By: Neil Macmillan

Difficult to define Rian Hughes' new sans serif, Paralucent , which dominates Loaded Magazine's latest redesign. Art Director, Adrian Broadway, takes full advantage of the seven new condensed Paralucent weights, Thin through to Heavy, which, with the interesting pics this mag is famous for, create somewhat dynamic pages. Most of the 'body' text is Meta but, on its occasional use in this form, Paralucent shows real potential.

The London Evening Standard's listings mag, Hot Tickets, appeared in new typographic clothes recently. Haute couture from Font Bureau in the form of Cyrus Highsmith's lively slab serif Dispatch. Art Director, Simon Penwarden successfully exploits Dispatch's energetic letterforms and wide range of weights. Get your hands on a copy of Font Bureau Type Specimens Third Edition and read Mike Parker's typeface biography of Dispatch... brilliant.

Hot Tickets' introduction of Dispatch may well have been inspired by its earlier appearance in the Independent on Sunday newspaper. IoS art director Courtney Murphy Price uses Dispatch to complement Font Bureau's Poynter types, OldStyle Narrow (display) and OldStyle and Gothic (text). Allied to a sensitive use of colour and lots of white space Courtney has succeeded in designing one of our best looking newspapers.

On a more 'conservative' note IoS's dockland neighbours, The Daily Telegraph, have recently introduced a new text face, the selection of which involved the author. Berthold Franklin Antiqua, designed by G.G.Lange and released in 1976, replaces the late Walter Tracy's newspaper type Linotype Modern released in 1969. With slight modifications to ascenders and descenders, Franklin Antiqua offers Telegraph readers an almost seamless transition to a more legible type with the added advantages of beautiful italics and true bold weights.

More was promised on ATypI Copenhagen in this issue but, of course, by now the official programme has been well reviewed and much documented elsewhere. However the last para's mention of Berthold reminds me of how bountiful the periphery of these conferences can be. A chance encounter in my hotel bar in Copenhagen led to some enjoyable conversation on newspaper typography with Örjan Nordling, designer of Berthold Types' Nordling and conference speaker. Örjan recently introduced his Bodoni revival to Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. Mutual admiration for the work of the late Albert Kapr introduced me to Professor Lisa Beck of Augsburg during a DTL presentation at ATypI Antwerp. I was then fortunate to receive many examples of her wonderful calligraphy and copies of the excellent books on letterforms she co-produced with Eugen Nerdinger. Letterforms in their most commercial form and a fascination with the product of Raymond Da Boll, designer and handletterer of both The Book of Oz Cooper and Paul Standard's Calligraphy's Flowering, Decay & Restauration, encouraged me to approach Rick Cusick at ATypI San Francisco. I'm pleased to own a copy of With Respect...to RFD, a comprehensive study of Da Boll's life and work edited by calligrapher Cusick. Nyx, Rick Cusick's lively stencil type for Adobe, is currently branding a TV and press campaign in the UK for health food chain Holland & Barrett and is much in evidence in bookshops everywhere.

One of my own recent bookshop purchases was the Bloomsbury paperback, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. A great read, it's typeset in Sabon by Hewer Text of Edinburgh. Much to my delight I found an informative Note on the Type on the last page (from that invaluable source, Jaspert, Berry & Johnson's The Encyclopaedia of Type Faces, I'm sure). More of this please, Bloomsbury. Another purchase was Ruari McLean's, True to Type. Described as a typographical autobiography it offers an enlightning and very personal insight into the evolution of UK typography, allied to illustration and printing methods, during the mid 20th century. Typeset in John Hudson's contribution to the Creative Alliance, Manticore, the book also features several of McLean's delightful line illustrations the style of which will be familiar to readers of Thames & Hudson's Manual of Typography.

I've been enjoying a well considered poster and press advertising campaign for the Teacher Training Agency which utilises the typographic nuances of Dave Farey's Creative Alliance sans serif type family Cachet. Carefully crafted by a skilled advertising typographer italicless Cachet performs superbly from 48 sheet poster down to the smallest recruitment ad.

We've just passed the time of the year for whisky campaigns and a big spend in poster and press by Glenfiddich caught my eye with a brilliant use of the seductive forms of Emigre's Mrs Eves. In this instance even Mr Goudy would have forgiven the letterspaced lower case. Those familiar with Mrs Eves will be aware of the incredible range of ligatures Emigre offer with this Baskerville revival and their ingenious little application LigatureMaker which was engineered by Letterror's Just van Rossum. You can witness Just and Erik van Blokland's amazing range of skills, creative and engineering, at letterror.com where you'll also find an online opportunity to purchase printed evidence in the form of the award-winning Letterror book.

Not sure if this is the time of year for cheese campaigns but I found the excellent use of layout, colour, type and humour by Port Salut and Mini-Babybel campaigns very interesting. Port Salut exploits the single case blackness of Jeremy Tankard's Shire Types and Mini-Babybel uses Poppl College Swash from Berthold Types. The latter I thought an outstanding type solution. How do these guys do it?

Finally Julian Morey of Club 21 reports distinguished sightings of two of his typefaces at work. Signplate appears in the new Damien Hirst book published by Faber & Faber and Checkout features in Rick Poynor's Obey the Giant published by August/Birkhauser.

Disclaimer: