Gelateria is characterized by its dots and tails. This font is as a whole smooth and elegant. But because its dots and end of the tails are little points, Gelateria impressed you very much. Holiday Type Project offers retro hand drawing scripts. Inspired by retro script on shopfront lettering, wall paint advertisements in Italy around 1950s. Check out the script fonts from Holiday Type!

This bouncy beauty was inspired by Walnetto Casual, designed by Dave West for Photo-Lettering, Inc. in the 1970s, and takes its name from a mythical West Texas beastie. This version has been thoughtfully designed to use Contextual Alternates to avoid unsightly serif collisions for best possible visual effect. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

This delightfully playful font is based on a single-stroke pen font from the 1922 tome Heberling’s Basic Lettering, and elements of composition, color harmony, gilding, embossing-processes, etc. by Walter A. Heberling. Swoopy, loopy, but never poopy, this font delivers on the fun. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Because of the need for a new condensed serif font family, Jack Yan created this individualistic style of typefaces complete with one of the largest collections of unusual ligatures available at the time of launch in the mid-1990s. As well as the usual selection of double-f and ct, JY&A has provided gr, gt, ty, and other ligatures for JY Integrity Roman and Italic.

Pochoir is a sweet stencil antiqua typeface with round and thick serifs. Once, on a university trip to Paris, Yanone saw some spray-stencil street art. This inspired him to redraw Underware’s Dolly (with permission) in a spray-stencil style, making many adjustments to weight and character shapes to bring about Pochoir. The art form of stencils have first appeared in Paris in the 1980s.

Browsing online auctions and other webs sites often unearths wonderful examples of lettering from the past. A perfect example is Ritz Stencil JNL, modeled after a page from a 1930s-era lettering book. Although this font has similar characteristics to other better-known designs, there are enough unique differences to let it stand on its own as a great example of the Art Deco era.

Slatterine is a retro-futuristic family, inspired by the second streamline era of the 1950s It's ideal for any design work that needs to suggest bygone visions of the future, or to have a retro-space-age effect. Slatterine's horizontally shaded glyphs give a strong sense of motion, whether coupled with the regular form's sharply leaning oblique angle, the perpendicular form, or the reverse leaning 'Lefty'.

A circa-1940s textbook for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens (similar to Speedball pens) offered numerous samples of lettering that could be obtained by following the simple directions and using the book as a guide. One example was a classic Art Deco design made with a round nib pen, and it has been redrawn digitally as Lettering Book JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Halavah Twist JNL is a casual serif font designed by Jeffrey N. Levine and modeled after an early-1960s display font that was quite popular in its day. This new interpretation takes on an entirely different look from the original, creating a modern-yet-retro design. Light, playful and fun-loving, Halavah Twist JNL is perfect for any project that exudes a bubbly warmth and enthusiasm.

Working at American Type Founders from a Bruce Foundry recutting, Morris Fuller Benton worked out the dramatics of the English Fat Face, and in 1928 produced Ultra Bodoni, a headline spectacular. Using Benton’s 1933 Ultra Bodoni Extra Condensed, Richard Lipton digitized Bodoni FB Bold Condensed, then took compression even further and designed Bodoni FB Bold Compressed, a real technical tour de force; FB 1992

Power, speed and modern creature comforts characterized rail travel in the 1930s. To reflect those characteristics, legendary French poster artist A. M. Cassandre employed strong graphic elements and a chiaroscuro letter treatment to the 1939 poster lettering that inspired this font. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 Latin and Unicode 1250 Central European character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

The pattern for this graceful, subtly modulated Art Deco typeface was designed by Willard T. Sniffin for American Type Founders in the 1930s. True to the original design, the Swash Caps version features Sniffin's twelve decorative variants. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

Digital Sans Now combines and completes the many diverse requests and requirements by users of the past years. By now, 36 versions for over 70 Latin and Cyrillic languages have become available, including Small Caps. Digital Sans Now is also available as a webfont and reflects, with its simplified and geometric construction and its consciously maintained poster-like forms as well as with its ornamental character, the spirit of the decorative serif-less headline typefaces of the 1970s. The basic severity of other grotesque typefaces is here repressed by means of targeted rounds. Exactly these formal breaks allow the impression that it could be used in a variety of visual applications. Short texts, headlines and logos of all descriptions are its domain. It is because of this versatility that the typeface has become a desirable stylistic element, especially in such design provinces as technology, games and sports, and that, for many years now, it appears to be timeless. Additional weights designed on the basis of the original, from Thin to Ultra, the Italics, Small Caps and alternative characters allow for differentiated “looks and feels”, and, with deliberate usage, give the “Digital Sans Now” expanded possibilities for expression. The basis for the design of Digital Sans Now is a headline typeface created in 1973 by Marty Goldstein and the Digital Sans family which has been available from Elsner+Flake since the mid-1990s under a license agreement. The four weights designed by Marty Goldstein, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, were originally sold by the American company Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) under the name of “Sol”. Similarly, the company Fotostar International offered film fonts for 2” phototypesetting machines, these however under the name “Sun”. The first digital adaptation had already been ordered in the mid 1970s in Germany by Walter Brendel for the phototypesetting system Unitype used by the TypeShop Group, in three widths and under the name “Digital Part of the Serial Collection.” Based on the versions by VGC, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, new versions were then created with appropriate stroke and width adaptations for data sets for the fonts Light, Medium and Bold as well as for the corresponding italics

A long lost Art Nouveau wood type from the Hamilton Museum Collection evokes the excesses of Victorian design and the equally quirky 1960s Psychedelic era revival of the Victorian type styles. Free flowing organic designs that flourished with Art Nouveau in the late 1800s were directly referenced and further distorted with with phototype in the late 1960s. This design, known as Arabesque, was produced by the Morgans & Wilcox Co. and the Wm. Page Co. as almost identical designs. Both manufacturers were acquired by Hamilton and offered briefly by Hamilton as design #618. This curious wood type defies most of the basic tenets of type design and what comes to mind when one thinks "wood type". Many characters have a lively eccentricity that were all left true to the original design. Additional characters were designed to fill out the standard range of characters found in digital fonts. This font includes over 280 characters for full unicode support of Western and Central European Latin characters.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alexander Branczyk and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Branczyk and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! The three fonts in the F2F Czykago family, F2F Czykago Light, F2F Czykago Semi Serif, and F2F Czykago Trans, were all inspired by the Apple system font Chicago. The F2F Czykago family, along with 38 other Face2Face fonts, is included in the TakeType 5 collection from Linotype. Branczyk designed 16 of these himself."

Softrobo Pro is the further development of Softrobo font provided by Koval Type Foundry in 2008. Provided in 3 most popular formats: OpenType PS, TrueType and Type1. Fine-built, straight but not official, with soft corners is suitable for short texts, placards and advertising. It was inspired by the 1970s when people were mad about robots, space and so on. I decided to create a font as if it were a progressive font of the 1970s. This font supports the Latin-based languages: Albanian, Basque, Bielorussian (Latin), Breton, Catalonian, Chamorro, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (with Flemish), English, Estonian & Setu, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Gaelic (Irish), Galician, German (incl. eszett), Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maori, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian, Saami (Lule & South), Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, and Turkish. It also supports the Cyrillic-based languages: Belorussian, Bulgarian, Crimian Tatar (Cyrillic), Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian, Also included: ligatures, superior & inferior numbers set.

The award-winning Scala family (1990-1993) is a worldwide bestseller and has established itself as a ‘classic’ among digital fonts. It was one of the first serious digital text fonts to support small caps, ligatures and different set of numbers. In fact Scala and Scala Sans (1990-1993) are two different typefaces sharing a common form principle: the skeletons of both Scala and Scala Sans are identical. Scala’s dark colour and low contrast works to prevent the thin parts from breaking up. The generous length of Scala italic’s serifs gives it a strong rhythm. The bold weight has the same character widths as the normal weight, so changing a text from normal into bold does not affect the set width. Another part of Scala is very popular among its users: Scala Hands, containing more than one hundred decorative hands and pointers, is a free bonus. Scala Jewels is a set of four highly decorative typefaces, based on the bold capitals of Scala.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alessio Leonardi and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Leonardi and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! F2F Mekanik Amente appears as if it had once been a normal font whose letters were horribly attacked by a pair of scissors. This font could be a very creative choice for headlines. F2F Mekanik Amente is one of 41 Face2Face fonts included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH. Leonardi designed 11 of these himself."

The award-winning Scala family (1990-1993) is a worldwide bestseller and has established itself as a ‘classic’ among digital fonts. It was one of the first serious digital text fonts to support small caps, ligatures and different set of numbers. In fact Scala and Scala Sans (1990-1993) are two workhorse-like typefaces sharing a common form principle: the skeletons of both Scala and Scala Sans are identical, therefore they can be combined perfectly. Where many of the modern sans serifs (like Helvetica and Univers) have rather ‘closed’ letter shapes, the same elements in Scala Sans are much more ‘open’. This greatly improves legibility, especially in the smaller point sizes. The italic of Scala Sans is not a slanted version of the roman, but rather a ‘real’ italic. Another part of Scala is very popular among its users: Scala Hands, containing more than one hundred decorative hands and pointers, is included in the Scala fonts and is a free bonus.

Nicolas Cochin (not to be confused with another font named simply "Cochin") was originally designed by Georges Peignot in the early 20th Century and was based on engraved letters of the 17th Century artist Charles Nicholas Cochin. Many foundries including Lanston released versions in the 1920s. Several digital versions can now be found, but none have kept the irregular details of the metal type which include strokes that cross over each other as if hand drawn (see letters K & y). The new Lanston digitization is the only digital version to retain the idiosyncratic treatment which makes the metal type so alluring. The Opentype version included an expanded Central European character set as well as ligatures, alternates, fractions, superior/inferior numerals (the Italic also has swash characters).

Some time ago I stumbled upon a little book called 'De Sprookjeshoorn' ('Horn of Fairy Tales') by Anton Eijkens (1920 - 2012). It was published in 1946 and contains several authentic and unique fairy tales - unfortunately unreadable to modern children, as the language used is out of date. What caught my eye was the handwritten font on the cover of the booklet. Closet Skeleton is a fairytale font inspired by the one I found on the cover of De Sprookjeshoorn. It comes with several curly alternates and some end-ligatures as well. I added an 'old fashioned' ampersand and a modern one, so you can choose which one to use. Apart from that, Closet Skeleton comes with a closet choc-a-block full of diacritics.

Atlan—a Latin ‘spin-off’ of classic geometric sans typefaces. Remembering typefaces like ‘Kabel’ by Rudolf Koch, while paying attention to current design needs, was the starting point for ‘Atlan’—a simple, elegant and appealing font. This typeface is based on highly expressive sans-serif geometric fonts of the 1920s. We challenged ourselves to reinterpret these characteristics, without losing expressiveness, in order to create a functional and versatile design. This process resulted in a font with display features, well-suited for light, uniform-coloured texts. The family offers a variety of styles from the elegant Thin weight—ideal for publishing and corporate websites—to the Heavy variant (perfect for logotypes and packaging), which reveals the stylistic elements of the typeface.

The Coast is a Sans Serif type family inspired by enamel signs from the 1920s. The Coast has a large x-height which gives the font a friendly look and guarantees great performance in very small sizes. The Coast family also works great in huge sizes since it has some very special and highly elaborated characters like the small “e” and “g” which distinguishes it from an ordinary Sans Serif. The family includes real small caps, small capital figures, medieval and monospaced lining figures for information in tables. Coast and Coast Wide both come with a variety of special characters, alternates, mathematical symbols and the unusual ligature “rt”. Also on board: the german capital letter “sharp s” = ẞ. That’s about it.

Titul is a display typeface with strong historical connotations. It is based on a series of stylish lettering for book covers, designed by Russian graphic artist Alexander Leo in the 1920s. The historical reference for him was book design of the 1st half of the 19th century. Type family consists of four ornamented and three basic styles: one solid, one inline and one striped. All seven faces have corresponding oblique styles. Also, there is a beautiful vignette font and a style for constructing ornamental borders. Titul suits best for vintage spirited typography, from the 19th to early 20th century. It is perfect for book covers, theater posters, packaging and greeting cards. Typeface was created by Isabella Chaeva and released by Paratype in 2020.

Canterbury Old Style Pro is a two-weight serif font family with a small x-height. In 1920, Morris F. Benton designed the original weight for American Type Founders (ATF). Raymond Vatter and Steve Jackaman produced the digital version in 1992 and added a new “Bold” weight, and a full set of swash capitals were designed and released in 2003. Jackaman redrew and remastered the family in 2017, engineering the complete family into OpenType Pro format. Our OpenType fonts have extended character sets that support Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Canterbury OS Pro has a whimsical, old-time feel, and handsomely distinguishes itself at all sizes. Canterbury Sans, its sans serif sister font, complements the family with its flowing forms.

This “very elegant and British alphabet” was originally released in the 1920s as "Richmond Oldstyle" by the Blackfriars Type Foundry of London. Touted as highly artistic and graceful, it is exceptionally “at home” wherever style and charm are called for. Both versions of this font contain the complete Unicode Latin A character complement, with support for the Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, Flemish, French, Frisian, German, Greenlandic, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Maltese, Maori, Moldavan, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Provençal, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Romany, Sámi, Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish and Welsh languages, as well as discretionary ligatures and extended fractions.

The German typeface artist Lucian Bernhard designed Bernhard Antiqua as the first of his many text typefaces. The first weights were produced in 1912 by the foundry Flinsch in Frankfurt am Main. Further weights followed in the 1920s, produced by the Bauersche foundry, which had acquired Flinsch in the meantime. Bernhard font is an alphabet with a marked historical influence. It brings the viewer back to the early 20th century, when the bold forms of this typeface graced advertising displays and posters. Distinguishing characteristics of this typeface are the cross of the capital W and the rounding of the capital R. Linotype's Bernhard condensed bold, with its narrow, robust forms, is best for headlines in medium and larger point sizes.

The redefinition of a classic In the 1920s the Viennese government decided to standardize the street signs across the city. A typeface was especially constructed for the purpose. It was available in a Heavy and a Bold Condensed version, to support short street names as well as longer ones. As the years went by, the typeface was adopted and redrawn by several enamel factories. These adaptations lead to variations on the design, and to the fact that there isn’t a Viennese street sign font but 16 – in part severely – different versions. Henriette is not a digitization of any of those versions; rather, it is influenced by all of them. The italic versions are completely original and designed to accompany the Roman.

Zona Pro is a geometric sans-serif type family of 8 styles plus matching italics, designed by Kostas Bartsokas in 2013/14. It draws inspiration from 1920’s geometric style faces, having clean and highly readable shapes, and mixes it up in the heavier weights with a slight variance in the stroke widths, lending it a grotesque-ish unique and distinctive look. Zona Pro is multifunctional and versatile. With its modern yet elegant form it performs amazingly in display sizes and headlines. At the same time its really tall x-height makes Zona Pro equally suited for editorials and shorter lines of text in smaller sizes (magazines, newspapers). Zona Pro supports Greek, Western, Central and Eastern European languages, ligatures and special characters.

URW Geometric® is a sans serif typeface inspired by the German geometric typefaces of the 1920s but designed for modern usability. The character shapes have optimized proportions and an improved balance, the x-height is increased, ascenders and descenders are decreased. Special glyphs, which are often designed afterwards for the original geometric typefaces from the 1920s, are perfectly integrated in the URW Geometric® . These design characteristics increase the usability and legibility tremendously. With its 10 weights ranging from Thin to Black, plus 10 additional oblique styles, it has a great versatility in mind. The extreme light styles shine bright in large sizes, the middle weights are perfect for body copy and the bolder variants for the use of emphasis information or bring a strong impact to headlines and information. The optically balanced styles are designed to work in perfect harmony together. URW Geometric® is functional, strong, simple and harmonized in form, and at a glance appears as a modern variant of its predecessors. Apart from the basic characters the design has an extra focus on the special glyphs. These are designed for todays needs. For example: the email glyph looks modern and unique, including a perfectly balanced spacing. The numero sign, in modern use called “hashtag”, is space saving and optically balanced for body text. Additionally, various extra and alternate glyphs are designed to provide a friendly usability. Including a wide Latin language support and character sets, URW Geometric® is perfectly designed for today’s requirements. Please have a look at the URW Geometric® Type Specimen (PDF) for further information.

