As faithful chroniclers of the slab serif revolution (see our picks here and our take on H&FJ’s fantastic options here), we’d be remiss if we didn’t cover House’s new take on the form, Eames Century Modern. This lovely and super complete family makes me think five things in this order:

1. Back in the days of sorting the metal types at CCSF’s type shop, I would sometimes run into some mid-century advertising typefaces and think, “why does no one make things in that proportion anymore?”

2. Dang, I kind of wish we hadn’t gotten Clarendon Text because dang this sort of superfamily is like as useful as that and a bag of chips.

3. Who knew you could make stencils sassy?

4. What does this typeface have to do with the Eames again?

OK,  valid argument/dodge. But, I’m going to use it as an excuse to put Powers of Ten here because if you haven’t seen it, or haven’t seen it recently, you reaaaaally should.

powers of ten :: charles and ray eames from bacteriasleep on Vimeo.

5. Wait a minute, there’s something familiar. Erik Van Blokland, is that you?

As a matter of a fact, it is Van Blokland who developed the type family (along with the usual suspects at House). He is the typographer/programmer behind Letterror, who brought us the premiere self-randomizing face Beowolf, the most richly alterating typewriter face Trixie, and our favorite extended slab Zapata – in recent years I’d wondered what he’d been up to and now I know.

The dead giveaway to me was the tails on the italics lowercase, which almost make it feel like a clean typeface made out of his fantastic handdrawn face Salmiak. Ever since seeing the Eames specimen I have been hypothesizing a project where we’d use the two together somehow.