Another new moon, another new casting from Skyline. Behold Collection No. 43: a set of twelve different ornaments, all cast on 12pt em-body, from a bunch of old foundry matrices recently obtained from India. The source of these designs is not known but some of the other matrices in this fortuitous acquisition were the Primula Ornaments originating with Typefoundry Amsterdam. These elements are quite possibly from there also, or English Monotype. The Indian-made mats are rather irregular but we’re making the best of them.
Back in stock (finally!) is Crayonette in 12pt. This project was begun over a year and a half ago and proved to be very challenging. Most of the first production was rejected due to inconsistent alignment, which was traced to a small broken internal part in the casting machine’s matrix holder. There were further problems with the makeup production and some of that had to be rejected. But eventually we prevailed, as we usually do, and now there are 50 new fonts on the shelf ready to go. (Zip Code 25550, are you there?)
We do normally produce more than this in a month’s time. Much of our labors in October were invested in a major overhaul of the Skyline web site. Dinosaurs though we are (living and working quite happily amidst early 20th-century machinery), it has not escaped our notice that the rest of the world is barreling headlong into the future–and that many of our customers increasingly live their lives through small hand-held electronic devices. Though our present web site was launched only two years ago, and was a vast improvement over the original do-it-yourself mashup it replaced, the time has come to make Skyline accessible via the technology of the day, complete with an electronic shopping cart. (A sneak preview was leaked on Facebook and received a surprising amount of good press.) The new site is in the final stages of development and we plan to pull the trigger some time this month. Stay tuned for an unscheduled announcement.