisconsin’s Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum -- dedicated to the preservation, study, production, and printing of wood type -- on a collection of graphic gear. The "Vintage Varsity" t-shirts, hoodies, leggings, sweatshirts, sweatpants and totes feature images from the museum’s Globe Printing Plate collection. The idea for a partnership was sparked when a Target designer caught a screening of Typeface, Justine Nagan's 2009 documentary about the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. Members of the megaretailer's design team later visited the institution to select antique woodblocks ripe for Americana-infused apparel. They worked closely with museum staff to create more than 100 different hand-pressed prints before toying with scale, layering and color. Type nuts can wear their Target togs to Two Rivers, Wisconsin, this November, when Hamilton holds its annual "Wayzgoose" type conference.

It's hard to find a good T-shirt. Rising above the garish, too cute, and downright disposable competition is Ugmonk, a brand born out of founder Jeff Sheldon's love for typography and minimal design. The Downingtown, Pennsylvania-based designer-turned-entrepreneur has carved out a creative niche with high-quality tees, hoodies, prints and accessories that feature simple, fresh, font-inspired graphics in a smashing palette of dusky hues and saturated brights. Having shipped its wares to 55 countries and counting, Ugmonk is now gearing up for its third anniversary celebration. Visit the site at 10 a.m. EST on August 26th to grab one of 200 limited-edition sets of birthday goodies.

Better living through typography? That's the aim of Dyslexie, a font designed for people with dyslexia. Dutch designer Christian Boer set out to create an alphabet that would thwart the exchanging and rotating of letters that occurs in the learning disorder by making subtle tweaks to traditional Western letterforms and punctuation marks. For example, ascenders and descenders are stretched, height differences between letters are emphasized, and easily confused letters such as "i" and "j" are tilted at different angles to distinguish them from one another. Boer was his own first test subject (he has dyslexia), and more recently, studies conducted at the University of Twente in the Netherlands demonstrated that people with dyslexia made fewer reading errors when the text was set in Dyslexie compared to a standard typeface.