By: Neil Macmillan

A poster campaign for the FA Premiership Barclaycard is ably exploiting the idiosyncrasies of Emigre's Cholla Sans. This was good reason to dip into their catalogue (always a pleasure) to have a closer look at Sibylle Hagmann's contribution to the Emigre library. Cholla Wide Unicase is particularly interesting as is the supporting ligature font which, like Mrs Eaves, comes with the LigatureMaker application. Recent Cholla Sans additions include italics for the Thin and Bold weights. I note that Mrs Eaves is the first Emigre font to be released in OpenType format. Having already had fun with the Adobe Pro OpenType fonts in InDesign (test-drive them if you get a chance), I look forward to the same with Mrs Eaves. Especially as Emigre promise even more than the original package.

Flicking through the FontBook on the hunt for alternative sans-serifs, I've always been intrigued by the character shapes of Burin Sans. A font from Agfa Monotype's Engravers 1 volume only available in one weight, it's looking good in a TV, poster and press campaign for Citroen by Partners DDBH. Some custom rounding has added a visual edge to this interesting font. Searching for background info on Burin Sans I found nothing more than this definition of Burin from Collins Compact English Dictionary: burin (byoor-in) a steel chisel used for engraving metal, wood or marble [French].

Rounded Sans types of a conventional nature are currently in vogue inspired, perhaps, by Wolff Olins corporate identity for the Tate Modern. Whilst that particular typeface is a custom production, off-the-shelf specifiers can opt for the rounded versions of AG Book (Berthold), Arial (Monotype), Futura Round Headline (Scangraphic), Helvetica Rounded (Adobe) or Ulissa (Creative Alliance). V.A.G. Rounded (Adobe), Vega (Scangraphic) and the all-new Podium from Family Foundry are also contenders in the rounded sans arena.

Family Foundry is an ongoing experimental project conceived by The Identikal Corporation's Adam and Nick Hayes. Sightings of their fonts at work prove that their brilliant Fontworks Family Foundry poster has influenced many designers. There's certainly a lot of Phat about and Tremble recently jumped out at me from an issue of MacUser.

How do you account for the popularity of a typeface? How do you account for the popularity of DIN Mittelschrift? Something to do with visual psychology, I suppose. A full page ad I spotted in the Guardian today, supporting Gibraltar's sovereignty and political rights, was absolutely bristling with this ubiquitous typeface. DIN's potential first came to my notice in Emigre magazine (No. 22, the Nick Bell issue). It's popularity is underlined in a recent redesign by the Independent newspaper where it's not being used. The Independent's choice of Mark van Bronkhurst's ITC Conduit , a DIN derivative, as the supporting display sans-serif reflects the typeface's influence over that medium. Van Bronkhurst's interpretation adds an extreme quirkiness to many characters. Perhaps too extreme for a daily newspaper.

The Observer has replaced it's Life magazine with the smaller format, glossier OM. No change of text face but displaywise Berthold Evo gives way to Bell Gothic which the main paper has used for several years. Bell Gothic suffers from overexposure, I'm afraid, but art director Gary Phillips' introduction of a hairline weight works well. The mention of hairline weights reminds me that Nick Cooke's new release Precious Sans includes, amongst eight, a Thin weight. Check out Precious Sans on the Fontworks website, it is a bit special.

It was Ed Cleary who drew my attention to Luc(as) de Groot's remarkable Thesis achievement way back in 1994. He was testing beta versions of the fonts for FSI and couldn't contain his enthusiasm. Thesis, five years' work completed by Luc(as) in 1994, comprises three distinct letterforms - TheSans, TheSerif and TheMix, each in eight weights (Extra Light through to Black) with each weight in six variants, Plain, Italic, Small Caps, Small Caps Italic, Expert and Expert Italic. The Thesis fonts feature in the LucasFonts collection now available from Fontworks. Basic versions of each Thesis component, a Condensed version of TheSans, Office, Mono and Typewriter versions, and a traditional serif version TheAntiqua are now on offer along with many other interesting and very usable fonts. TheSans is featuring in a UK advertising campaign for AOL and a slightly modified version of TheMix has been successfully branding The Royal Bank of Scotland for several years. The latter's decision to replace TheMix with Arial is beyond my comprehension.

On a lighter note, I've always had this thing about Madge of Neighbours fame. Working from home you sometimes have to resort to any light relief. Get a life, I hear you say. Point of this, anyway, is that Neighbours' Madge is now starring in Caroline Aherne's Aussie sitcom, Dossa and Joe, where the credits are of some typographic interest. Aherne's Royle Family sitcom used very Woody Allan like credits. You must know what I mean - simple black out of white Richmond Old Style or very similar, nice stuff. Same style in Dossa and Joe, coincidence?

Football World Cup now over. Typeface of the tournament for me was Emigre's Base-9 which ITV were using for the info graphics on their coverage. They used the caps/small caps relationship to great advantage. Very very legible and what about that 'Q'.

Disclaimer: