Originally released in 2008, Stern is the only typeface to be produced and marketed simultaneously in digital and metal. In the twenty-first century, no less. It is also the last typeface Jim Rimmer ever completed. The process he used for its design and manufacture is the stuff of legend, and can be seen in the Richard Kegler documentary, Making Faces: Metal Type in the 21st Century. The design is a delicate upright italic named in memory of Chris Stern, the late artist and printer from Washington State. In 2013, Canada Type remastered and expanded the design's offerings to a glyphset of over 1200 characters, updated programming. Now Stern Pro includes the following features: - Small caps. - Caps-to-small-caps functionality, useful for setting mid-height caps alongside lowercase. - Tall caps. - Historical forms. - A wide variety of alternates for both uppercase and lowercase letters. - Plenty of ligatures. - Seven types of numerals, enclosers, cojoiners and currency symbols. - Automatic fractions. - A complete set of lowercase ordinals, from a to z. - Case-sensitive forms. - Language support for Greek and over 50 Latin languages. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

“Loyolliams” is my first designed Latin typeface which has special meanings and unforgettable memories for me. The font's name, Loyolliams, consists of two mixed syllables stand for two different names. The first syllable is derived from the name “Loyola” and the second syllable is derived from the last five letters of the name “Williams.” These two names are related to “Concordia University”—located in Montreal in Canada—where I studied at a short academic term and spent in a very special period of my life in the late 2005. This renowned Canadian academic institution was created following the 1974 merger of “Loyola College” (1896) and “Sir George Williams University” (1926). This conglomeration formed “Concordia University” and the name Concordia itself was taken from the motto of the city of Montreal, Concordia salus (meaning ‘well-being through harmony’). This font comes in two different weights; light and regular. “Loyolliams” is a square, geometric, techno, and modern font. It is suitable for T-shirts, books' covers, websites’ addresses, advertisement light boards, and titles in technical, artistic, and other types of magazines and signboards. “Loyolliams” can be used also in posters, surfaces of electrical and electronic tools, digital devices and chips, geometrical machines, trucks, tractors, calculators, mobile phones, watches, laptops, personal computers, power equipments, digital cameras, technical magazines, and other digital and electronic tools. This fonts can be effectively used in titles especially when its uppercase and lowercase letters are mixed together and when it is used in its italic mode. "Loyolliams" is suitable for writing and printing small textual paragraphs in cards, magazines advertisements, and also posters. The main characteristic of "Loyolliams" Typeface is its non-curve style in most of its alphanumeric letters. The characters are deliberately designed to have only angular and square shapes.

Driver Gothic is based on the typeface used for Ontario license plates. Although unique among Canadian provincial license plates, this face is very similar to, if not outright identical with, the face used on car plates in 22 American states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia. Driver Gothic is available in all popular font formats, and is comprised of a very extended character set (over 750 characters) covering a wide range of languages, including Central and Eastern European languages, Greek, Cyrillic, Esperanto, Turkish, Baltic and Celtic/Welsh. Driver Gothic Pro, the OpenType version, contains class-based kerning and push-button stylistic alternates for use with apps that support advanced typography. Buckle up!

One name originating from Canada greatly inspired the birth of this vintage font. With the opentype feature: standar ligature, stylistic alternate (specifically for lowercase), Stylistic Sets 01 through 06 with different styles in each letter. Courtland is perfect for use in logo types, vintage logos, posters, labels, packaging, headlines, t-shirts and other designs.

One would think the whole hippy thing would have died out after the knighting of Mick Jagger and the selling out of the The Who. Not at Canada Type. We still occasionally read Burroughs and Ginsberg, listen to Dylan and Hendrix, and use the backyard to pretend (um, like run barefoot with the dog). And we're always happy to make another psychedelic font. This one is based on an early 1970s film type that went by the names Hoopla and Scorpio. Doobie is a typical hippy font that uses the simplest elements of the art nouveau genre. Bubbly and wavy, Doobie exudes an almost child-like innocence, the ever laid back, optimistic simplicity of flower power. It is right at home alongside the many other psychedelic fonts that make Canada Type the definite home of the groovy alphabet. Far out!

Boxr™ is a contemporary font family named after its boxy, square shape. We softened all the sharp corners on stems and connections to achieve a harmonious balance between the clean, corporate look and the warm, friendly feel. This versatile rectangular sans serif typeface is an excellent choice for your prints, packaging, editorial, and digital design projects. Boxr™ comes in 5 weights, 10 styles, and 1,100 glyphs/style. This Canadian-designed typeface also packs with OpenType features such as stylistic alternates, case-sensitive punctuations, ligatures, and date vs fraction recognitions. It also supports 200+ Latin-based languages and comes 120 essential UX/UI icons available in three different stylistic options. Try Boxr™ on your new design projects today! To find out more about Boxr™ Opentype features and type specimen, please visit https://r9typedesign.com/boxr-fonts-features-specimen

Cartier was Canada’s first roman text typeface, created in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s centennial. Its designer, Carl Dair, was one of the country’s most celebrated graphic design pioneers, and a fine designer indeed — but he was not a trained type designer. He had spent a year at the Enschedé type foundry and printing works in the Netherlands, but that probably wasn’t enough to fully grasp all that was required to make an effective text face. It is also possible that Dair simply compromised his own design by not allowing any of the much needed alterations to be made to his working drawings when they were handed over to Linotype for production. Cartier, though a strikingly original oldstyle, never became the influential allround text face it might have been. A display typeface derived from it, Raleigh, was more successful. Realizing that Dair’s design was sound in concept, if not in execution, Rod McDonald began working on a new digital version in 1997. The final family is convincing proof that Cartier could have been the functional text face that Dair originally wanted.

Jim Rimmer’s first typeface was originally published in 1970 as a basic film type alphabet through a small, independent type house in central California. Its sources of influence (now calligraphic type standards by Dair, Goudy and Zapf) are ones that remained with Jim for the rest of his career. If you squint at Totemic in just the right way, you can see some recognizable themes Jim would later flesh out and make his own in later works throughout his career as a type designer and printer. Totemic is now available for the first time as a digital font, of the refined and expanded kind now expected from Canada Type. It comes with quite a few standard advanced typography features: Small caps, caps-to-small-caps, automatic fractions and standard ligatures, stylistic alternate sets, six kinds of figures, case-sensitive forms, and extended Latin language support. It also comes with a very unique and unprecedented feature: Variably stackable totem poles. Simply enable the discretionary ligatures feature, type any unique three-digit combination using numbers between 1 and 4, and watch the magic happens. With a name like Totemic, we just couldn't help ourselves. Many thanks to Andrew Steeves of Gaspereau Press for finding Jim’s lost gem in a most unexpected place, and for helping us bring it back to life 45 years after its analog birth. 20% of Totemic’s revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Looking like happy frosting on a cupcake at a twiddle bug party, this bouncy food entry from Canadian designer Haley Fiege turns the original Jellybrush type into organic happiness you can spread on pancakes, ice-cream, sorbets, sauces and condements, oh peanut butter! Yeah, all kinds of sandwich fillings. Anything really. What else? People who own rubber factories. Anybody in the food business, like green grocers or your local bakery. Thrift stores. Falling somewhere between cushions and cat food, this flexible and inviting letter mixes simplicity with organic character and humor for a wide range of uses. Soft Serve’s compact cursive forms and bouncy friendliness draw on artbrush scripts and the typo-italic model of Renaissance Vatican scribe Ludovico Arrighi. A versatile workhorse ideal for: * Dairy & beverage * Sweets & soft drink * Five minute food & sauces * Pet food & accessories * Bathroom & kitchen * Cushions, pillows, rubber & swimming pool, etc.

Drawn shortly before Jim Rimmer's passing in 2010, Loxley was designed to be used in a fine press edition of the folklore story of Robin Hood. It was named after the cited birthplace of the story's classic hero. Loxley's shapes were inspired the same early Roman faces (such as Subiaco from the late 1400s) that influenced Frederick Goudy's Aries, Franciscan and Goudry Thirty types. It exhibits the preculiarities of Jim's left-handed calligraphy, as well as his outside-the-box thinking with exit strokes and serif variations. Loxley was remastered for the latest technologies in 2013. Now it comes with a character set of over 450 glyphs, including plenty of stylistic alternates, a full compliment of f-ligatures, a Th-ligature, basic fractions, ordinals, a long s for historic setting, comprehensive class-based kerning, and extended Latin language support. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Sherbrooke is a simple and sans serif font. I have chosen the name of this typeface after the "Sherbrooke" Street in Montreal, Canada, that I daily walked in for several months in the late 2005 while I was studying in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I do adore this street and also I adore the whole city of Montreal. This font comes in two different weights. "Sherbrooke" can be used in wide fields of publications such as the titles of novels, literary texts, short stories, dictionaries, books, newspapers, websites, and magazines. It is suitable for T-shirts, mugs, advertisement light boards in malls, subtitles of movies, logos, cans of foods, and medicines' names. The font is more attractive when it is printed in calendars and for displaying the contents and paragraphs of electronic encyclopedias and different online websites. "Sherbrooke" is specifically designed for educational, journalistic, literary, and social purposes. The main characteristics of "Sherbrooke" Typeface are in its sans serif new designed letters and also in its lowercase special numerals. I think that these characteristics have made "Sherbrooke" exceptionally unique with its alphanumeric combinations. You can enjoy this typeface and use it anywhere at any product or service. It is simply gratuitous for all. The word "Sherbrooke" is a person's name. Sherbrooke Street - officially Rue Sherbrooke - is a major east-west artery at 31.3 kilometers in length and it is the second longest street on the Island of Montreal in Canada. The street is named for John Coape Sherbrooke, the Governor General of British North America from 1816 to 1818.

Canadian designer Patrick Griffin made P22 Counter as an exercise in exploring the limits of counter-space and interchangeability between extremely geometric and standard calligraphic forms. Within a field of solid stems and horizontal strokes, parallel lines and curves play the role of counterparts to define square and round shapes, making what’s revealed just as interesting as what’s withheld. Each of the three basic Counter fonts stakes its own aesthetic territory, from clean basic minimalism, through the nostalgia of exuberantly pixel-based design, and on to calligraphic-cum-typographic, all within clear and precise geometric parameters. Counter Pro comes with that entire range included in a single font, giving its user the ability to move freely in a visual space and counter-space that can be defined by more than 1450 glyphs. While all the fonts come with extended Latin language support, P22 Counter Pro includes all three fonts in one font, many alternates, swashes and ending forms that are not available in the basic fonts.

Rosemont is a playful new font which hovers on the bordeline between Arts and Crafts style and Art Nouveau style. It has the narrowness of Art Nouveau fonts like Adresack, Spoonbill and Coloma, with the curls and unique character forms of Art Nouveau fonts like Beauvoir or Acadian. The result is an interesting looking font which could be at home in either design environment. Rosemont features two sets of upper case characters, one with more decoration and one which is more plain.

Inspiration for font design takes on many shapes and forms. It can be vintage source material, visualized concepts or simply suggestions made by others. In an email conversation with Kevin Redekop (the Principal Designer for FabArts Creative Fabricators in Canada) who had purchased a number of Jeff Levine Fonts, a sample sketch of a desired stencil font was provided. This set the wheels into motion for the drawing and production of Saskatoon Stencil JNL.

Johnny is the latest addition to the long line of popular psychedelic/hippy/funky art nouveau fonts representing the retro side of the Canada Type library. It is the digitization of a popular 1969 Phil Martin typeface that was known by two different names: Harem and Margit. The film type version had plenty of irregularities and quirks that made it seem like it was done in a hurry. In this digital version the errors have been corrected and the character set expanded to include international characters with built-in alternates, to be on par with what today's layout artists expect from a high quality font. This font saw a lot of use on record sleeves and music posters throughout the pre-disco part of the 1970s, which makes it a veteran of both the psychedelic and funk periods. This makes it the sharper, sturdier art nouveau contemporary personality of Canada Type's Tomato font. This font contains a very expanded character set that includes full support for Central, Eastern and Western European languages, as well as Baltic, Turkish, Esperanto, Greek, Cyrillic and Vietnamese.

Louis is a faithful digital rendition and expansion of a design called Fanfare, originally drawn by Louis Oppenheim in 1927. Redrawn digitally by Rod MacDonald, and engineered in-house by Canada Type, Louis includes the many alternates that came with the original design, and then some. It was also expanded into three variations, including a soft-cornered style, and a rough woodcut one. And of course, the codepage support covers the majority of Latin-based languages.

I used to be an exchange student in Canada. I noticed my handwriting was quite different from the handwriting of people who are from countries where the roman alphabet is used. So, I thought why not make a font based on my natural handwriting. This font can be used whenever a cute and different style like mine is needed. "Exchange Student" is extended, containing the full West European diacritics & a full set of ligatures, making it suitable for multilingual environments & publications. Enjoy!

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a species of holly, native to the USA and Canada. I thought it was a rather cool name (pun intended) for a messy script font made during a cold spell. Winterberry was created using Chinese ink and a crappy brush - hence its messy appearance. Use Winterberry on your alt-Christmas invitations, your fantasy novels, your rock albums or your website! You’ll love it! Comes with a bunch of diacritics and some ripe double letter ligatures as well.

This family was inspired by the set of fonts used in Paris by Ponce Rosset, aka “Faucheur” to print the account of the second voyage to Canada by Jacques Cartier, first edition, in 1545. It is a Garalde set, the punchcutter is unknown, certainly it was not Garamond himself. In our two styles (normal and italic), fontfaces, kernings and spaces are scrupulously the same as in the original. This Pro font covers Western, Eastern and Central European languages (including Celtic) Baltic and Turkish, with standard and long-s ligatures in each of the two styles.

Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle (1791–1847) was an English officer and military engineer who served in the War of 1812 and ultimately settled in Canada. I stumbled upon copies of some of his charts and maps, became infatuated with the hand-lettered titles—and the result is the eponymous Bonnycastle. The font has a bold weight and an italic style but is intended as an eye-catching standalone, evocative of its period in history. Use as a titling face on branding materials, event posters, book covers, presentation graphics, historical illustrations, and the like.

Isabelle is the closest thing to a metal type revival Jim Rimmer ever did. The original metal face was designed and cut in late 1930s Germany, but its propspects were cut short by the arrival of the war. This was one of Jim's favourite faces, most likely because of the refined art deco elements that reminded him of his youthful enthusiasm about everything press-related, and the face's intricately thought balance between calligraphy and typography. Not to mention one of the most beautiful italics ever made. Jim's early 2000s digitization included mathematical corrections to the original metal cut, as well as some functional improvements for digital use. In 2013, during the remastering of the entire Rimmer collection, Isabelle underwent a considerable rethinking/expansion and was rechristened Isabelle Pro. The new revisions include small caps, ligatures, seven types of figures, automatic fractions, extended Latin language support, stylistic alternates that include lowercase serif angle options in the roman and looped ascenders/descenders in the italic, and plenty of extra OpenType features like caps-to-small-caps substitution, case-sensitive positioning, ordinals, and extended class-based kerning. Now each of the Isabelle Pro fonts includes over 680 glyphs. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

In June of 2004, Canada Type released Crucifix, a condensed three-tiers typeface that tried to bridge the gap between traditional blackletter forms and the traditional European gothics. The main goal of Crucifix was to have as many as 4 different variations on each letter form, so the original release consisted of three fonts: a main font with a standard character set, a small caps set, and a unicase variation. Now Canada Type presents the next generation of this typeface: Crucifix 2.0 and Crucifix Pro. This new version takes advantage of both Unicode and OpenType technologies to make Crucifix as versatile as ever. The PostScript Type 1 and the True Type version boast extended Latin character set support, including Western, Eastern and Central European, Turkish and Baltic, as well as two non-Latin scripts: Cryillic and Greek. The OpenType version, Crucifix Pro, goes even further by including all of above in one font, along with proper automation to accommodate on-the-fly ligatures, small caps, numerators, denominators, some fractions and a ton of stylistic and contextual alternates - all programmed to work with the latest OpenType-enabled programs. Unique, stark, and with more than 900 characters, Crucifix has that clinical sharpness and special dramatic wonder to make it perfect for mystery, gothic, and horror design settings.

The Colville fonts began their existence in 2015 as a project-specific typeface, made to be used on a custom-made headstone commemorating Canadian artist Alex Colville (1920-2013) and his wife Rhoda Wright. For that purpose, some initial shapes were modelled after letters Colville himself had used on a Governor General gold medal he designed in the mid-1970s. From there started a year-long project that culminated in a set of four comprehensive fonts ranging in weight from Light to Bold, each containing over 750 glyphs to cover Pan European language support, stylistic alternates, five sets of figures, automatic fractions, and some ornaments rooted in Alex Colville’s art. These fonts exhibit a strong art deco aesthetic that has always been a favourite of architects, metal casters, and sign makers. This is a very humanist geometry alternating from the precisely calculated to the curvy and lithe, subtle contrast, flat stroke stops, and airy proportions that make for a counterspace built for accommodation and comfort. The breadth and timeless humanism of the Colville set makes fit in a variety of applications, from straightforward headlines, titles, and emphasis captions, to branding and packaging.

By overwhelming popular demand, this is the wide display companion to Canada Type's Clarendon Text family. It comes in ten styles: regular, medium, bold, with small caps and oldstyle Figures counterparts, as well as stencil and sketch versions of the regular and the bold. All the fonts come equipped with superscripts/numerators, denominators, and scientific inferiors. The OpenType fonts also contain automatic fractions and class-based kerning. The Clarendon Wide fonts are available in all popular formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages.

Jim Rimmer aptly described his Dokument family as a sans serif in the vein of News Gothic that takes nothing from News Gothic. Building on that internal analysis, Dokument Pro is the thoroughly reworked and expanded of the original main set released in 2005, with different widths still in the pipeline. This new version updates Jim’s work to six Pro weights and their italic counterparts, each of which takes advantage of OpenType stylistic sets to introduce different degrees of graduation from gothic to humanist. Dokument Pro is now a unique text sans family, with an adaptable personality suitable for the kind of edgy, uncompromising corporate and media typography that just tells it like it is, instead of having to resort to the common contemporary luring and baiting tactics. Dokument Pro’s range of weights, styles and features (over 775 glyphs per font, built-in small caps, alternates galore, and support for over 45 Latin languages) allows for multi-application versatility and clear, precise emotional delivery. This is the kind of straight-shooter sans that should be in every designer’s toolbelt. For more details on the fonts' features, text and display specimens and print tests, consult the Dokument Pro PDF availabe in the Gallery section of this page. 20% of Dokument Pro’s revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Teaspoon was originally designed by Haley Fiege as a project-specific font in 2007, then completed and produced by Canada Type for commercial viability in 2008. With a personality that can only be described as “ironic cute”, it serves as a much needed alternative for the old overused poster faces, such as Cooper Black and Gill Sans Extra Bold. Words that look good set in Teaspoon include puppies, rainbows, salmonella poisoning and Tom Cruise. Teaspoon is available in all popular formats, comes with plenty of alternate characters, and supports a wider than normal range of Latin-based languages, as well as Cyrillic and Greek.

Though Zigarre can easily be categorized a brush script, Jim Rimmer actually drew it using a big marker. Jim’s original face, inspired by inter-war German poster lettering, was a rough one, with the marker’s juicy ink roughing it out all over the place. The smooth version, Zigarre Script, was produced as part of a major update and remastering the design underwent in 2012. Both Zigarre Script and Zigarre Rough come with extended Latin language support, as well as a few built-in stylistic alternates. 20% of this font’s revenues will be donated to a GDC scholarship fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Bouwsma Script, based on Philip Bouwsma's own handwriting, was originally released in 1994 and settled for nothing less than being an instant classic. One of Bouwsma's widely used works in the 1990s, Bouwsma Script finds its home now at Canada Type, where it was updated with the Euro symbol and complete support for Turkish, Baltic, and Central and Eastern European languages. It now also comes in all popular font formats, including OpenType. Real, casual, friendly, and loaded with the designer's artistic touch, Bouwsma Script can be seen around the globe on plenty of store signs, book covers, product packaging, promotional posters and a variety of other paraphernalia.

When type historians look back on Jim Rimmer, they will consider him the last type designer who just couldn't let go of metal type, even though he was just as proficient in digital type. Lancelot is one definite case in point: A face designed and produced in digital as late in the game as 1999, only to spring onto the new millenium a couple of years later as a metal type cast in three sizes. That was Jim, a time traveler constantly reminding the craft of its origins. This particular time machine was originally designed as a simple set of attractive caps that emphasize the beauty of the variable conventional dialogue between the drawing tool and the intended final form, and the one exchanged within the totality of the forms themselves. Jim designed two weights, with contrast and counterspace being the main difference between them. In 2013, the Lancelot family was remastered and greatly expanded. Lancelot Pro is now a wonder of over 840 glyphs per font, including smaller versions of the caps in the minuscule slots, and alternates and ligatures that can transform the historic spirit of the original design into anything from half-uncial to outright gothic. Language support goes beyond the extended Latin stuff, to cover Cyrillic and Greek as well. 20% of the Lancelot Pro family's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

NOMAD —Regular is a stand alone font. Nomad -Regular is a clean, interesting revival font. It is a Display font. Nomad, now exclusively in OpenType .oft by Joseph V Coniglio of Coniglio Type. It is a narrow boldfaced font. Its analog source was comprised of an extremely limited die cut, truly generic, craft, peel-and-stick vinyl set of capital letters of ascenders and numbers. It was purchased at a five & dime stores, hardware department from the 1970's. My father owned an original set of characters: Nomad-Regular is nicely expanded to meet the needs of OpenType. The original adhesive labels adhered to the bows of that small boats so fisherman wouldn't get turned away at the Canadian border for not having their vessels tagged and listed with the appropriate license name and numbers, recorded by customs. It was a required serialization of letters and numbers marked on the side of their vessels. On the other hand, most beer and whisky drinking fishers, card players and bait casters would rather not deal with it, but the boat could not cross over the border without them. (Once part of Market LTD from the 1990's, a collection of limited faces, mostly alpha-numeric and some just plain numeric, used primarily in retail and display situations and titling.) Designer: Joseph V Coniglio Author: Coniglio Type

Poster Paint is a fun shocard alphabet which came about from Jim Rimmer’s admiration of Goudy Stout, a design he liked in spite of the fact that Goudy himself claimed to detest it. Extremely eye-catching and humourous to a fault, Poster Paint is an ideal fit for fun environments like theme parks, concession stands, cofee and juice bars, and in print design for children books and fun food packaging. Poster Paint was updated and remastered for the latest technologies in 2012. It comes with a glyphset of over 375 characters, and supports the majority of Latin-based languges. 20% of this font’s revenues will be donated to a GDC scholarship fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

This font was created inspired from a handwritten copy of the "Brief story of the second journey in Canada" (1535) by French explorer Jacques Cartier. It is an early "Civilité" manual style, closely looking like the "Civilité" script font carved by Robert Granjon a few years later and still strongly influenced by blackletters forms, clearly visible in the capitals or long s, d, e, f or t forms. (Look at our "1557 Civilite Granjon Pro" and the latest "1638 Civilite Manual"). It is containing Western (including Celtic) and Northern European, Icelandic, Baltic, Eastern, Central European and Turquish diacritics. Historical forms, titling alternates and the numerous lower alternates or ligatures made the font looking like a real various hand.

Tall, thin and elegant, Marian Churchland’s fonts are very much like her.. and now available from those awfully nice chaps at Comicraft to allow you to pretend that you are too! Marian Churchland was born in Canada in 1982, and was raised on a strict diet of fine literature and epic fantasy video games. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (English Literature and Visual Arts) from the University of British Columbia, and has been doing professional illustration work, including book covers and magazine articles, since she was 17. Last year, she became the first woman to solo-illustrate a CONAN story, and this year she’s illustrating three issues of ELEPHANTMEN for Image Comics. See the families related to Marian Churchland: Marian Churchland Journal.

This is the rounded, softer version of Canada Type's popular Press Gothic. Originally done in 2011 for a global publisher, this font has already seen plenty of magazine and book cover action, perhaps even more than the sharp condensed face that spawned it. And like Press Gothic, Soft Press comes with small caps and biform/unicase forms, in addition to the main upper/lowercase set. The extended language support covers a wide range, including Greek and Cyrillic, Turkish, Baltic, Central and Eastern European languages, Celtic/Welsh and Esperanto. The Pro version combines all three TrueType fonts into one OpenType-programmed font, taking advantage of class-based kerning, the small caps feature, and the stylistic alternates feature for the biform shapes.

This is Canada Type's second Helmut Matheis revival. Rhino is what Matheis did under the name Mobil for the Ludwig & Mayer foundry in 1960. It's an informal text face with some attractive irregularities relating to the traits of handwriting. The influence of the human hand can be clearly seen in letters like the A, J, Q, R, T and pretty much all of the lowercase. Though obviously inspired by and tooled after the human touch, Rhino's functionality extends to even a page or two of text setting. Aside from its functionality, Rhino gives short paragraphs what the classic immersive-reading fonts are not built for: immediate friendliness and natural humility. A few alternates and ligatures are included within the font.

This is the rounded, softer version of Canada Type's popular Wagner Grotesk. Originally done in 2011 for a global publisher, this font has already seen plenty of magazine and book cover action, perhaps even more than the sharp condensed face that spawned it. And like Wagner Grotesk, Wagner Round comes with small caps and biform/unicase forms, in addition to the main upper/lowercase set. The extended language support covers a wide range, including Greek and Cyrillic, Turkish, Baltic, Central and Eastern European languages, Celtic/Welsh and Esperanto. The Pro version combines all three TrueType fonts into one OpenType-programmed font, taking advantage of class-based kerning, the small caps feature, and the stylistic alternates feature for the biform shapes.

Alexander Quill was originally designed in the early 1980s to be cut in 14 point for casting into foundry type for the setting and printing of limited edition books at Pie Tree Press, Jim Rimmer's private sanctum. This alphabet exhibits traditional calligraphic tension, which helps its simple, somewhat octagonal forms play well together for an easy read. Its setting expresses a dramatic sense of history or fantasy. Alexander Quill was updated and remastered for the latest technologies in 2012. It comes with plenty of built-in alternates, a glyphset of over 410 characters, and supports the majority of Latin-based languges. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the GDC Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, or Early Alphabetic) is found in a small corpus of c. 40 inscriptions and fragments, the vast majority from Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula, dating to the Middle Bronze Age. They are considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian script and the Phoenician alphabet, which led to many modern alphabets including the Greek alphabet. According to common theory, Canaanites or Hyksos who spoke a Canaanite language repurposed Egyptian hieroglyphs to construct a different script. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are mostly dated to between the mid-19th (early date) and the mid-16th (late date) century BC.

From the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, by way of Toronto, comes Martie's handwriting. Martie Byrd is a school teacher in Roanoke, Virginia, and a friend of Canada Type's Rebecca Alaccari. After years of admiring the cheer and clarity of Martie's handwriting, we asked her to write out full alphabets for some cool font treatment. The intent was to do three different versions of her writing in two different pens, then use the auto-magic of OpenType to determine letter sequences and rotate character sets on the fly when the fonts are in use. A successful endeavor it was. Take a look at the images in the MyFonts gallery to see the character rotation in action, along with a visual explanation of why Martie is not just another handwriting font. Unlike other available felt tip and ballpoint handwriting fonts, the regular and bold variations are style-based, not weight-based. They are the handwritten expressions of two different Sharpie pens: The fine point one (Martie Bold), and the ultrafine one (Martie Regular). The style-based variation considerably helps the realism needed in design pieces that take advantage of the contrast of two different handwriting fonts. Weight thickening in handwriting is an obvious mechanical effect that only happens with computers. Weight changing by replacing pens is what happens in the real world. Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold each contain three different character sets in a single font. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European languages for all three sets. This translates into each Pro font containing over 750 characters. Add OpenType code and stir, and you have true handwriting fonts with versatility unavailable out there in anything else of the genre. A software program that supports OpenType features is needed to use the randomization coded in Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold. Current versions of QuarkXpress and Adobe applications (Photoshop, Illlustrator, InDesign) do contain support for the randomization feature. But if you don't have one of these apps, you can still use the interchangeable Type 1 or True Type fonts and change the characters manually to achieve the appearance of true handwriting. The Martie fonts come in a variety of price packages, from the affordable single fonts to value-laden complete sets. All the proceeds from these fonts received by Canada Type will be donated 50/50 to two primary schools: One in Roanoke (where Martie teaches), and one in Toronto (where the 10-year old, real Canada Type boss goes). So next time a design project needs a handwriting font, do the write thing and use Martie to keep it real.

Tall, thin and elegant, Marian Churchland’s fonts are very much like her.. and now available from those awfully nice chaps at Comicraft to allow you to pretend that you are too! Marian Churchland was born in Canada in 1982, and was raised on a strict diet of fine literature and epic fantasy video games. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (English Literature and Visual Arts) from the University of British Columbia, and has been doing professional illustration work, including book covers and magazine articles, since she was 17. Last year, she became the first woman to solo-illustrate a CONAN story, and this year she’s illustrating three issues of ELEPHANTMEN for Image Comics. Artwork by Marian Churchland from Elephantmen #20. See the families related to Marian Churchland Journal: Marian Churchland .