A light hearted unicase typeface inspired by the titling of the 1977 Pink Panther cartoon, Therapeutic Pink.

Glypha was designed by Adrian Frutiger and appeared with D. Stempel AG in 1977. The font consists of ten cuts and is formally based on its predecessor, Serifa, although its lower case letters are a bit larger. Like Serifa, Glypha is also based on the general scheme used to design Univers.

A short-lived TV game show from 1977 called “Second Chance” has its logo lettered in a bold, block type style with slightly chamfered corners. This inspired Chancy JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. While “Second Chance” only lasted one season, the show was re-tooled - and debuted in 1983 as “Press Your Luck” – which ran until 1986.

1977 was a good year for soccer. Attendance for the North American Soccer League (NASL) grew 33%, to 13,000 per game. Brazillian soccer legend Pelé played his final match, kicking for both the New York Cosmos and Santos of Brazil. And a soccerboy named Charlie was crowned with the nickname Chanky. In honor of his soccer hero Pelé, Charlie insisted the neighbor kids call him Chelé. They laughed at him and called him Chanky after Spanky from the Little Rascals. As he grew into his manhood, he became Chank the internationally renowned font designer. Chank created this font Soccerboy, as filtered through the artistic eyes of his 1977 childhood. It's a tri-line font, hand-drawn in Chank's signature cartoon whimsy. Soccerboy encourages play with color and alternate characters. Create coloring effects yourself using layers and the magic wand and paint bucket tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.

Raleigh was produced in 1977 by Robert Norton based on Carl Dair’s Cartier typeface which was designed for the 1967 Montreal World's Fair. It was renamed after Dair’s death. Adrian Williams added three weights for a display series, and Robert Norton developed the text versions. A contemporary old style serif with calligraphic features. For use both in text and display typography. Cyrillic version was developed at ParaType in 2001 by Vladimir Yefimov.

Inspired by the 1977 anthology horror film called "Uncanny", Uncanny Cat PB captures all the awkward fun of the film's titling sequence. Feline revenge has never looked so good. This typeface was oodles of fun to flesh out, and is true to that purposefully awkward appeal that a lot of Pink Broccoli fonts are imbued with. Loaded with a collection of ligatures that combine and nest letters against each other, lending to the unique typesetting of this "uncanny" font.

Alan Meeks designed Chesterfield in 1977. Chesterfield is a retro typeface, harkening back to decorative design from the turn of the century. There are many subtle art nouveau traits and curves in Chesterfield, and a hint to Frederic Goudy's work as well. Chesterfield is a display typeface, and should not be used in sizes below 12 point. This typeface would be a great fit for newsletter headlines, or signs for country stores. There are two styles of Chesterfield available: Chesterfield, and Chesterfield Antique. Chesterfield Antique is a more antiquated version of the typeface, and its letters appear slightly corroded.

German-born, veteran graphic designer and calligrapher Mandred Kloppert, has designed everything from book covers and packaging to logos and fonts. In fact, in 1977, one of his poster designs was voted best poster of the year. Challenger, his first digital typeface draws on his more than 40 years of experience as a freelance graphic designer and calligrapher. Challenger is a versatile font and is particularly effective in contexts in which the purpose is to put across a message very directly and assertively, while retaining a dignified style - in advertisement texts, on packaging, invitations and greetings cards and the like. It is dynamic without being overbearing, individual without being quirky.

