A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul

My first font for 2009 was Aerle. It is a new dark sans serif font in my continuing objective of designing book fonts that I can really use. It made a little ripple in the industry, but more than that I found that I loved it with Aramus and Artimas — my latest book font family with the same proportions. In many ways, Aerle is a very different direction for me built on what I have learned on Aramus and other recent developments in my style. The concept came to me while using Bitstream's Mister Earl on a site online—though there is no direct reference. I wanted a more playful heavy sans with a much smaller x-height than I have been using lately, plus taller ascenders. As I was using Aerle, I constantly needed a light and bold version. The new direction I am taking is a result of a decision that my fonts, though I loved the character shapes, produced an even type color that is too dark or a little dense. Aerle was an attempt to get away from that look even though the letterspacing is quite tight. For Aerle Thin I pushed a little further in that direction and increased the letterspacing. The hand-drawn shapes vary a lot, many pushing the boundaries of the normal character. This gives a little looseness and helps the lightness in feel I am looking for. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. Most new type around the world is far too perfect for my taste. While the shapes are exquisite, the feel is not human but digital mechanical. I find myself wanting to draw fonts that feel human — as if a person crafted them. In most ways this is a normal font for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. These small caps were very small (x-height as is proper). So Aerle's small caps are a little oversize because they plugged up too bad at x-height size. The bold is halfway between. These size variations seem important and work well in the text. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg sh sp st ch ck ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, & small caps; proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures; plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

Drakoheart Revofit is an initiative to make sans fonts. It’s one of my personal favorites, in fact. In its first release, this font had a cool appearance but was improved with better kerning and a cool look in this new release. Perfect to write some digital texts as in web articles, blogs and branding.

A few scant examples of die cut gummed letters (R, C, Y and &) provided the design inspiration for Adhesive Serif Letters JNL. Influenced by the Caslon style, this typeface offers clean, legible titling. The sample letters were once manufactured by the Tablet and Ticket Company of Chicago and sold under their brand name of Willson's [named for the founder of the company]. Gummed letter sets were available in a variety of styles and sizes for various sign, merchandising and marking needs.

Eldridge is reminiscent of the sort of clear functional slab serif that was often to be seen in the 19th century. It is the plainer cousin of our Bamberforth family and the two partner together very well—Bamberforth for the eye-catching headines and Eldridge for the essential support. It is another new face, which harks straight back to Victorian times and, as such, is ideal for giving anything a 19th century feel-especially posters, book headings, dust jackets and invitations.

Marseille is an Art Deco-inspired typeface which is based on Louise Fili’s iconic cover design for the hauntingly beautiful Marguerite Duras novel, The Lover. The font is available in six irresistible weights: thin, light, regular, medium, semibold, and bold. Each weight features both caps and lower case, and supports over 200 languages. Marseille will satisfy all your typographic needs, from book jackets to monograms to packaging, logos, and even wedding invitations—timelessly elegant, with a distinctive flair that exudes La Belle France.

Have you ever searched for a font that looked like it was really someone's handwriting, only to find that it was too feminine or too hard to read? I used to want a font like that, too, until I discovered that a font like that had been residing in my attic, in letters to me from my late grandfather. Not only was I thrilled to have a font like this at hand, but also one that would be a memory of my grandfather every time I used it. He was a hard-working man, raising a family during the Depression, yet was still fun-loving, kind, and generous. We called him Grandhappy. As a wedding present, I received from him rolling pins and a cutting board made of 8 different kinds of wood that he pieced together. In this font, the bullet is a rolling pin in honor of that! Other than the fact that this is a font from the hand of one greatly loved, my favorite thing is that although a True Type Font, it has some features of an Open Type font. There are many alternative letter choices available through the use of little-used keys on the keyboard and alt codes. This font was chosen to portray Jay Gatsby's handwriting in The Great Gatsby (2013).

It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting. Conveniently, my mother then still volunteered at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. She made copies of the letters of a few famous Texans -- Houston, Austin, Travis, Burnet, Rusk. Thomas J. Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. I hadn't realized at the time what a challenge it'd be to render a realistic-looking script face, but the result has, in fact, filled a niche.

We have been in lockdown for a long time now. The schools were also closed, meaning my kids had to stay at home. This week the schools reopened (not a day too soon!), which means my kids can play with their friends again and learn something too! My wife and I pack their lunchboxes every day and always add some fruit for snack time. That fruity snack inspired me to create this rather messy font! Fruity Snack is a handmade display font. It looks wobbly, comes with awkward angles and rough bits. It also comes with extensive language support (including Vietnamese) and 2 sets of alternates for the lower case letters.

I've had an interest in typography ever since my college days, even submitting my NDD thesis on the subject. The basic concept for this typeface stems from that early creative period, hence the obvious 60’s retro feel. It’s only recently that I've have had the chance to carry through fully some of my dormant typographic ideas, but ‘better late than never’ as they say! The font’s characteristic style is based on repeating or rotating templates of a half and a quarter circle, the geometric, modular building blocks used here. The name was simply influenced by the letter ‘u’, which visually describes a stylized ‘tulip’ flower.

A robust slab serif typeface that combines classic proportions with contemporary styling. These carefully crafted letterforms are best suited for use on book jackets, news headlines, packaging, posters and t-shirts. Details include four distinct styles, a full character set, manually edited kerning and Euro symbol.

Loosely inspired by the designs of Rudolf Koch and his Koch Antiqua, Sin Original Dark by Mondrey Sin is a curious monoline display face with small x-heights, and large caps. The design almost looks 1920s vintage. Interesting for book Jackets, editorial, and as drop caps.

A bold, playful typeface named after my late and much-missed grey cat, Freddie, who was my best buddy for 18 years.

Bealiva is one of my fonts based on a hand lettering project in 2020. It was very inspired from the famous retro typography designs in late 60's until 70's. It includes the extrude look, so you will not have to add it later.

9 months is a decorative face with two font styles. It would look nice on candy and food package, in children's books and magazines. This work is devoted to the period in my wife's life when she was pregnant during 9 months with our daughter.

Haglos Script was inspired by Modern Vintage & Retro style in combination with old American traditional style. It's bold and has amazing swashes. In my examples I show how this script can be used. It's very well suited for logotypes, product labels, food flyer, and others.

The history of this font is those. Once I assorted the old children's books which have stayed from times of my childhood. On one of them I have seen a trade mark of a printing house consisting of two Russian letters "L" and "B". From they were begun also with my font. And though finally from these letters a little that remained, elements of these letters can be seen in font D-block B.

Don't we all have a silly habit? I've got mine, for sure! - like checking whether I remembered to bring my keys, immediately after locking the door...and then checking again like 2 minutes later! Silly Habit is my laid back comic font, easy to read and fresh enough for a design that needs an extra party to it! Comes with contextual alternates, which in this case means 4 different versions of each lowercase letter

A powerful handmade font with a crunchy outline and a lot of attitude. It’s slightly based upon my own handwriting, when I really really concentrate on making each letter both legible and related to the other letters. Otherwise my handwriting is really garbage! :) I’ve added ligatures of repeating letters, such as bb, cc, dd, ee… and more - a great way to sparkle a little more energy in the font and the design it’s used for.

Easy Speech is a hand drawn font inspired by my own writing, suitable for texts made in a hurry on sticky notes, letters, postcards... Most glyphs collide to give a real badly written feeling.

Contra Condensed is the condensed version of my Contra family of fonts. It is very condensed, but not yet narrow. It is well suited in all situations were one needs to save space. Enjoy!

Rearviewmirror (no space) is a Pearl Jam song and it happens to be my favourite! Rearview Mirror is a handmade tall & thin font. It comes in a regular and bold style with their italics.

The inspiration for this typeface family came from my childhood experiences at West Monkton, amidst an historic part of the South West of England. Studies of the original incised capitals of the Trajan column in Rome were analysed and polished for this modern version. The lower case letterforms and numerals were then created in sympathy, taking their proportions from the incised letters of local gravestones. Its name honours not only the area where the original alphabet was conceived and drawn, but also the people responsible for fostering my initial interest in letters. These stylized incised typefaces give a depth to the letterforms that can be exploited in your typography - evoking the carved monumental inscriptions of the Roman era.

My name is Teruyoshi Matsui. I live in Japan. I am a Brush Artist. I artistically write the letters of the alphabet with a Japanese brush. I have created the font “ BrushType Longhand”. It was originally named "BrushType Alternative". But I changed my mind before it was completed. At first I aimed at an alternative font. But while I was trying to make it alternative, I realized that it was not. Of course there are many alternative letters that you have never seen before among them, so you have to be careful using the font. If you are a progressive and defiant designer trying to discriminate against others' designs, you should own my font "BrushType Longhand". Be ambitious! This is the word I will give you. I am ambitious ,too. No one in the world creates brush fonts like me. I am the only one as a Brush Artist though no one knows. I will be a world artist some day. So you should buy the font that is one of my favorite works. Thank you.

