Hoefler & Frere-Jones releases new font, Ideal Sans

Hoefler & Frere-Jones, arguably the most-loved type foundry among designers, today released a new typeface, Ideal Sans.

Ideal Sans is an effort to restore some of the humanist design qualities often lacking in modern sans-serif typefaces. As the company says:

Setting aside the easy pursuit of digital perfection, Ideal Sans favors handmade forms that help it achieve different goals: warmth, craftsmanship, and humanity.

Because of the amount of research and development that the foundry puts into each font, new releases aren’t as frequent as one would expect from less detail-oriented foundries.

Naming the font Ideal Sans is a bit of a departure from H&FJ’s standard naming procedure, which generally forgoes the inclusion of a sans or serif indicator — we wonder if this is a hint from the company that serif or slab versions of the font are on their way.