In 2009 A2/SW/HK launched A2-TYPE to release and distribute over a decade’s worth of specially crafted typefaces. A2-TYPE create and release retail typefaces at regular intervals, as well as develop bespoke fonts for magazines, newspapers, brands etc. — Clients include MoMA; Design Museum, London; Wallpaper*; Royal Mail; Penguin Press UK, NYC; Phaidon Press; Faber & Faber; Tate Modern, Tate Britain and V&A Museum. In 2010 Kubel was awarded the prestigious 3-year artist and designer working grant from The Danish Art Foundation. Kubel is a visiting lecturer at Royal College of Art in London and a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale, AGI.

My typeface Antwerp is a 16th-Century typeface with contemporary proportions. The design is a free spirited amalgamation and interpretation of the all inspiring archives of type on display in the Museum Plantin-Moretus in the Belgium city Antwerp — hence the fonts name. The typeface was developed as part of Kubel’s studies at the Expert class Type design 2010 – 11 at Plantin Institute of Typography.

The concept behind the typeface was to create a contemporary family of text typefaces with historical references. The final design incorporates a large x-height and has a warm appearance on the printed page as well as on screen. The first drawings were done by hand on paper before it was developed into digital format, on screen in FontLab. The family of typefaces evolved slowly overa period of ten months and is by the opening of this exhibition in its final stage of completion. Antwerp has been designed as an OpenType font and features many number styles including old style figures (non aligning numerals) plus a large set of ligatures and fractions.

My passion and admiration for 15 and 16th century Italian, French and Dutch typefaces might shine through in Antwerp — I acknowledge that it has become an integral part of my ‘type dna’ — It’s how I design letters, fonts, alphabets and it’s also a direct translation of how I draw type by hand on paper — in other words, I have been conditioned by history!

I set out to design a typeface with a solid range of weights giving designers and art directors maximum choice (Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold & Bold + corresponding italic styles) when typesetting books, newspapers and magazines. The importance and focus on detail in the individual glyphs are intentional and something I have spent a long time crafting. Large punctuation, slightly inclined stems, old style serifs and pronounced ink traps are all part of the underlying structure of my final font. The relatively large x-height* is a decision I made to bring my design more into the 21st century and essentially make fit with the current trends found in the design and advertising community. *It is argued that a large x-height aids legibility although no conclusive studies have been published on this subject. I have tried to incorporate my love of handwriting and the flow of my own ‘shorthand’ into my Italic font(s). Normally an Italic typeface is between 7 –15° slanted, my italic is 19° which is a feature I have been looking for when designing books and setting text myself. Since the introduction of digital type, italics have become less and less slanted and has in essence moved closer to the romans. From a technical and aesthetic point of view it’s understandable, however, in real life, when it comes to how type performs on the printed page and web as well; I call for italics with more contrast! After all since the 16th century Italic typefaces are used to high light words and sentences in text – this is what my typeface does as well as of course keeping the proportions and overall structure of the roman.

Antwerp is in essence the culmination of all my scribbles, thoughts and research done over a period of many years — I acknowledge that it would not have been conceived had I not joined the Expert class Type design course under the guidance of Frank E. Blokland.

The typeface has been designed in 5 weights with sophisticated 19° Italic styles as companion and supports extended Latin A language settings (Eastern European) — The typeface(s) are commercially available from London based type studio A2-TYPE in November 2011.

Henrik Kubel is a partner in London based design studio A2/SW/HK.

Version history
V1.0 – Initial release version; 2011.11

ISO 8859-1
Latin1
Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Danish, English (UK and US), Faroese, Galician, German, Icelandic, Irish (new orthography), Italian, Kurdish (The Kurdish Unified Alphabet), Latin (basic classical orthography), Leonese, Luxembourgish (basic classical orthography), Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk), Occitan, Portuguese (Portuguese and Brazilian), Rhaeto-Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Walloon

ISO 8859-2
Latin2
Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, German, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian (when in the Latin script), Slovak, Slovene, Upper Sorbian, and Lower Sorbian.

ISO 8859-3
Latin3
Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish

ISO 8859-4
Latin4
Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Greenlandic, Sami

ISO 8859-9
Latin5
Turkish

ISO 8859-10
Latin6
Nordic languages

A2-Type, EULA (End-User Licence Agreement)

This EULA constitutes a binding legal agreement between you and A2-Type. By installing or using the font software, you acknowledge that you have the authority to be bound by the terms of this EULA and that you represent and have the right to bind to the terms this EULA the person, company or other legal entity specified as the buyer of font software on the invoice. By installing, downloading, or using the font software, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to the terms of this agreement.

Licence
A2-Type hereby grants the purchaser of the font software a limited, non-exclusive, non-transfera­ble licence to install and use the fonts and font software. The licence applies to the font software that has been purchased and paid in full and is granted for the number of users specified on the receipt/invoice for the purchase.

The licence is for this font software and this particular number of users only and it is not allowed for the purchaser to copy, transfer, lend, licence, lease, sell or distribute the font software in any form other than what is explicitly stated in this EULA.

Corporate entities consisting of several companies, media publishers owning several magazines, newspapers or comparable must acquire licences for each separate company or publication and cannot share one licence across the whole organization.

For backup purposes it is allowed for the Purchaser to make one copy of the font software and save it in an archive. This copy must be used for archival/back-up purposes only. Upon termination of this agreement, the original font software must be destroyed together with the backup copy.

