I’m still making progress on IO’s next update, which includes a significant number of drawing improvements across the glyph set.

To be released when it’s ready — I’m hoping these will be the last drawing changes to the basic character set, so I’m taking my time to get them right.

Next week marks three years since I started Mass-Driver.

One of the things I’ve been most surprised by is how quickly *anything* that isn’t standardised starts to drift. Today I’m working on a unified template for PDF specimens, which have somehow ended up having more different versions than there are typefaces.

(Incidentally, if you have any strong feelings about what should or shouldn’t be in a PDF specimen, I would love to hear your thoughts)

Cincinnati Type Foundry’s Gothic №2 (from an 1888 specimen, above), and MD Primer (below).

While I’m hesitant to use the term ‘genre revival’ in reference to MD Primer, at its core it’s a tribute to the features I love most about 19th century grotesks. The inconsistent constructions, looming capitals and superfluous swashes, redrawn in a way that’s honest to the digital material of contemporary type.

(More info about the process here: https://mass-driver.com/article/md-primer-the-pursuit-of-imperfection)

The next update for MD IO may or may not include ligatures (particularly for programming), and I’m keen to hear from anyone who either uses or avoids them in monospace typefaces.

IO technically already includes a handful of ligatures — they’re just not accessible with OpenType features. These single-width glyphs (below) are instead used to distinguish ligature *codepoints* (like U+FB01 ‘fi’) from their component characters (‘f’ and ‘i’).

My most recent release, MD Polychrome is a #typeface designed to reference the MICR-style ‘retro high-tech’ typefaces of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Unlike those designs, however, it’s been carefully drawn in a natively digital format, and supports 400+ (Latin-based) languages — so it’s actually ready for contemporary uses, too.

Specimen site: https://polychrome.mass-driver.com
Licensing/trials: https://mass-driver.com/typefaces/md-polychrome

Not every typeface can (or should!) be built on this strict 3-axis foundation of weight, width and slant. But when I set out to design MD System — with the goal of creating “my ideal workhorse sans” — one of the most important features was predictability.

And after working with it almost every day for 3+ years, I still find searching for the right style refreshingly boring.

(More info here, with free trials also available: https://mass-driver.com/typefaces/md-system)