It’s that time of year again! As the new year approaches, it’s become somewhat of a tradition for us to look back at our students’ work, plus that of the design community in general, to highlight the fonts that are currently in vogue and likely to be big in the coming year. We’ve delved into the biggest Shillington projects, from our six physical campuses and our global body of online students, to predict the typefaces that will matter most in 2022. These range from the new, radical and hip to traditional fonts that are re-emerging in style. They come from both big, established foundries and s ..read more

We all know that sometimes finding the perfect typography for a design project can be like finding a needle in a haystack—especially when a client has given a vague notion of what they want. You know the classic “oh yeah, we want a modern font on there”. We at Shillington didn’t want you to lose any sleep over the choice, so we’ve put together a list of the best modern typefaces that you can use to give any project that perfect contemporary twist. Better yet, they’re all free so you don’t have to worry about breaking the bank either. From Aileron Black all the way through to Yatra One, we’ve h ..read more

Dipped your toes into the world of graphic design? You’ll know that typography is something that underpins almost every aspect of this practice. If at this point your eyes have started to blur, and the word ‘typography’ is beginning to lose all meaning, and then you feel like it actually has no meaning—never fear! Check out this article we’ve written for this exact moment, which takes a deep dive into all the typography terms and rules you’ll need to know. If you’ve come back from that refresher still lost, or just sitting here feeling like typography inspiration isn’t going to come in your f ..read more

Considering how much the world has changed since this time last year, making general predictions for what the next 12 months have in store is a tall order. But when it comes to design, we at Shillington feel we’re on steadier ground. With the profession having survived, even prospered through 2020, we’re fairly sure it can cope with anything that 2021 can throw at us. And that makes us relatively confident about suggesting the top 20 fonts will be popular with designers in the year ahead. Some of these are fresh new fonts you may not yet have heard of. But graphic design is never just about th ..read more

Whether you’re a student or a recent graduate, living on a tight budget means looking for savings wherever you can, including the assets for your creative projects. Of course, you don’t want to compromise on the quality of your work. That would be the very definition of a false economy. But the good news is, when it comes to fonts, you don’t have to! Carefully curated by one the world’s biggest companies, Google Fonts is an oasis of high-quality digital typefaces. They’re all open source and available for free, forever. So if you can’t afford to licence commercial fonts, it’s a great plac ..read more

You need some typography for your project and you’re on a tight budget. You’d love that stunning sans serif or stylish handwritten type to add that final touch but they’re just too darn expensive. What you need is a definitive list of the best type foundries online that offer beautiful free fonts. At Shillington, we’ve done all the hard work for you and scoured the web to find the very best resources for your typography needs. 1. Font Fabric An independent type foundry, founded in 2008 by designer Svet Simov, Font Fabric provides a range of free, high-quality fonts for both personal ..read more

Shrenik Ganatra is a Shillington teacher in New York, a multi-disciplinary designer and songwriter currently based in Brooklyn, New York. His work is rooted in typography and has been featured in international blogs, publications and Creative Boom, Adobe, Graphis, The Design Kids, Design Indaba, AIGA Eye on Design, ADC Global, Typism and Behance. He is most renowned for his ADAM.CG Pro typeface, which is used by over 700k people in over 100 countries. Since 2013, Shrenik has worked both independently and in multi-disciplinary studios in New York. Shrenik’s clientele includes The Library of Co ..read more

It’s hard not to overstate the importance Margaret Calvert. Why? Can you name something you see everyday? How about road signs? They’re seemingly so mundane that it’s easy to forget that they’re one of the most used pieces of graphic design in the world—and designing them is an incredibly ambitious and radical project. And, who designs these road signs? In the UK, the job was given to Margaret Calvert, a fresh graduate at the time who went on to become arguably one of history’s most important designers. Her work in the ’60s for the British government is one of the country’s biggest and most s ..read more

In graphic design, quite a few decisions happen behind the scenes that clients may not grasp the importance of, yet have a huge effect on the outcome of a design. When it comes to typography, it is the attention to detail that makes a difference in how readable and legible that piece of typography is. Among the elements that require a lot of finessing is leading, one of the unsung heroes behind every typography-heavy piece of design. What Is leading? Leading is the space between multiple lines of type, which can be as few as two lines of type to, well, as many lines as needed. Leading is meas ..read more

A good designer knows that you’ve got to look beyond the now to produce the best designs. This means looking toward the future to predict what is coming, but just as importantly looking back to the past for reference and for inspiration. Here, we’re going to delve deep and dig out some of the most interesting vintage typography, all of which can inspire designers or even be used in your designs today. It’s hard to define where typography as we know it began—early versions of what we would now call a printing press have supposedly been discovered in Ancient Mesopotamia, dating around the 2nd Ce ..read more