Embedding of fonts is not allowed except in the ways defined below.

Copyright
By agreeing to this EULA, the purchaser agrees to the fact that the font software is a copyright-protected creation and that all copyrights and other rights, to the font software (including the design and art work, the metadata, font software etc.) rest solely with A2-Type. These rights are not limited to any geographical area but apply worldwide.

All rights not expressly granted in this EULA are reserved to A2-Type.

In case font software is updated (e.g. if A2-Type makes new releases or additions of the same font(s) and chooses to make them available to previous purchasers of the font software), these addi­tions will be covered by this EULA and the terms and conditions herein. This applies regardless of who has made the additions or updates: A2-Type will still be the sole proprietors of all rights, titles and interests to the typefaces and font software worldwide.

It is not allowed to change the design of the fonts/typefaces in the font software by adding, deleting, modifying, or in any other way changing or tampering with the design or software including, but not limited to, the metadata and copyright notices in the font software.

Embedding of fonts
Embedding of fonts is not allowed under this EULA except in the ways specifically described below, where embedding is done in a way that allows only viewing and printing.

Embedding is defined as follows:
The creation of documents which contain the font software purchased under this EULA in whole or in part. For example by using any kind of technology for embedding fonts on the Internet (World Wide Web) or otherwise, by embedding the font software in Adobe PDF or CSS files, in TrueDoc or Flash files.

The exceptions to this rule are:
When using fonts on the web or other forms of digital publication in a way where they are not embedded, but used as images. In image files such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and BMP-files, the font forms part of an image and where it is not possible to ‘grab’ or extract the font sofware in any way as is the case with an embedded font. Therefore, such image formats are allowed as long as the image files do not feature more than 50% of the character set in the font software and as long as image files feature fixed images, do not feature outlines of the font(s), do not permit alteration by third party, and do not contain elements from the font software that are larger than 500 pixels in height.

When embedding the font software in a workflow PDF for the purpose of providing a document to an outside supplier (e.g. to a supplier of printing services). In such cases the workflow PDF must comply with the following specifications: workflow PDFs must be transmitted individually on a one-by-one basis. This must take place on a closed-network. Under no circumstance does this EULA permit the purchaser of font software or anyone acting on behalf of the purchaser to make workflow PDF-files or other documents where the font software is embedded accessible to public download, broadcast or comparable, e.g. on a publicly accessible web page or comparable. When embedding the font on a website is done using the javascript-based Cufón, if the font is limited to one or several domains.

When embedding the font software in Flash Files (SWF format) for the purpose of creating vector graphics for web pages. In such cases the following restrictions apply: Flash files must be ‘static’ and not ‘dynamic’ in order to prevent any third party from extracting, copying, modifying, or any other way gaining access to the font software, Flash files must be configured as ‘Protect from Import’. Finally, Flash files must have ‘subsetting’ enabled and limit the number of characters from the font software that are embedded. When embedding the font on a website by use of a font hosting service – that prevents the fonts from being downloaded in full by the end-user. Contact A2-Type Support for further details and information on font hosting services and licencing for other dynamic and editable embedding requirements.

Disclaimer & Limitation of Liability
The font software is provided ‘as is’. A2-Type disclaims all warranties, representations and guarantees, express or implied, as to fitness for any particular purpose, merchantability or otherwise with respect to the font software. A2-Type does not warrant that the operation of the font software will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that the font software is without defects. The EULA furthermore does not contain any warranty of non-infringement and title or quiet enjoyment.

To the extent permitted under English law, A2-Type shall not be liable for any injury, damage, any direct or indirect financial or economic loss, loss of profits, legal costs or any other cost, injury or damage whatsoever as the result of the use, installation, dispersion, or communication of the font software supplied by A2-Type. A2-Type is not liable for any viruses, bugs, errors or similar. A2-Type’s liability to pay any kind of damages under English law is under all circumstances limited to the price paid for the goods supplied or replacement of the font software either of which shall be at A2-Type’s sole discretion.

A2-Type’s right to terminate the agreement A2-Type reserves the right to terminate the EULA, in case the purchaser does not comply with the terms of the agreement. In the event of such a termination, A2-Type must inform the purchaser by email or regular mail. Consequently, the license granted in this EULA is immediately cancelled, and the purchaser must destroy all font software from A2-Type and immediately stop using the font software.

The purchaser, by agreeing to this EULA, automatically waives any challenges to, defenses or claims to defense, as regards A2-Type’s right to the font software and A2-Type’s rights to terminate this agreement in the manner stated above.

Venue and choice of law:
A2-Type is a division of A2/SW/HK Limited company based in England. Any dispute arising from the selling and purchasing of goods at www.a2-type.co.uk or any of A2-Type registered retail partners shall be settled according to English law and at A2-Type’s venue in England.

Other
The purchaser acknowledges to be bound by the terms and conditions of this EULA and further agrees that the EULA is the complete and exclusive statement of the agreement between A2-Type and the purchaser which supersedes any prior proposal, prior agreement (oral or in writing) and any other communications relating to the subject matter of this EULA. No variation of the terms of this agreement or any different terms will be enforceable in the absence of an express written amendment including a written express waiver of the terms of this EULA.

The failure of A2-Type to insist upon strict adherence to any term of this EULA on any occasion shall not be construed as a waiver and shall not deprive A2-Type of the right thereafter to insist upon strict adherence to that term or any other term of this EULA.