The story of Scripps College Old Style is a heart-warming and inspiring chronicle about a young librarian, a handful of students, a wealthy grandmother, a dedicated educator -- and two eminent American type designers. The story begins in 1938, when Dorothy Drake, the newly hired librarian at Scripps College, a small women's college in southern California, became an impromptu dinner companion of the American type designer Fred Goudy. By the 1990s, the original fonts that Goudy had created for Scripps College in the 1940s had become prized -- but they were seldom-used antiques. Scripps needed digital versions of the metal fonts. This goal posed two immediate challenges: finding a designer familiar with letterpress printing who was skilled at creating digital fonts, and locating the money to commission the designer's services. The first challenge was the easiest to conquer. Sumner Stone was my first and only choice," recalls Kitty Maryatt, the current curator of the Scripps College Press. "I knew he had letterpress experience, was an accomplished calligrapher, and that his typeface designs were simply exquisite. The choice was easy."The second challenge was more difficult. It took the dedication, hard work and tenacity of Maryatt to bring the beautiful Goudy designs into the twenty-first century. While Stone was eager to begin work on the project, the college had no more money for new typeface designs in the 1990s than it did in the1930s. Years of lobbying, cajoling and letter writing were necessary to obtain the college's approval for the design project. Once she had the necessary funding, the design brief posed yet a third challenge. Goudy had provided two sizes of type to the Press: 14 point and 16 point. Which would serve as the foundation for Stone's work? In addition, the Goudy fonts were quite worn. Should Stone use printed samples as his design master, or base his work on the original Goudy renderings? The 14-point master drawings were the ultimate choice, with the stipulation that the finished fonts would provide both a seamless transition from the worn metal versions and a faithful representation of the original Goudy designs. Once the budget and design brief were established, the process of converting the original Goudy drawings into digital fonts took just a little over two months. Stone delivered finished products to Scripps in the fall of 1997. The first official use of the fonts was to set an announcement for a lecture by Stone at Scripps in February of 1998. But the story is not quite finished. Maryatt was so pleased with the new digital fonts, she wanted to share them with the graphic design community. At Stone's suggestion, she contacted Monotype Imaging with the hope that the company would add the new designs to its library. An easy decision! Now Monotype Imaging is part of the story. We are proud to announce the release of Scripps College Old Style as a Monotype Classic font. The once exclusive font of metal type is now available in digital form for designers around the world. "

Victor Hammer created many faces based on uncial handwriting of which American Uncial, released commercially by the Stempel foundry in 1952, is the source for this version. Uncial is an ideal choice for historical or church pieces, provided that the length of the copy is brief.

The 1957 French publication “La Letra Dans La Peinture et la Publicite” (“The Letter tn the Painting and Advertising”) had an illustration of split-serif letters and numbers with a decidedly Western feel. This is now available as Horse Thief JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Yet another one of those romantic looking fonts. The lowercase looks pretty ordinary, while the uppercase swings around with a mixture of tagging / grunge / comicscript and casual handwriting. It works out extremely well with letters and stuff!. For fun, try writing in uppercase only...looks swell!!

Ornaments family with four different sets plus a decorative capitals font from the rare, valuable and amazing Allerlei Zierat book from Schelter & Gieseck (1902). A research and free interpretation by Intellecta Design. This encyclopedic specimen book of the Leipzig, Germany type foundry and printing supply house J.G. Schelter & Giesecke features, as the title indicates, all kinds of decoration for supplying printing of every type. On the title page, the firm boasts winning grand prize in 1900 in Paris (presumably at the Exposition Universelle). It is hard to do justice in a short description to the variety of styles (traditional, Jugenstil, etc.) and categories (certificates, letterheads, borders, ornaments, exotic motifs, flowers, animals, silhouettes, menus, greeting cards, vignettes humorous and otherwise, images of bicyclists, occupational symbols, portraits, Classical figures, religious art, heraldry, ships, trains, athletes, etc., etc.) offered in this volume. Some of the examples are printed in color, most are in black-and-white. The Jugenstil cover of this copy shows minor wear and soiling. The plate of “Gust. Carlsson & Co., Stockholm” is attached to the front pastedown. A small fraction of pages show minor soiling, a pencil notation or a short closed tear. Two of the fold-outs at the back have a little more damage-one is missing a 1x2 inch piece along the margin, the other has a 3-inch closed tear and an edge which is crumpled. A rare specimen from the Intellecta rare books library.

Hope Sans™ takes the jaunty style of 1950s and 60s lettering and melds it with the jubilant 1970s swashes of Bookman. The result is a sans serif family that is lively, inviting and deeply customizable. Its basic sans serif forms create engaging text, while a roaring collection of swash designs, alternate characters and ligatures make it a natural for attention-grabbing display typography. Hope Sans has been selected by the judges of the 22nd Annual TDC Typeface Design Competition to receive the Certificate of Typographic Excellence. The middle weights of the family are easy on the eyes and shine at smaller sizes and in blocks of text copy. Their friendly vibe also translates well to web and interactive design projects. Spacing is open, counters are large and Hope Sans’ range of six weights can provide just the right design for virtually any need. Headlines, subheads, banners and navigational links are naturals for its lightest and boldest weights – either with, or without, the swash letters. “Hope Sans is a paint box,” says its designer, Charles Nix. “In its basic form, it’s a sturdy grotesque, capable of setting text in a cool and relaxed way. But a bit of accenting with the alternate forms easily creates an entirely different mood and meaning. And for those that are willing to really mix with it, the variety of alternate characters can build truly unique typographic statements.”

In March 2010, Émile Fradin, a modest peasant farmer from central France, died at the age of 103. To his grave he took the secret behind one of the most controversial archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. A discovery which put into question the very origins of the written word and the paternity of European culture. It was the uncovering of peculiar artefacts would come to be known as the Glozel runes. The discovery of the Glozel runes On the first day of March 1924, a not yet 18-year-old Fradin was ploughing his family’s field in the hamlet of Glozel, when his cow stumbled into a hole. When he and his grandfather, Claude, looked closer, they discovered a mass of broken stone, under which lay an underground chamber. Within, they discovered pottery fragments, carved bones, and a peculiar clay tablet covered in bizarre characters that neither of the two could decipher. The family requested a subsidy for excavation works to be carried out, but were refused by the regional authority. With that disappointment, it seemed as though the discovery would fade into obscurity. However, the following year, news of Fradin’s unusual clay tablet reached the ears of the physician and amateur archeologist, Antonin Morlet. By the end of May 1925, Morlet began the first of his excavations.4 Within the first two years alone, he had amassed some 3,000 finds.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. Carol Twombly designed this Caslon revival for Adobe in 1990, after studying Caslon's own specimen sheets from the mid-eighteenth century. This elegant version is quite true to the source, and has been optimized for the demands of digital design and printing. Adobe Caslon? makes an excellent text font and includes just about everything needed by the discriminating typographer: small caps, Old style Figures, swash letters, alternates, ligatures, expert characters, central European characters, and a plethora of period ornaments.

It was the original work of fifteenth century designer Nicolas Jenson that formed the basis for this roman serif style developed by Ernst Detterer in 1923. Similar in spirit to other early twentieth century revivals such as Centaur, Cloister Old Style, and Italian Old Style, Nicolas Jenson is distinguished by its pristine and delicate nature. A gifted young apprentice to Detterer, Robert Hunter Middleton, greatly expanded the family. And by 1929, bold, italic, and open were part of the Ludlow Foundry’s beautiful Nicolas Jenson Series. It was reintroduced under a new name, Eusebius, in 1941. This digital version includes a new medium and extrabold weight with intermediate small caps and swash alternates throughout the family. There is also a regular expert version with a variety of currency symbols plus a regular petite caps (regular x-height small caps) and old style figures version. Nicolas Jenson is now available in the OpenType Std format. Small caps, old style figures, and swash alternates have all been combined into one style for ease of use. You will also find an additional regular petite caps version included with the regular style. Some new characters have been added as stylistic alternates and historical forms. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Caltic-Holiday, Caltic-Festival, and Caltic-Straight are three eye-catching, very bold typefaces that are suitable for posters and signage. Caltic-Holiday and Caltic-Festival base letter shapes on trapezoids with curved sides but with curves that are reversed going from one to the other. Caltic-Straight has letters based on trapezoids with straight sides. None are suited for text and with their built-in spacing will not work as all upper-case or all lower-case. All three come in two widths, regular and wide, giving the Caltic family six members. Caltic has nothing to do with Celts. The Calt refers to the calt or contextual alternative OpenType feature that makes this typeface work. When the letters on the upper-case keys alternate with the letters on the lower-case keys, they fit snuggly together. As long as the user has a word processor that supports the contextual alternatives feature, there is no need for the user to alternate letters; the calt feature does it automatically. Although the fonts seem similar to hand-drawn lettering that was done on posters and signs during the hippie era of the 1960s and 1970s, I can find nothing quite like them. My inspiration for them is older, in a newspaper from 1932 that led to the typeface family PoultySign. Caltic (and Lentzers) are the result of seeing what else I could do with the inspiration that sprang from that 1932 newspaper.