Looking back at 2008, there are several things worth mentioning about Parachute®.
To begin with, a new and improved version of Champion Script Pro was released in January. This was followed by the launch of the Upscale Typography blog in February. Visits hit the roof when The making of Champion Script Pro was first published. Simultaneously, Champion Script Pro was featured in popular independent blogs and forums such as Ministry of type, Fontlover, Slanted, Typographie.info, while it became top story in several sites such as Digg.com.
Parachute’s Flickr group was also launched in late February and now counts close to 400 members. A gathering of international creative minds sharing typographic explorations, ideas and tips.
The new issue of the award-winning German magazine Slanted was received early in 2008, which included a feature on contemporary serif typefaces by 8 international designers and foundries including Parachute® (Centro Serif Pro in full coverage), Emigre, Fontfont, FontBureau and others.
An exciting new typeface was released in April. Ornamental Treasures is a contemporary set of ornaments, banners and frames based on the byzantine art forms. What is so special about this series is that it consists of 9 fonts that behave as layers which in turn enable the user to create with an unlimited combination of colors in any program, without converting glyphs to outlines.
May was a month to remember as another award was added to Parachute’s collection. The Centro Pro series was picked as Europe’s best for 2008 at the prestigious European Design Awards and Panos Vassiliou -the designer of Centro Pro- received his award in a celebrated ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden.
Earlier, in the same month, The making of Centro Pro was posted and this article became top story in several popular blogs.
A different Bodoni was released in September. Bodoni Script Pro is based on Bodoni’s distinct swash capitals and was designed with connected lowercase characters and capitals with extra calligraphic elements.
In October Parachute’s blog was moved to a new independent location under a different platform. At the same time a new series of articles was initiated which offer typographic tips to those who actually use type.
In November, Panos Vassiliou the founder of Parachute®, was invited as a guest speaker at the Adobe D-Day 2008 conference. By popular demand, part of his Apocalypto Type speech will appear as a series of articles in 2009.
Also in November, Parachute® appeared in another international publication the Typodarium 2009. This is a very cool tear-off calendar -published by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz in Germany- showcasing 365 different fonts by 50 well-known international foundries and designers.
Later in December Ornamental Treasures was featured in the new issue of Slanted magazine which focuses on signs, symbols and ornaments.
In 2008 Parachute® also appeared in several other design magazines such as the German Novum, the Polish 2+3D and the Czech Typo.
Meanwhile Parachute’s ongoing participation and support for the design community was realized by last year’s official sponsoring of the established Design Panorama 2008 conference.
Finally, what a great way to end the year when you know that your work has made the top list as one of the 10 best typeface designs of 2008. This becomes even more important since the list was compiled by independent sources.
There are some new and exciting things coming up from the folks at Parachute® in 2009. Stay tuned!
