Typefaces of the Month, Matthijs Sluiter’s Picks

We asked Fonts In Use editor and Type Specimens curator to select the most notable type releases and updates of April.

Releases

Atlantic by MCKL Type Botter by Retype Foundry Canela Arabic by Khajag Apelian, Waël Morcos Dargon by Anne-Dauphine Borione Diplomat by Source Type IvyMazarin by Ivy Foundry Literatura by Roman Gornitsky GT Mechanik by Grilli Type Walney by Luzi Type Wefts by Overlap Type

Updates and family extensions

ABC Arizona by Dinamo now has two new widths: Condensed and Compressed Baskerville Sans is a revised, redesigned and extended version of John Sans by Storm Foundry. It counts six widths, each in seven weights plus italics, supporting Latin, Greek and Cyrillic Blast Foundry complemented Bay Sans with Bay Grotesque Pooja Saxena designed Bree Devanagari, an extension to TypeTogether’s Bree collection Comma Serif is the third part of the Comma superfamily by Martin Majoor, in addition to Comma Sans and Comma Base Schick Toikka released Edict Text as a companion to Edict Display An extended version of Gaya with five new weights is available from Writtenshape Foundry Neureal moved from ECAL Typefaces to Outline Online, and was extended with a Semi Mono subfamily Two new weights for Petit Serif, designed by Mathieu Cortat and available from 205TF CoFo Robert Sans is the serifless companion to Liza Raskazova’s CoFo Robert, released by Contrast Foundry.

ESAD News

esadtype.esad-amiens.fr

Projects by graduates of the 2024–2026 programme have been published on the ÉSAD (École supérieure d’art et de design in Amiens) website. Those are five fonts: Clemens, a post-Gothic typeface; Jorm, inspired by Iranian street culture; Liansh, which treats letters as gestures; Tac, reinterpreting Tamil lettering from the 1960s-1970s covers; and Kedije, which imitates prosody.

With the publication of its graduates’ works, the school has opened applications for the 2026–2028 programme.

Jorm Clemens Kedije Tac Liansh

Unicode: gamified

charcuterie.elastiq.ch

Developer David Aerne has turned the Unicode code chart into a slightly hypnotic browser game. In Charcuterie, when you type a character, the software will display everything in Unicode that is visually related to it. However, these similar characters might not necessarily share the same skeleton and may even exist in other writing systems.

How Do We Actually Want to Buy Type?

fontstand.com/news/design-news/survey

Over a year ago, the Fontstand rental platform conducted a survey. They asked respondents — graphic designers and managers — about how they interact with fonts. It turned out, for instance, that 66.2% of the surveyed avoided purchasing a font because of its unclear or complicated licensing terms, and that the average price respondents are willing to pay is between $40 and $59 per style.

Wakamai Fondue: Update

pixelambacht.nl/2026/a-new-wakamai-fondue

Wakamai Fondue, a font testing and preview platform, has been updated. A new engine for the website now handles font rendering; there are better, in-depth reports on how the typeface behaves on the web and potential issues users may run into; testing to explore the potential of variable and color fonts has become more convenient.

Shady Characters: Update

shadycharacters.co.uk/2026/04/new-shady-characters-live

Keith Houston’s blog — which we often referenced in our Manual and, for example, in a series on emojis — has a new website. The blog has migrated from WordPress and now loads faster. It also got easier to copy text and images, while comments, which were previously posted instantly, will be pre-moderated.

Typographics 2026

2026.typographics.com

The Typographics conference, held annually at the Cooper Union in New York City, has published this year’s programme. The line-up includes Druk ’s author Berton Hasebe, designer Anna Kulachek, and calligrapher and type designer Julien Priez.

Early-bird tickets to the event are available until May 15.

Welcome the Bolid System

bolidsystem.ch

ÉCAL graduates Arthur Schwarz and Maël Bächtold have launched their own foundry — Bolid Systems. The studio’s library already includes nine faces: four sans serifs, three serifs, a script — and a wild take on Bauhaus.

ANRT: 2026–2028

anrt-nancy.fr/en/apply

ANRT — Atelier national de recherche typographique, one of the leading schools where a type designer can get a PHD in Practice, — has launched a call for applications for its 2026–2028 programme. At ANRT, a student may either join one of the ongoing projects the institute is currently involved in or work on their own. This year, ANRT traditionally offers to participate in Missing Scripts, an initiative that designs the first digital fonts for minority scripts that previously lacked them, or a project dedicated to the legacy of typographer Franck Jalleau.

The call is open until June 21.

Protest Typography in the Desert (and Not Just That)

viewsproject.wordpress.com/2026/04/20/views-summer-seminars-2026

The VIEWS project (Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems) has opened signups for a new series of free seminars on early writing systems. Two of them — one about the spread of the alphabetic writing and one about graffiti in Egypt’s desert acting as a tool of resistance to censorship — are to be held online.

Typographic Bulletin Looking for Talent

t.me/typobulletin/113

The bilingual publication Typographic Bulletin is looking for researchers — or those who are willing to become one. The project especially expects those who can work directly with the archive of design documentation from the New Typefaces Department of Moscow-based Poligraphmash Research Institute, where typefaces supporting Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic were created for 50 years (back in the Soviet time).

Applications can be submitted until May 11.

Are Type Designers Afraid of AI?

visible-language.org/journal/issue-60-1-automation-type-design

Alice Savoie, Kai Bernau, Wayne Daly, Raphaela Häfliger, and Sebastian Baez-Lugo from ÉCAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne) and ÉPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) have published a paper on how type designers automate — and do not automate — their work process. The researchers surveyed over 120 professionals and found that most of them are actively writing scripts to work in font editors, but are actually not willing to delegate to AI anything but what they consider technical operations, such as generating specimens. And — most respondents believe that kerning is the first candidate for further automation, yet are convinced that proper kerning is impossible without a human eye.

Letterforms generated with AI by Orlando Brunner. From Automation and Artificial Intelligence in the Type Design Process

Designing without a center

https://slarg.be/content/activities

Garine Gokceyan, a designer and PhD fellow at Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp, is hosting a two-day research workshop on how to design typefaces that will speak across multiple languages rather than support scripts beyond Latin. You can join the first day — which is lectures and talks — online. The second day — which is about drawing revivals — will take place onsite, but will be limited to only 12 persons.

1/2 ATypI 2026

atypi.org/conferences-events/atypi-2026-stanford

ATypI has published a programme of its conference to take place at Stanford from May 27 to 30. The list of speakers at the event includes Google Fonts lead operations manager Dave Crosskand, legibility researchers Sofie Beier and Ann Bessemans, and type designer Toshi Omagari.

There are actually two conferences scheduled for this year, and applications are still open for the one planned for October in Sharjah. Before announcing the programme of this year, ATypI posted talks from last year’s event on its YouTube channel.

TDC Awards — winners

enter.tdc.org/finalists

The TDC Awards competition has announced its finalists. For instance, Ciel by Production Type and Tausend by Fontwerk were awarded in the category Superfamily, while Catich Colour — featured in our February digest —and SF Symbols by Apple won in the category Non-standard Formats.

Сiel by Production Type

type.today turned 10!

In April, we turned ten years old. To celebrate the anniversary, we launched a series of open calls (the results of the first one are already available in our journal), spoke with clients who have been with us throughout this entire decade, turned one episode of our Manual into a poster, released two new typefaces — Onweer and Algorytm, and went to a wine bar!