The type community were out in force at the annual ATypI font jamboree last month, just 10 days after the horrific events in New York and Washington. The turn-out at this year's conference in Copenhagen was excellent and though some high profile North Americans such as Font Bureau, Emigre and House Industries were in absentia the general mood was upbeat as most people wanted to get back to business. Highlights included a fascinating talk by Nick Shinn ("For the masses: the triumph of historicism") on American magazine typography over the last 100 years, Jay Rutherford's presentation on the Bauhaus movement and Jeremy Tankard's Quicktime VR tour of his West London studio. Ulsterman and Mr Fontsmith himself, Jason Smith, is on a roll: speaker at the conference, elected to the ATypI board, turning 30 last week and soon to have his fonts released by Fontworks. Happy Birthday Jason!

More about the ATypI conference here. or read ex-U&lc editor John Berry's review on the CreativePro site .

Main News:

- FONTWORKS WEBSITE RE-BRANDED
The eagle-eyed font lover will have noted a slight change of image on our website recently. We're proud to be the premier type distribution outlet in the UK and, after all, our domain name does reflect this so why not develop type.co.uk as a brand? We'd be stupid not to!

- NEW FONT BUREAU RELEASES & SPECIMEN BOOKLETS
The keenly anticipated new Font Bureau Retail #25 & #26 releases don't disappoint. Corporate I.D. specialists will be salivating at the additions to Greg Thompson's popular 'Agenda' family, particularly the italics, which now means that the series offers 52 weights of the design. New Italics and Condensed weights have also been added to 'Griffith Gothic'. Other notable debutants include Michael Clark's sweetly elegant cursive 'Pouty', Petr van Blokland's humanist sans companion to Proforma, 'Productus', and Cyrus Highsmith's playful display face 'Eggwhite' which he started to sketch when trapped in a meeting that showed no sign of ending! These fonts, and other releases Avia, Pennsylvania, Dispatch, Grand Central & Occupant Gothic are featured in the new FB specimen book which is available from Fontworks.

- THE TRADITION CONTINUES....BERTHOLD EXTEND AKZIDENZ GROTESK
Dieter Hofrichter has added 11 new weights (Light SC OSF, Light Italic + OSF, Super Italic, Light Cond. Italic, Cond. Italic, Bold Cond. Ital, ExtraBold Italic, Light Ext. Italic, Ext. Italic, Medium Ext. Italic) to the world famous Akzidenz Grotesk family and all weights now include Euros. Upgrades are available to existing users - call for details and look out for an updated Berthold booklet with samples of all the recent releases coming soon.

- NEW CLUB 21 POSTER
Julian Morey's Club 21 foundry, exclusive to Fontworks, springs into life with a new ascii-art poster to promote the collection. Contact us for a free copy and view the new downloadable PDF while you wait for the postman to deliver it!

- SHEER BLISS
Jeremy Tankard's multi-purpose 'Bliss' typeface now boasts an Extra Light set which you can view in a new A5 reference book. Contact sales@type.co.uk if you'd like one.

- LO-RES EMIGRE
Zuzana Licko has decided to restructure her ground-breaking 1985 bitmap designs 'Emigre', 'Emperor', 'Oakland' & 'Universal' by grouping them under one family name in the font menu ('Lo-Res'), together with the Base 9 and 12 bitmaps. The 'Lo-Res' fonts also offer technical enhancements, including a more complete character set, more consistent character shapes among styles and weights, as well as improved alignment among the various resolutions. Other new Emigre fonts include Frank Heine's 'Dalliance' which was inspired by an early 19th century hand lettering specimen and Rodrigo Cavazos' eclectic 'Eidetic' series, the adjective eidetic referring to a mental image of overwhelming vividness or clarity. Contact Fontworks to see samples and order these fonts.

- LINOTYPE GOLD EDITION 1.5 SPECIAL OFFER
Now is the time to buy your organisation a font library with some excellent offers to be had, the pick being the Linotype 1.5 Gold Edition (hybrid Mac & PC library containing approx. 4,000 fonts including classics such as Frutiger, Univers, Neue Helvetica etc) which can be yours for 3,500 GBP ex. VAT. We have very few left so be quick! For details on this & version 1.6 please contact the Fontworks sales team .

- MORE OUTSTANDING LINOTYPE PRODUCTS ON CD
Value and quality, as ever, are on the Linotype autumn agenda spearheaded by the Platinum series - including the new Frutiger Next CD with true italics, Syntax, Univers & Compatil - for serious design professionals and outstanding offers like the Neue Helvetica hybrid CD (all 51 weights in Mac and PC format including Euro symbols) for 349 GBP ex VAT. Further details on our Products page or by calling us on 020 7226 4411.

- TRAVELLING TYPOGRAPHER #5
Neil MacMillan's roving report, episode 5 of the growing cult series.

- ACME NEWS: NEW FONTS, POSTER & BOOK
Fontworks' best selling fonts at the moment are AF Carplates and AF PAN due to their specification in the new Learning Skills Council Corporate I.D. (and their design excellence of course!). A sensational new ACME poster is being printed as we speak and will showcase new designs AF Diva (a contemporary sans family from Dirk Wachowiak), Paul Kehra's AF PostSoviet and Christian Küsters' monolinear AF Zip Code - watch this space. ACME guru Küsters has somehow found the time to collaborate with design historian Emily King on a new book called 'Restart' (ISBN 0 500 282978, published by Thames & Hudson - see www.restartinteractive.co.uk & Creative Review Oct 2001 issue), a fascinating investigation into the thought processes of new design rather than a review of the end results.

- FAMILY FOUNDRY DISPLAY CASE
We've started a new section on our website entitled 'Display Case' to feature the design work of our associated foundries. The Identikal Corporation's 'Family Foundry' section includes a flash movie and artwork from their Type Evangelist era. Other sections include ShinnType & featured fonts from the archives.

- MACFORMAT FONT SPREADS
Look out for double page font spreads in forthcoming issues of Macformat. Foundries already featured have included Identikal Corporation , ACME , SooyType and Garagefonts with ShinnType and Alias coming in the next 2 issues, both featuring biogs and words of wisdom from each designer on their own fonts.

- VIRUS ALERT!
No need to worry, just a plug for Jon Barnbrook's recently updated Virusfonts website. Potential cult members will be invited to begin a search for enlightenment, view the sacred font list and make a donation to the cause. Cheapskates might just want to download 2 free Virus desktops.