Headline Heads Up — No. 11

One Tues­day every month, I’m going to round up a cou­ple (maybe a few) awe­some dis­play type­faces to show­case and give a lit­tle break­down on each one. If you have a sug­ges­tion you want me to take a look at, drop me a line. Let’s jump straight into some head­line goodness.

Bready

Foundry : Måns Grebäck

Designer(s) : Måns Grebäck

Cost: $5 — $79 (depending on license)

It seems like every month I have some­thing from Måns Grebäck on my list, but he keeps releas­ing awe­some new fonts that would make great head­lines. This month it is Bready — a thick, point­ed brush script with what I can best describe as some “wonky” bits (which isn’t a bad thing). These uneven curves and inter­est­ing stroke weights are what actu­al­ly tie the let­ters togeth­er and make the type­face work. The type­face also works because of four extra fonts that extend the selec­tion of alter­nate char­ac­ters with more swash­es in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Look through all the choic­es for let­ters and you’re bound to find a good com­bi­na­tion to set an open­ing word or any short dis­play type.

 

Arizonia

Foundry : TypeSETit

Designer(s) : Rob Leuschke

Cost: FREE

We stay in the point­ed brush script fam­i­ly but go in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. With more slant and a lot less weight, Arizonia by Rob Leuschke has a slight­ly more cal­li­graph­ic feel. There is the hint of cur­sive hand­writ­ing over sign-painting as the source of inspi­ra­tion. I def­i­nite­ly can see a roman­tic book title or the tagline for a home and gar­den mag­a­zine being set in this swoop­ing type­face. I think it might even work in some for­mal set­tings such as the names on an invi­ta­tion. Without any alter­nates though, judge your words care­ful­ly and look out for repeat let­ters that might dis­rupt a hand­writ­ten flow (if you want to go for that).

 

Arco Web & Arco Crayon

Foundry : Okaycat

Designer(s) : Luke William Turvey, Natsuko Hayashida

Cost: $29.95 each

These two cousins are casu­al ser­ifs with plen­ty of easy going, child­hood bounce. The filled-in Arco Web would be per­fect for flash cards, chil­dren’s birth­day invi­ta­tions, and cir­cus tent pro­grams. Want even more school­marm chalk­board charm, Arco Crayon is a tex­tured ver­sion full of dis­tressed edges. Arco Web could eas­i­ly set a short para­graph and be per­fect­ly leg­i­ble, but both ver­sions will eas­i­ly add cute, fun per­son­al­i­ty to any headline.

 

Final Men­tions

If your appetite for typog­ra­phy is still hun­gry, here are two recent posts with more great free fonts to take a look through.

• New High-Quality Free Fonts on SmashingMagazine
• 10 Fresh Free Fonts on Web Design Ledger