The Bitstream version of Trump Mediaeval of Linotype, 1954-60, by Georg Trump, a prolific German type designer. It seems to be his best typeface. It has a vigorous and assumed oldstyle roman and italic that is the sloped roman, except for the letters a, e, f. With its crisp angularity and wedge-shapes serifs, Trump Mediaeval appears carved in stone. It is a strong text typeface that is highly legible and especially useful for low-resolution output. It is useful in display work too. Cyrillic version developed for ParaType by Vladimir Yefimov and Isabella Chaeva and released in 2010. Cyrillic italics maintain the main feature of Trump Mediaeval to be the sloped roman, except for the letters г, д, и, й, n, т. There are old style figures, additional ligatures and fractions available at all styles and small caps at the Roman 55. Black style was added in 2011 by Vladimir Yefimov.

Bitstream typeface based on Koch Antiqua by Rudolph Koch (Klingspor, 1922). Koch Antiqua, also known as Locarno and Eve, is the most popular face of one of the great lettering artists of the 20th century. This delicate display face has a small x-height, very tall ascenders, and main strokes that taper gracefully downward. Koch-Antiqua appeared extensively in advertising between the wars. A refined letterform, it is best used sparingly for a distinctive look in advertising, book, and job work. Two weights of Cyrillic version including alternative lc characters were developed by Isabella Chaeva and released in 2008 by ParaType.

Künstler Grotesk ML is one of a number of typeface designs that attempts to reconcile Germany’s blackletter tradition with the international familiarity of roman letterforms in a simple, robust design suitable for meeting the demands of a modern industrial economy, while rejecting the extraneous ornamentation of the departing Victorian era. It is an all-cap design with a number of playful ligatures. It has an appealing boldness that reverses well. Künstler means ‘artist’ in German. I had always assumed it was a person’s name until I came across the translation. Lesson: conjecture is not fact. Grotesk refers to a sans serif letterform tradition. Kunstler Grotesk was originally released by Bauer'sche Giesserei of Frankfurt am Main circa 1900. Künstler Grotesk ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 350 glyphs, 260 kerning pairs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, salt, dlig (19) and hist. 3. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 4. Redesigned mathematical operators. 5. Included tabular (std) & proportional (opt) numbers. 6. Refined various glyph outlines. 7. Made CcNnOoSsZz-kreska available (salt). 8. Incorporated alternate glyphs in lower case.

After inventing a new metal typecasting procedure that allowed for the production of more detailed typefaces, the famous German typefoundry D. Stempel AG developed Kuenstler Script in 1902 - 1903. Originally called Kunstlerschreibschrift (artistic handwriting), this design was based on English copperplate script styles from the late 1800s. In 1957, Hans Bohn added the heavy Kuenstler Script Black weight to the family. Like intricate handwriting put to paper with a feather and an inkwell, Kuenstler Script makes almost any text look distinguished and elegant. Kuenstler Script is a joining script; and because of its fine hairlines and small x-height, it is best used at sizes above 12 pt. The typeface works well in advertising work and on invitations, greetings cards, business cards, and certificates.

Designed by George Belwe for Schelter & Giesecke in Dresden, Belwe is one of the first typefaces to show the elements of the style we have classified as Kuenstler. Deliberately unusual proportions and detailing break with traditional rhythm and hint at blackletter connections.

Matthew Carter designed the Shelley family 1972 for Mergenthaler Linotype to be used as a new script face for the photo typesetting machines. The basic idea was to create one script face that would offer dfferent elegant letterforms. Matthew designed Shelley in three different versions, Allegro which is in the style of Kuenstler Schreibschrift, Andante where the caps are less flowrish and wide and Volante where the letters have its most expressive and wide forms and the lowercase z in this font is in the french anglian double stacked form. All three versions can be easily mixed to give the text a more individual calligraphic look Besides Shelley Linotype Zapfino from Hermann Zapf shows similar basics, but in a totally different letterform. In Linotype Zapfino the individual lowercase letters from the four different versions have different letterforms which gives the text an even more individual touch.

Secession is a very readable typeface, suitable for short blocks of text. If you have grown weary of the standard sans-serif faces one sees all the time, you may want to use Secession as a fresh and distinctive substitute. Like Kunstler Grotesk, Secession is one of a number of typeface designs that attempts to reconcile Germany’s blackletter tradition with the international familiarity of roman letterforms in a simple, robust design suitable for meeting the demands of a modern industrial economy, while rejecting the extraneous ornamentation of the departing Victorian era. Unlike Kunstler Grotesk, Secession was designed with a lower case. Secession Bold was originally jointly released as Halbfette Secession by Bauer & Company of Stuttgart and H. Berthold AG of Berlin around 1898. The rest of the family was designed by HiH. The basic family of four: Text, Oblique, Bold and BoldOblique are available in two versions: one set with the standard contemporary lining or ranging numerals for spreadsheets and tables and one set of old-style figures (with OSF in font name) for use with text. The two versions of the basic family, Secession and Secession OSF were released in July 2006. Cousins include ExtraBold, SCOSF Text, and two multi-lingual versions of the text weight. Secession ML includes the Latin Extended-A character set in unicode format plus 17 ligatures and a few strays. Secession GreekML has all the characters of the ML version plus the unicode Greek set and 17 Greek ligatures. Release of the cousins took place in August and October of 2006. Click on BUYING CHOICES. Click on GLYPHS and use drop-down menus and slider to see the all the glyphs for the various fonts. Similar: Birmingham (Ref 100 Ornamental Alphabets, Solo); Spartana (Art Nouveau Display Alphabets, Solo)

Larisch is a hand-lettered design by the Austrian calligrapher and teacher, Rudolf von Larisch. The original was used for the title page of the 1903 edition of Beispiele Kunstlerischer Schrift (Examples of Artistic Writing). Larisch is an attractive, casual set of caps of even strokes with rounded terminals. Except for the terminals, it is similar in style to Kunstler Grotesk. The numerals are lining or ranging figures, meaning they line up with the baseline, unlike old-style text figures. All are of equal width for setting up columns of numbers. The letters are well formed and easy to read, as you would expect from a writing master. Ligatures includes CH (123), CK (125), FT (135), LA (137), LO (167), OO (172), CO (177) and TT (181. An alternative O with underscore is provided at position 111. Friendly, but not fancy -- a very useful all-cap font.