There are milestones in this work that you see coming — a font launch, a good review, a feature on a design blog. And then there are the ones that arrive quietly and mean more than you expected.

Being included in Fine Specimens: A Showcase of Contemporary Type Design, edited by Elliot Jay Stocks, is one of the latter.

Three typefaces from SilverStag Type Foundry made it into the book: The Silver Editorial, Collidge, and SLTF Boxroom. Printed on actual pages. In an actual book. Next to work from foundries I've admired and studied for years.

I'm still getting used to that.

What Is Fine Specimens?

Fine Specimens is a curated book dedicated entirely to contemporary type design. Edited by Elliot Jay Stocks — designer, type enthusiast, and someone who has spent years championing independent type culture — the book brings together typefaces from independent foundries and type designers from around the world.

It's not a catalog. It's a statement about where type design is right now — who's making it, what it looks like, and why it matters.

You can get your own copy here: Fine Specimens by Elliot Jay Stocks

The Three Typefaces

The Silver Editorial

The Silver Editorial is SilverStag's flagship serif family — a multilingual editorial typeface built around the bold, expressive serifs that defined high-fashion magazine typography in the 1980s. It's available in Regular and Italic, and it's designed for the kind of layouts where typography needs to carry as much weight as the photography beside it.

It was one of the first typefaces that really defined what SilverStag is about — elegant but not delicate, confident but not loud.

Collidge

Collidge is the opposite end of the spectrum, and I love that both ended up in the same book.

It's an ultra-bold sans serif with four versions — Regular, Regular Outlined, Rounded, and Rounded Outlined — and over 150 ligatures and alternates. Chunky, unapologetic, built for maximum impact. The kind of typeface that doesn't whisper.

Seeing Collidge on a printed page next to more restrained work from other foundries is a good reminder that type design doesn't have one voice. It has many.

SLTF Boxroom

Boxroom is a bold modern serif that sits somewhere between vintage elegance and contemporary character. Sharp extended serifs, unexpected decorative details on letters like the O, Q, E, and P — it adds something unexpected to a layout without announcing itself too loudly.

It's one of those typefaces that rewards a closer look.

What This Means to Me

I've been running SilverStag Type Foundry as a solo operation since the beginning. No studio, no team — just me, a screen, and a lot of hours spent on letterforms that most people will never consciously notice.

That's the nature of type design. The goal is for the work to disappear into the layout, to serve the content without drawing attention to itself. But every once in a while, it's good to have someone point at it and say: this is worth looking at.

Elliot did that. And I'm genuinely grateful.

Type design can feel like a solitary pursuit — and it mostly is. But books like Fine Specimens are a reminder that there's a community around this work, that people care about it, that the hours spent adjusting curves and kerning pairs and OpenType features actually matter to someone on the other end.

Get Your Own Copy — and Win One

If you want to add Fine Specimens to your shelf, you can order a copy directly from Elliot's website: elliotjaystocks.com/books#fine-specimens

And if you want a chance to win a copy — I'll be giving one away soon on my podcast. Stay tuned for details.