By: Neil Macmillan

Next door to Fontworks' new offices at New North Road, Islington there's a gastropub called The North Star. Nice and handy it is, too. Of particular interest to the author is not the availability there of good food and drink but the type branding of The North Star in Emigre's Mrs Eaves. Set completely in lowercase the namestyle works really well on the outside of their building where it also flips, in extruded aluminium, vertically on the corner. The distinctive Mrs Eaves also adds a touch of class to the in-bar promos.

I had another encounter with Mrs Eaves when an art director friend passed on a couple of books he'd picked up whilst judging awards. It (or she?) features in a German promotional book for paper company Scheufelen. Beautifully designed by Designbüro Strichpunkt Stuttgart, it appears to be a book of fictional annual reports. Whilst most the text is set in the basic Roman and Italic weights, there's a clever use as headings of the Mrs Eaves Unicase font. Supporting types are Mark von Bronkhorst 's ITC Conduit and the very interesting Rialto, a Venetian Renaissance typeface by Austrian foundry dfType. The other book was Guldkorn 2001, the annual of Danish art direction. Ingot-like with a gold cover and gilt-edged pages, this book pleasantly surprised me with its choice of Alias's Enabler typeface for the intro and headings. Used mostly in larger sizes, Gareth Hague's quirky Enabler character interpretations look terrific against the relative anonymity of the DIN Mittelschrift body type.

Another of Alias's distinctive types brands Mike Leigh's film 'All or Nothing'. August , an intriguing but difficult to define and classify family of five weights plus alternates , is used for the titles and promo material. 'Once Upon a Time in the Midlands', another current film release, succeeds in creating a mid-western feel to its titles with the use of Emigre's Brothers types by John Downer. These types were inspired by a letterhead for Cole Brothers travelling shows designed around the turn of the century (19th/20th). Included in the Brothers type family is a novel font of 87 word logos & graphic elements. There are excellent showings of the Brothers fonts and some interesting text on their creation by John Downer in Emigre Magazine No 49.

Very impressed with the typography on a recent campaign for Marks & Spencer by Rainey Kelly etc./Y&R. Clever use of a bold weight of Adrian Frutiger's Avenir as a translucent headline in level caps over quality photography. The body copy, also in Avenir, flits from black to white as it crosses the contrasting tone of the pic. This promotion of Avenir, the secondary type in the M&S corporate styling, is a smart move to counter the blandness of their primary Optima . No surprise that the art director of this campaign, and the photographer, was Brian Stewart (www.brianstewart.net). In my opinion, one of the UK's best press art directors.

I was asked by a type director to identify the current headline type at work in Frieze magazine, a sans running somewhere between Helvetica and Avant Garde but with much more style than either. Turned out to be Chalet 60s Style by House Industries, an excellent choice by an obviously type-aware art editor. Chalet, which is also being used by Lego as a corporate body font, is an amazing piece of work by this Yorklyn DE, US based foundry. Available in three weights described as Paris, London and New York, which come in three styles, 60s, 70s and 80s. In each succeding decade's fonts the characters, as you'd imagine, become more stylised. The family is completed by Chalet Tokyo, weighted as New York, but with several unique character interpretations. The Comprimé (Condensed) and the new Oblique and Cyrillic versions add even more function and flair. House Industries deserve the highest praise for reviving, and bringing to the attention of the industry, the typographic work of the late René Albert Chalet. A great all-round designer, I remember trying in vain to buy a pair of his 5-pocket jeans in Edinburgh during the Seventies.

A recent visit to my local Tesco revealed that Nick Cooke's successful sans serif Houschka has been chosen by the supermarket group for in-store information signage. Houschka also features in Manchester United's Review, their official matchday programme/magazine, much to the delight of Fontworks' Joe Graham (yes, he's a red but don't hold it against him). Houschka is used in the masthead and intros with FF Fago (display and text) and Jeremy Tankard's Enigma (text). Mention of Jeremy reminds me of an almost fatal encounter with Bliss in Essex Road, Islington. Bliss, the corporate ID typeface of estate agents Foxtons, brands their fleet of BMW Minis. I'm sure you can guess the next bit.

Alpen are using Berthold's Poppl Laudatio in a press and poster campaign for their breakfast bars. Friedrich Poppl completed Laudatio in 1982, the year of his death. Robert Bringhurst, in his book The Elements of Typographic Style, describes Poppl Laudatio as having 'restrained calligraphic power along with inscriptional dignity' and it brings exactly that to the Alpen campaign.

Flying for the first time for many years with British Airways recently gave me the opportunity to analyse type use in High Life, their inflight magazine published by Cedar Communications. The dominant sans in this well designed magazine threw me at first. It appeared to be somewhere between TF Forever and Berthold Evo (recently released by Linotype Library as Veto). In fact it proved to be a customised version of TF Forever for Cedar by Fontworks Special Projects team. Supported by Acme's AF Klampenborg (a sans by Henrik Kubel) for running heads and subheads and GGL's Berthold Garamond for text, this eclectic combination of types plus some excellent editorial worked for me.

My BA flight took me to Rome for a short holiday with an opportunity to spend some time at the ATypI Congress. My first interesting typographic encounter in Rome, however, was with a morning newspaper, the International Herald Tribune, delivered to the hotel room with a supplement called Italy Daily offering Italian news in English. Whilst the Tribune was completely set in The Font Bureau's Poynter Series, it was Italy Daily's use of Berthold's Daily News that took me by surprise. Available in four weights plus true italics, Daily News was designed by Gustav Jaeger and issued by Berthold in 1985. With small sharp serifs and minimal contrast between thicks and thins, Daily News, despite its name, is an unusual choice for newspaper typography. Fair to say that I found it novel and refreshing.

A brief visit to the ATypI Roma Congress, attended by over 400 type enthusiasts, enabled me to listen to several enlightening and humorous talks and discussions on type matters both historical and topical. This is always a real opportunity to catch up with the latest developments in the world of type and, of particular interest this year, was the book Language Culture Type published jointly by ATypI and Graphis. Edited by John D. Berry and distributed to delegates, this book shows the winning types of the first type design contest sponsored by ATypI, bukva:raz! (Russian for 'letter:one!). These showings, a feast for typophiles, are complemented by essays on the interplay of type and language in the world today from many experts including Robert Bringhurst. Language Culture Type is a 'must have' for anyone working seriously with type today.

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