This Christmas, I proudly received one of the coolest gifts of the past years: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over the Lazy Dog: Typeface Memory Game, by Fabio Prata and Flavia Nalon from Bis Publishers.

After trying to buy it a couple of times from Amazon (they continually postponed its shipping), I forgot about it. Yesterday, on a gift exchange during a traditional Holy Kings dinner (that we celebrate in Portugal, but is mainly celebrated in Spain), I received a small package from Isabel A. To my surprise it was the long awaited Memory Game!

Detail of the Typeface Memory Game, 2010 Bis Publishers

We quickly unwrapped it and browsed all the cards. The game consists in 25 pairs of standard sized, double-faced, one color, but surprisingly thick (built to last?) cards. Each one depicting a specimen and the credits of well-known typefaces. At least the majority of them.

A nice surprise was to find Lucas de Groot’s Thesis (my favorite typeface of all time), followed by Mário Feliciano’s ever popular Flama (at least one Portuguese representative in the slim list of typefaces). In the package we also found lots of famous fonts, like Caroll Twombly’s Trajan, Bruce Rogers’ Centaur and even Sibylle Hagmann’s Cholla (this last one is specially for you Isabel!)

This is the perfect (typophile) gift. Fun to use, great to collect and it has lots of potential use in the classroom. I highly recommend it. I just wish that BIS Publishing would issue a second volume…

P.S.: Buy it from my US Amazon store, or from my UK Amazon store.