25 March 2020
Commercial Type presents Commercial Classics
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

AIGA SF

130 Sutter Street, Suite 600

San Francisco, CA 94104

Event is over
schedule
6:00 pm
Event Starts, Drinks & Networking
6:45 pm
Presentation followed by Q&A
8:00 pm
Event Ends

**This is a notice that Commerical Type and AIGA SF will have to postpone our Commercial Classics event and reception that was planned for March 25th in San Francisco. Customers, partners, and community members are AIGA SF and Commercial Types top priority. We were very much looking forward to hosting the event, but due to the COVID-19 we have made the difficult decision to pause live events for the short term. We will plan to host this event in the near future, so stay tuned for further details. Please sign up for our newsletter and follow us on social media to be notified when the rescheduled dates are announced.**

2020 marks the tenth anniversary of Commercial Type, one of world’s leading independent foundries. During this decade they have released a string of what have become classic typefaces, including Graphik, Guardian, Publico, Lyon, Dala Floda, Druk and Austin. At the same time they have also issued more experimental and groundbreaking faces like Marian, Tanja and recently Orientation. During this period they have created custom typefaces for clients as diverse as the Museum of Modern Art, New York, England’s Soccer Team, Chobani, Rapha and multiple magazines and newspapers across the world.

During this period the team at Commercial Type have been exploring the history of fonts at St Bride Library in London, uncovering long forgotten classics and bringing them back to life. Finally, in 2019 they launched a new foundry to release these faces, Commercial Classics. Starting off with faces from the beginning of the nineteenth century, they have created a series of diverse faces, from workhorses like the sans Caslon Doric, and the serifs Brunel and Caslon Ionic, through to some of the most radical and strange faces ever made such as Caslon Italian. The aim was always not to make perfect copies, but faces that captured the spirit of the original and to expand them for today’s users.

Commercial Type partner Paul Barnes, will tell the fascinating and exciting story of this new foundry. He will explain what inspired Commercial Type, of researching through archives, and of creating new families that offer designers a rich and varied palette of faces.

speakers
Paul Barnes
Paul Barnes is a British graphic designer, type designer, and founding partner with Christian Schwartz in the London and New York based foundry Commercial Type. Over the last ten years with Schwartz and individually he has designed a number of acclaimed custom and retail faces, from the enormous editorial Guardian family through to the more experimental such as Dala Floda and Marian. He has a particular interest in the history of letterforms, which has led to Commercial Type’s new venture Commercial Classics an exploration of reviving long forgotten and extinct typefaces.