New release: Austin News by Paul Barnes

RELEASES | 31 MAY 2016
Austin News Text has a very different texture from Austin Text, thanks to its exaggerated x-height and short extenders.
Austin is more compact horizontally, while Austin News is more compact vertically for tighter stacking of lines.

Designed for Jon Hill’s redesign of the Daily Telegraph in 2015, Austin News is a collection of four closely related typefaces for headlines and text in both print and screen use. Adapted from the successful Austin families, originally designed for magazines, Austin News has compact ascenders and descenders for tight leading: classic news proportions. Loosely based on the 18th century typefaces cut by Richard Austin for the publisher John Bell, they encapsulate an elegant yet easy Anglo charm, with the clean finish appropriate to contemporary news media. It is also very well suited to the screen, with Text and Deck holding up well even on small handheld devices.

Lining figures are the default form.
Oldstyle figures are also included.
For tables and info graphics, tabular lining figures are also available,

For text sizes, Austin News Text is economical and legible yet pleasing to the reader. With its large x height, heavier serifs, and very short ascenders and descenders, it maintains a comfortable readability down to small sizes on newsprint. Serious in tone, it has a more elegance than a typical news text face, with nuances like the curved leg on the k giving a subtle warmth and personality. Austin News Text features five weights, each with matching italics, from Roman and a slightly heavier Roman No. 2 up to a Fat weight that is well suited for running titles and punching up information graphics.

Designed for large sizes, Austin News Headline is a more robust version of Austin with a greater x-height, lower contrast and thickened serifs. Slightly less compact in horizontal proportions and looser in spacing, while more compact in its vertical proportions, it creates a serious impression. The matching italic has enough individuality to be expressive, but not so much as to become distracting. Designed in a range of eight weights from Light through to an ultra heavy Fat weight, they can cover all manner of stories and degrees of seriousness in newspaper design. 

Austin News Headline Condensed is intended for situations where space is at a premium, but stylish type is still a requirement. Its compact proportion looks back to the classic news faces of the early 20th century. 

Lastly, Austin News Deck is designed for subheads and other in-between display sizes, where the thin strokes of Headline would be too delicate and the Text too robust.

Romans include straight-legged K and k
Italics include a wider range of alternates, including J K Q Y g w and y

All sizes of Austin News include alternates that allow the user to fine-tune the overall visual tone: more idiosyncratic with the default K and k, or quieter with the straight-legged alternates, with additional nuances possible in the italics.

RELEASES | 7 JANUARY 2014

New release: Austin Text by Paul Barnes

Austin was first designed in 2003 for the elegant display typography of Harpers & Queen, a British fashion magazine, and Paul Barnes had long wanted to augment the delicate display face with a more rugged version for smaller sizes. He finally found the time, and the result is a highly personable text face firmly in the British tradition, hewing much closer to the original types—cut by Richa...
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RELEASES | 7 OCTOBER 2011

New release: Austin Hairline by Berton Hasebe and Paul Barnes

When we first designed Austin in the middle of the last decade, we always imagined that it was as extreme as it could possibly be. Well of course it wasn't, as our new release Austin Hairline amply demonstrates.
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RELEASES | 1 JANUARY 2010

New release: Additional weights for Austin

Commercial Type's first release of 2010 is an expansion of the Austin family. Light and Ultra weights, drawn by Berton Hasebe for Alex Grossman's new design of WSJ magazine, extend the original into dramatic new territory, and are available now. At the same time, a magazine in Russia commissioned Cyrillic support for the original family, giving us an opportunity to work with Ilya Ruderman in M...
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NEWSPAPERS, PUBLICATIONS, CUSTOM TYPEFACES | 29 JUNE 2015

New typefaces for The Daily Telegraph

The Daily Telegraph has undergone a design transformation to mark its 160th anniversary. Under the guidance of design director, Jon Hill, one of the last remaining quality daily broadsheets in the UK has a completely new typographic dress from Commercial Type. Working closely with Hill was Commercial Type partner, Paul Barnes, who has developed two new type families as well as designing the new...
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