New Release — Pim!
Our playful Pim (and the Analogue Pixels, Pim for short) came a long way. As natural as it feels in our catalog with all the fun features you have come to expect from a digital typeface today, the initial version was actually designed for letterpress printing. Designer Pieter van Rosmalen produced the analog fonts in polymere and wood, every monospaced letter a square cube.
These letterforms were inspired by the iconic ‘Pootjesglas’ etalage lettering in Dutch shop windows of the mid 20th century, named after Johannes Willem ‘Pim’ Pootjes. The wide, round shapes, distinct ball terminals and bold, round punctuation of these glas advertising boards had fascinated van Rosmalen for a long time. While analogue Pim only consisted of capital letters, digital Pim adds an extensive repertoire of lowercase, alternates, pictograms, ornaments, borders, patterns and display numerals that hark back to their origin. It covers the extended Latin and Cyrillic character-set (with Bulgarian and Serbian alternates) across three weights and an inline style.
All glyphs were drawn on a square and have an extremely high x-height with no descenders. Because of this Pim can be set very tightly, best with no additional interline spacing (leading). Three different sets of ‘clip-on’ swashes can be connected to the capital letters of the Latin as well as Cyrillic character-set. When you type [, {, or ( followed by an uppercase letter, the bracket is replaced by a swash and the uppercase letter adjusts to connect to it. Typing a hyphen, dash, or caret between bracket and letter creates a ‘connector’ stroke for longer swashes.
For basic uppercase initials there are also Pootjes-inspired alternative ‘Art Deco’ characters available. Manicules (index fingers), emoji, arrows, symbols and googly eyes umlauts round out the character-set and enable all the fun we need in our lives right now.
We can’t wait to see what you design with Pim.
To celebrate the release of Pim, all styles are available with a 30% discount until 5 January 2026.
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NEW WORK — We’ve just added two bespoke projects to our website: a four-member type family for insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden, and a type family consisting of four subfamilies (10 fonts in total) for Dutch football club PSV.
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NEW RELEASE — Rigby Mono by Pieter van Rosmalen!
Our small Rigby type family – designed by Pieter van Rosmalen – got a little larger: now also available in a monospaced variant that makes monospaced text extra personable. Nevertheless, Rigby is still not overwhelming you with a confusing number of styles. Two weights, regular and bold, and a matching italic – sometimes referred to as RIBBI – Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic – provide all the emphasis you need for simple projects and correspondence, on screens as well as in print.
Rigby (Mono) started as a retail version of a custom typeface developed for NTR, a Dutch public broadcaster specializing in information, education and culture. The expressive logo by Studio Turner was to be accompanied by a performant but also warm and fitting typeface. While our NTR-fonts were sharp and rounded at the same time, van Rosmalen settled for all-sharp/angular terminals for Rigby but still kept personable letterforms like the unique lowercase g and e. If these are too flavourful for your use-case, just switch to the more toned-down alternatives via OpenType features: “normal” g, e with straight bar, and single-storey a. (You can also access these alternates individually via stylistic sets.) However, the personable feel of these default characters is what makes the monospaced family extra special.
Plenty of accented characters cover 40 Latin-based languages. Use it where ever your standard text-editor font is too boring but an expansive family with 80 styles would be too overwhelming.
To celebrate the release of Rigby Mono, all Rigby styles (so not only Rigby Mono! are available with a 30% discount until 14 April 2025.
/typefaces/rigby/
NEW RELEASE — Merwede by Titus Schulz!
Titus Schulz understands what makes a good text typeface legible. Drawing on 25 years of experience as a book designer and inspired by his own calligraphic handwriting, which he got introduced to at ArtEZ Academy of Arts Arnhem, he designed Merwede.
Merwede is not a revival. Many of its features are unconventional and unique. They stem from Schulz’s dissatisfaction with details in classic book typefaces, like italic capitals. (In Merwede, the italic capitals stand one degree more upright than the lowercase so they don’t appear to lean against the lowercase.) References and inspiration have been early Renaissance typefaces and the work of typographers and type designers such as Pierre Simon Fournier, Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen, Helmut Salden and Martin Majoor, without following any particular model.
In addition to the three standard weights Regular, Medium and Bold, Merwede – named after a river in the west of The Netherlands – includes an intermediary weight called ‘Firm’. Merwede Firm is slightly heavier than Merwede Regular and was designed for posters, inscriptions or reversed-out text. All weights set to the same width so changes in the font weight won’t cause any reflow.
A unique feature of Merwede is the full set of musical chord symbols, which Schulz finds unfavourably designed in almost all music books. ‘Why are the sharp, flat and all necessary chord symbols missing in typefaces? Almost all music books are miserable shaped when it comes to these symbols.’
All this, plus an extensive set of OpenType features make Merwede a true, very charming workhorse.
Images designed by @hannaboslau (thanks!).
/typefaces/merwede
On 16 June 2008 – that is exactly 15 years ago – we founded Bold Monday! We want to express a big thank you to all our customers, collaborators and supporters. To celebrate our anniversary you can get a 15% discount on all items in our webshop today. Use voucher code "BoldMonday15years". Enjoy!
Today – 24 May – is Cyrillic Alphabet Day in Bulgaria! We are happy to announce that this year we are collaborating with Bulgarian type designer Lora Shtirkova @loraincolors to bring localised Bulgarian Cyrillic forms to all members of the IBM Plex family. First in line is Plex Sans, with Serif, Mono and Sans Condensed members to follow.
Днес – 24 май – e Ден на българската писменост, просвета и култура! С радост обявяваме, че тази година си сътрудничим с българския шрифтов дизайнер Лора Щиркова, за да представим локализиранa форма на Българска кирилица на всички членове на семейството IBM Plex. Първият от тях е Plex Sans, като ще последват Serif, Mono и Sans Condensed.
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#type #typeface #typedesign #font #cyrillic #bulgaria #шрифт #типография #кирилица #българия
NEW RELEASE – Rigby by Pieter van Rosmalen.
Rigby is a refreshingly uncomplicated, unique sans-serif containing personable letterforms such as a unique lowercase g and e. Originally developed as a custom typeface for Dutch public broadcasting company NTR, this reworked version is now available for the general licensing. Rigby comes in four styles only which makes using it fantastically easy.
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#display #typography #typographicdesign #type #typedesign #font #display #branding #fontdesign #fonts #typeface #design #graphicdesign #beatles
NEW RELEASE – Goldich by Jasper de Waard
The Goldich series is a typeface family with letterforms that have crystallised into sharply cut shapes. Over a period of several years, Jasper de Waard created this series of five weights plus italics. Thin parts of characters weather away to different degrees and form stencil letters that want to shine in large sizes. The angular display quality of Goldich is especially apparent in all-caps settings. Smaller mixed case paragraphs – and especially the italics – add an elegant sparkle to all texts.
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#display #typography #typographicdesign #type #typedesign #typeface #typefacedesign #font #fontdesign #graphicdesign #poster #magazine #book #branding #edgy #minerals #sharp #stencil
