By: Neil Macmillan

Hats off to PC World's creatives who have bravely branded this major retail account with an unusual choice of typeface. A*I Oz Poster, a revival of Oswald Cooper's hand lettering (circa 1913) by R. McCamant for Alphabets Incorporated, might seem an inappropriate selection for a high-tech products chain. Check it out and judge for yourself. Cooper's brilliant original lettering can be viewed in The Book of Oz Cooper; The Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, 1949. Obviously not an easy book to get hold of but well worth the effort. Other examples of Oz's wonderful hand have inspired fellow Cooper enthusiast Dave Farey to produce ITC Highlander and ITC Ozwald .

Talking of revivals, I've just had a preview of The Font Bureau's latest releases, 25 & 26 and amongst these are new display weights of FB Garamond. Font Bureau's Garamond is a revival of Robert Hunter Middleton's design, based on authentic original sources, for the Ludlow Typograph Company of Chicago in 1929/30. This delicate and distinctive interpretation of Garamond was used to great advantage a couple of years back by Simon Fairweather in a Rover ad campaign for the now defunct Amirati Puris Lintas. The aforementioned Dave Farey revived another Middleton type, Stellar, for Agfa Monotype's Creative Alliance library. Stellar, a less severe alternative to the monotone sans serifs gaining popularity in the late 1920s, has a pleasant thick and thin contrast. Middleton's beautiful, classic titling font, Delphian Open also features in the Creative Alliance collection.

Another delightful addition to The Font Bureau library is Pouty, a light chancery script by commercial lettering artist Michael Clark. Complemented by many harmonious ligatures and alternates, FB describe it as a 'sweetly elegant cursive' and I can't argue with that.

Re script types, I was interested to discover at the ATypI Congress in Copenhagen that Henrik Birkvig, one of the Danish organisers and Head of Department at the Graphic Arts Institute of Denmark in Copenhagen, encourages students to use Poetica and Zapfino in assignments to familiarise themselves with traditional calligraphic letterforms. Digital calligraphy, somewhat of a contradiction, is certainly a satisfying alternative to the real thing for the less gifted, like myself. More about ATypI and Copenhagen will appear in the next issue.

Unable to escape The Font Bureau's influence on type use, I picked up a copy of Advertising Age in the reception of a large London ad agency to discover an interesting use in text of FB Village. This Goudy revival exploits slightly exaggerated letterforms to create dynamic text. Redrawn by David Berlow for display and text use in Esquire magazine in 1994, FB Village, with its beautiful italics, benefits from Font Bureau's unrivalled sensitivity to inter-character spacing which is also evident in their house font, FB Californian - yet another Goudy revival. Interstate - surprise, surprise - is the dominant display font in Advertising Age.

The Observer Food Monthly magazine is using Jeremy Tankard's serif typeface Enigma for both headline and text. The distinctive character shapes of Enigma work beautifully in large sizes and art director Gary Phillips takes full advantage. And, needless to say, more evidence of FB here in Food Monthly's use of Interstate as their supporting sans serif.

Mikaway from Berthold Types (designed for Berthold by Kazimierz Mika in 1989) features as the serif display font in a Scotland on Sunday redesign. Available in four weights with condensed, old style figure and small cap versions, Mikaway is one of the many underused gems in the Berthold Types library. To view the collection call Fontworks for The Berthold Exclusiv Collection booklet. Also featuring in this newspaper's new appearance are the Platinum Collection Univers types from Linotype Library. 63 reworked weights of this classic sans from Ultra Light to Extra Black, each with the Euro currency symbol, create a formidable palette for newspaper work. SoS's magazine Spectrum, justifiably spared from a redesign, retains its use of Bureau Grotesque and the delightful Eldorado from, of course, you know who.

Walking down St John Street in London towards the junction with Clerkenwell Road, I spotted an interesting display of typographic t-shirts in a hairdressing salon. The style, on closer inspection, rang a bell. Large, slightly distressed obviously letterpress characters, white out of black, and branded Frostees, could only be the work of Vince Frost. They're brilliant and on sale there. Saving up for one as I write.

I've always meant to mention an interesting use of an interesting typeface by Saatchi & Saatchi type director Roger Kennedy. It was in the spring of last year that Roger showed me his work on a campaign for the Museum of London advertising The High Steet Londinium Exhibition. To achieve the Roman period feel, Roger set the body copy in Albertus caps justified to the shape of Roman columns but it was his use of Adobe Penumbra as the headline face that interested me most. Roger's objective was to find a sans serif with Trajan influence and proportions. And he succeeded with his choice. Penumbra is an all caps multiple master display typeface with weight and style axes. Derived from his poster lettering, Lance Hidy with Gino Lee designed Penumbra, the style axis of which allows selection of a serif or a sans serif design, and almost any variation in between. 'I wanted a type that was somewhere between Futura and Syntax , with a bloodline to Trajan', says Hidy in the Adobe Originals specimen book of Penumbra. Knowing that Roger only became acquainted with this book recently, his choice underlines the impressive ability of a good type director to source an appropriate type solution.

Last week I attended a book launch at the Magma bookshop in Clerkenwell Road (117-119). You could spend some really serious money in this place but a small investment of £15.95 in a copy of Typographic Writing (published by the ISTD) will bring rich rewards. Edited by David Jury, this book presents selected writing from thirty years of TypoGraphic, the journal of the International Society of Typographic Designers. The contributions from outstanding typographers and designers too numerous to mention are broken down into four categories - Working practice, Technology, Education and History. I'm only beginning to digest my copy but know already that Typographic Writing will have a special place on my bookshelf. The last paragraph of Wim Crouwel's intro sums it up for me, 'Regardless of what does come next, it is of the greatest importance to learn from the experiences of the past. What is written about our discipline today is research material tomorrow. Thus, everything in this compilation of writing is secured as essential luggage for those who follow us'.

Other sightings by colleagues of the many Fontworks' typefaces currently hard at work include Nick Cooke's Nubian (Alberto VO5 press campaign, Natura juice packaging) and his Houschka (Morgan Stanley branding sponsoring Frasier on the Paramount Comedy Channel), Acme's AF Klampenborg (Radio 2 press campaign, MacFormat magazine) and Club 21's Pacific (Citroen ad campaign).

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