The original Frutiger typeface was designed in the early 1970s by Adrian Frutiger and his studio for the way finding system of the Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Soon after the airport was opened, a huge demand for the typeface arose from companies wanting to employ it in other signage systems, as well as in printed matter. The Frutiger typeface came out as part of the Linotype library in 1977. Epitomizing functionality and clarity both in signage and as a bread-and-butter typeface in print, Frutiger became a modern classic. Neue Frutiger® is the 2009 version of the Frutiger typeface family. It was revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. While Frutiger Next, the 1999 revision, introduced a new concept (including a larger x-height, a more pronounced ascender height, narrower letter-spacing and, most notably, an italic with calligraphic traits), Neue Frutiger returns to the original 1977 design. The result is a well-balanced range of 10 finely-graded weights. Despite the various changes, the ‘New Frutiger’ still fits perfectly with Frutiger and serves to harmoniously enhance the styles already in existence. Neue Frutiger Variable are font files which are featuring two axis and have a preset instance from UltraLight to ExtraBlack and Condensed to Extended. Featured in: Best Fonts for Resumes, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for PowerPoints, Best Fonts for Tattoos

Drawn by Tony Stan, ITC Garamond was first released in 1975 in Book and Ultra weights only. These were intended as display faces to complement existing text designs from other foundries. (In fact, many of ITC’s interpretations of traditional typefaces began as display counterparts for existing text designs.) These first weights of ITC Garamond became so popular, however, that ITC released the Light and Bold weights and a suite of condensed faces in 1977. Now, the complete ITC Garamond family features sixteen members: four weights of roman and italic in normal width and four weights of roman and italic in companion condensed versions. The family resemblance is there, but ITC Garamond’s unique provenance gives it an unmistakable, one-of-a-kind appeal.

Provincial Railway is the first product of argentine typographic archeology project called "Tipografía Histórica Ferroviaria" (Fabio Ares & Octavio Osores, since 2012). Is about the signboards of the stations of the P1 line of the Provincial Railway of Buenos Aires (1907-1977). The letter of this signboards can be described as display type, with a tall box and a constructivist style, with elementary geometric shapes and without line modulation. Although without a doubt, its differential feature is provided by the rectangular shapes that it has towards the ascending and descending lines, which in some cases coincide with the stems, showing a curious rhythm in the composition of the text line. The family is completed with complementary fonts of different styles. The proceeds from the sale of the fonts will be used to finance the project.

The typefaces Largo Mager (Light) and Largo Halbfett (Medium) were cast for the first time in 1937 by Ludwig & Mayer based on the designs by Hans Wagner. One weight Largo Licht (Outline) was added in 1956. All fonts were only configured with capitals. The digital version of Largo has pointed serifs and not the slightly rounded ones seen in the hot metal versions which gives the typeface a more elegant note. Largo is often used for fine printing jobs as business cards or formal invitations, or in the fashion and cosmetics fields. Hans Wagner was born in Munich in 1894 and died in 1977 in Altenburg where he had worked as a painter, graphic designer and book designer. In addition to the Largo typeface, he developed, among others, the Altenburger Gotisch (1928), the Welt-Antiqua (1931-1934) and the Wolfram (1930).

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin’s design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface. The condensed fonts were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977. The original designs include one version for setting headlines and one for text copy. However, in the initial digitization, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included. The font family consists of 5 weights (4 for condensed), with complementary obliques for widest width fonts. When ITC released the OpenType version of the font, the original 33 alternate characters and ligatures, plus extra characters were included. ITC Avant Garde Gothic® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for PowerPoints

ITC Avant Garde Gothic¿ was designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase in 1970. They based it on Lubalin¿s logo for Avant Garde Magazine - an exciting construction of overlapping and tightly-set geometric capitals. ITC Avant Garde is a geometric sans serif; meaning the basic shapes are constructed from circles and straight lines, much like the work from the 1920s German Bauhaus movement. The early versions of ITC Avant Garde became well-known for their many unique alternates and ligatures that still conjure up the typographic aura of the 1970s. These fonts contain the basic alphabets (without the old unusual ligatures). Still strong and modern looking, ITC Avant Garde has become a solid staple in the repertoire of today's graphic designer. The large, open counters and tall x-heights seem friendly, and help to make this family work well for short texts and headlines. The condensed weights were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by Andr¿ G¿rtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977. ITC Avant Garde¿ Mono is a monospaced version done by Ned Bunnel in 1983.

The new Linotype® Devanagari typeface is a traditional text face now available in five weights (from Light to Black) and suitable for a wide variety of print and digital uses. A compact design, Linotype Devanagari also provides economy of space where textual real estate is at a premium. In addition, its large character set enables the setting of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and is suitable for Sanskrit passages. The design’s open counters ensure high levels of legibility at small sizes and at modest resolution. The history of Linotype Devanagari is quite extensive. Inspired by the late 19th and early 20th century Nirnaya Sagar designs, it was originally designed in 1977 by Mathew Carter for phototypesetting systems. It was then revised and expanded for digital typesetting by the Linotype letter-drawing studio headed by Georgie Surman under the art direction of Fiona Ross. This new, enhanced revival was designed by Lisa Timpi and Gunnar Vilhjálmsson with Fiona Ross as a consultant. This new Linotype Devanagari is part of a project to refresh the pivotal Linotype Bengali and Linotype Gujarati typefaces and make them available for the first time in the popular OpenType font format.

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

Linotype Zapf Essentials is the modernized version of Zapf Dingbats and was also designed by Hermann Zapf himself. Over 372 characters and symbols are included within six fonts and make life a little more communicative, a little more informative, and a lot more interesting. The fonts contain symbols for both professional and everyday uses. With their markers, ornaments and arrows they are informative as well as versatile, timeless and lively. An interesting note to the story of Zapf Essentials: in 1977, Hermann Zapf created about 1000 sketches of signs and symbols. ITC chose those which became known around the world as Zapf Dingbats. For a typesetter, dingbats are the characters in the corner of the type box which can be used for just about anything. The last decade has seen the appearance of new symbols for e-mail, fax, mobile phones and other developments. These are now part of Linotype Zapf Essentials, just as they are now a part of everyday life. For a quick overview of the different Linotype Essentials variations, see the keyboard layout PDF in the Gallery section. It shows the keyboard layout of each font. A helpful hint from Hermann Zapf: Linotype Zapf Essentials should be used sparingly so that the characters retain their emphasis.

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability. ITC Garamond? was designed in 1977 by Tony Stan. Loosely based on the forms of the original sixteenth-century Garamond, this version has a taller x-height and tighter letterspacing. These modern characteristics make it very suitable for advertising or packaging, and it also works well for manuals and handbooks. Legible and versatile, ITC Garamond? has eight regular weights from light to ultra, plus eight condensed weights. Ed Benguiat designed the four stylish handtooled weights in 1992." In 1993 Ed Benguiat has designed Handtooled versions.

A sturdy workhorse with the grace of a gazelle, the FF Pastoral typeface family marries pure craftsmanship with rapturous excesses of form. With his fifteenth release under the FontFont brand, prolific French designer Xavier Dupré has filled a typographic toolbox with plentiful options ranging from a tender, feathery Thin to a robust, healthy Black. At a glance, FF Pastoral appears deceptively simple, particularly in the middle weights. That surface serenity is intentional and allows for easy reading and quick comprehension of short blocks of copy. Upon closer inspection, FF Pastoral is complex and nuanced, carrying a balanced tension in its forms. This plays particularly well in magazine spreads and corporate logos, where uniqueness is a virtue. In creating his latest design, Dupré drew inspiration from a tasteful mix of references, combining diverse elements with a deft hand. While its letter shapes were informed by humanist-geometric hybrid Gill Sans, FF Pastoral’s proportions have been optimized for contemporary typography. Slightly condensed but generously spaced, FF Pastoral features a tall x-height, open counters, and subtle, sprightly italics slanted at just 5°. Proportional oldstyle figures are the default in the family, with tabular and lining numbers and fractions accessible through OpenType features. Elegant details evocative of calligraphy judiciously pepper the FF Pastoral glyph set. The ‘e’ bears an oblique crossbar, while the right leg of the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ are insouciantly curved in both the upright and italic variants. Further flourishes appear throughout the italics, notably in the ‘T’ and the ‘Z’, the gloriously looped tail of the ‘G’, and an extraordinary ampersand. Sharp-eyed fans of Dupré’s work may feel like they’re in familiar territory, and they would be right. An early version of FF Pastoral sprang to life in 2017 as Malis, a family in four weights on the heavier side of the spectrum. Over time, Dupré refined his original design, expanding it with four lighter styles and including true italics for all. The lightest weights are ethereal, with exquisitely delicate strokes drawing the eye in and across a line of type. The most substantial styles are tremendous in their power, allowing text to make a deep impression in print or on screen. Fully fleshed out, FF Pastoral works sublimely in a vast array of text and display settings. Dupré sees his latest FontFont offering as a ‘cultural’ typeface, perfect for the pages of an oversized coffee-table book or business communications where warmth and informality will win the day. Born in Aubenas, France (1977), Xavier Dupré is a gifted user of type as well as an award-winning type designer and lettering artist. After training in graphic design in Paris, Dupré studied calligraphy and typography at the Scriptorium de Toulouse. Since releasing FF Parango in 2001, Dupré has published such FontFont classics as the FF Absara and FF Sanuk superfamilies, FF Megano, FF Tartine, and FF Yoga. A designer of Khmer fonts as well as Latin typefaces, Dupré splits his time between Europe and Asia.

Impressed by the quality of the Aachen typeface that was originally designed for Letraset in 1969 and extended to include Aachen Medium in 1977, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging has extended this robust display design to create an entire family. Derived from the serif-accented Egyptienne fonts dating to the early 20th century, Aachen has serifs that are very solid but considerably shorter than those of its precursor. The incorporated geometrical elements, such as right angles and straight lines, provide the slender letters of Aachen with a slightly technological, stencil-like quality. Despite this, the effect of Aachen is by no means static; its dynamism means that this typeface, originally designed for use in headlines, has come to be used with particular frequency in sport- and fitness-related contexts. Jim Wasco, for many years a type designer at Monotype Imaging, recognized the potential of Aachen and decided to extend the typeface to create an entire typeface family. He appropriated the existing Aachen Bold in unchanged form and first created the less heavy cuts, Thin and Regular. Wasco admits that he found designing the forms for Thin a particular challenge. It took him several attempts before he was able to achieve consistency within the glyphs for Thin and, at the same time, retain sufficient affinity with the original Aachen Bold. But he finally managed to adapt the short serifs and the condensed and slightly geometrical quality of the letters to the needs of Thin. The weights Light, Book, Medium and Semibold were generated by means of interpolation. Supplemented by Extralight and Extrabold, the new Neue Aachen can now boast a total of nine different weights. Wasco initially relied on his predilection for genuine cursives in his designs for the Italic cuts. But it became apparent with these first trial runs that the soft curves of cursives did not suit Aachen and led to the loss of too much of its original character. Wasco thus decided to compromise by using both inclined and cursive letters. Neue Aachen Italic is somewhat narrower than its upright counterparts; the lower case 'a' has a closed form while the 'f' has been given a descender, but the letters have otherwise not been given additional adornments. The range of glyphs available for Neue Aachen has been significantly extended, so that the typeface can now be used to set texts not only in Western but also Central European languages. Wasco has also added a double-counter lowercase 'g' while relying on the availability of alternative letters in the format sets for the enhancement of the legibility of Neue Aachen when used to set texts. The seven new weights and completely new Italic variants have enormously increased the potential applications of Aachen and the range of creative options for the designer. While the Bold weights have proved their worth as display fonts, the new Book and Regular cuts are ideal for setting text. And the subtlety of Ultra Light will provide your projects with a quite unique flair. The new possibilities and opportunities in terms of design and applications that Neue Aachen offers you are not restricted to print production; you can also create internet pages thanks to its availability as a web font.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <