PT Octava™ was designed at ParaType in 2001 by Vladimir Yefimov. The first (Cyrillic only) version named Scriptura Russica (1996) consisting of three styles (book, italic, bold) was commissioned by the Russian Bible Society. Lately the Latin letters and bold italic were added. Inspired by Lectura, 1969, by Dick Dooijes and Stone Print, 1991, by Sumner Stone. In spite of large x-height the typeface is both space saving and quite legible at small sizes. Expert fonts including small caps (book) and old style figures are available.

Ardone is a well-modulated humanist serif font family with Garalde roots. A distant ancestor is Minister (a German font designed by Fahrenwaldt in 1929) through my first font, Diaconia Old Style. This first style, book, is slightly condensed and very elegant with thin bracketed serifs. There are many OpenType features with over 600 characters: Caps, lower case, small caps, ligatures, discretionary ligatures, swashes, small cap figures, old style figures, numerators, denominators, accent characters (including CE), ordinal numbers (1st-infinity: lining and oldstyle), and so on. Ardone is designed for text use in body copy.

“One Hundred Alphabets for the Show Card Writer” was published in 1919 to afford sign artists the ability to create signs and show cards in then-contemporary lettering styles. One such alphabet was big, bold and representative of the Art Nouveau stylings popular in the early part of the 20th Century. Most likely it was applied to store sales and public events that were casual and informal, for its letter forms are free of any constraints. This design is now available as Fun Time Nouveau JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Architype Konstrukt is a collection of avant-garde typefaces deriving mainly from the work of artists/designers of the inter-war years, whose ideals have helped to shape the design philosophies of the modernist movement in Europe. Due to their experimental nature character sets may be limited. Architype Van Doesburg derives from the 1919 experimental geometric alphabet by Theo van Doesburg, whose work was heavily influenced by De Stijl theories, specifically rectangularity. The typeface has been constructed on the same 5 x 5 grid, and is limited by his ‘single alphabet’ theory.

Congress from Adrian Williams was shown for the first time at the Association Typographique International Congress, which proved to be so popular in 1980 at Kiel; designed to present a style equally appealling in European languages. Many characters are more condensed than is usual, while others have had certain elements exagerated, bringing notice to new elements of certain letters. The concept being to bring an equality of importance to the whole, producing a collection of International characters working together in harmony on the page -- a common aim that Europeans wish of any Congress.

The sheet music for the 1939 tune "Chico's Love Song (Ma-La-Ja Fa-La Pas-Ka Lah-Ta) [Cuban Double Talk]" may have had an odd title, but the main portion of it was hand lettered in an interesting style. Condensed letters with rounded corners complemented by sharp lines and angles give the characters an almost futuristic look, despite the fact that they were designed during the Art Deco era. This became the basis for Song Composer JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The German-born designer Lucian Bernhard designed Bernhard Fashion in 1929. An American" typeface, Bernhard's original design was created for the American Type Founders (ATF). It bespeaks the spirit of the roaring 20s. The hairline-thin letters exhibit elongated ascenders (but not descenders), and many stylized elements. The capital letters also all descend visibly below the baseline. In text, the extra large capitals seem almost like drop caps. This typeface is best used sparingly in text. Largely set headlines will allow readers to enjoy the fashionable quality of Bernhard Fashion's design."

ITC Mudville was Christopher Wolff's entry in the 1998 U&lc Type Design Competition, for which he won an Honorable Mention (Display). Mudville evolved from variations on hand-lettering that Wolff had done on a variety of projects over the years. The underlying shapes of the letters are formal roman letterforms, but the actual strokes retain the look of letters sketched casually on a layout. Mudville straddles the line between inline and outline type designs. It recalls some of the styles of popular lettering used in display advertising in the '20s.

An ad in the Oct. 27, 1919 issue of the trade magazine “The Moving Picture World” promoted “Princess Virtue” from Bluebird Pictures starring Mae Murray – The Adorable [as noted by the movie studio in the ad]. The Art Nouveau hand lettering emulated the style usually drawn with a round nib pen, but was given a specialized treatment for the ad. It was re-drawn in a more traditional ‘pen nib’ look for digital revival. The end result is Silent Movies JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Rasteroids is a typographic flashback to computing of the mid 1980s, when 9-pin dot-matrix printers were the state of the art, and most home computer displays were TVs hooked up to RF modulators. Rasteroids not only captures the dot-matrix printer look, but recreates the rasterized appearance of text on those lower-resolution monitors. Unlike that dot matrix type of yore, Rasteroids does have some variation in character width, and is legible in small blocks of copy. Still, it is best used sparingly, or as a special effect.

