King's Caslon is Dalton Maag's latest addition to its exclusive font library. It is based on the custom font we designed for the King's College London earlier this year. The main differences are that instead of a Semi-Bold we provide a Bold weight and we have added a few extra ligatures to the fonts. King's Caslon is available with Standard or Typo characterset. To see what it looks like, use TypoGFX for testing.

With TypoGFX you can now test drive fonts from the Dalton Maag Exclusive library. Our proofing tool allows you to specify a page size, apply foreground and background colours, and define font, point size and grouped positioning on the page. The biggest asset of our tool, compared to other test drivers, is that you can see three different fonts at the same time. This is particularly helpful if you want to compare the look and feel of type when designing a logo, for example. All fonts are rendered in real time. That means you get the best quality, whatever your zoom factor or type size. At present, printing and print quality is limited to what you see on the screen.

This release of TypoGFX is for public Beta testing. We would like to hear your comments and suggestions to make it an even better tool.

A new design for its packaging and promotion helps Durex reposition its brand from safe sex and condoms to softer tones of sexual wellbeing. The fonts are to be used on packaging and eventually will find their way into all communications with Durex consumers.

Elmwood in Leeds asked Dalton Maag to design a two weight font family which would support the ambitions of the brand repositioning. After exploring a number of design concepts it was decided that the font needed to be clean and functional. Rounded off stems were introduced to establish a link with the Durex logo. The fonts are slightly condensed and ascenders which go beyond the cap height provide proportions that feel soft and warm. The character shapes are drawn to pull along the reading direction giving the font a contemporary and energetic look and feel.

The Durex fonts support around fifty languages using the Latin alphabet enabling this great brand to communicate internationally and widen its consumer base. Its clean and functional design, combined with other design elements, help consumers make an informed choice of product.

For more information about the process and implications of designing a corporate font please contact us.

Adobe's latest update of its very comprehensive publishing pack CS3 contains a number of changes. For example, menu windows have a new look and at first may not be as obvious to the user who works in CS2. But once you begin working with the programs and find your way around them you'll find that Adobe has done a reasonably good job.

Some users have alerted us to a warning in Illustrator CS3 when saving a document in PDF compatible mode. It says: 'Only fonts with appropriate permission bits will be embedded'. This warning is misleading as it suggests to a less experienced user that the fonts they have used may actually not be embeddable. It is true that fonts with embedding permissions denied will not become part of the document but the vast majority of fonts have their bit set to 'Print & Preview' and will embed.

This warning also suggests that fonts may be embedded for use in Illustrator itself. This is of course not so. The fonts are being embedded in the PDF compatible layer of the file, and will only display and print if the Illustrator file is opened via Acrobat (Reader). Illustrator itself will not present the fonts at all, as that would infringe on the license agreements of the font producers.