By: Neil Macmillan

Strange, unconventional typefaces are often strong elements in branding. Stranger than most, a slightly modified version of Emigre's Suburban by Rudy VanderLans is working very effectively for British Gas. Several Suburban characters were reworked inhouse by BMP DDB with fonts produced and distributed by Fontworks' Special Projects team. The supporting typeface, Adrian Frutiger's lesser known sans-serif Avenir, complements the extremes of the reworked Suburban perfectly.

Berthold Evo, discussed in the first issue of Type News becomes ever more popular. Simon Warden at Bates UK used Evo to style both his wedding invite and a new SuperDrug campaign. It's working well, too, in a press & television campaign for Hilton Hotels.

We're seeing more and more of Jeremy Tankard's Bliss. For those of you who don't know Bliss, it's a six-weight sans-serif, each with italics and small caps, which 'owes its origin to Edward Johnson's observations on the "essential forms" of letters and Tankard's own study of five typefaces (Gill Sans, Syntax, Frutiger, Johnson's Underground typeface and Jock Kinneir's Transport typeface)'. Bliss features strongly in a Sunday Telegraph mag redesign (art director, Jason Shulman). ST Magazine's use of type and layout in the TV and radio listings pages is as good as I've seen anywhere. Bliss, which is now the Woolwich's corporate typeface, is also being used in a poster campaign for dotcom company, clickmango. Confirming this with Jeremy, he told me he'd just been to the launch of a little book called 'The Football Fan' from Virgin Publishing which is completely typeset in... ...oh, you've guessed.

Two interesting sans-serif types from Nick Cook's g-type foundry are featuring in current ad campaigns. Mark Cakebread at Euro RSG has styled an Evian campaign with Houschka and Nubian is looking good in SonyCard press ads (agency & type director unknown). These types are both shown in the g-type flyer available from Fontworks .

Among the many dotcom advertising campaigns battling for your internet time, I particularly like the choice of type for totaljobs.com. Styled by Mark Osborne, type director at CDP, it uses (T26)'s Mechanic Gothic (looks like it sounds) designed by Manchester-based Darren Scott.

Checking out The Observer's launch issue of Sport Monthly I was surprised at Interstate's domination of the typography. Maybe they're after sponsorship from Sainsbury's. The widespread use of this typeface has lost it some of its branding power but this will be refreshed by the introduction of new weights by Font Bureau. Three new light weights, the hairline particularly so, and an ultra black plus additional italics make Interstate one of the most complete of the contemporary sans families. The ultra black weights are already at work in a Scotsman newspaper redesign, particularly in their new daily tabloid section.

That earlier mention of a supermarket chain reminds me that Tesco has impressed me with the use of Gerard Unger's typeface Hollander on their own-brand packaging. A predecessor to Unger's better known Swift, Hollander, with exaggerated serifs and x-height looks good as either a display or text typeface. Hollander is available in regular, italic, bold and small caps from Fontworks.

The Hoefler Type Foundry has released HTF Requiem, a family of Renaissance types based on the work of Ludovico degli Arrighi. Originally developed for 'Travel & Leisure' magazine, HTF Requiem comes in three weight variations, Text, Display and Fine Display. Each weight has Roman, Small Caps, Italic and Italic Ligatures fonts. Also included in the Requiem family are two fonts of Ornaments, one for text sizes and one for display. Each of these faces contains a set of printer's flowers plus two sets of 'cartouche' alphabets in the period style. You can acquire this exceptionally beautiful typeface family through Fontworks .

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