Afronaut PRO (New version of typeface published in 2019) was inspired by vernacular Latin & Arabic typography in St. Louis (on Senegal-Mauretania Border, Africa). Geometric forms working well and contrasting with smooth, round elements. After reading "Afronautics – from Zambia to the Moon" by Bartek Sabela (about Zambian conquest of space) a breif was set to create typeface that looks like mix between: vernacular Arabic script, futuristic typography and some special lettering that I found in Africa during my travels to Guinée, Bissau, Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania and West Sahara. Afronaut has seven weights, also many letters have 3 different forms. Afronaut PRO can work as regular version of my Yalla Typeface.

There's a little restaurant in an old house on a sidestreet in town (Rockland, Maine, USA) called Cafe Miranda. The staff is friendly, the setting intimate, and the appetizer a basket of hot bread fresh from a brick oven. Its ample menu features such entries as "Quasi-Cassoulet" and "Gentle Sole." It's among my favorite local places to dine out. But the menu got photocopied once too often, and Cindy's personable handlettering got faded and broken. So I took matters into my own hands. And here's what I delivered to the newly computerized folks at the little restaurant on Oak Street. You, too, can travel in rather heavy felt-tip style.

The other day, I was thinking how time flies and how my kids grow up so fast. In the blink of an eye, they had turned from babies into almost-teenagers. They're not teenagers yet, but given their tantrums, it does feel like I have three teenagers in the house... ;-) Ogenblik, in Dutch, means: ‘in the blink of an eye’, ‘lightning fast’, or ‘for a brief moment’. It’s similar to the German ‘Augenblick’, which means exactly the same. Ogenblik was made with the same dried out marker pen that helped me create my font Castlerigg. I guess it had more than one extra font in it! Ogenblik is a bit of a grungy, yet quite legible and neat font. Comes with multilingual support.

Father's Day, or June 17 of this year, is in the middle of Argentinian winter. And like people do on wintery Sunday mornings, I was bundled up in bed with too many covers, pillows and comforters. Feeling good and not thinking about anything in particular, Father's Day was nowhere in the vicinity of my mind. My eleven year old son, Matías, came into the room with a handmade present for me. Up to this point, my Father's Day gift history was nothing unusual. Books, socks, hand-painted wooden spoons, the kind of thing any father would expect from his pre-teen son. So you can understand when I say I was bracing myself to fake excitement at my son's present. But this Father's Day was special. I didn't have to fake excitement. I was in fact excited beyond my own belief. Matí's handmade present was a complete alphabet drawn on an A4 paper. Grungy, childish, and sweeter than a ton of honey. He'd spent days making it, three-dimensioning the letters, wiggle-shadowing them. Incredible. A common annoyance for graphic designers is explaining to people, even those close to them, what they do for a living. You have to somehow make it understandable that you are a visual communicator, not an artist. Part of the problem is the fact that "graphic designer" and "visual communicator" are just not in the dictionary of standard professions out there. If you're a plumber, you can wrap all the duties of your job with 3.5 words: I'm a plumber. If you're a graphic designer, no wrapper, 3.5 or 300 words, will ever cover it. I've spent many hours throughout the years explaining to my own family and friends what I do for a living, but most of them still come back and ask what it is exactly that I do for dough. When you're a type designer, that problem magnifies itself considerably. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you start looking for the nearest exit, but none of the ones you can find is any good. All the one-line descriptions are vague, and every single one of them queues a long, one-sided conversation that usually ends with someone getting too drunk listening, or too tired of talking. Now imagine being a type designer, with a curious eleven year old son. The kid is curious as to why daddy keeps writing huge letters on the computer screen. Let's go play some ball, dad. As soon as I finish working, son. He looks over my shoulder and sees a big twirly H on the screen. To him it looks like a game, like I'm not working. And I have to explain it to him again. This Father's Day, my son gave me the one present that tells me he finally understands what I do for a living. Perhaps he is even comfortable with it, or curious enough about that he wants to try it out himself. Either way, it was the happiest Father's Day I've ever had, and I'm prouder of my son than of everything else I've done in my life. This is Matí's font. I hope you find it useful.

Nevermind is a revived sample of intuitive instant lettering with a decisive cut-out attitude. I use this font often with my illustrations, which resemble a similar approach in directness of style and visual language.

My friend in the Czech Republic sent me a card with some hand lettering that was similar to this tall headline font. It has a funky yet elegant appearance. Works nice for Art Deco too.

The hand lettered title on the cover of the 1914 tune “I Want you to Meet My Mother” served as the inspiration for Nouveau Date JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.