On the same day that the latest font catalogue from Netherlands foundry Typotheque arrives in the post, I discover the exciting news that they’re about to launch their own Web Font service. As far as I’m aware, this is the first foundry to setup their own web distribution - rather than using a 3rd party such as Typekit. It feels like the flood gates of web fonts are suddenly about to open!
What also peaked my interest, was the incredible piece of work that is Typotheque’s History.
Based on a skeleton of Roman inscriptional capitals, History includes ‘21 layers inspired by the evolution of typography’. These layers are designed to be combined, which means that you build up your own style of typeface using layers of serifs, swashes and other decorations. It can be a chunky slab serif, or a light sans with delicate swashes, while maintaing the same strong typographic base:
Mixing these layers can be done with their own ‘History Remixer’, but for web it requires a bit of javascript tomfoolery. In all, it’s an outstanding piece of work, and I’m tempted to swap allegiance from Underground Pro.