Simplo: the ‘Italian Futura’. Simplo is a geometric sans serif typeface, built in sixteen styles. It is a tribute to the 1930s typeface Semplicità, designed by Nebiolo’s Alessandro Butti. Although many details of Simplo differ from Semplicità, it preserves the spirit of the original. Simplo is ideal for use in display sizes. It is also quite legible in text, and is well suited for graphic design and corporate identity design. Simplo has sixteen styles, extensive language support, eight different kinds of figures, sophisticated OpenType features — so it’s ready for advanced typographic projects. The most notable characteristics of this typeface are the ‘t’ and the ‘f’. The ‘t’ is the culmination of simplicity: a vertical line with just a simple right-side crossbar. The ‘f’ also has just a right-side crossbar, and is really tall: it reaches both the highest and lowest vertical position of the typeface. The top of the distinctive ‘s’, is much narrower than its bottom. The ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘g’, ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘u’ are spurless, and show a family resemblance with Hans Reichel’s 1990s typeface Dax. However, these letters are rounder and more geometric than Dax’s counterparts, because of Dax’s higher x-height and narrower design. In Paul Shaw’s Imprint article about typefaces that have been overlooked and/or underappreciated, “Overlooked Typefaces”, he concluded his discussion of Semplicità as follows: “These idiosyncrasies suggest that Semplicità might find a warm reception today, given the current love affair with Gotham, Neutraface and Proxima—and the resurgence of ITC Avant-Garde Gothic.” Free demo font available. For more information about Simplo, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

According to the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, «canturía» is the exercise of singing, and a way of singing musical compositions. Canturiana Type (derived from «canturía») has a romantic and musical air, as well as a clear sensuality thanks to its sinuous construction. The curves seduce us, conquer us, hypnotize us and the letters acquire a resounding lightness, and a very earthly presence that is complemented by a certain aerial, spiritual expressiveness. Canturiana Type is inspired by Canterbury, a font designed in the 1920s by the legendary American type designer and engineer Morris Fuller Benton and published by the American Type Founders (ATF). Canturiana Type collects all this heritage and transforms it into a digital typeface perfectly functional and adapted to the visual communication of the 21st century. Its elegant art deco essence provides it with a unique and heterodox imprint that works in very different media, giving them distinction and depth. The creative process of Canturiana Type has gone through various mutations to a point where each episode of its creation has left its mark, a multiple imprint that makes it unique, singular in its essence and plural in its possibilities. For this reason, Canturiana Type expresses itself with several voices without any variation in its essence. A conceptual ambiguity that makes it truly versatile. Canturiana Type is a typographic choir, a complex entity that has infinite nuances and tones. Classic and cool. Disruptive and romantic. Literary and musical. Canturiana Type is composed of 5 weights, and has a large number of swashes, alternate characters, ligatures and various visual elements to make compositions as titles or for use in short texts. Canturiana Type has more than a thousand glyphs and offers a wide range of languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Sonrisa is a design that evolved from my sketches of the skeletal structure of Jakob Erbar’s Koloss, trying to discover its underlying essence without all the contrast and bulkiness of the original design. Sonrisa Thin was the resulting font, from which the other weights of the family were developed. Gentle curves, open counters, generous x-height, and sleekly tapered terminals give Sonrisa a very legible, modern, elegant appearance. When she saw the first draft of this typeface, the smile on my friend Jennifer’s face gave me the idea to call it “Sonrisa” (Spanish for “smile”). Jennifer, a clinical psychologist, described Sonrisa’s personality as: "happy, clean, clear, open, joyful, spacious, playful, calm. I can see it being used for body product lines such as oils and lotions. Can see it being used in home/travel magazines or even Architectural Digest. Yoga magazine, definitely." Sonrisa is what some foundries call a “Pro” typeface family with all the bells and whistles that provide typographic versatility: true small caps, oldstyle numerals, arbitrary fractions, discretionary ligatures, and other powerful OpenType features. All fonts in the family, except Sonrisa Titling, support most European languages, including modern Greek and languages that use the Cyrillic Alphabet. (Cyrillic glyphs designed in consultation with Ukrainian type designer, Sergiy S. Tkachenko.) Sonrisa is available in the original Thin, monoline version as well as six weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extra Bold, Black), and a Titling font that is essentially a display font construction kit. If you enjoy using Sonrisa even half as much as I enjoyed creating it, then I know you will have a “sonrisa” (smile) on your face!

PF Champion Script Pro is perhaps the most advanced and powerful calligraphic family ever made. It received an award for Excellence in Type Design from the International Type Design Competition ‘Modern Cyrillic 2009’ which was held in Moscow. Most recently, it received another award from the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition - Granshan Awards 2010. This typeface was first presented in June 2007 at the 3rd International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC) and was met with rave reviews. It is based mainly on the manuscripts of the 18th century English calligrapher Joseph Champion. Developed over a period of two and a half years, each one of the 2 weights is loaded with 4300 glyphs(!), offering simultaneous support for all European languages based on the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. Furthermore, a wide selection of alternate forms and ligatures is included for all languages, in order to accommodate diverse design aesthetics. These alternates are either applied automatically through an advanced programming scheme, or manually through several OpenType features. An attempt was made to design a contemporary script typeface with classic roots, by following certain guidelines, i.e. lowercase characters were designed so they are less inclined, have a higher x-height and are less condensed than the original. Several characters were stripped-off their connecting lines in order to enhance legibility. Four sets of alternate swashed capitals as well as a plethora of ornaments and frames (117) was included. Small caps and their alternate forms were designed to replace the capitals which disrupt the flow of text within a sentence with their extravagant swashes. All characters were carefully designed with the proper weight in order to sustain harsh printing conditions (on special papers), a situation which affects mainly the light connecting parts of calligraphic typefaces. Finally, it was programmed in such a way as to preserve handwriting qualities, by designing an extensive array of ligatures and alternate glyphs in all languages, never before released or incorporated within the same font.

Roc is a sans serif grotesk inspired by American wood types from the end of the 19th century. With nine weights in five widths, this family contains 45 fonts in total. The character set supports Western and Central European languages, as well as Turkish. Roc Grotesk comes in a range of five widths: Compressed, Condensed, Normal, Wide and ExtraWide, in order to cover a wide scope of applications. Although the styles at both ends of each range are made in their most pronounced form in terms of width and weight, they are not taken to such extremes as to become absurd, and are quite usable in display settings. The Normal width keeps all its nine styles in proportionally similar widths. The Compressed width, however, is deliberately made to be disproportionate, so that every style takes the least possible horizontal space. That is why the contrast between Compressed Thin and Compressed Heavy style is substantial. As the weights progress from Thin to Heavy, the stroke contrast becomes more prominent. It is intentionally exaggerated in heavier weights, which is particularly apparent in the uppercase E and R of the Black and Heavy style. Roc has a large x-height and relatively short descenders and ascenders. No uppercase letter descends below the baseline, so the lines of an all-caps text can be packed tightly on a poster or a headline. The Regular style is somewhat generously spaced, as it is most likely to be used for setting longer passages of text. Its Bold counterpart is spaced in such a way that the width of the text column will be similar to the text set in Regular. Tabular figures in these two styles have exact matching widths, so for example, you could emphasize one row of numbers in a data column without visually disrupting the vertical order of the table. The lowercase g and r have alternatives to accommodate what most designers expect from a typical Grotesk typeface. The single-story g and the cut-off r are accessible via the OpenType feature.

Padraig Nua is a font conceptualized and designed by Tony Fahy. It is a European Celtic font, contemporary to many languages, not just of Europe but of the world. It’s origin is influenced by events in Ireland in the 1960s when it was decided that the uncial letterform should not be used further in Irish schools for the Irish language—Gaelic—and that it should be replaced by the Roman letterform—the Cló Romhanach as it was called afterwards. This happened overnight without any apparent discussion. It probably had a lot to do with Ireland joining the EEC, as the EU was called then. It had a massive effect on the Irish language and culture, in that the distinguishing factor that gave the language it’s identity—the half uncial/uncial fonts that were in use in all school, government and society documentation and merchandise—were lost overnight. No one said how or why. It was just done. To this day, all documentation is bi-lingual in government and Gaelic is taught in schools and universities—and decreed so by the European Union—but the presentation for both languages is the Roman letterform. Throughout the world, there are millions of Irish Americans and Irish Canadians, Irish Europeans, Australian Irish, African Irish and many living in the Middle East and Asia—and this new font—Padraig Nua, will appeal to many of them, visually recalling their roots. No one had thought, in those days, of commissioning a design that might update the Gaelic language to a more contemporary appearance that would keep the cultural nature of it intact with a revised and updated font—at one with Europe, the US and the world. Tony Fahy designed Padraig Nua (New Patrick) to address the problem. It keeps an appearance that lends towards the Gaelic language but steers it in the direction of Roman fonts. Some characters reflect letterforms from the Irish/Gaelic manuscripts and uncial fonts.

Right now! FS Emeric reconciles a pair of seemingly opposing approaches: the systematic but chilly functionalism of early modernist typography, trapped in time, and a warmer, more emotional, more optimistic spirit. What Fontsmith created was something that marries precision with expression, geometry with movement, functionality with humanity. FS Emeric has a sharp, kinetic edge that cuts across design disciplines – graphic, fashion, product, automotive. It’s about what’s happening right now. Contemporary, optimistic, distinctive – a classic working sans serif. Appetite Discussions with some of Fontsmith’s design studio clients had revealed an appetite for a new kind of typeface that could express mid-century modernist principles in a fresh, contemporary voice. As he crafted the letterforms that would form FS Emeric, Phil Garnham was guided by two central ideas. First, there was Jan Tschichold’s contention that a good letter is “one that expresses itself, speaking with the utmost distinctiveness and clarity”. Second was a belief that a font can be personally expressive without compromising its functionality. These provided the fuel that drove the project to its conclusion. Posters To mark the launch of FS Emeric, Fontsmith asked 11 eminent design studios from around the world – the likes of Pentagram, Studio Dumbar, Bibliotheque, Non-Format and Build – to create a limited edition A1 poster. Each poster celebrated a different weight of FS Emeric, and just 50 of each were screen-printed by Dan Mather onto 175gsm Colorplan stock. “We gave away a randomly selected poster every time two or more weights of the FS Emeric were purchased,” says Phil Garnham. “They’ve now become somewhat of a collector’s item in their own right.” Superfamily In the spirit of Univers, the original font superfamily, FS Emeric now comprises 22 Roman and italic typefaces overall, making it one of the most versatile and functional modern fonts across all kinds of media, as well as one of the most distinctive.

Here in the heart of Santa Monica, in the disused 1940s aircraft hangar we like to call the Comicraft Studios, we know that times are tough. As we were driving to “work” in the back of our chauffeur driven Humvee limo, sipping martinis out of the navels of Playboy bunnies and wondering what font we should release next, we decided it was time to reach out to the poor people. Yes, we felt it was time to create a font for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, for the wretched refuse of our teeming shores. A font, if you will, for the tempest-tossed. It’s a little skinny and might be described as pinched and starved, but it’s guaranteed to see you through this current economic crisis as only the 26 letters of the alphabet can. It was a tall order, but Jazzy JG Roshell created this one while he was in line at the bank, waiting for his personal bailout. Meticulously crafted using one of those ballpoint pens attached to the cashier’s station by elastic, Credit Crunch is the Hamburger Helper of comic book fonts. It’s kind of a hybrid -- just like the Priuses our trophy wives drive to their personal plastic surgeons -- and it’s solar powered and also comes with a tank full of good old fashioned Biro ink. The Recession, Climate Change AND Global Hunger will probably end mere minutes after you crack open your life’s savings to buy this font. How can you afford NOT to...? See the families related to Credit Crunch: Credit Extension.

You stand, poised at the brink. If you do not choose the right, the best typeface, this may be one of the greatest disasters in your history. The whole root and core and brain on which and around which your project is built seems about to perish into an ignominious end. But I do not for a moment fail to believe that Winsel shall prevail for you. This bold new face, founded from the tested mind of insigne design, will in the moment of need wield for you the full might of its ancestors. The entire strength of the British Empire’s vernacular poster lettering spanning the 1920’s to the 1950’s drives the very heart of every feature and weight this font has to offer. Winsel’s expanded design is sharp and angular, based on pointed brush strokes. Its thick, sturdy appearance will draw and direct your reader’s mind to the weight and importance of your messages and titling. Within the font’s full forces work a range of styles to achieve victory in the contest ahead: thick weights that are compact and muscular for carrying a heavier load and lighter, finer weights to lead you through your more sensitive operations. It stands equipped with OpenType features, ready to support most European Latin-based languages and providing features such as Small Caps and Titling Caps in all nine of its weights. Well-honed for the task ahead, Winsel has been crafted to ride out the storm of mediocrity and to outlive the merits of inconsequence, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. There has never been in all the world such an opportunity for you. With Winsel, you shall go on till the end. You shall write on the beaches. You shall write on the landing grounds. You shall write with growing confidence and growing strength in print or on the air. Every morn has brought forth a noble chance. Your chance this day is Winsel.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™, and Soho®.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.

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.”

The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is also ideal for any application that requires quick and easy assimilation of text. According to Nicholas, “The idea for the design started when I was asked to develop a custom version of Century Schoolbook. I wanted to give the design a more contemporary feel, although the client ultimately decided to keep their typeface closer to the original. The project nevertheless gave me ideas for a new design. Since designing Nimrod, some 30 years ago, I had wanted to make a more modern typeface family for newspapers and magazines – this seemed the ideal candidate.” Ysobel (pronounced “Isabel”) has the soft, inviting letter shapes of Century Schoolbook but contrasts these with more incised serifs and terminals. Its capitals are also narrower than those of Century Schoolbook, and care was taken to ensure that they harmonize perfectly with the lowercase. Ysobel’s x-height is full-bodied without disrupting lowercase proportions. In addition, curved terminals, such as those in the “C,” “c” and “e,” were drawn more open as an aid to legibility and readability in text copy. Weight stress is near vertical, and hairlines are robust to ensure character fidelity in small point sizes. Development began with the text version of the family, which has four weights, each with an italic companion. All weights feature lining and old style numerals, fractions, superiors and extended Latin language coverage. Small caps are also available in the Roman Regular design. Ysobel Display is a completely redrawn version of the typeface; it is narrower, and has a slightly smaller x-height, thinner hairlines and subtle design changes to improve its appearance when set at large sizes. The Display Italic received particular attention to make it ideal for setting headlines, subheads and short blocks of copy. Changes include a slightly greater italic angle and more cursive treatment of some letter shapes. Alternative styles of capital “J” and “Q,” to provide variation, are available in all weights.

A true workhorse. The only Grotesk you’ll ever need. Allrounder Grotesk is a neutral, powerful Neogrotesk member of the Allrounder superfamily. An unobtrusive teamplayer as well as an excellent soloist, this hard-working sans-serif typeface is ready for any task you’ll throw it at. A workhorse that lives up to its name, Allrounder Grotesk consists of ten weights ranging from a delicate Air to a powerful Black with 900+ glyphs per font. Each weight is accompanied by carefully hand-corrected italics. Allrounder Grotesk supports more than 200 Latin-based languages, containing the complete “LatinPlus” glyph set developed by Underware. It also provides you with plenty of OpenType features and additional goodies: small capitals, ten sets of figures, case-sensitive forms, ligatures, superiors, fractions and arrows. Equipped like this, you’ll be ready for any kind of sophisticated typesetting scenario you might encounter. With Allrounder Grotesk, you’ve got a sans that works great for body text, yet looks crisp and clean in headlines and display sizes. Whether annual reports, magazine and editorial layouts, nonfiction books, branding and packaging work, large-scale advertising, forms and contracts, or contemporary posters: Allrounder Grotesk is up for it. This multitalented font family was developed in a 2-year process by Moritz Kleinsorge. It was the first release of the Allrounder superfamily, a series of typefaces sharing the same color and horizontal metrics (cap height, small cap height and x-height): a typesetting system whose components match each other perfectly. Any other part of this design kit, e. g., Allrounder Antiqua or Allrounder Monument, may be easily combined with Allrounder Grotesk. Perfect Pairing: Allrounder Antiqua + Allrounder Grotesk Allrounder Antiqua is the ideal complement to Allrounder Grotesk. They both share common vertical metrics and a common color. This allows you to pair both typefaces within the same layout—even within the same paragraph—without creating visual disruption. Head over to the Family Page of Allrounder Antiqua to get more information about this typeface. Design Trick: Bilingual Design With the Allrounder Superfamily Combining Allrounder Grotesk with Allrounder Antiqua is an ideal approach for bilingual designs, wherein both languages get the same emphasis yet are distinguished with two different typefaces. It's also best practice to set headlines in a different typeface than the body text if they harmonize with each other. Allrounder Grotesk and Allrounder Antiqua provide you with the perfect pair for this purpose. In any kind of design, in any type of medium, working with Allrounder fonts is effortless. That’s why Allrounder got its name.

Timeless Renaissance looks, gently updated. For novels and billboards alike. Allrounder Antiqua is an old-style serif member of the Allrounder superfamily. A timeless typeface based on classical proportions, Allrounder Antiqua is perfectly suitable for advanced book and editorial design well as packaging and branding. True: its main purpose is to set flawless body copy and to generate an evenly textured page—but its refined shapes work fantastically in display applications, too. Some details, such as the small and sharp bowl of the lowercase a, are fully appreciated in large sizes only. If you need a sophisticated serif typeface for packaging, food, fashion, consumer goods, or lifestyle branding, Allrounder Antiqua is up for it. It's also apt as an outstanding corporate typeface, be it for a more conservative venture or the latest hipster start-up. This classy serif typeface comes in four weights with corresponding true italics. Just like its sans-serif counterpart, Allrounder Grotesk, Allrounder Antiqua is equipped with plenty of Opentype Features like small caps, six sets of figures, case-sensitive forms, superiors, fractions and many ligatures. You will find alternate letters with swashes within this extended character set, as well as all the accented glyphs necessary to support more than 200 Latin-based languages. Historical Background The (French) Renaissance-influenced typeface started as Moritz Kleinsorge's graduation project within the "Expert Class Type design" course of the Plantin Institute for Typography, located in the famous Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp, Belgium. There, Moritz Kleinsorge decided to create a revival of Robert Granjon's "Ascendonica Romain", described as "a beautiful face; typical of Granjon's mature style" in the inventory list of available material. "To touch punches and matrices cut by Robert Granjon back in 1567 was an invaluable inspiration", Moritz explains. Over time, the typeface moved away from being a true revival. Rather, it evolved into a Granjon-inspired typeface. That typeface is now available as Allrounder Antiqua. Perfect Pairing: Allrounder Antiqua + Allrounder Grotesk Allrounder Grotesk is the ideal complement to Allrounder Antiqua. They both share common vertical metrics and a common color. This allows you to pair both typefaces within the same layout—even within the same paragraph—without creating visual disruption. Head over to the Family Page of Allrounder Grotesk to get more information about this typeface. Design Trick: Bilingual Design With the Allrounder Superfamily Combining Allrounder Grotesk with Allrounder Antiqua is an ideal approach for bilingual designs, wherein both languages get the same emphasis yet are distinguished with two different typefaces. It's also best practice to set headlines in a different typeface than the body text if they harmonize with each other. Allrounder Grotesk and Allrounder Antiqua provide you with the perfect pair for this purpose.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

Gundrada ML was inspired by the lettering on the tomb of Gundrada de Warenne. She was buried at Southover Church at Lewes, Sussex, in the south of England in 1085. The Latin inscription on her tomb, STIRPS GUNDRADA DUCUM, meaning “Gundrada, descendant of the Duke” may have led to the speculation that she was the daughter of William, Duke of Normandy and bastard son of Robert the Devil of Normandy and Arletta, daughter of a tanner in Falaise. In 1066 William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned William I of England. More commonly known as William the Conquerer, he commissioned a string of forts around the kingdom and charged trusted Norman Barons to control the contentious Anglo-Saxon population. William de Warenne, husband of Gundrada, was one of these Barons. There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility. The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension. Features 1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist. 3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures. 4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets). 5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages. 6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic. 7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #. 8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl. 9. Historic alternate longs. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.

Divina Proportione is based from the original studies from Luca Pacioli. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. [This was education in the vernacular (i.e. the local tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants.] He moved to Venice around 1464 where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. It was during this period that he wrote his first book -- a treatise on arithmetic for the three boys he was tutoring. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia and wrote a comprehensive abbaco textbook in the vernacular for his students during 1477 and 1478. It is thought that he then started teaching university mathematics (rather than abbaco) and he did so in a number of Italian universities, including Perugia, holding the first chair in mathematics in two of them. He also continued to work as a private abbaco tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book to be printed, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an invitation from Lodovico Sforza ("Il Moro") to work in Milan. There he met, collaborated with, lived with, and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove their patron out. Their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died aged 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro where it is thought he had spent much of his final years. De divina proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509). Two versions of the original manuscript are extant, one in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the other in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva. The subject was mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations of the regular solids in De divina proportione while he lived with and took mathematics lessons from Pacioli. Leonardo's drawings are probably the first illustrations of skeletonic solids, an easy distinction between front and back. The work also discusses the use of perspective by painters such as Piero della Francesca, Melozzo da Forlì, and Marco Palmezzano. As a side note, the "M" logo used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is taken from De divina proportione. “ The Ancients, having taken into consideration the rigorous construction of the human body, elaborated all their works, as especially their holy temples, according to these proportions; for they found here the two principal figures without which no project is possible: the perfection of the circle, the principle of all regular bodies, and the equilateral square. ” —De divina proportione