After a long hiatus (inexcusably skipping 2009 and ’10) we’re back with our annual review of the year in type.

The idea is simple: I invite a group of writers, educators, type makers and type users to look back at 2011 and pick the release that excited them most. The reviews range from the academic (like Paul van der Laan on Zizou or Jens Kutilek on FB Alix) to the theoretical (such as Jan Middendorp on Agile) to the personal (like Carolina de Bartolo who reviewed Calibre and Periódico after firsthand experience with a redesign of WIRED magazine) to the playfully unexpected (Microsoft’s Si Daniels praises Apple Color Emoji) to the exclamatory (Matthew Butterick on Neue Haas Grotesk).

This is not a juried contest. The result isn’t necessarily the “best fonts of the year”, or even those most used or ballyhooed. But these 50 selections do capture a pretty accurate snapshot of where type design is now, and where it’s headed.

If 50 seems like a lot, consider the thousands of new releases that didn’t make the list. The general public’s interest in typography continues to grow, and with that comes hundreds of new designers who are dabbling in or starting new careers in type making. Our list of honorable mentions represents only a small slice of the new fonts published in 2011.

As always, the other clear trend is new technology. By the end of 2008, we could finally declare OpenType the default font format. Three years later, in the wake of the @font-face declaration, there are new formats and new substrates as destinations for type design. Yet, in contrast to OpenType’s glacial adoption rate, webfonts are poised to take hold quickly, sparked by intelligent delivery platforms (pioneered by Typekit in 2009), early adoption by major foundries (led by FontFont), and screen-specific font design (like Font Bureau’s RE series).

The unexpected benefit of the new webfont era for an effort like this one on Typographica – it becomes easier to judge a typeface more fairly. Despite type’s long history in print, a font made today will likely be seen on screen far more often than on paper. I’ve always lamented that critics and users usually only judge typefaces on screen, not in their “proper” medium. But in an age in which we read more on screen than in print, maybe this isn’t a universal problem anymore. Of course, now font makers need to rethink the way type is made and rendered, but we’re already seeing progress there.

This year’s list wouldn’t be possible without Chris Hamamoto’s enduring design, Billy Whited’s proficient coding, Laura Serra’s image wrangling, and able proofing by Matthew Coles. We’re also grateful to FontFont for FF Quadraat and Process for Anchor, typefaces that make writing and reading on the web a pleasure. Thank you!

Letters drawn by hand and for a specific project have the possibility of being richly specific and profoundly beautiful. This doesn’t mean that you can use a hand drawn font, that won’t do, you have to create an original piece so that it will actually deserve the title of hand drawn typography, the kind of work that is considered by people a work of art. This typographic art takes a lot of time and patience, besides the imagination you need to have to create this kind of typeface, because it requires the artist to pay a lot of attention to details. In this article you will see a considerable number of carefully selected hand drawn typographic examples. I hope you’ll appreciate the designers’ efforts as much as they deserve.

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Hand drawn Letter-fill font experiment 1

Hand-drawn Monograms

SVSV

Hand Drawn Typography

EDITORIAL // AEROFLOT In-flight Magazine

Logo set

Typography Works

Lush

Words From Utopia Pt. III

Cyrillique – Fantastique

Miriam blanco

Typography

DiR

Typography

Crit happens

Silk

2011 Calendar of Silly Holidays

LoveYouMore

Braided

New York New York

Hand Drawn Type

Newer Bits

Typography

Squaremeal

Hand Drawn/Painted Type

MAP

Typo

Letters

Oriental Type

Illustrated type

Synovate

SHOW ANGEWANDTE 08

Tools of the trade

Speak to the Ham

Lost in Tokyo

Ashes