DSType foundry highlights.

Solido is a very versatile and usable type system with five widths: Solido, Solido Constricted, Solido Condensed, Solido Compressed and Solido Compact, in a total of 35 fonts with many alternate characters.

First designed for the Chilean newspaper La Tercera in 2010, the Acta family is a clean and fresh type family that is conservative enough to be used in a newspaper setting. The complete Acta Type System contains Acta and Acta Display, both with six weights and matching italics. Acta Symbols offers an amazing collection of symbols specifically designed for newspapers and magazines, while the heavyweight version, Acta Poster, is elegant and eye-catching in three styles with plenty of ligatures and alternates.

Nyte was first created for the redesign of The New York Times Magazine. Closely inspired by the foundry’s older typeface, Esta, Nyte was introduced for a broader audience in a set of OpenType fonts and features that allow the text to stand out when used in headlines and small passages of text, while allowing for high readability and space efficiency when used in text sizes.

Acto is a type system designed as the sans serif counterpart of DSType’s font family Acta. Both type families were created in 2010 for the redesign of the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, but unlike some of the foundry’s previous fonts (i.e., Leitura) Acto doesn’t exactly match Acta in terms of structure, so it can live on its own. Since the uppercase has the same height as the ascenders, the foundry created a curved “l” in order to avoid potential confusion with the “I”. This theme was continued by removing the spurs on the b, g, and g, creating a warm feel. In the end, Acto is a very powerful sans family, offering eleven weights with matching italics, perfect for editorial and corporate design.

User is a monospaced type family with 30 styles, from Hairline to Bold, divided in Regular, Upright and Stencil, with five weights (Hairline, ExtraLight, Light, Medium and Bold) all with Cameo versions. Complexity and versatility are the keywords for this type family. Despite being a monospaced font (i.e., there is no kerning), all the glyphs were designed in order to sit comfortably in the 600 points width, a hard task because some glyphs are too narrow (‘i’ and ‘l’), while others are too wide (‘m’ and ‘w’), but they must all fit the same width. The desire to maintain comfortable readability was a key consideration, several ligatures were designed to fit both single and double space width, allowing the designer to maintain an aura of proportional design.

At first glance, Jules appears to be just one more Didonic variation, but a closer look starts revealing all the extraordinary features of this type family, specifically designed for use in extremely big sizes. Jules reflects the last of the late 18th century and was inspired by several plates from a portuguese calligrapher named Antonio Jacintho de Araujo. Available in three different optical sizes: Big, Colossal and Epic, Jules has a plethora of ligatures and stylistic alternates, plus refined Italics and a super elegant Swashes version.

Braga is an exuberant baroque typeface named after a Portuguese city which is also known as the baroque capital of Portugal. This typographic extravaganza comes with a multitude of fonts designed to work like layers, allowing the designer to insert color, lines, gradients, patterns, baroque, floral swashes, and many other graphic elements. Starting with Braga Base, any of the twenty-three available styles can be added to create colorful typographic designs.

The Aparo font family is a unique blend of typography and calligraphy, of the unconnected and the connected. Aparo brings the best of these two worlds together into a single, yet complex, typeface. Aparo appears to be a very simple bold italic roman typeface, but it has plenty of calligraphic flair, including swashes that make the words stand out, collision detectors to avoid weird combinations, alternate characters activated by default for improved calligraphic effect and a very extended character set in a total of 897 glyphs.

Firme is the designer’s personal take on geometric typefaces. This robust font is especially suited for corporate and editorial projects, offering several stylistic alternates and discretionary ligatures for improved typographic flexibility.

Mafra is a contemporary typeface with plenty of style, asymmetrical and very dynamic serifs, and pleasant openness and balance. The type family is suited both for editorial and corporate design, and is available in five weights, ranging from Light to Black with matching italics.