Northeast Railway is a product of argentine typographic archeology project called "Tipografía Histórica Ferroviaria" (Fabio Ares & Octavio Osores, since 2012). Is about the signboards of the stations of the line of the Argentine North Eastern Railway Company Limited (1987-1948). The letter of this signboards can be described as display type, with elementary geometric shapes and without line modulation. The principal font of the resultant family is the bold. The family is completed with complementary fonts of different styles. The proceeds from the sale of the fonts will be used to finance the project.

AggressIan is the release of the first font I ever drew. It was done by hand with triangle and parallel rule back in the mid-1980s. I originally called it Aggressor, but I never liked it. My local type designer friend, Ian Roberts, really likes this type of drawing and told me I had to release it. So I named it after him. The small caps should work well if you need a bolder version. It has oldstyle and lining figures, plus the small cap figures. I hope you like it.

The first Antique Olive fonts were produced by the French type foundry Olive, in 1962-1966 and designed by poster designer Roger Excoffon (1910-1983). All Excoffons fonts are flamboyant, elegant and highly stylistic. They include the Banco, Mistral, and Calypso fonts. Antique Olive was launched to rival Helvetica and Univers, but the shapes it took were totally refreshing. Antique Olive is probably the most striking Sans Serif since Futura and Gill, and more refined than either. It is perfect for posters and display material as it works well in larger sizes.

The inspiration for AlbertBetenbuch came from a typeface drawn by Albert Dürer and an interpretation of that face in Arthur Baker’s Historic Calligraphic Alphabets (Dover, 1980). It is not a recreation of either. The characteristic common to AlbertBetenbuch and the faces inspiring it is the decorative zig-zag with the upper-case letters. In late 2018 the inside of the shadowed style was separated out. It looks very much like the plain face but its spacing matches the shadowed version. It can be layered with the shadowed version to easily create two-colored letters.

The Souvenir typeface was originally drawn by Morris Fuller Benton in 1914 as a single weight for the American Type Founders company. It was revived in 1967 by Photo-Lettering and optimized for phototypesetting equipment. ITC was formed in 1971 and, with the help of Photo-Lettering, introduced ITC Souvenir as one of its first font families. ITC Souvenir was designed by Ed Benguiat and comes in four weights, each with a matching italic. In 1983, Ned Bunnel's ITC Souvenir Monospaced was released; this is a monospace version of ITC Souvenir.

Designed for the newspaper technology of the 1980s, Clarion uses many of the findings made in the preparation of Monotype Nimrod, from which it is derived. The Clarion font family differs from Nimrod in its detailing, which is more akin to that of the Ionics, a style which influenced most designers of contemporary newspaper faces. The large x-height and sturdy construction of the characters make Clarion well suited for use on laser printers as well as being an excellent choice for setting newspapers, journals, newsletters and circulars.

Graphite was designed by David Siegel, who began thinking about the typeface in 1982, looking for an architect's handwriting with a chiselled pencil" look. The handwriting of San Francisco architect Anthony Celis LaRosa became Siegel's choice. With the assistance of David Berlow and Tom Rickner, Graphite was designed and released as a multiple master typeface with weight and width axes that allow for its use in a dynamic range from light condensed to black extended. Graphite is an upright script with simple lines, and is usable in a large variety of informal copysetting situations."

German type designer Hans Reichel created this sans FontFont in 1999. The family has 12 weights, ranging from Light to Black (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries, poster and billboards as well as web and screen design. FF Sari provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Litera was designed in 1983 by Michael Neugebauer, who used the same strict constructed design found in his typeface Circulus. In its figures are the clear geometric forms of the circle, triangle and rectangle, which were also the main forms of Bauhaus designs. The overall look of Litera is modern, clear and light. Distinguishing characteristics are the openness and the e and P and the particularly long cross stroke of the G. The cool Litera is best for middle length texts and headlines. Similar typefaces include Futura from Paul Renner and Avenir from Adrian Frutiger.

