New Font Release, 2025 Wrapped and more

Marmite Defontes newsletter #15

Good day people,

Let’s start with the classic wishes for the year that just started. Or the year that is about to start (🇨🇳🐍). I’ve just realised that this is gonna be the year of my Chinese zodiac animal. Be prepared! Anyway. All the best for you and all the best for Marmite Defontes in 25.

Here’s the menu

1. New Font Release: Metaplasm
2. 2025 Review
3. Design Nuggets
4. Music Break

Reading time: ±3 minutes

New Font Release: Metaplasm

Let me introduce you Metaplasm, a new {surprise} display font. Half trendy, half-vintage, half sci-fi and half legible. Too many halves, but twice as fun. Fun because you can play with the width and the slice axis in the variable version.

And some more visuals

2025 Review

Yup, you read that correctly. There is no typo in this one. Or maybe there is… First, social media new year’s wishes felt to me like a plague, rushing from every corner of the internet. And on top of that, we did put -between December and January - a sh*tload of wrapped stuff and 2024 reviews of all kinds. I’m going the opposite direction on this one. Meaning, I’m writing down a list of things that are either happening for the foundry or things I want to happen for the project this year. That is one way of dreaming, planning and motivating myself for the months to come.

Marmite Defontes Year in Preview 2025 consists of:

• The foundry is releasing 6 new typefaces this year
• Our work is published in 2 different books
• We are featured in half a dozen online publications
• We did start our first custom typeface project
• We released our first typeface with a script other than Latin
• We have a lot of fun!

This also means we’ll have to review this preview by the end of 2025. Does that count as a wrap? 🤔

Fonts Picture Drop

Made some good progress on the character set of Noxi during Xmas break. And playing with this family was super fun.

Also made a couple of new tests/visuals for Winslow and Taku

Design Nuggets

1️⃣ Tiny Glade 🏰
Tiny Glade is a small relaxing game about creating castles, farms and landscapes. I’ve been following the team’s adventure for this game. True craft and genuine original gameplay. I (still) don’t own a PC, but that’s for sure the kind of game experience that would trigger me to buy one (or subscribe to a cloud solution). Beyond the obvious cuteness and attention to details, having indie projects that somehow invent new playable moments is a thing to cherish and support.

2️⃣ Climate Crisis, a data visualisation with a variable font 🐻‍❄️
Mixing the climate crisis topic with the creative use of font technologies: that is something I could not avoid sharing with you. Type designer Giorgio Bellante is using variable fonts to visualise the dramatic effect of human activities on planet earth. Discovered via hypercorrectism Instagram account.

3️⃣ “Michel Gondry, Do It Yourself” documentary ✂️
Speaking of creative minds, Michel Gondry is a big one. And there is a very well-produced documentary about him and his career. Sadly, the video is no longer available on the Arte platform, but I’m sure it will resurface at some point. I’ll leave you with the trailer and you can also rewatch the clip he made for The Chemical Brothers for their track “Let Forever Be”. Me, I’m gonna watch again Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Music Break

🎸🪴 Dianna Lopez “Internal Nirvana”
The people that send me (good) music recommendations are my people. So thank you, Lidia for this one. Dianna Lopez’s music is soothing and dreamy, simple and calm and obvious. I love her concept of Healing Guitar Frequencies. Visually, I also like the “back of the truck” staging for many of her videos. Perfect music to focus, relax or read. Yes, the loop is one hour long. Enjoy!

📦💃 Jungle “Keep Me Satisfied”
Shaky grooves and uplifting beats for this musical little cake from Jungle. On top, you also have a groovy video clip with charming choreography. You’re welcome.

Oh, one last thing: our website has seen some updates. Dedicated pages for work in progress fonts, updated and new components, fixed colour bugs, etc. If you want to have a look. 🤓

Talk to you pretty soon.

Guillaume