Welcome to the early mail out of The Dinamo Update! We’re sending our type foundry’s monthly newsletter around to people who we think might be interested in hearing about our latest updates earlier than others.

Press, event organizers, or any other subscribers can get in touch with madeleine@abcdinamo.com if they’d like more information about any of the upcoming releases mentioned below.

New Release: ABC Gravity ✨

Gravity’s initial skeleton was inspired by heavy grotesk typefaces from the ‘60s and ‘70s, which we worked to compress and stretch out into extreme widths. Drawing only in Black weight helped us to focus on width-specific requirements, but more weights will come. As a special addition to the font, we also implemented features that allow you to arrange and shift the characters: You can make them jump over the baseline or hang from the top.

All of Gravity is packaged as one Variable Font file. That means the output can be modulated seamlessly from XXXX Compressed to Wide. As a fall back, we’ve also defined 12 separate font styles that can be used separately.

→ Slide to stretch Gravity in our Early Access section

To celebrate this step in Gravity’s release-journey, we also launched a new piece of Hardware! For those in need of more analogue means to stretch, our Dinamo x Matter Of x TheraBand collab packages Gravity as one easy to use resistance band, proven to increase range of motion and add tension to common house hold exercises. Designed and conceptualized by our new friends at Matter Of studio in Stuttgart. Athlete Immo Schneider tested and reviewed the band and gave it an unbiased 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

→ Head over to our Hardware store to buy the collab 🏋️

New Font Gauntlet Update

Essentially, the Font Gauntlet lets you proof, generate, and animate Variable Fonts, and it’s free to use for everyone. New updates include:

• Audio mode: Using your microphone input, you can animate your VF axis—the higher the volume is, the higher the axis goes 🌊
• Downloadable app and offline mode: The Gauntlet caches locally in your browser for offline use, or you can download the program from Chrome and anchor it to your dock ⚓
• Auto font size: Text will resize automatically to fit your screen 🏌️
• Presentation view: Display your font full-screen without all the UI clutter 🧹
• Glyphs view: Browse all your individual glyphs in one table 👓
• Waterfall mode: Watch your font’s letters diminish in size 🍿
• Screenshot feature: Grab a shot of your window, saved straight to your Desktop 💥

→ Run your fonts through the new Font Gauntlet!

Discord Rebrands with Ginto

Discord—the number one communication platform for gamers—has just rebranded using ABC Ginto. Congratulations to its designer Seb McLauchlan, and our friends at the Berlin/London/LA-based Studio Koto! As the team behind Discord’s new identity write: “Playful and sophisticated Ginto brings a bold energy that doesn’t take itself too seriously.” Take a look at Koto’s project page to see Ginto alongside Clyde. Good job.

New Release: ABC Marfa

After one year in Early Access, ABC Marfa has now made it over the finish line and is officially available in our Retail Library!

While stylistically born in the hot metal typesetting period, Marfa was designed in a high-speed era of no time to lose: Its uprights were drawn in under 1,000 hours and its hot-headed Italics in less than half of that. Initially, Marfa was a sturdy, utilitarian typeface of three modest weights known as Gothic No. 6, drawn by Fabian Harb in homage to early American gothic typefaces. It made its first appearances in projects by early adopters like Other Means, Dan Solbach, Folder Studio, Eloise Harris & Nea-Kosma, and NODE. 🙏

In the years since, we were lucky enough to get designer Seb McLauchlan from our London satellite on board, who helped us to extend the font into a full family with corresponding Italics and a Mono counterpart.

The family now consists of 28 styles, and as another nod to history, Seb also included small caps and old style figures (just how printers and designers in the late 19th Century liked it). This time, the Dinamo pig was designed by NYC’s finest OtherMeans (thanks Gary, Ryan, and Phil).

→ Explore the many styles of ABC Marfa
→ Or download free trials of the font

New Language Extension:

Over the last few years, we’ve been working with various collaborators on extending ABC Favorit to cover as many languages as possible: Our ultimate goal for Favorit is for it to become a truly global font. And our latest language addition, ABC Favorit Arabic, officially launches today!

Favorit Arabic supports Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu, and it’s the outcome of a collaboration between Khajag Apelian and Wael Morcos. The design captures the formal idiosyncrasies of its Latin original, including its low contrast, tubular shapes, geometric construction, and other subtle quirks. Working with Khajag and Wael has been amazing and we hope we get the chance to do repeat it again soon.

The first application of Favorit Arabic is already under way, too! The font is currently being used for all the Arabic texts in the newly rebranded Qatar Children’s Museum. The project was spearheaded by 2x4 in New York with Wael as an Arabic specialist and designer. Latin texts are set in Tenon Latin by Max Phillips at Signal.

→ Test ABC Favorit Arabic online
→ Or download free trials for the font

Cargo and Dinamo Join Services

Independent Type Foundry 👆🏻💗👇🏻 Independent Site Builder

In case you missed the announcement in our last issue, all Cargo users have full access to a selection of our favorit (😉🙄) Dinamo fonts. The offering includes: Diatype, Diatype Mono, Diatype Semi-Mono, Favorit, Favorit Mono, Monument Grotesk, Monument Grotesk Mono, and Monument Grotesk Semi-Mono. At no additional cost!

→ Try them out yourself on Cargo

Work in Progress

After releasing our multi-coloured 3300 Dietiker chair in February, designer Mohamed Chajid of Digitatio studio hit us up on Instagram with a mock-up and concept for an accompanying AR chair filter. Since launching our Face Filters collection in 2019, we’ve been exploring the medium as a way to get to know AR and VR artists working in the field, and so we were excited when Mohamed got in touch. We said yes 🥺

Quick backstory: After designing the 3D model chair and inputting it into SparkAR, Mohamed actually made a spinning version by mistake. It stuck around though, as did the accompanying animations and “virtual sit-down” film we made that features the 3300 flying through space. 🪑☄️ Thanks to Mohamed for the idea and enthusiasm—he’s a rising AR star, you should work with him too!

→ Open the filter to hold the 3300 in your palm

Thank you for checking in with our latest issue of The Dinamo Update. You can read all of the back issues in our archive.

Speak soon,
Team Dinamo 🐝