New from Black Studio, presenting Aistoria is a typeface that is feminine, adaptable, aesthetically contemporary and creates limitless variety for your creative needs. Its striking contrasts and subtle details, together with luxurious strokes and voluptuous curves, create a beautiful and powerful statement for any typographic composition, blending glamor with contemporary aesthetics. Aistoria really helps you create unlimited variations for your creative needs in making your project titles: such as Books, fashion, magazines, logos, branding, photography, invitations, wedding invitations, quotes, blog headers, posters, advertisements, postcards, books, websites, etc. WHAT IS INCLUDED; • Aistoria – Regular This typeface of has become the work of true love, making it as easy and fun as possible. I can't wait to see what you do with Aistoria! Feel free to use the #Black Studio tag and the #Aistoria font to show what you've done, I really hope you enjoy it! Thank you!

The Dutch word “leuk" translates loosely to English as pleasant, jolly, funny, witty, clever, nice, sweet, kind, nice, amusing, entertaining, and funny. Leuk, the font, is a small, highly legible font with a witty, sociable personality that engages it’s readers. My challenge in designing Leuk was to find a unique feature to set apart the font without losing the fundamentals of type design. In the process of doing so, I created a virtual font “smile and wink” in the “o” upper and lowercase with integrated stencil-connecting strokes within the “a,e, k, z, o, ß” to reveal Leuk’s calligraphic roots. Legible and friendly, Leuk is designed for use in advertising, brochures, promotion, book cover design, packaging, and the like. The Leuk family consists of Leuk Light, Leuk Light Italic, Leuk Regular, Leuk Italic, Leuk Bold, Leuk Bold Italic, Leuk Black, Leuk Black Italic in Opentype format.

Debs was inspired by a thank you note sent from one of my friends to another. The recipient liked the handwriting so much that he passed the note on to me after having asked permission from Debs, the writer. I enjoyed the vigor and looseness of the handwriting, as well as admiring its legibility and style. Debs has all the characteristics of modern handwriting: It appears loose, unstructured, and free, while maintaining good form and great legibility. Its baseline is varied, creating an impression of notes written by busy people, while its characters remain well formed and readable. Debs comes in five styles, regular, lite, black, wide and wide-black. Use Debs for advertising, for casual greeting cards, for a casual, handwritten look on music or fashion media. Debs has all the features usually included in a fully professional font. Language support includes all European character sets.

Italiko is a calligraphic font. The letters have been hand-drawn individually to extract the common strokes. The strokes have then been re-composed to give the font a more unified appearance. It comes in Black, Bold, Regular, and Thin. The Thin version is different as the extreme contrast in the font makes the thinner lines disappear. It is likely best used as a display font. There are ligatures for the combination of letters that can be written more quickly by using a single stroke and letters that are slightly different from the ‘Italic canon.’ You can select which one to use in your application (i.e., Word) using combinations of italic/bold: No selection -> Regular Bold -> Bold Italic -> Thin Bold Italic -> Black If you end up using the font, get in touch at https://github.com/lucabol/Italiko. Feel free to suggest improvements or let me know if you encounter problems.

BLANC GROOVE, a font with a futuristic and experimental concept created with a strong and charismatic character. following the current trend design style. BLANC GROOVE is made experimentally following a futuristic style recipe with alternate characters made with outstanding alternate and display that makes this font more stylish and varied. BLANC GROOVE is a variable font that has 18 Font, 9 weights with 2 Variable from thin to black & Italic. also includes alternates that are more varied with variables. BLANC GROOVE is a versatile font system, designed primarily for display uses with a need of visual impact. Variable : Thin & Italic Light & Italic ExtraLight & Italic Regular & Italic Medium & Italic SemiBold & Italic Bold & Italic ExtraBold & Italic Black & Italic Feature : Alternate Character Ligature Discretionary Ligature Multilingual Support Numeral & Punctuation Symbol etc alihbWish you enjoy our font and if you have a question, don't hesitate to drop message & I'm happy to help.

Costanera is a neohumanist typeface with both soft strokes and endings, which is inspired by 90s typefaces. It has an organic aspect and curved finials associated to the early calligraphy, while its straight angles give Costanera a technological and futuristic impression. Costanera weights go from thin to black, thus it can be used in short-impact phrases ideally using Black or Thin weight and extensive texts selecting the Book version. On the other hand, due to its calligraphic-futuristic features Costanera is perfectly suitable for different fields, such as vanguard technology, architecture, and signage topics. This typeface is composed of a Normal and Alternative version, adding 32 weights in total. Stylistic sets, small caps, ligatures, lining and old style numbers, fractions, circle numbers and arrows are part of the Opentype features. Moreover, this project comes with 790 glyphs that allows to write in 219 languages.

Created with the needs of branding design in mind, Jan Hendrik Weber's Unitext is a crisp, clean typeface that functions well across print and online use. It blends humanist and grotesque qualities, adopting a style that the designer describes as “neo grotesque”. Narrow spacing is what sets this typeface apart, however it also uses open counters and angled details to boost readability. “The ideal font should work at every touchpoint,” says Weber. “And designers shouldn’t need an introduction or a set of rules on how to handle this typeface. Unitext allows designers to work without explanation.” The Unitext family includes 7 weights, spread across 14 fonts with extensive Western, Central and Eastern European language support. Unitext Variables are font files which are featuring one axis and have 14 names instances: Hairline, Hairline Italic, Extralight, Extralight Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Black, Black Italic

Informative is a typeface consisting of a whole family of sans fonts and a collection of thematic pictograms. This combination of two different types of communication reflects the current need for using text and images as means of conveying information in a complementary way. The family comes with a text version of 7 weights (with matching italics)—Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold and Black, and includes 7 thematic icons sets which allude to elements related to alimentation, city, energy, people, politics, sports and work. Each set contains 88 glyphs and includes both outline and black versions. The text font contains a set of 423 glyphs that support 207 different languages. Informative is a clean, simple and versatile typeface well-suited for a wide range of graphic design and visual communication projects. This font has especially been designed for infographics, maps and digital applications.

Roisty – A Black Display Sans Serif Typeface Roisty, a sleek and contemporary black display sans-serif typeface, exudes sophistication and modernity in its design. With clean lines and a bold, assertive presence, Roisty commands attention while maintaining readability. The sharp contrast between its thick strokes and thin lines creates a visually striking appearance, making it an ideal choice for headlines, logos, and other display purposes. The typeface’s timeless elegance, combined with its versatile nature, ensures that Roisty stands out in both digital and print mediums, embodying a perfect blend of classic refinement and cutting-edge aesthetics. Roisty is perfect for branding projects, logo, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements, product packaging, product designs, label, photography, watermark, invitation, stationery, game, fashion and any projects. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish.

Brookshire was inspired by the lettering seen on the Almanac ephemera paper when I visited the flea market in France. The result is a lovely piece of neo-Victorian fun that brings back the joy of 19th-century shop signs and flamboyant design ethos. Brookshire is ideal for poster work and signage, or anywhere that you want to bring back the joy of high Victorian design ethos.

Fitzgerald was inspired by the carved and gilded lettering seen over the entrance of a bar in Dublin. The result is a lovely piece of neo-Victorian fun that brings back the joy of 19th century shop-signs and flamboyant design ethos. Fitzgerald is ideal for poster work and signage, or anywhere that you want to bring back the joy of high Victorian design ethos.

Lankie is a clean, contemporary, geometric, condensed sans serif font. The font is ideal for headlines, titles, branding, small blocks of text or wherever a fresh font is desirable.

Based on some 1930s-era ‘block chamfer’ gummed paper lettering, Chamfer Stencil Sans JNL is a stenciled treatment of the original design; available in both regular and oblique versions.

TT Barrels useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Barrels is an elegant scotch style modern serif with strong industrial accents in its design. The TT Barrels project was born from a fictional technical assignment in which we tried to combine the technological effectiveness of industrial production used in engineering and the restrictions imposed by it with a beautiful scotch style serif. We decided to create a typeface that could be used to press letters on the metal body of a car, all while the typeface being elegant, and possessing sophisticated details that are typical of the classic text fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the process of designing and sketching, we reconsidered certain aspects and abandoned some of the requirements imposed by the technology of metal letter pressing, for example, from the extensive application of visual compensators, the decreased strokes contrast, and the hyperdeformation of individual letter elements to preserve a more pronounced rhythm of these elements. First of all, we wanted both to maintain the ease of reading for the entire text array and follow the rules of aesthetics of each letter in the typeface, while still leaving some influence of industrialism. In the end, this influence is best manifested in serifs, which are quite massive and have a technologically exaggerated wedge shape. TT Barrels consists of 12 fonts: Light, Regular, DemiBold, Bold, Extrabold, Black and the corresponding Italics. Each outline consists of more than 750 glyphs and includes small capitals, ligatures (for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets), stylistic alternates, old-style figures, and many other useful features. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Barrels OpenType features: ordn, c2sc, smcp, case, frac, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, dlig, liga, calt, salt (ss01). TT Barrels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

PT Serif Pro is an universal type family designed for use together with PT Sans Pro family released earlier. PT Serif Pro coordinates with PT Sans Pro on metrics, proportions, weights and design. It consists of 38 styles: 6 weights (from light to black) with corresponding italics of normal proportions; 6 weights (from light to black) with corresponding italics of narrow proportions; 6 weights (from light to black) with corresponding italics of extended proportions; and 2 caption styles (regular and italic) are for texts of small point sizes. The letterforms are distinguished by large x-height, modest stroke contrast, robust wedge-like serifs, and triangular terminals. Due to these features the face can be qualified as matched to modern trends of type design and of enhanced legibility. Mentioned characteristics beside conventional use in business applications and printed stuff made the fonts quite useable for advertising and display typography. Each font next to standard Latin and Cyrillic character sets contain alphabet glyphs of title languages of the national republics of Russian Federation and support the most of the languages of neighboring countries. The fonts were developed and released by ParaType in 2011 with financial support from Federal Agency of Print and Mass Communications of Russian Federation. PT Serif family together with PT Sans won the bronze in Original Typeface category of ED-Awards 2011. Design – Alexandra Korolkova with assistance of Olga Umpeleva and supervision of Vladimir Yefimov

Illumini is a thin and rounded neoish sans-serif suitable for everything from logotypes to large text blocks. It contains several of the traditional ligatures normally found in serif fonts.

TDF Arena is a solid block font built for a sellout crowd. One of our best-selling typefaces is now available here, exclusively in a grunge style with Monotype Fonts.

Bevelle is a serif font with characters that have beveled corners. It is ideal for headlines, titles, branding, small blocks of text or wherever a clean, fresh look is desired.

Back in 2006 when we first released our Happy Holidays font, we thought the War on Christmas was over! We'd taken down our Menorahs, our Christmas trees, reclining Buddhas and red, black and green Kwanzaa decorations, and were prepared to sprinkle nothing more than a little Season's Greetings over our end of year celebrations. When we saw our friends and neighbors at department stores, we'd greet them with a simple, cordial, non-denominational “Happy Holidays.” But the font showed up at our company party this year having learned over 200 new languages (and, it must be said, a little bit loaded on Stylistic Alternates) in a mood to celebrate EVERYTHING. It was wishing people happy Bodhi Day, Solstice, Festivus, you name it! It even brought (count 'em) THREE new outfits based on the colors of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. So may the designs on the cups of the hot beverages that take you through the long dark coffee break of the soul that stretches from Halloween to Thanksgiving to New Year's Day be a little more festive this year with the refreshed, Remastered, all-inclusive spirit of Happy Holidays!

Diaconia Old Style is a new rendition of my workhorse body copy font that I originally designed to use for the body copy of "Printing in a Digital World." I became increasingly upset with the lack of lowercase numbers and true small caps. Diaconia started life as a modification of one of the Dutch Bible fonts I traced. It has changed a lot since then (although I have a hard time telling how much because I have lost the original). The plain and italic work especially well when used in very large sizes as display faces. The other four variants (small caps, heavy, heavy italic, and black) are designed for use in book production. Because I format all my own books, I was able to design fonts that met my needs exactly: lowercase numbers, SMALL CAPS font, Mac Command, Option, and Control symbols, ballot box in the section slot, and several other special characters. DiaconiaPro is the OpenType family of my body copy workhorse. This is the first font family I ever created: classic, elegant, easy to read. 583 characters: small caps, oldstyle figures, numerators, denominators, lining figures, accents and a lot more.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, a solid style that must have different colors when used and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. To see how patterns can be constructed, see the “Samples” file here. TessieOddsNEnds contains shapes that did not fit into the other Tessie fonts: TessieStandingBirds, TessieFlyingBirds, TessieMoreBirds, TessieXtraBirds, TessieSpinners, TessiePuzzlePieces, TessieAnimals, TessieBugs, TessieMiscellaneous, and TessieMoreStuff. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns. The addition of a solid style that must be colored makes these new fonts a bit more difficult to use but offers far greater possibilities in getting visually interesting results.)

Fer is a sans-serif font for body text, not lacking in its own distinctive voice. The aftertaste of reading the text set in Fer is like reading the letters on old rusty plates somewhere in Southern Europe, hence the name (Fer means iron in French). Being a modern system that includes a variable font with weight and optical size axes, Fer combines the features of geometriс sans serifs and old sans serifs with closed apertures. The typeface contains three sets of styles: for captions, text and headings, — with the weight ranging from regular to black. Fer was created with the idea to unite nations. The Latin character set supports all European languages, most African languages and Vietnamese. Cyrillic has support for all living Cyrillic languages and some obsolete characters too. The font also supports the Greek language. Additionally, the character set includes currency signs of all supported languages’ countries, old style, lining, tabular and proportional figures as well as numbers in squares and circles. Lastly, the font has lots of localized letterforms and stylistic sets. Fer was designed by Dmitry Goloub for Paratype in 2020–2023.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

This Arabic typeface is one of Parachute’s most involved text typefaces. For the first time -back in 2010- a contemporary Arabic equivalent to a comprehensive DIN series of fonts was available. In fact, this set of fonts contains the most complete and powerful array of Arabic features commercially today. It comes in eight weights and includes Latin. Based on the DIN Text Pro superfamily, Parachute® released -in collaboration with designer Hasan Abu Afash- 2 new versions. DIN Text Arabic is the basic Arabic version which includes Latin and supports all variations of the Arabic script such as Persian, Urdu and Pashto. The second version DIN Text Universal is the most advanced DIN superfamily ever. It combines the powerful DIN Text Pro with DIN Text Arabic bringing the number of glyphs to 3320 per font. It is also enhanced with 30 advanced opentype features and kerning for all languages. Altogether it supports hundreds of languages, proving to be an essential tool for corporations which operate internationally. The whole family consists of eight weights from extra black to hairline. DIN Text Arabic is featured in the recent book Arabesque 2 by Gestalten.

LD Count Fountula takes you back to Transylvania and this classic-themed font lets you celebrate this spooky season in style. Enjoy!

Sofa Bird is my name for a laid back and relaxed comic font, with a twist of handcraft mixed with adventurous penmanship!

Tummy is part of the Game font set I made few years back; this one is for game packaging and logo design.

Beatnik Barbie is a unconventional font design inspired by Jack Kerouac and the ‘Beat Generation’. It is an original design by Alex Kaczun and it is a derivative work based on his original ‘Beatnik’ font. It has an informal style about it, and invokes a casual and friendly mood. Beatnik Barbie incorporates many alternate letter forms, which work like ligatures, so when you type, it automatically substitutes different letter forms for a truly custom hand-written look. Perfect for any application. Beatnik Barbie truly has the heart and soul of the beat mentality. Groovin' baby.

Fonts Café is offering a brand new pack of fonts and elements; The Bold Pressing Pack, full of bold, strong, powerful, vintage fonts which really stand out to make a strong impact. These fonts bring us back to a time when ink was placed onto wooden blocks, which were then pressed down onto the paper, creating big, bold letters, with the beautiful flaws of a time when things of import were given the due attention they deserved. This pack is designed to quickly capture the attention of anyone who sees it, while making a statement that says you mean business. It includes five different font styles, as well as two different element styles. There's everything from a standard letterpress font, to a font which truly emulates the imperfections of those days, as well as one that stands out above the rest to make a truly bold statement, and more. Check below these powerful fonts in more detail.

Spillsbury was inspired by some examples of 1920s signwriting (principally seen on the side of some vintage vans-good thing they were in a photograph and not on the move!). Spillsbury draws inspiration from these sources to provide a unique combination of legibility and flair, which echoes the charm of advertising and publicity material from the halcyon days of the 1920s. A basic range of four display faces os offered - Regular, Plain (not all that plain really!), Shaded and Shadowed. In a new departure for Greater Albion, three pairs of 'Duo' faces are also offered. These are designed to be used in pairs-and only sold on that basis for little more than the cost of a single face-to provide for two-coloured typographic design, enabling the recreation of those evokative two coloured blocked lettering styles that were used to such good effect in the past. Take a trip back to more colourful times today with Spillsbury!

BC Away is a display typeface. It has emerged from the idea of drawing letterforms with a single-line path. Thanks to this idea, the characters are designed out of standard and conventional forms. Character designs are a combination of sharp corners and smooth curves, at the same time keeping readability. Some parts have been left blank in accordance with the letter forms. The name 'Away' represents these blanks. Also, the word 'a way' refers to the design of letterforms using a single-way.

The Greyspark Font is a great font selection for a big range of design projects. These fonts will add a beautiful and light retro charm to any design project! This font is perfect for branding logo, illustration, or apparel design. This font also support multilingual, number and symbol. This font comes in three style, regular, stamp, and block. The script style have the clean feel, the stamp gives you the aged feel with texture on it, and the block style have a rough edge.

The main idea behind creating Monly typeface was to combine playfulness with a strong letter construction backbone, so all the letters would stand tall and firm, but not to lose the playfulness. Like people, who grow up but try to save their inner child. By doing so and combining all this, the typeface achieves a great readability and appealing look. Monly font suits best for logos, headlines and small text blocks, but can also be used for big text blocks if the style suits the purpose.

SK Quadratica™ is a monumental accidental typeface inspired by the coexistence of nature and human industrialization. Font characters are similar to blocks. The block structure of the typeface allows you to create various typographic compositions with striking simplicity. Besides, typeface symbols are easy to modify because of which it is a pleasure to work with it. SK Quadratica also contains many alternative character variations. In addition to the basic Latin alphabet, the font supports various languages, including the expanded Latin alphabet, Cyrillic, etc.

Like traditional athletic block typefaces, Crafton is built with chiseled corners and a rigid skeleton. However, an underlying formula of fervor and functionality emerges in execution. The typeface features traditional block tendencies that are challenged by expressive angles and deviations in line weight that harken to penmanship. Uniquely tapered terminals seen in letters like a, c, and s demonstrate a strong visual energy while increasing legibility. The legs of angled letterforms like the A, v, and y are cropped in a way that further reinforces this motif.

Albertina was a typeface ahead of its time. It was in the early 1960s when designer Chris Brand, an accomplished calligrapher, aspired to draw a typeface based on the principles of calligraphy. Unfortunately, typesetting machines of that era put many restrictions on designers. Characters had to be drawn within a very coarse grid, which also defined their spacing. Technological limitations meant that italic designs often had to share the same character widths as the romans. Designers were forced to draw italic faces much wider and with more open spacing than what would be typical in calligraphic lettering or hand-set type. Not surprisingly, production of the first Albertina fonts went very slowly. Brand would submit his character drawings, and the Monotype Drawing Office would modify them to be compatible with the company's typesetting equipment. The new drawings would then be sent back to Brand for approval or rework. Most were reworked. The process took so long, in fact, that by the time the face was completed it was once again out of phase with the times: instead of being released as metal type for the Monotype composing machines it had been tailored for, Albertina debuted as phototype fonts for the Monophoto typesetter. The design's first use was for a catalog of the work of Stanley Morison, exhibited at the Albertina Library in Brussels in 1966. Sales of the design were not remarkable. With the advent of digital type technology, Albertina's story took a far happier turn. Frank E. Blokland, of the Dutch Type Library, used Brand's original, uncompromised drawings as the foundation of a digital revival. The Monophoto version had taken a considerable battering from the limitations of Monotype's unit system," recalls Blokland, "but there was no need for me to incorporate these restrictions in the digital version." With the full backing of Monotype and original designer Brand looking over Blokland's shoulder, a new design for Albertina emerged, displaying all the grace and verve of Brand's original drawings. The basic family drawn by Brand also grew into three weights, each with an italic complement and a suite of small caps and old style figures."

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."