At the tail end of the Summer of 2015 Alphabettes.org announced its existence with a friendly “Oh, Hello there!”. Saying it is the brainchild of German typographer and teacher Indra Kupferschmid, and American design educator and self-proclaimed type nerd Amy Papaelias would be telling only a small part of the story. This platform for supporting and promoting the work of all women in lettering, typography, and type design is a group effort, the collective voice of an impressive group of female creators. More a loose network than an actual organisation, Alphabettes currently counts 135 members from around the world. While this wonderful initiative provides new opportunities for women in our industry, a cynical person might wonder why inequality needs to be countered with exclusion. Because I personally am a big fan of Alphabettes I decided to ask Indra and Amy why they feel there is a need for an all-women typography blog.

A conversation with Hannes von Döhren, Andreas Frohloff, Ivo Gabrowitsch, Christoph Koeberlin, Jens Kutílek, Erik Spiekermann and Bernd Volmer grants us a peek behind the curtains of their collaboration while they discuss the creation of the new FontFont release FF Mark® Condensed. We talk about the unreleased "narrow” version to explain the new "condensed”, about ‘ch’-ligatures and the missing "spectacle-g” as well as about the importance of democratic design decisions and basket arches. What’s more, we asked: How narrow should the ‘s’ be, how do you avoid an “egg”, and when does it begin to feel like “Mark”?

FF Mark’s initial weights, from hairline to black, are now matched with new corresponding Condensed styles, bringing versatility to the typeface.

Designed for signage, the Danish FF Signa has been radically different from most sans serif text typefaces. To complete this versatile super family, we now present FF Signa Slab Stencil and offer you a 70% introductory discount until March 31.

Nocturno’s absorbing text and brilliant display weights pair with Venus’ hand-drawn warmth and haphazard rhythm to create a relationship that accentuates the rough and smooth in each.