Aeonian, designed by Emilia Adorno, was mostly inspired by the iconic morphology adopted by the arts of the 1920s. One hundred years later we can still see the resemblance between the wants and the needs of now and then to reach for the sky, to look ahead and enter the future in style. Now as then, we seek the right tools to do so, then once again, we embrace the rational, yet elegant and stylish forms of simplicity, geometry and symmetry. At the same time, there is a strong and growing need for a warmer approach to creating lovemarks. For that, Aeonian’s alternates hold attractive, soft and inviting shapes to an emotional appeal. Aeonian is a combination of all of them. A rational side entwined with an emotional one. Born a geometric sans, Aeonian ended up being a 2 in 1 font with a sans serif set and alternates reaching over 1200 glyphs. The entire family contains 6 weights, from thin to black, with its matching italics. It features a variety of ligatures to be used as connectors, specially for display. It also offers multilingual support, even for certain display ligatures. Later, Aeonian kept growing, with stylistic alternate sets of initial, mid and final glyphs. These are its arms to reach for infinity with a warm heart. The wide range of possibilities that Aeonian offers, makes it the best font for creating vast design systems with a rich visual language.

Welcome to the world of Luckywish Sans-Serif Handmade Font, a special offering born from hands full of creativity and love. Combining the art of handwriting with the simplicity of a sans-serif, Luckywish font offers a magical script that fulfills all your wishes. Luckywish is a symbol of hope that shines through every stroke found in each character. Crafted with heartfelt dedication, this font showcases the natural beauty of handwriting, bringing warmth and joy to every design composition. Armed with a pen and imagination, Luckywish exudes a unique charm. Its relaxed and delicately intertwined style brings a friendly and inviting ambiance to every formed sentence. When used, this font will infuse happiness and a fresh spirit into every project you undertake. Luckywish is more than just a font; it's a loyal partner to designers, writers, and creators alike. With its sans-serif characteristics, this font is easy to use and suitable for a variety of creative projects, from logo designs to posters, from wedding invitations to company branding. In the palm of your hand, Luckywish offers a perfect balance between boldness and delightful gentleness. Each character is meticulously crafted to provide unparalleled harmony in every usage. It's time to let your hopes and imagination flourish with Luckywish. Let this font bring joy and inspiration into your design world. Get ready to witness your words and messages transform into mesmerizing works of art that capture hearts. Be part of this magical journey with Luckywish. Get the font now and enjoy limitless creativity with an unmatched personal touch.

Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

Paralucent Slab is an addition to the ever-popular Paralucent family. Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans and slab serif design. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. The addition of the Slab family adds even more options for running text and headline.

Y’all, have you met Caryn? She’s a typeface that’s as friendly as a front porch conversation on a sunny day. With her short brush strokes and swooping flourishes, she’ll make your words sing with genuine warmth and charm. Caryn is like a cozy quilt or a hot apple pie, bringing a homemade touch to everything she touches. Whether you’re crafting a wedding invitation, designing a logo for your farm stand, or just writing a letter to a friend, she’ll help you express your message with a down-to-earth grace. And here’s the best part: Caryn doesn’t put on airs. She’s unassuming and approachable, like a neighbor who always has a smile and a kind word. You don’t need fancy design skills or a big budget to make Caryn work for you. She’ll fit right in with your homespun style and make you look like a pro. So if you want to add a touch of warmth and hospitality to your next project, give Caryn a try. She’s the perfect typeface to welcome your readers, customers, or loved ones with open arms. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, and in two widths each with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. There are two additions to the core 28-weight family: a three-weight stencil set, and a four weight text family. The text weights have been adjusted for use at small point sizes, and feature more open character shapes, looser inter-letter spacing for improved readability, and lining numerals for use in listings and tables. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. A perennial Device bestseller.

Based on a specimen of an obscure and uncredited old face called Kitterland, Hamlet is one of those curiosities hardly ever noticed in the world of modern fonts, the kind that infuses a variety of historic Blackletter and calligraphy traits in an otherwise Roman alphabet. Such typefaces, what few of them exist, are almost always classified by typophiles as traditional decorative Roman alphabets. We beg to differ. We think such hybrids are fascinating enough to deserve a classification of their own. And we think today's aspiring letterers and type designers would benefit from paying special attention to this kind of hybrid alphabet, not only because it has much more hand than machine in it, but also because it is a prime example of how to succeed in mixing different lettering techniques into one self-contained and distinctly functional alphabet. As in any efficient mixture of lettering methods, Hamlet ended up with characters that are uniquely its own, such as the cupped A, M, V, W and Y, the very luscious and inviting curves on the arms of E, F, L and T, both single- and double-story forms of the a, and the humblest, friendliest g and y ever. A dozen alternate characters are sprinkled throughout the character set, so check out the map for a few pleasant surprises. We also made the Handtooled and Headstone styles because we thought these friendly forms were just crying out for such treatments. The Handtooled version turned out quite lovely, if we may say so ourselves, perhaps even better than the main font. The Headstone version is available as a free bonus to those who purchase the complete Hamlet package. All Hamlet styles come with lining figures as well as old style ones. Hamlet comes in all popular font formats. The OpenType fonts contain push-button swapping alternates and figures, which come in handy in software programs that support this kind of thing.

Sortie Super is a take on one of the kings of display lettering - Caslon's high-contrast, reversed stress 'Italian' style. It looks great at big sizes and in short flurries... and shouldn't be used in confined spaces.  When compared with the original face, the weight and contrast of Sortie Super has been exaggerated. To add gravity to the letters I've increased their width overall and reduced the spacing to a hair-line fracture for added visual impact. Characters like 'S', 'E','O' and 'Z' are relatively close to their historical precedents - however the terminals on the 'C-G-S-З-Є', which have been drawn so to be more consistent. Other aspects, such as the leg of the 'R' and 'Я', the apex of the 'A' and the spur of the 'G' are revised and simplified, to help spacing and optical weight across the alphabet. Also, to reduce visual noise terminals in characters like 'C', 'J' and 'R'' are horizontally aligned. Meanwhile, the central horizontal strokes in the 'B', 'P' and 'R' etc are reduced to a hairline, so as to create a more simplified system of thick-to-thin.  The temptation when drawing this kind of esoteric display alphabet is to start to rely on modular components. Which, while copy-paste-repeat is a sure-fire way to make the face more visually consistent, it's a lazy method that risks allowing the font become soulless and mechanical. An early experiment I made was making a monospaced version, which was useful in headlines, but it lost that loving feeling. So, by maintaining a handful of flourishes – the tail of the '?', the inky drop of the '!', the bulbous gloop of arms of the 'Ж' and 'К', the swirling legs in the 'R', 'Я' and 'Л', the big-bowling weight of the 'J' and 'U' – plus a few in-built inconsistencies and a bit of its own silliness, Sortie Super retains some of the organic warmth of its ancestor. Conversely, the counters, apertures and negative space are largely rigidly geometric, which helps give the revival font a bit of a modern touch. Sortie Super is an uppercase-only display font that comes with Western, Central and East European Latin, extended Cyrillic, Pinyin, as well as a set of hairline graphic features and symbols.

Morris is a four-font family produced by HiH Retrofonts and based on the work of the very English William Morris. William Morris wanted a gothic type drawn from the 14th century blackletter tradition that he admired both stylistically and philosophically. He drew from several sources. His principal inspiration for his lower case was the 1462 Bible by Peter Schoeffer of Mainz; particularly notable for the first appearance of the ‘ear’ on the g. The upper case was Morris’s amalgam of the Italian cursive closed caps popular throughout the 12th through 15th centuries, a modern example of which is Goudy’s Lombardic Capitals. The gothic that Morris designed was first used by his Kelmscott Press for the publication of the Historyes Of Troye in 1892. It was called “Troy Type” and was cut at 18 points by Edward Prince. It was also used for The Tale of Beowulf. The typeface was re-cut in at 12 points and called “Chaucer Type” for use in The Order of Chivalry and The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Morris' objective is designing his gothic was not only to preserve the color and presence of his sources, but to create letters that were more readable to the English eye. ATF copied Troy and called it Satanick. Not only was the ATF version popular in the United States; but, interestingly, sold very well in Germany. There was great interest in that country in finding a middle ground between blackletter and roman styles -- one that was comfortable for a wider readership. The Morris design was considered one of the more successful solutions. Our interpretation, which we call Morris Gothic, substantially follows the Petzendorfer model used by other versions we have seen, with the following exceptions: 1) a larger fillet radius on the upper arm of the H, 2) a more typically broadpen stroke in place of the foxtail on the Q, which I do not like, 3) inclusion of the aforementioned ear on the g and 4) a slightly shorter descender on the y. We have included five ornaments, at positions 0135, 0137, 0167, 0172 and 0177. The German ligatures ‘ch’ & ‘ck’ can be accessed using the left and right brace keys (0123 & 0125). Morris Initials One and Morris Initials Two are two of several different styles of decorative initial letters that Morris designed for use with his type. He drew from a variety of 15th century sources, among which were Peter Schoeffer’s 1462 Mainz Bible and the lily-of-the-valley alphabet by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg. Each of the two initial fonts is paired with the Morris Gothic lower case. Morris Ornaments is a collection of both text ornaments and forms from the surrounding page-border decorations.

Paverify is an all-caps geometric slab serif display face inspired by a particular pavement tile component which is evoking a blocky “I” letter. All other characters were interpreted based on its look and drawn accordingly. There are three uppercase Roman fonts in different weights and widths substantially. With the additional versions, type family consisting of 7 fonts in total. Over 220 Latin, Cyrillic and Greek script languages supported. Each font contains an extensive multilingual support with more than 1600 glyphs and OpenType features, including number forms, fractions, and stylistic alternate sets those provide different looks by the typographic preferences. For the lowercase letters there are small caps variants, i.e., shorter caps. These also have identical glyphs and matching marks to enable “Small Capitals From Capitals” feature. Narrower Medium and Bold styles was produced to accompany the Black first design. Paverify comes with an ornaments font named as “Extras”, which contains geometric graphical elements, i.e., paver stone patterns, banner/sticker background sets, star comps and a collection of catchwords to simplify creating feature rich layouts. As is known as interlocking paver in certain regions — a rectangular shape with the distinctive diagonal tabs — transcribing the simplest letter to draw into the whole alphabet was a challenging task. Not only it was the single thing that can be used as a source, considering its thick form in roughly 1.2:1 proportions compared to the sophistication of letterforms was the challenge. Starting point was keeping design consistent while both avoiding and preserving a particular appearance to achieve a similar texture, basically a repeating pattern on the streets. In contrary of a traditional approach, Paverify tend to have more contrast than the other slab serifs which helps to reduce massive stem weight of the source form. This look contributes to its hand painted sign effect achieved in a certain degree, which may otherwise impractical to transform because the source material is an inorganic, static form by definition. Tight and even spacing of the pavement tiles was inspirational for the kerning balance of the letters. Although the lighter weights have more space between the letter pairs, black weight adjusted as to be close to each other as the original grid. Tight spacing can be ignored by using Capital Spacing OpenType feature for the Outline versions as layer fonts. In one stroke, this gives an extra space between the letters to avoid diagonal armed letter terminals overlap. Black typographic colour and texture gives a sturdy appearance to the lines, it is useful for the projects where a robust display faces preferred for the titling, strong headlines, letter stacks, dropcaps, initials, short names on materials such as advertisements, book covers, posters, logotypes, wordmarks, package designs, and more in print or digital. Paverify can be paired as a complimentary face in a combination with broader type systems, where vintage look compositions and woodcut style fusions requiring an extra stunning texture.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

Iza W and Intellecta Design are proud to announce Invitation Script, a modern and clean revival of the classic work of the Portuguese master penman Manuel de Andrade de Figueiredo, whose work can be seen in “Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar (...)'' (1722). Invitation Script is the third script superfamily published by Intellecta Design, after Penabico and Van den Velde Script. Invitation Script has original letters designed by Iza W. Creative direction and core programming were provided by Paulo W. Chyrllene K assisted with some work on unusual and archaic styles, resulting in a special font - Invitation Script Archaic (soon available). Invitation started out from Andrade’s script style and evolved into a voluptuous script font family. The result is a typeface ideal for beautiful headings, signatures, art work typography, titles and short pieces of hand-lettered text. Invitation family includes two multi-table Opentype fonts, three supplementary fonts for ornaments and fleurons, and the Archaic font with some of the Andrade’s original characters. Embedded in the regular fonts are additional sets of letters. Over 40 variations are available for certain letters via the Special Sets Opentype table. The two regular versions of Invitation Script contains the following: (i) An extensive set of ligatures providing letterform variations that make eye-popping designs or simulate real handwriting. These are accessible via contextual alternates and other open-type features. (ii) Many stylistic alternates for each letter (upper and lowercase, accessed via the glyph palette, encoded in the ranges of the Special Set Opentype feature). Since there are over 1100 glyphs in each font, we suggest using the glyph palette. (iii) A set of ornaments and fleurons accessed with the glyph palette or using the Ornaments feature. Additional ornaments can be found in the two Invitation Script Ornaments fonts. (iv) Initial and final letters with artistic variations accessible using the initial and final form open-type features. (v) Major kerning work: over 6000 kerning pairs, hand-set to avoid collisions and to create intricate combinations of letters, using swashes and other resources. These powerful features are all accessible in InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. We recommend exploring the magic of this font using the glyph palette. Our sample illustrations and PDF brochures showcase the power and pizzazz of this calligraphic script. Let your imagination go wild and use Invitation Script in ways that Andrade could not have foreseen. In non-OpenType-savvy applications, Invitation Script is still an exceptionally beautiful calligraphic typeface that stands up to the competition. The regular fonts contains the complete Latin alphabet, including Central European, Vietnamese, Baltic and Turkish, with a full set of diacritics and punctuation marks. --- 1 FIGUEIREDO, Manuel de Andrade de, 1670-1735 Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar. Offerecida á Augusta Magestade do Senhor Dom Joaõ V. Rey de Portugal. Primeira parte / por Manoel de Andrade de Figueiredo, Mestre desta Arte nas cidades de Lisboa Occidental, e Oriental. - Lisboa Occidental: na Officina de Bernardo da Costa de Carvalho, Impressor do Serenissimo Senhor Infante, 1722. - [18], 156 p., 44 f. grav. a buril : il., ; 2º (31 cm)Engraved royal coat of arms supported by angels over the city of Lisbon, engraved portrait of the author (both of the foregoing by Bernard Picart), (12)ff., 156pp., engraved calligraphic section title, 44 engraved plates. Wood-engraved culs-de-lampe and lettrines. Sm. folio. “Andrade de Figueiredo was born in Espirito Santo, where his father was Governor of the ‘Capitania.’ The fine portrait is dated 1721 and is showing Figueiredo at the age of 48. He was an eminent calligrapher and a creator of the Portuguese handwriting until the reign of Don José I (ca. 1755). His work follows the style of the great Italian masters in its use of clubbed ascenders and descenders, and of Diaz Morante, the famous Spanish writing master, in its very elaborate show of command of hand. By his contemporaries, he was known as the ‘Morante portugues’” (Ekström). “Ce livre est un manuel, composé de quatre parties, destiné à apprendre à lire, à écrire, à conter ainsi que l’orthographe. Les planches comportent des examples d’écritures, d’alphabets et de textes ornés de remarquables traits de plume exécutés d’une main sûre et enjouée” (Jammes).

An inline adaptation of a distinctive slab serif, Cesium is an unusually responsive display face that maintains its high energy across a range of different moods. The Cesium typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2020. An energetic inline adaptation of Hoefler’s broad-shouldered Vitesse Black typeface (2000), Cesium is named for the fifty-fifth member of the periodic table of the elements, a volatile liquid metal that presents as a scintillating quicksilver. From the desk of the designer, Jonathan Hoefler: I always felt that our Vitesse typeface, an unusual species of slab serif, would take well to an inline. Vitesse is based not on the circle or the ellipse, but on a less familiar shape that has no common name, a variation on the ‘stadium’ that has two opposing flat edges, and two gently rounded sides. In place of sharp corners, Vitesse uses a continuously flowing stroke to manage the transition between upright and diagonal lines, most apparent on letters like M and N. A year of making this gesture with my wrist, both when drawing letterforms and miming their intentions during design critiques, left me thinking about a reduced version of the typeface, in which letters would be defined not by inside and outside contours, but by a single, fluid raceway. Like most straightforward ideas, this one proved challenging to execute, but its puzzles were immensely satisfying to solve. Adding an inline to a typeface is the quickest way to reveal its secrets. All the furtive adjustments in weight and size that a type designer makes — relieving congestion by thinning the center arm of a bold E, or lightening the intersecting strokes of a W — are instantly exposed with the addition of a centerline. Adapting an existing alphabet to accommodate this inline called for renovating every single character (down to the capital I, the period, and even the space), in some cases making small adjustments to reallocate weight, at other times redesigning whole parts of the character set. The longer we worked on the typeface, the more we discovered opportunities to turn these constraints into advantages, solving stubbornly complex characters like € and § by redefining how an inline should behave, and using these new patterns to reshape the rest of the alphabet. The New Typeface The outcome is a typeface we’re calling Cesium. It shares many of Vitesse’s qualities, its heartbeat an energetic thrum of motorsports and industry, and it will doubtless be welcome in both hardware stores and Hollywood. But we’ve been surprised by Cesium’s more reflective moods, its ability to be alert and softspoken at the same time. Much in the way that vibrant colors can animate a typeface, we’ve found that Cesium’s sensitivity to spacing most effectively changes its voice. Tighter leading and tracking turns up the heat, heightening Cesium’s sporty, high-tech associations, but with the addition of letterspacing it achieves an almost literary repose. This range of voices recommends Cesium not only to logos, book covers, and title sequences, but to projects that regularly must adjust their volume, such as identities, packaging, and editorial design. Read more about how to use Cesium. About the Name Cesium is a chemical element, one of only five metals that’s liquid at room temperature. Resembling quicksilver, cesium is typically stored in a glass ampule, where the tension between a sturdy outer vessel and its volatile contents is scintillating. The Cesium typeface hopes to capture this quality, its bright and insistent inline restrained by a strong and sinuous container. Cesium is one of only three H&Co typefaces whose name comes from the periodic table, a distinction it shares with Mercury and Tungsten. At a time when I considered a more sci-fi name for the typeface, I learned that these three elements have an unusual connection: they’re used together in the propulsion system of nasa’s Deep Space 1, the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by an ion drive. I found the association compelling, and adopted the name at once, with the hope that designers might employ the typeface in the same spirit of discovery, optimism, and invention. —JH Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

Typographer and graphic designer Pavel Teimer (1935-1970) designed a modern serif roman with italics in 1967. For the drawing of Teimer he found inspiration in the types of Walbaum and Didot, rather than Bodoni. He re-evaluated these archetypes in an individual way, adjusting both height and width proportions and modifying details in the strokes, thus effectively breaking away from the historical models he used as a starting point. Teimer's antiqua has less contrast; the overall construction of the characters is softer and more lively. The proportions of the italics are rather wide, making them stand out by their calm and measured rhythm. This was defined by the purpose of the typeface, as it was to be utilised for two-character matrices. The long serifs are a typical feature noticeable throughout the complete family of fonts. In 1967, a full set of basic glyphs, numerals and diacritics of Teimer's antiqua was submitted to the Czechoslovak Grafotechna type foundry. However, the face was never cast. At the beginning of 2005 we decided to rehabilitate this hidden gem of Czech typography. We used the booklet "Teimer's antiqua - a design of modern type roman and italics", written by Jan Solpera and Kl‡ra Kv’zov‡ in 1992, as a template for digitisation. The specimen contains an elementary set of roman and italics, including numerals and ampersands. After studying the specimen, we decided to make certain adjustments to the construction of the character shapes. We slightly corrected the proportions of the typeface, cut and broadened the serifs, and slightly strengthened the hair strokes. In the upper case we made some significant changes in the end serifs of round strokes in C, G and S, and the J was redrawn from the scratch. The top diagonal arm of the K was made to connect with the vertical stem, while the tail of Q has received a more expressive tail. The stronger hairlines are yet more apparent in the lower case, which is why we needed to further intervene in the construction of the actual character shapes. The drawing of the f is new, with more tension at the top of the character, and the overall shape of the g is better balanced. We also added an ear to the j, and curves in the r have become more fluent. To emphasise the compact character of the family, the lining numerals were thoroughly redrawn, with the finials being replaced by vertical serifs. The original character of the numerals was preserved in the new set of old-style figures. To make the uppercase italics as compact as possible, they were based on the roman cut rather than on the original design. The slope of lowercase italics needed to be harmonised. The actual letter forms are still broader than the characters in the original design, and the changes in construction are more noticeable. The lower case b gained a bottom serif, the f has a more traditional shape as it is no longer constricted by the demands of two-matrice casting, the g was redrawn and is a single storey design now. The serifs on one side of the descenders of the p and q were removed, the r is broader and more open. The construction of s, v, w, x, y, and z is now more compact and better balanced. Because Teimer was designed to make optimal use of the OpenType format, it was deemed necessary to add a significant amount of new glyphs. The present character set of one font comprisess over 780 glyphs, including accented characters for typesetting of common Latin script languages, small caps and a set of ligatures, tabular, proportional, old style and lining, superscript and fraction numerals. It also contains a number of special characters, such as arrows, circles, squares, boxed numerals, and ornaments. Because of its fine and light construction, the original digitised design remained the lightest of the family. Several heavier weights were added, with the family now comprising Light, Light Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic.

In 1955 the Czech State Department of Culture, which was then in charge of all the publishing houses, organised a competition amongst printing houses and generally all book businesses for the design of a newspaper typeface. The motivation for this contest was obvious: the situation in the printing presses was appalling, with very little quality fonts existing and financial resources being too scarce to permit the purchase of type abroad. The conditions to be met by the typeface were strictly defined, and far more constrained than the ones applied to regular typefaces designed for books. A number of parameters needed to be considered, including the pressure of the printing presses and the quality of the thin newspaper ink that would have smothered any delicate strokes. Rough drafts of type designs for the competition were submitted by Vratislav Hejzl, Stanislav Marso, Frantisek Novak, Frantisek Panek, Jiri Petr, Jindrich Posekany, and the team of Stanislav Duda, Karel Misek and Josef Tyfa. The committee published its comments and corrections of the designs, and asked the designers to draw the final drafts. The winner was unambiguous — the members of the committee unanimously agreed to award Stanislav Marso’s design the first prize. His typeface was cast by Grafotechna (a state-owned enterprise) for setting with line-composing machines and also in larger sizes for hand-setting. Regular, bold, and bold condensed cuts were produced, and the face was named Public. In 2003 we decided to digitise the typeface. Drawings of the regular and italic cuts at the size of approximatively 3,5 cicero (43 pt) were used as templates for scanning. Those originals covered the complete set of caps except for the U, the lowercase, numerals, and sloped ampersand. The bold and condensed bold cuts were found in an original specimen book of the Rude Pravo newspaper printing press. These specimens included a dot, acute, colon, semicolon, hyphens, exclamation and question marks, asterisk, parentheses, square brackets, cross, section sign, and ampersand. After the regular cut was drafted, we began to modify it. All the uppercase letters were fine-tuned, the crossbar of the A was raised, E, F, and H were narrowed, L and R were significantly broadened, and the angle of the leg and arm of the K were adjusted. The vertex of the M now rests on the baseline, making the glyph broader. The apex of the N is narrower, resulting in a more regular glyph. The tail of Q was made more decorative; the uppercase S lost its implied serifs. The lowercase ascenders and descenders were slightly extended. Corrections on the lower case a were more significant, its waist being lowered in order to improve its colour and light. The top of the f was redrawn, the loop of lowercase g now has a squarer character. The diagonals of the lowercase k were harmonised with the uppercase K. The t has a more open and longer terminal, and the tail of the y matches its overall construction. Numerals are generally better proportioned. Italics have been thoroughly redrawn, and in general their slope is lessened by approximatively 2–3 degrees. The italic upper case is more consistent with the regular cut. Unlike the original, the tail of the K is not curved, and the Z is not calligraphic. The italic lower case is even further removed from the original. This concerns specifically the bottom finials of the c and e, the top of the f, the descender of the j, the serif of the k, a heavier ear on the r, a more open t, a broader v and w, a different x, and, again, a non-calligraphic z. Originally the bold cut conformed even more to the superellipse shape than the regular one, since all the glyphs had to be fitted to the same width. We have redrawn the bold cut to provide a better match with the regular. This means its shapes have become generally broader, also noticeably darker. Medium and Semibold weights were also interpolated, with a colour similar to the original bold cut. The condensed variants’ width is 85 percent of the original. The design of the Bold Condensed weights was optimised for the setting of headlines, while the lighter ones are suited for normal condensed settings. All the OpenType fonts include small caps, numerals, fractions, ligatures, and expert glyphs, conforming to the Suitcase Standard set. Over half a century of consistent quality ensures perfect legibility even in adverse printing conditions and on poor quality paper. RePublic is an exquisite newspaper and magazine type, which is equally well suited as a contemporary book face.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul