Inspired by the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft (1890-1936), and the city of Arkham lying abroad the Miskatonic River... witth all those witchcrafts secrecy and the infamous Necronomicon. The Elder Ones and the mighty Cthulhu, who lies and not dies within the dephts of the ocean in R'lyeh he's awaiting... arf, anyway this font will well set for posters, detective stories or horror books, pulps and others... *Full western latin language with most diacritics and numbers* Included in this set: - ARKHAM77 Black (More formal display) 560 glyphes - ARKHAM77 Elegante (for a creepiest rendition) 590 glyphes - ARKHAM77 Titles (as its name do not tells, for credits, or simple text) 560 glyphes - ARKHAM77 Extras (Embellish your work with this cool collection of frames and ornaments) +100 glyphes

Slab-like sibling Why stop at sans? Rather than leave FS Silas Sans as an only child, the team wanted to extend the family, and create a complete system for brands and editorial. Unsure what the result would be, the team started experimenting with a slab serif version. ‘We didn’t know how it would turn out, but we really liked it and wanted to take it further. A fresh angle ‘We stuck with the angular theme of the sans by drawing angled slab serifs,’ says Phil Garnham, ‘as opposed to the square serifs that slab fonts usually have. That created an inner dynamism in words and sentences on the page, and a very distinctive, crafted character, like a Victorian soul in a contemporary body.’ These crafted touches include details such as the angled ascenders on the ‘i’ and ‘l’, while characters such as the ‘y’, with its abruptly-ending descender, add a mark of distinction. A perfect pair Silas Slab, like its sibling, offers a clear-cut range of five weights, from the elegant Thin to the monumental ExtraBold. Put it together with Silas Sans and you have the full complement, capable of performing the full range of tasks, above the line and below, in headlines, body copy and logotypes, B2B and B2C. Keep them together; they don’t like it when they’re apart.

The great enigma There are hidden depths to FS Silas Sans. First impressions are of a functional, multi-purpose typeface with a cool, edgy, angular character. Gaze into its eyes a little longer, though, and you'll detect a more nuanced, colourful personality, with full, open, satisfyingly squarish forms balancing the abruptness of the sharply-angled terminals and ascenders. Authoritative, official and stern on the outside; amiable and welcoming on the inside. You’re so Dane The designers, led by Phil Garnham, were trying to capture something straight-talking, authentic, and a little... Scandinavian. ‘We were thinking about some of the characters in Danish dramas that were on in the early stages of the font’s development, like The Killing and The Bridge,’ says Phil. ‘The police officers, that is, not the psychopathic killers. Smart and a bit cool, but with a warm heart.’ For a good Danish name, we settled on Silas. It was that or Hans-Christian. The finer points Silas Sans rewards close inspection. Study, if you will, its amply squarish forms, the roomy ‘o’ and ‘e’, in particular. Observe the angular ascenders and terminals of, for example, the ‘L’, ‘I’, ‘d’ and ‘i’, inferring the movement and lift of a pen. Consider the cuts to the ‘A’ and ‘v’ that create harmony with adjacent letters. And scrutinise the subtle ink traps set within the ‘A’ and ‘Y’ for reproduction at small sizes. A fine subject, we think you’ll agree, and available in a versatile range of weights to make (with FS Silas Slab) a typographic system with a comprehensive hierarchy.

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

For best results, use of OpenType features is strongly recommend. This font is inspired by Johannes Janssonius, well know as Jan Janszoon o Jan Janssonius (Arnhem, 1588 – Amsterdam, 1664), was a Dutch cartographer, publisher and engraver. Married to Hondius's daughter. He was the author of many masterpieces of cartography of the 1700s like Willem Blaeu and Hondius, famous maps with heavy use of decorations in the letterig to fill the spaces of oceans, seas, lakes and scrolls. Now you can easily recreate not just ancient maps without effort, but you can use this font creatively, to make unique, modern logos, product names, fresh packaging, hip fashion outfits, refined labels, signs, coordinated images ... Hundreds of alternatives to choose from and maybe to combine with other fonts in an original way. One extra font with 27 castles in Janszoon style are also usefull for map, of course, but also for many different creative artworks. Warning: Jannson Map having oversized swashes compared to the normal standards cannot be used with Windows Word because Word does not give the possibility to manage the line spacing professionally. Jannson Map works great with applications like Illustrator, In Design, quark Xpress, mac Text etc ...

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.”

L-O-L-A Like the subject of the Kinks’ song, FS Lola is a little bit of both – a font with a rare combination of masculine and feminine. The font was inspired by the song, which itself was inspired by the night the Kinks’ manager spent dancing drunkenly in a Soho club with a beautiful woman... Or so he’d thought, until her stubble started to show halfway through the evening. Masculine/feminin Phil Garnham’s experience in designing FS Lola was similar to the one related by Ray Davies. Setting out to create a sans serif font, he realised along the way that he was actually dealing with a semi-serif. He went with it, though, and produced a font with the best masculine and feminine qualities: hard edges and corners tempered by shapes of softness and generosity, the outcome of what Phil calls an “organic” design process. “Initially, my designs were very graphic and hard but not very distinctive. By printing and redrawing the letters in pencil I achieved a softer and friendlier alphabet with a strong personality.” Broad Lola, as you’d expect, is very broad-minded. Available in five weights with italics – and fluent in central European languages – FS Lola offers a confident combination of feminine softness and male steeliness to any kind of design. As the song says, “It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world... except for Lola.

ZX Spectrum In 1982, a home computer came on the market that would launch the UK IT industry. The ZX Spectrum sold five million units and spawned thousands of software titles. It was the must-have gadget for every teen. FS Sinclair is inspired by the memory of Sir Clive Sinclair’s greatest creation: the experience of entering its clunky command codes and reading its simple, grid-placed type. Smart, switched-on, great in text and display, FS Sinclair is a modern grid-based font, drawn with the Spectrum in mind and brought to life by well thought-out design. Formula Having completed the font for Channel 4’s brand update, the Fontsmith team defined the formula for its next font: the creative essence of the C4 work but with more structural discipline, more rigid form and a little more seriousness. The new font wouldn’t look self-consciously retro but it would reference the past and, it was hoped, influence the future. Readability Like the ZX Spectrum, it took a while for the new font to do exactly what it was meant to do. Many of the early concepts by Phil Garnham and Jason Smith were too jagged – the result of an awareness of getting too close to existing fonts of the same ilk, such as Wim Crouwel’s Gridnik. Eventually, FS Sinclair evolved into a more readable, functional grid-based type design that answered Phil and Jason’s original, self-set brief. Idiosyncratic There’s a technological, systems feel to FS Sinclair but ultimately, humans are in charge. The lowercase “a”, “n”, “m” and “r” have clean-cut “ears”, and the square-ish design is softened by round joins on the inside of the letterforms. The idiosyncratic design of letters such as “g”, “j”, “k”, “v”, “w” and “y” bring the design up to date. This is a modular font with character, and a range of weights that allow varied application.

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

Elegant and round Having harboured a desire for a rounded font within the Fontsmith library for some time, Phil Garnham recognised that FS Emeric offered the perfect skeleton around which to design it. Most new rounded fonts rely on scripts or other in-app automation to form their characters. For all their warmth and approachability, they too often conjure images of jelly sweets and sausages. Not so FS Aldrin, where every curve and transition has been crafted by hand, giving a distinctive look and elegant feel. Design highlights FS Aldrin enjoys wide-open ‘lunar’ counters and soft, tube-like terminals. These improve legibility, especially on backlit signage and screens. The open proportions and circular strokes are juxtaposed against a more serious technical aspect that exists within each counter shape. The lighter weights feel precise and efficient, perfect for notes on blueprints or technical drawings. The heavy weights are equally crafted but more playful by their rotund nature, and are perfect for strong headlines or packaging projects. UI icons A suite of 268 icons complement the typeface beautifully and extend the design language in all directions. They cover a range of commonly used applications and themes ranging from ecommerce to weather, and also serve as a solid starting point for a bespoke brand icon set or UI. In addition, born of FS Aldrin’s astronomical theme and playful nature is a special collection of space-themed icons, including rockets, shuttles and lunar modules (hint: if you type the word BUZZ with ligatures enabled, an astronaut appears). Earth to Buzz Buzz Aldrin was the pilot of Apollo 11’s lunar module, the one that put man on The Moon for the very first time. Early on in the project’s life, FS Aldrin emerged as the ideal hook on which to hang the font’s space helmet (hardly surprising given Phil’s fascination with space travel and astronomy). An approach was made to Buzz’s management to see if he would sanction the association. Not only was the great man himself happy to see his name on a typeface, he also asked to use it in his upcoming keynote talks, book launches and online projects.

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.