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ILT’s Favorite Fonts of 2022

The year 2022 was a busy one for ILT. We celebrated our one-year anniversary as a font distributor, grew the ILT family to 82 foundries, and launched ILT Academy, our ambitious new educational platform. Now is a good time to look back on some of our favorite releases of 2022. To keep the list manageable, we’ve limited it to just ten typefaces. There were many more great releases on ILT throughout 2022, that aren’t on this list, but rest assured, we’ll remind you about those in the coming weeks and months. So, without further ado, and in no particular order, here are ten of our favorite releases from 2022. Enjoy!

Juma

  Cyla Costa, Álvaro Franca, Felipe Casaprima
  Naipe Foundry

A pretty special color font family from Naipe Foundry. The addition of a monochrome outline style means that you can use your own custom color palette. It’s outrageously expressive nature will naturally limit its applications, but when you do find. place for it, it’s going to pay off ten-fold. Juma is designed to be used big — the bigger the better! Juma was also recently featured in Steven Heller’s Font of the Month.

Rollerscript

  Nick Cooke
  G-Type

Every font library needs a good handwriting typeface, and G-Type’s new Rollerscript ticks all the right boxes! A sprinkling of fairy dust (OpenType magic) produces the joins and variations for authentic looking handwriting. Available in smooth and rough versions too. Think of the ‘rough cut’ as a sightly lighter version when used at smaller sizes, and a more textured version when used big. Test with the ILT type tester to see what we mean.

Bay Sans

  Barbara Bigosińska
  Blast Foundry

Bay Sans from Blast Foundry is a solid and versatile sans serif with great details, and available in scores of weights. Oh, and did we mention that Bay Sans comes with tons of optional swashes! Great for drop caps and logos, and a goto typeface for typesetting quotations, or for some editorial design punch.

Flexible

  Art Grootfontein

Flexible by Art Grootfontein, as its name suggests, is an elastic font family. It’s coolest feature is that not only is it flexible in width, but in height too. And, of course, it’s also available as a 2-axes variable font. Ideal for typographic animations, posters and anywhere you need a versatile sans serif. The full family includes the variable font.

SideNote

  Jamie Clarke
  Jamie Clarke Type

Sidenote is designed specifically for paratextual elements from side-notes, end notes and captions to tables and titles. At larger sizes, it’s tempting to call SideNote a handwriting typeface. However, when set in blocks of text, it has much more the feel of a humanist sans, albeit with a cursive lilt. This is not a genre that’s easy to get right, and it’s difficult to find a good and practical balance between a handwriting parody and a confused humanist sans. But SideNote hits the nail on the head with its typographic business casual swagger. In all of his work, Jamie shows an obsessive attention to detail, and again this is one of the ingredients contributing to SideNote’s success.

Schotis Display

  Juanjo López
  Huy!Fonts

Schotis Display is the new companion to Schotis Text and is meant to be used in headlines, in subheadings, and other larger settings. Its design is inspired by 19th-century Scotch Romans, but has a thoroughly contemporary look & feel. Schotis has many standout characters, notably the lowercase g! Looking at the ball terminals, the smooth transitions of arches into stems and the dynamic curves of the uppercase S, one marvels at how smooth it all feels, and how pleasant the reading experience is.

Proxima Sera

  Mark Simonson
  Mark Simonson Studio

The new Proxima Sera is the long-awaited serif companion to one of the world’s most popular typefaces, Proxima Nova. But Proxima Sera pairs well with other typefaces too and is a great standalone font family for webfonts. We’re particularly fond of the almost mono-line italics, and the beautiful sparkle of the serifs and ball terminals in the lighter weights. If you’re curious about the origin and development of this new font family from Mark Simonson, then be sure to check out his ILT Font Fashion Week talk on YouTube.

Boucan

  Malou Verlomme

A typeface which blends high-tech with high fun. Boucan, by the super-talented and multiple award-winning French type designer Malou Verlomme, was also Steven Heller’s pick for his Font of the Month in April 2022. Boucan is also available as a variable font, which is really fun to animate.

Gwen

  Pavel Pavlov & Plamen Motev
  Fontfabric

Not only is the brand-new Gwen from the fine folk at Fontfabric an absolute gem, but it sparkles like one too. Look at those terminals and tittels! Standout letter are manifold, but let’s start with g, G, R! Our favorite feature of Gwen is most easily accessible in the variable font version that comes with a kind of sparkle or sharpness axis — in addition to a weight axis. This makes it ideal for animation, but also means that you can dial the ‘sparkle’ from muted to magnificent. Perfect for use in posters, packaging, and a great font family to have in your library ready for your next editorial design project. Part of the wider Gwen superfamily.

Newsagent

  Simon Walker
  Beasts of England

Brand new and beautiful from Beasts of England and hot on the heels of their stunning 2021 release Sisteron, comes Newsagent. It’s a tall and condensed display face that’s crying out to be used in titles, on posters, and in magazines. When you introduce those wild ornamental capitals, then you’re really getting two fonts for the price of one. Those alone make it a must-have font family. The caps make great drop caps and work surprisingly well in all-caps settings for a logo or emblazoned across some packaging, or even for a blog title, onboarding, or landing page.

Notable glyphs

And here’s a very small selection of some standout or notable glyphs from the above list of favorite fonts of 2022. Do you have a favorite?

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