A Serif I Truly Fell For
I’ve never loved serifs, until now.
Although my design career overall is short (max of 3+ years), I can speak as a frequent browser of Adobe, Google, MyFonts, Typewolf, Fontshop, and other font sites. I never really fell for serifs. I appreciate their contrasting flavors, but sometimes this flavor falls flat or is repetitive. I peruse over the font sites seeing the occasional Garamond, Didot, Georgia, and other usual casts of characters. They never catch my attention. Then Sundance Tipografia and Brice Pop stepped into the spotlight.
Sundance Tipografia Co. has a personality that comes through these eclectic fonts. The fonts they featured had a vibe that I clicked with instantly. Featuring a variety of quirky contrasts and adopts a style reminiscent of typography in the ’60s and ’70s with very bolded, organic, and contrasting forms. The fonts featured on their sites, similar to Brice Pop, are Balgin and Klose Slab. These fonts embody the quirky styling and complement the rubber-hose illustrations of the 60’s and 70’s typography. The designer behind these fonts is Cahya Sofyan, an Indonesian-type designer. Researching them, I found that IDN World featured an article about the designer that you can read.
Looking at Brice Pop as a whole, I can’t even begin to describe the jealousy I feel for projects that WERE WASTED. Whether it be the combination of paired rubber hose-esque illustration or the copious contrast pieces this font family provides, I’ve fallen in love.
Looking at the variety of letterforms close up in this showcase of the Brice Pop Black, I appreciate the variety of weight offered in the counters, especially looking at the capital H. The inward bow compliments the center crossbar that sits just a few pixels below the x-height. One thing that struck me is the counter space, stretched in the capital O, creating this outlier letterform different from the uppercase B. The closed counter of the uppercase B stretches horizontally to complement the heavy weighted stem and bowl.
As the letterforms translate into other forms, such as the lowercase a and g, the manipulated counter spaces showcase the more oval shaping of the lowercase a. The lowercase e finial has this extreme weight, balancing itself out in this heavily contrasted crossbar that almost comes to a point in the lowercase e’s closed counter.
Digging more into the characteristics of the type, this graphic provided by Sundance Tipografia effectively showcased some of these wow moments I kept finding throughout the type family.
Looking at the uppercase R, the straight vertical and horizontal lines accenting on the middle and bottom of the R stem provide these structural bases that sit before the bowls. The horizontal lines create this storied rollercoaster your eyes follow from the left corner to the right and down the bowl. The extreme curvature of the R gives it this fluid flavor, almost sifting you through a grow and shrink machine. As you come upon the leg, you hit a pinnacle point that sits above the closed counter of the R and makes you feel like you’re looking at the sky before a vertical drop hits you and makes the pit in your stomach drop.
The variety is what made my mouth water, offering a full cup of water, pairing the type seamlessly with imagery, shapes, and illustrations. I had flashbacks to Max Fleischer and rubber-hose cartoons in the featured stickers. The characters complement the wacky and zany styling that the font family offers. Even moving between condensed and expanded letterforms, a beautiful contrast plays out like a melody (ha, get it, MUSICAL NOTES) between even the minimal faces showcased in this graphic.
The description for this font acts as an accent piece that perfectly fits Brice Pop and what Sundance Tipografia emulated.
“Brice refers to cultural products of the 80s such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, that is consumed by the majority of society population.”
I looked over examples or possibly imagery to fact check the description of the 80’s type. These were just a few examples I had pulled that featured prominent societal fads during that time. Even though I was born in the 2000s, my old soul smiled a little seeing the Dukes of Hazzard title sequence in my research and even finding new imagery such as the Angel Red Line record company. In these type examples, you start seeing the resemblances built out in Brice Pop, especially that bowed open counter in the capital H of The Dukes of Hazzard Photo or the optical space in the crossbar of the lowercase e in the Angel Red Line record. In Spaceman 3, I see remnants of the organic shapes within the counters and the bowed serifs on the legs, stems, and arms. The few examples here showcase these contrasted and bold spaces that emulate Brice Pop and other type forms researched throughout the week.
If you haven’t I would HIGHLY recommend you check out Sundance Tipografia Co. Digital Type Foundry and I applaud Brice Pop. Below are some links you can checkout featuring Brice Pop and Sundance Tipografia Co.
Font Designer for Brice Pop: Cahya Sofyan
Illustrators for Brice Pop Graphics: Anthony Orozco & Steve Gavan
Animator for Brice Pop Behance Page: Ahmad Syarif Hafidh
Where to find Brice Pop
Checkout my blog at https://typo-blog.webflow.io to see more reviews, typefaces, and all things *TYPO.
All rights for Brice Pop are reserved by © 2020 Sundance Tipografia Co. Digital Type Foundry
Photos, Illustrations, or any imagery are not directly owned by *Typo and were found with the intention of strictly educational review from the viewpoint of a designer. If any situations arise in which images need to be taken down, removed, or replaced please contact *Typo ASAP. Thank you.
