Why Should the Nerds have all the Fun?

Sep 13

Welcome back to your favourite(?) fortnightly newsletter!

As promised, I bring details and dates this time! Be sure to read all the way to the end. 💌 Fair Warning: This week’s issue doubles as a love-letter to one of my favourite genres of type. Ready for the deets?

🤤 Ugly Delicious, Type Edition 🤤

GROTESQUES. We briefly discussed grotesques in our last issue, but if you know anything about me, you know I love and heavily use grotesques. What are Grotesques? What makes them grotesque? It’s time for a deep dive!

Grotesques are the genre of sans type created around 1815. They’re slightly crude but have a lot of visual character. That’s usually a fair way to spot them in the wild. Grots were initially inspired by sign type, solid, bold forms suitable for headlines and advertisements. Over time, they lost some of their quirk, got more sleek and polished and neutral as Neo-Grotesques (read: Helvetica).

As for why they were deemed ‘grotesque’— well, sans serifs were considered pretty renegade for their time. They were seen as quite ugly and obnoxious compared to their glamorous predecessors — high-contrast, modern serifs and Roman type.

If you’re keen on reading more about Grots, check this out.

💁🏻‍♀️ Why be Regular, when you can be Degular? 💁🏻‍♀️

DEGULAR. To celebrate grotesques in all their glory, this time, I present you, Degular. If you are familiar with the brilliant work of James Edmondson (type designer, creator of Degular, and all-round genius) down at OH no Type Co, you’ll know that Degular is an atypical addition to the foundry’s roster.

In James’s own words—

While {most of} the fonts around here scream in desperate need of your peepers’ gaze, Degular aims to fade into the background (…) Degular also provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use an Ohno font more than once!

Degular is Ohno’s take on a familiar and beloved genre of Sans. The story of Degular might be the only thing better than Degular itself. Give this a watch!

Degular, and many others from Ohno are available to use and license for free (personal and commercial) as part of the Adobe CC subscription. It might be one of the few and only redeeming benefits of having an Adobe subscription. Cheggit!

🎙 Save the Date! 🎙

“WHY SHOULD THE NERDS HAVE ALL THE FUN?”, the title of my talk at TypeWknd. And as promised, here’s the scoop—

I started tttt to share my learnings and type know-how, something that had become natural to me through my education, exposure and enthusiasm. But typography is very inaccessible to most people. Most designers too! And it has been, for a very long time. Everyone knows and acknowledges the importance of good typography but that’s where it starts and ends!
Where does one go from there? What’s beyond a series of Design 101 articles, hating Comic Sans and honing Google fonts?
Why Should the Nerds have all the Fun? Let's talk about how we can make typography more accessible, the story of tiptoptypetips and the way ahead!

My presentation is part of an entire weekend (as the name suggests) of type and design-related talks, presentations and workshops. And trust me, sharing the ‘stage’ with such a diverse, truly global and talented list of speakers is both flattering and terrifying. The conference is fully online, and FREE! All you have to do is register—

I went ahead and also created a calendar event for you— Sunday, Sept 27th, 7:30AM CST | 1:30PM BST | 6PM IST. Mark your calendars, nerds!

Add to Calendar!

Hope to see you all there :)

I had fun with this one! Hope you enjoyed your weekend read of The Roundup too. As always, reply to this email with any thoughts and feedback, drop me a DM on Twitter or leave a comment below 👇

Until next time,
🌈 Sneha.