A personal calligraphic series commissioned by Bitstream from Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. Although Carmina BT is a neutral design, optimized for use in digital publishing, Zapf von Hesse’s unique calligraphic spirit is still quite visible in the family’s letterforms. This is not surprising, as all of Zapf von Hesse’s typefaces are calligraphic in nature. Yet Carmina BT is suitable for almost any conceivable digital text application, from book design up through signage use.

Arkeo BT is designer Brian Sooy's first typeface family published by Bitstream. Given very few design elements to work with, Brian has designed a bitmap font that is unique and very readable. There are three widths, Condensed, Regular and Extended. In our opinion, pixels never looked so good. Arkeo performs equally well on screen and as on paper. The OpenType versions include an extended character set featuring oldstyle figures, fractions and additional f-ligatures. Design was begun in late 2001 and completed in 2002. Sooy asked Bitstream to critique, which we did gladly. We also added additional characters for OpenType. This included alternate figure set, an extended set of fractions and additional f-ligatures. Sooy used preliminary versions for setting parts of the TypeCon 2002 material and website.

Futura is the fully developed prototype of the twentieth century Geometric Sanserif. The form is ancient, Greek capitals being inscribed by the Cretans twenty-five hundred years ago at the time of Pythagoras in the Gortyn Code, by the Imperial Romans, notably in the tomb of the Scipios, by classical revival architects in eighteenth century London, which formed the basis for Caslon’s first sanserif typeface in 1817. Some aspects of the Geometric sanserif survived in the flood of Gothics that followed, particularly in the work of Vincent Figgins. In 1927, stimulated by the Bauhaus experiments in geometric form and the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Erbar, Paul Renner sketched a set of Bauhaus forms; working from these, the professional letter design office at Bauer reinvented the sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles and brought the Universal Alphabet and Erbar to their definitive typographic form. Futura became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century. Ironically, given its generic past, Futura is the only typeface to have been granted registration under copyright as an original work of art, and, further irony, given the key part played by the Bauer letter design office, the full copyright belongs to Renner and his heirs. This decision in a Frankfurt court implies that a further small group of older typefaces may also be covered by copyright in Germany, particularly those designed for Stempel by Hermann Zapf. This situation appears to be limited to this small group of faces in this one country, although protection of designers’ rights in newer typefaces is now possible in France and Germany through legislation deriving from the 1973 Vienna Treaty for the protection of typefaces. Mergenthaler’s Spartan is a close copy of Futura; Ludlow’s Tempo is less close. Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, German yet anti-Nazi... with hindsight the choice of Futura as Volkswagen’s ad font since the 1960s looks inevitable.

Charles Gibbons' Fleischman BT Pro revives J.M. Fleischman's quirky and elegant text faces of the 1730s. Born in Germany, Fleischman worked in Holland, primarily at Enschedé en Zonen where he cut dozens of faces. His types represent some of the earliest examples of the Transitional style, predating and influencing the work of Fournier, Baskerville, and Bodoni. They were wildly popular in their day, used for everything from newspapers to currency, and Fleischman himself has enjoyed a renaissance of late. Fleischman BT Pro preserves the feel of the printed metal types while expanding the original to include four OpenType fonts: roman, italic, bold, and bold italic. They all include small caps, old style and lining figures, discretionary and historical ligatures, ornaments, and superiors. Fleischman Pro also supports Western, Central European, and Eastern European languages.

Cooper Black, commissioned by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, is the best known of Oswald Cooper’s typefaces. Bitstream has expanded the 1921 original into a complete series of round-edged text faces.

Allen Zuk has designed this wacky typeface that he calls KOOKY. Each character has three variants that bounce about the baseline. The effect is a randomly casual appearance that is great for headlines. The OpenType version does this automatically by using contextual alternates in applications that recognize this option.

Eroxion was designed by Eduardo Manso in 1997. It is a good example of degenerative typographic design, borrowing from techniques first explored in the early 1990s by the designers at Letterror.

Eduardo Manso has brought new meaning to the word distressed. The contours of Rina have been randomly inverted, spiked and split to create this agitated look. Surprisingly, Rina remains legible. And just to turn the screw a little more, Manso created an outline version, Rina Linea.

Bonislawsky pulls off a beauty in these letterforms rendered with barbed wire. In our view, it couldn't have been done better. Now you can contain the animal in you with style.

Stephen Chick, of In Your Typeface Productions (IYTP) foundry, has created this rather prickly type design. Although for display, it is surprisingly legible at smaller point sizes. There is an Inline version, and also an Inline Extra version, which has only the inner contours of the Inline itself, which can be combined with the Regular to create cool two-color effects. The extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Created by Italian graphic designer and illustrator Lorenzo Lalatta, Orchestra brings a whimsical yet elegant spin to Latin typography. Every letterform is cleverly adapted from the shape of a musical instrument or musician. Mr. Lalatta has even disguised himself as the bullet glyph. Perfect for use as initial letters or in special invitations, these caricatures allow for delightful color embellishment as well. Don't be shy about wielding this baton!

Lettering designer Ray Cruz, creator of Bitstream’s VeraCruz, Fat Albert and Cruz Cantera, and many other typefaces, introduces Homeland BT, a finely drawn family of six weights, including two italics. This text and display typeface has a generous x-height and overall body width for great legibility at small text sizes. The exaggerated serifs impart a sense of stability and comfort, and give headlines a unique styling. Available in PostScript OpenType format, Homeland’s extended glyph set covers the Western and Central European, Baltic and Turkish languages.

The creation of designer Boris Mahovac, Tabita is a fun, freeform display typeface. The whimsical swirls and marks within the characters impart a childlike playfulness. There are many great glyphs in this typeface that lend themselves to expressive phrasing. The lowercase “q”, is especially animated! The extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Antagométrica BT is the creation of Argentine designer Maximiliano Giungi. A clean and slightly condensed sanserif, it is ideal for use in text settings, but its trendy design makes it distinctive enough for display work. The CFF OpenType glyph repertoire includes additional ligatures, full sets of superior and inferior figures as well as unlimited fractions. There are also tabular and proportional figure sets, and the extended glyph set supports Central Europe.

Thomas Oldfield’s typeface, Reaper, is reminiscent of inscribed Greek letterforms but he claims that its origin is much simpler than that. “I recall”, Tom says, “that I just began the design by making the uppercase ‘I’ and continued using it to make up the other characters.” The cap only typeface has alternate cap forms in the lowercase positions, including a vastly scaled downed O and Q that make for some unusual text settings. Contrary to what the name might have you believe, there’s a lot of life in this quirky typeface.

Cataneo was designed at Bitstream by Richard Lipton and Jacqueline Sakwa and was initially released in 1993. Cataneo is an elegant chancery cursive typeface, inspired by the work of Bernardino Cataneo, a 16th-century Italian writing master. Cataneo offers as companions, typographer sets of swash characters and extensions to round out the family of three weights.

Drawn by Italian graphic designer Nicola Serradimigni, Drawboard is a fun, freeform display typeface. Serradimigni based each character on a rectangle and kept the use of curved shapes and diagonals to a minimum. Serradimigni had intended to use his sketches as a basis for a more precise outline, but we liked the spontaneity of the drawings so much that we encouraged him to keep that motif. The looseness of Drawboard is the result. The character set supports Central Europe, and includes some upper and lowercase alternates accessible via OpenType features.

A handsome, square sanserif, the ultra extended Cavalero is strictly a display design. The typeface was inspired by the Chevy Cavalier logotype.

Matt Desmond (MADType, Pufficlaude BT) would like you to meet Mesotone BT. This computer typeface design is monoweight and somewhat monowidth. The squarish unicase glyph forms feature eased corners and rounded terminal ends, which takes some of the edge off its techi look. Yet Mesotone still inspires one to explore the outer limits of the design universe. So, don’t tone it down; Mess with the fringes. Get Mesotone. Available in PostScript OpenType format, Mesotone’s extended glyph set covers the Western and Central European, Baltic and Turkish languages.

Intertype’s reaction to ATF’s Murray Hill.

An original Bitstream typeface prepared by Gerard Unger to provide a typeface of tapered stroke that will work well at lower resolutions.

Arrus was designed at Bitstream by Richard Lipton and first released in 1991. Arrus is based on Lipton’s own hand-lettered calligraphic alphabets that draw their influence from classic inscriptional forms. Arrus has small cap and extension typographer sets available as well.

PuffiClaude by Matt Desmond is a real piece of work. Great for funky display stuff, its got some jive junk hanging around every character. This OpenType font has many goodies including extra ligatures, superiors and inferiors, unlimited fractions, and a hip little smiley face. Hey, maybe it's a portrait of Claude! There are so many funky glyphs that it even supports Central European languages. Man, that's hip! Hook up.

Originally released in 1987, Charter incorporates three important features: compact set width to give economical copyfit; generous x-height to give readability at small point sizes; and sturdy open letterforms to give reliable reproduction at both typesetter and laser printer resolutions. The design brings a clarity and freshness to everyday documents, such as newsletters, textbooks, directories and technical manuals, where the reader’s concentration must not be interrupted by unfamiliar letterforms but where typographic dullness can itself impair comprehension. The Italic has cursive letterforms - so is instantly distinguishable, while being readable enough in its own right for continuous text. The Charter BT Pro Pack features 6 fonts: roman, italic, bold, bold italic, black, and black italic. The fonts include characters originally developed for expert sets, such as ligatures, ornaments, old style figures, small caps, and superiors. The Pro Pack fonts support Western, Central European, and Eastern European languages. OpenType fonts are a cross-platform font format. The same OpenType font can be installed on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Unix systems. Mac OS X and Windows 2000, XP, and Vista have built-in support for OpenType. OpenType fonts also work on Linux, Unix, and earlier versions of Windows, where they are recognized as TrueType fonts. OpenType includes many more features than the standard TrueType and PostScript formats, including the ability to install the same font on different platforms, crucial for document portability. OpenType fonts boost productivity because graphic designers and business professionals do not have to wrestle with many different fonts. With OpenType, customers have larger character sets to work with and fewer font files to deal with.

The beautiful calligraphic typeface Ambiance comes from master designer Rob Leuschke. The complete array of characters includes a swash alternate for each upper and lowercase letter. Called contextual alternates in OpenType, the swash characters are automatically substituted in the appropriate context when you select them.

Modakshar was inspired by traditional Indic handwriting scripts which ‘hang’ from a common upper horizontal bar. Adapting this motif to Latin letterforms was challenging. The typeface was first conceived in the 1970's as a design project in school. The current digital design was completed in 2002. Basic motif was inspired by traditional Indic script handwriting.

Masoud Nejabati has drawn upon his capable calligraphic skills to create this typeface. Persia represents his first latin-based design. This gentle and finely rendered script reveals Nejabati's extensive background in Islamic calligraphic art. The slight back slant further enhances the appearance of hand-scribed pen calligraphy.

Huxley Vertical meets Peignot in this stylized cap/lowercase hybrid design called Ambule. French designer Julien Janiszewski has created a clean, straightforward design that is strikingly effective in both text and display settings. Ambule Oblique and Ambule Outline complete the typeface family, extending its range of possible uses.

Based on Mr. Hubbard's own hand printing, Richfont Medium is an extremely casual design. Actually light in weight, it renders best at 14 point and above. Richfont Light and Bold are available from the designer.

The new Clarendon BT Pro typeface family features 450 glyphs in each font with expanded support for Central and Eastern European languages, and enhanced OpenType features including ligatures, diagonal fractions, superscript/subscripts and Case-Sensitive Forms. Clarendon BT is an updated revival of the square serif (also called Ionic or Egyptienne styles) with bracketed serifs, ball terminals and high xheights. These attributes give Clarendon BT a timeless appearance for a wide range of contemporary uses from websites, ads, publications and signage.

Melina Plain and Melina Fancy are characterized by graceful lines, strong contrast and nostalgic overtones. These typefaces are patterned after two members of a type family named Greco, released by Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans of Madrid, Spain, in the 1920s. Melina Plain is a refined version of Greco Bold, and Melina Fancy is based on Greco Adornado, with the notable addition of a lowercase, which was not a part of the original design. Melina is based on two typefaces (ca. 1920) from the Fundición Tipográfica Richard Gans in Madrid, Spain. Nick Curtis first found Greco Adornado in a type specimen at the Library of Congress. It was a cap only design. He made a cut of the original (Melina Fancy) and created his own lowercase, and many other characters to support contemporary character sets. Later he came across Greco Bold, which had a lowercase, but he chose not to use it and instead, adapted his Melina Fancy to create Melina Plain.

Futuristic and spacey, Tannarin is a modular, cap-only typeface. Many letters are constructed of repeated components with the added twist of the round characters being shorter than the square characters.

The boss of extended typefaces, Brian Bonislawsky, has belted out this ultra wide design, EuroMachina, that looks like an odd meld of OCR-A, Microgramma and Bank Gothic. And if that wasn't enough, Brian then felt the need to distort it in various ways, creating Broken, Eroded and OverGreased. A little something for everyone.