Welcome to the first edition of The Dinamo Update. Moving forward, we’ll be regularly sharing a tell-all mailer in five parts, which includes: ① The Hot Topic, ② A Similarly Hot Topic, ③ Work & Travel, ④ Bespoke Projects, and ⑤ A Few More Things.

Tell your friends to sign up to our newsletter—or don’t, so you can be the first to know ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

We devised of this package to make our typefaces more affordable to students. According to one European-wide report, there are nearly 1,000 design graduates a year emerging from 20 public or private schools in Switzerland, while in Germany, there are 290 design programs with more graduates than we were able to count. In Poland, 21 design schools produce 1,500 graduates annually. In Portugal, 28 schools form 1,000 graduates. And in the UK, there are 232 design schools with graduates who—according to another report—are met with an average salary as a junior graphic designer of only £22K a year ☝️🧐

There are a lot of students entering a competitive yet often undervalued space (many with loans to pay). Trying to make a living out of graphic design post-graduation is hard enough, so we hope our discounts and fairer licensing model can help make our fonts more attainable during studies.

We also offer a second type of discount: Students can purchase any of our typefaces at 50% off. 

Read more about our special discounts.

To help you compare our fonts, we’ve added an additional entry point to our catalogue, which lets you see an overview of all our typeface. We hope you enjoy floating in the waterfall of their styles and italics.

On our homepage, there’s now a three-column overview of our released typefaces, early access fonts, and what’s in the pipeline. There’s always lots of stuff going on over here. Writing things down helps to clear the mind, and writing things down publicly puts a bit of pressure on us to live up to our promises ;-)

We’re learning that some of our (beloved) customers are not really sure what buying a typeface with us really means. Excitement blends with confusion! So we’ve listed 8 new “facts + benefits” about our font purchasing system on our Information page. Dive through the full details, and here’s a breakdown:

• Simple Pricing
• Variable Fonts Included
• Discounts for Students
• Free Trials
• Free Font Updates
• Option to personalise font name
• Option to share font with others
• Best Price Algorithm

• Meanwhile, our font developer Rob escaped and is working from Vigo in the northwest coast of Spain. The rest of the Berlin studio has been rotating between home office and studio, to keep the risk of the virus’s spread low.

• Last week, we participated in an online symposium about Font Licensing organised by ECAL. We enjoyed discussing our new pricing with sparring partners Jonas Nicollin (Independent/Base Design), Mary Catherine Pflug (Monotype) and the students of ECAL’s type design master course. Thank you Ondrej Bachor and Matthieu Cortat for inviting us.

• ABC Asfalt, ABC Monument Grotesk Mono, ABC Marfa, and ABC Simon are already on our Early Access page, and can be requested for licensing via our website.

• Zurich-based Kaj Lehmann is putting the finishing touches on his long-awaited ABC Synt. Mostly this means kerning. Bless him.

Dinamo Bespoke Projects

A Few More Things

• Glyphs has relaunched its website and just published a much anticipated new version of its software: Glyphs 3.0.1. Its entirely powered by our Sans-to-Serif Variable Font ABC Arizona (by Elias Hanzer), which has been implemented in a multitude of LIT ways. It’s a good looking proof-of-concept that Variable Fonts allow for a wide range of visual expressions while still keeping file size slim and fast. Congrats to the Glyphs team Andrea, Matteo, Chris, Abel, Georg, & Rainer.

• A reprint of our multi-color version of Different Times tee is underway. It might arrive just in times for holiday shopping.

• We backed the Kickstarter campaign behind the reprint of the book Aldo Novarese: Alfa-Beta, organized by Archivio Tipografico from Torino in Italy. Now that the goal has been met, we can highly recommend you get your own copy too!

• We also backed Briefcase Typefoundry’s Kickstarter for the book Jaroslav Benda 1882–1970: Typographic designs and letterforms. The title is about one of the most important figures in the history of Czech type design.

• Futuress.org just launched, a new magazine and community for design research, with lots of our friends involved!

See you next year

In spite of the difficult times, we wish you all a happy, healthy, and brighter New Year.

Speak soon,
Team Dinamo