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.

In comparison to the powerful and commanding original, Sancoale Gothic is a more sober version of Sancoale. The medium contrast between thick and thin strokes makes for a typeface that stands out with striking clarity in longer texts, yet is very readable. This new addition to the Sancoale family is a perfect alternative if you want to use a different style than the original family. Using the utmost care and restraint, the designer strove to avoid overbearing futurism in favor of a typeface with clean lines and clear forms. Show your customers the world with Sancoale Gothic, a versatile sans with a wide range of styles, from delicate thins to bold, hefty weights that dominate the page and screen with confidence and futuristic flair. A fresh, friendly voice for all kinds of uses, from corporate statements to fashion, Sancoale Gothic is a versatile sans with a wide range of styles, from delicate thins to bold, hefty weights that dominate the page and screen with confidence and futuristic flair. Sancoale Gothic has a distinct personality, which allows you to create a wide range of projects, including posters and websites. The Sancoale Gothic fonts come in many varieties, so you can go with a light or thick weight, depending on what fits your project best. With their sweeping curves, the heavy fonts are meant for huge headings on posters and websites. The Sancoale Gothic family is made up of 48 distinct styles, with 660 glyphs and supports 70 languages, allowing you to communicate with your customers all over the world. Small Capitals and other OpenType features abound! The design is sleek with no stems or spurs in the default character set, but OpenType alternates have alternates with stems. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. The superfamily offers an array of optical sizes, contrasting weights, and contrasting optical sizes to discover the right balance, contrast, and optical size for your design. Prepare to be blown away by Sancoale Gothic’s smooth curves and captivating allure. Sancoale Gothic is perfect for both a contemporary and forward looking style. Sancoale Gothic is both practical and unique, in a standalone capacity or with the companion Sancoale fonts. Use it to make an impact today.

This best selling series has now been extended to include a new member, Blue Goblet Drawn. Blue Goblet is hand-drawn by the artist, Cory Godbey, and is organic, charming and exuberant. Characters bounce and dance above and below the baseline and x-height, making this a whimsical and fun script. Not only is Blue Goblet Drawn a excellent choice, it also is also a versatile member of a wide family of different fonts. You can use it side by side with the original Blue Goblet fonts, and there are a wide range of ornaments available in the supplemental ornament sets--over 370 illustrations! These illustrations include doodley frames, lovely florals and other text ornaments that can be inserted into your text and resized at will. This makes the Blue Goblet series a great pick when you want a type system for a very unique and consistent look. The Blue Goblet series also continues to expand, making any of these family members a valuable investment for the future. Blue Goblet Drawn comes in three weights and three widths in each weight, with complementary italics for maximum impact for a total of eighteen pro fonts. The compact thin weights are delicate and tall, while the Regular has just enough heft for those situations where subtlety doesn't work. If you don't need the professional features, there are three stripped down fonts that include only the basic character set! Blue Goblet Drawn also includes auto-replacing ligatures that make it appear that the script was drawn by the artistís own hand--just for you! Blue Goblet Drawn also includes a wide variety of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType enabled application. Blue Goblet includes over 190 additional glyphs and is loaded with features including an even more unique alternate alphabet. Included are swash alternates, style sets, old style figures and small caps. Please see the informative PDF brochure to see these features in action. OpenType enabled applications such as the Adobe suite or Quark can take full advantage of the automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Blue Goblet Drawn is a great choice for friendly display type in children's books, packaging, organic packaging or other unique applications. Use Blue Goblet whenever you want to inject a handmade sense of fun and whimsy to your designs. Give the Blue Goblet series a whirl today!

Savigny began as an offshoot of Le Havre. Le Havre met my design objective of a geometric sans serif with a strong art deco touch. Le Havre’s primary inspiration came from the art deco titling of the 1930’s, and the lower case was just icing. The art of the 1930’s is of particular interest to me, and I love the art deco era and its art, and the simplicity of geometric shapes. I am mostly interested in designing display typefaces. In many ways Le Havre was the exact opposite of another popular insigne offering, Aviano Sans. Le Havre has very high ascenders, a lower case and is very condensed. Aviano Sans has no lowercase and extremely extended capitals. With the rise of webfonts I began to see Le Havre being used frequently online. It’s short x-height and very tall ascenders made it difficult to read in on screen text settings as it was intended as display type. With this observation, I felt that there is more room for a geometric sans in the insigne catalog. So I set about to design a new geometric sans using the successful skeleton of the Le Havre family. Although I planned to extend the Le Havre line, the new family is so drastically different I decided on a new name: Savigny. The face evolved and began to take on a few humanist touches. Designed from the very beginning as a webfont, the design is open and pleasing to the eye, with a tall x-height. To optimize it for onscreen settings, the spacing is generous. In addition, it includes extended and condensed members, making it insigne’s first superfamily. The family includes over 100 OpenType alternate characters. These include several style sets. Some are stemless, others are purely geometric, and in a nod to Savigny’s origins, Art Deco titling alternates. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Savigny is a great choice for a professional designer who wants a well rounded typeface family that is ready for the web.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Look, folks! From what may just be the vernacular sign capital of the world, Chattanooga, Tennessee, it’s a brand new hyperfamily from insigne! Look includes three different related fonts, with three weights each. That’s over 70 fonts! Imagine: you turn onto a stretch of open country road. On the distressed, red background of an old barn wall, a large block of crisp white letters shout out: “See Rock City.” You soon realize this barn is not alone in competing for the passing eye. Far from it, ladies and gentlemen. This is just one of the many pieces of historic, hand-painted advertisements dotting the great Southern United States. Yes, these are the pieces of true Americana--the barns, the roadside signs, the machinery, the soda fountains, and more--that now inspire this splendid new set of three font families. This new, easily readable type from insigne digs deep to capture the very heart and passion of this splendid country’s lettering of the post-war era. Look’s compact frame quickly draws the audience to your headline, logo, subheading, or pull quote, working well in those compact spots of text without overpowering your content. You'll easily put the feeling of those days gone by into every piece with the natural beauty and simple usefulness of the Look hyperfamily. Each of the individual sub-families incorporates a variety of font weights with distressed attributes. Think Woodtype. Jeans. Antiques, folks. That deep, ingrained texture--that quality that will stand the test of time. And Look is flexible, too. Take, for example, Look Script. This powerhouse of a font offers thinner weights to give your work an easy-going, down-to-earth design. But bring in those heavier weights, and you'll have a muscular, assertive font that will go the whole nine rounds. Combine any of the Look families with Ornaments to really give your layouts a zing. Build an extraordinary design as well with Look’s swashes and alternates. To activate any of these alternates, just click on Swash, Stylistic or Titling Alternates in any OpenType-savvy application, or choose from the Glyph Palette. Explore hundreds of included extras to find that “cherry on top” for your one-of-a-kind project. There are over 70 fonts to choose from, including subfamily sans, serif, script and ornament fonts! You can't go wrong. To get the most bang for your buck, order the whole Look family now! Note on SHADOWS: Increase depth and make your designs pop! Add shadows to any of the Look fonts by duplicating the text content layer in place and switching it to its corresponding shadow. Color and offset to taste. Look shadows are offset automatically. In Illustrator, you may need to turn on Em Box Top for proper shadow alignment.