Gotham is probably the one typeface that defines our millennial aesthetic. I’m sure you’ve seen it, Gotham had taken over the world by 2019.

What you may not know is that in 2014 there was a dispute worth $20 million within the firm that created Gotham: Hoefler & Frere-Jones. The drama was bad enough that Hoefler is accused of “most profound treachery” in Frere-Jones’s lawsuit. Ultimately the pair settled out of court.

Drama between type foundry partners is not new. In this article from Colossal we learn about Doves Press and their founders T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker. They founded the firm in 1900, but by 1909 they had dissolved their partnership. And in 1917, to ensure that no one would have access to Doves Press’ type—including Walker—Cobden-Sanderson dumped it all in the River Thames!

Robert Green, a type enthusiast, began searching for the missing lead type and in 2014 he miraculously found a lone ‘v’. And with the help of scuba divers, the team found 151 sorts (i.e., individual pieces of lead type) out of possible 500,000(!). Here’s a short film about the search:

It’s always fun to be reminded of the physical nature of typefaces…one reason why leading (LED-ing) is called leading, because of the lead in lead type.

I’ve been getting into professional sumo these past few months!

The overall sumo wrestler ranking system and the promotion/demotion process is really interesting. Every two months there is an official tournament, and each wrestler is given a rank. The rankings for each tournament is published in a meticulously hand-brushed listing called the banzuke.

Each banzuke includes each wrestler's full ring name, hometown, and rank is also listed. The highest ranked wrestlers are at the top of the page printed with the largest characters. This is followed by wrestlers in lower divisions, with accompanying smaller characters.

The characters are part of the set of Japanese calligraphy typefaces used towards the end of 18th century of the Edo era. The typeface for the banzuke is Sumomoji (相撲文字) and it was specifically designed for sumo advertisement. According to this video, the bold strokes in sumomoji are meant to represent the physical strength and power of the sumo wrestlers.

Here’s another example of a really striking Edo-era typeface—Kakuji (角字) which was used for making seals: