Smart Sans is a personal tribute to Leslie (Sam) Smart, the first type director to be hired by a major typesetting house in Canada. Smart was a twentieth century design pioneer who raised the standards of Canadian typography. Together with three of his peers, he established the first Type Directors Club in Toronto. After Smart's death in 1998, type designer Rod McDonald decided that something should be done to commemorate Smart's life and achievements. I had first thought of establishing a scholarship in Sam's name, but a typeface design soon replaced this idea," says McDonald. "Once I decided to design a typeface, however, it became a foregone conclusion that it would be a sans serif - for no other reason than that I loved the name Smart Sans." Two typefaces served as inspiration for McDonald's work. "Like thousands of designers, I'm keen on Matthew Carter's Helvetica Compressed series. And, when I was younger, I also loved Fred Lambert's Compacta," says McDonald. "I thought there might be a place for a small range that could take over from these 'old workhorses' and, in the process, bring a fresher look to the genre." McDonald drew three weights for the Smart Sans family, all ideally suited for setting attention-getting headlines and powerful display copy. The two-storied 'g' contributes to the design's lively personality, and the short 'r' helps maintain tight, even spacing. Smart Sans is the perfect homage to a great typographer, because it raises the bar on what to expect from condensed sans serif typefaces. Sam Smart would be pleased."

DESCRIPTION Now my feelings about didones are more than evident. After some years of roman-abstinence (1) I present Heroe, an interesting combination of elegance and sensuality. Heroe, spanish for hero, takes some aspects of roman typefaces to the extreme like my main inspiration, the great Herb Lubalin, did in the majority of his works: Thins turned into hairlines, altered proportions (for display purposes), unique ball terminals, poetic curves and a graceful way of placing them together on a layout. Its classy style makes the font perfect for a wide range of uses. Imagine Heroe Inline (my favorite) dancing over a bottle of perfume; printed on the cover of a fashion magazine; lighting wedding invitations up. Its partner, Heroe Monoline, may help you to make more elaborated pieces of design. Just combine it with Heroe, or Heroe Inline and see how perfect they match. TECHNICAL The difference between Pro and Std styles is the quantity of glyphs. While Pro styles have all the decorative characters available, Standard ones have only the basic set of them. Heroe Monoline Big and Heroe Monoline Small were made for better printing purposes. If you need to print the font in small sizes, then your choice should be Small. Heroe Monoline has the same alternates (and open-type code) as Heroe Pro and Inline, plus some decorative ligatures. NOTES (1) After fonts like Breathe , Aire , and the award winning Reina , I started experimenting with scripts a little more. Erotica , Bird Script and Dream Script are examples of that.

Wedding Regular was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF and released as Wedding Text in 1901. It is a lighter version of his ENGRAVER'S OLD ENGLISH of the same period. Wedding Regular is based on the Textura style of blackletter that continued in popularity in England into the 16th century, long after the Dutch, French and Italians had moved to a Roman model that expressed the Renaissance humanism of the period. Wedding Headline is a still lighter version of the regular text face, suitable for setting larger sizes while still preserving the delicacy of the decorative hairlines. Textura continues in use in England and the United States for newspaper mastheads, gift shop signs, wedding invitations and programs and other applications where a feeling of tradition is desired. I recently saw an 1980ish photo of a “Tubby Isaac” sign in London using textura. I believe Benton’s design captures that feeling without being heavy-handed and still remaining quite readable for eyes accustomed to Roman lettering. Both Wedding Regular and Wedding Headline convey a comfortable familiarity. These two fonts may be purchased together at an attractive discount or they may be purchased separately. The full character set may be found in the pdf file that you can download from the gallery section. The two monks (alt-0172 and alt-0177) are from a set of sixteenth century decorative initial letters by Gering and Renbolt. Please note that there are two different eszetts, the blackletter style at alt-0126 and the antiqua style at the alt-0223.