The latest Dalton Maag Exclusive font was designed by our very own Jérémie Hornus. It is called Tornac, a handwriting style font. It has a charming unevenness in its rhythm that creates a strong personality. This is combined with a flow and openness that will make this font highly suited for advertising and retail signage. Jérémie also took advantage of OpenType's typographic features and included a number of alternative character designs. They will help you to create a unique look and feel whenever you use Tornac.

We are happy to welcome Fabio Haag, the designer of Foco, to the Dalton Maag team. Fabio will be our man in South America from 1 March 2008 and help us build a presence for good typography in this emerging market. In his duties Fabio will assist us with design and production issues. But more importantly, Fabio will be able to help design agencies and end clients in South America to access the quality of design and technology that our clients are used to receiving from us. Any inquiries, in Portuguese from our South American clients can now be directed to Fabio Haag. He will also be able to reply to requests in Spanish, although less fluently.

When in 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the dream of leaving our planet became reality. 1969 saw the first manned moon landing, a human being actually setting foot on new lands. Reusable space shuttles opened the possibility of space tourism, although traditional shuttle launch technologies have prevented this from being a financially feasible option. It has taken Burt Rutan's engineering skills and Richard Branson's financial vision to develop Virgin Galactic.

London design agency GBH asked Dalton Maag to develop a five weight font family for Virgin Galactic. It is based on a square grid, although all characters have their widths subtly modified to have harmonious proportions and sit comfortably together. This also ensures that the font design does not feel too technical and futuristic; and that it does not reminisce of the science fiction movies of the 1970s. A particular challenge was to ensure acceptable legibility and individual letter recognition. The subtle gradation of the weights from Light to Extra Bold allows the designers to create a typographic transition from dark to light.

Switzerland's design scene was well and truly shaken up when Swisscom launched its new brand identity. Swisscom invited a number of design agencies to pitch ideas for an update to its visual identity as part of a closer integration of its various business interests. The initial brief stated that no departure from the existing identity was desired. London design agency Moving Brands, however, decided to completely ignore the brief and present a new concept.

It was a fundamental belief that as a communications business Swisscom had to embrace the dynamic world of modern media that has the consumer in charge. This belief is at the heart of the new identity. It demanded a change in thinking at Swisscom and a phrase was coined that expresses the new attitude - "swisscom your life".

It is often the case that a new identity is approached by creating a logo and/or wordmark that lives in a static world, primarily print. At Moving Brands, however, all identities are approached from a dynamic viewpoint that incorporates all possible media, such as the internet, mobile devices and print. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the new symbol was developed as a 3D animation and with an appropriate sonic to form the new expression. These elements set the emotional tone for everything that was to follow.

Being Swiss, Bruno Maag advised Moving Brands on how ideas would be perceived by the varied nature of Switzerland's population. Dalton Maag also helped Moving Brands with decisions concerning the typography. During the development of the identity we advised to reduce the number of fonts used by Swisscom. Now only The Sans and The Serif are applied in all communications. The wordmark needed to be refined to feel in better harmony with the new identity. It was also important that the wordmark could stand up in isolation, therefore needed to have unique features. The overall tone was softened and the letter spacing tightened. This helps the mark to have a more solid feel. To ensure that the wordmark performs in different environments we cut a large and small size version, and for reversed usage.

We believe that the new Swisscom identity is a landmark as to how identities must be approached in an age where mobile and other digital media become an ever-growing communications tool. We are working closely with Moving Brands to explore how typography and fonts can become integrated elements of cross media identities.