Linotype Lichtwerk, from German designer Bernd Pfannkuchen, is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from the entries of the Linotype-sponsored International Digital Type Design Contest 1999 for inclusion on the Take Type 3 CD. This display font contains very narrow forms with a high x-height. It is reminiscent of the constructivism of the 1920s and was designed with a small number of basic forms. The high, thin letters form words and an overall picture which almost flickers on the page. Linotype Lichtwerk with its technical look is suited exclusively for headlines.

A mid-1950s hand lettered ad for Stenso Lettering Guides provided the inspiration for Stencil Company JNL, now available in both regular and oblique versions. The Stenso Lettering Company of Baltimore, Maryland pioneered easy-to-use and inexpensive lettering devices with guide holes for accurate spacing. Originally designed by a school teacher (Ruth Libauer Hormats) around 1940, the company was family run until it was sold in 1962 to Ottenheimer Publishers. They in turn sold the line to the Dennison Manufacturing Company, and it was discontinued in the 1980s after Dennison merged with Avery.

PT Reforma Grotesk was designed for ParaType in 1999 by Albert Kapitonov based on the letterforms of Russian pre-revolutionary hand composition typefaces: Uzky Tonky Grotesk («Condensed Thin Sans»), Poluzhirny Knizhny Grotesk («Semibold Book Sans») and Reforma, of H. Berthold and O. Lehmann foundries (St.- Petersburg). This extra compressed sans serif with distinctive letter shapes is typical for display fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For use in advertising and display typography. The face got 'Galina' prize at Kirillitsa'99 International Type Design Competition in Moscow.

This is our first font, based on Peter's own personal way of writing uncials, The rounded letters of the fourth to eighth centuries. The characters in the caps position are more closely related to the classical Roman forms, and the lowercase position has letters that are the more rounded, medieval forms, at the same size, so they can be freely mixed, for a hand lettered appearance. This typeface is currently used for the titles in the TNT Television show "the Librarians". It was originally designed in 1998, and is now available in Open Type Format.

Commercial Script is a sophisticated copperplate script design. Its capitals are elaborate initials, and the lowercase letters join together in the style of real handwriting. Commercial Script's elegant refinement makes it a classic and ever-popular typeface. The spark behind this typeface comes from centries-old English Spencerian copperplate calligraphy. In 1985, the American typefoundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler released a typeface in this style. This was redesigned by ATF's Morris Fuller Benton in 1906, and ATF released Commercial Script" in 1908. In 1994, Letraset' released this digital version of the typeface."

Lucian Bernhard designed this typeface for American Type Founders in 1929. Bernhard Fashion sports tall ascenders, stylish embellishments, and much taller than normal capitals that drop below the baseline. This extra light typeface radiates elegance and lightness. SoftMaker’s Bernhard Fashion Pro typeface comes with a huge character set that covers not only Western European languages, but also includes Central European, Baltic, Croatian, Slovene, Romanian, and Turkish characters. Case-sensitive punctuation signs for all-caps titles are included as well as many fractions, an extensive set of ligatures, and separate sets of tabular and proportional digits.

Designed by Les Usherwood. Chelsea is a ‘modern’ Old Style serif font family designed by Les Usherwood (Typsettra) in the early 1980’s. Steve Jackaman (ITF) digitally engineered the family exclusively for ITF’s Red Rooster Collection in 1993. Usherwood drew influence from Frederic Goudy’s 1911 creation ‘Kennerley Old Style’ when designing Chelsea; Chelsea, however, tends to be wider with a taller x-height. Chelsea has the clean and upscale feel that is present in all Usherwood creations, and its legible design lends itself to projects of any size.

Elfen-Fraktur is monolinear blackletter typeface, that was originally designed by M. Beck and published in 1919. This revival comes in two extended versions with a complete Latin 1 character set: Elfen-Fraktur A uses the original blackletter skeletons and is suitable for setting texts with traditional German typesetting and orthography rules. Elfen-Fraktur B includes modernized letter designs for a broader and more legible use in various languages. A free bonus is the set of 22 border elements called Elfen-Schmuck. Check out the type specimen PDF for more details and instructions.

New Letter Gothic was designed for ParaType by Gayaneh Bagdasaryan based on monospaced Letter Gothic font by Roger Roberson, 1956–62. Due to clear and easy-to-read lettershapes of Letter Gothic the font is rather popular now for display and advertising matters. The idea was to create a font similar to Letter Gothic in lettershapes but with proportional widths of letters. For use in both display and text setting. New Letter Gothic has been adjudged an Award for Excellence in Type Design at Kyrillitsa ’99 International Type Design competition in Moscow, 1999.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City with Rob Roy Kelly and his fabulous collection of wood type. In the 1970s tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black. Again for Roger, in the 1980s I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so when I did Version 2 for Open Type, I changed it around a little, making it a much nicer Sutro.

Goudy Sans Bold was originally designed by Fredric Goudy in 1922 as a less formal "gothic" and finished in 1929. The light was designed in 1930 and the Light Italic in 1931. Alternate letterforms are included in these three Goudy designs which are digitized true to their original design. In 2006, designer Colin Kahn drew "LTC Goudy Sans Regular" which is a medium weight version intended for text purposes. Kahn has also designed an experimental "LTC Goudy Sans Hairline" which has a skeletal almost mono-width stroke and results in a surprisingly elegant display face.

While searching online for vintage type inspirations, an image was spotted of an old letterhead for a steel manufacturing company. The hand lettering of the word 'Ludlum' only offered D,L,M and E as visual examples, but from this Jeff Levine has designed Eckhardt Dualine JNL - a Deco-flavored dual-line type font. As with a number of other releases that emulate hand-lettering or sign painting, Jeff has named this font in honor of his good friend, the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr.; who ran Allied Signs in Miami from 1959 until his passing.

Koala was originally designed in 1999 by Eric de Berranger with an individual, independent character. A distinguishing characteristic of this sans serif font is its marked stroke contrast, typical of Modern Face fonts. The open, airy forms are reminiscent of ancient Roman capitals. The lower case letters display traits similar to those often seen on posters and in advertisements of the 1930s and 1940s. The lively Koala is particularly good for shorter texts and headlines in larger point sizes and combines well with fonts with little stroke contrast.

Commercial Script is a sophisticated copperplate script design. Its capitals are elaborate initials, and the lowercase letters join together in the style of real handwriting. Commercial Script's elegant refinement makes it a classic and ever-popular typeface. The spark behind this typeface comes from centries-old English Spencerian copperplate calligraphy. In 1985, the American typefoundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler released a typeface in this style. This was redesigned by ATF's Morris Fuller Benton in 1906, and ATF released Commercial Script" in 1908. In 1994, Letraset' released this digital version of the typeface."

In 1899, Robert Wiebking (who worked for a number of foundries in his time) designed an all-caps typeface named Engravers Roman (see Engravers #2). American Type Founders, Inc. (ATF) released a heavier variant in 1902, Engravers Bold, designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Engravers Bold was also released by the Barnhart Brothes & Spinder foundry. Today, Linotype's Engravers brings turn-of-the-century elegance directly to your keyboard. Use the Engravers typeface on any formal piece -- from table cards, to menus, invitations, or advertising work. Engravers is similar to Copperplate Gothic, Sackers Gothic and Nicolas Cochin.

This font was made during testing of a neat little application, that traced hand-written letters on the fly. That application was later abandoned, and the font, named Simpel for it's obvious casual simplicity, was finished separately. This story goes up to the year 1998, and recently the font was returned from the archives. SImpel was completly remastered and some useful ligatures were added. It is nice, clean and really, quite simple. Which often comes very handy. It will work well in comic books, magazines and party flyers, for instance.

Dungeon is a glyphic font family that combines elements of both sans serif and spur serif typefaces. It was designed exclusively for the Red Rooster Collection in 1998 by Steve Jackaman (ITF). The family is loosely based on Dick Jensen’s famous design “Serpentine,” which was created for the Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) in 1972. Dungeon is available in four weights, each of which is optimized for legibility at any size. The family’s masculine feel has helped it to turn up in a variety of projects, ranging from brand identity to advertising.

Supaduper PB is a font inspired by some wonderfully funky hand-lettered greeting cards from the 1980's. The delightfully awkward and animated playfulness of this lettering style was maintained throughout the fleshing out from the original specimens - and I think you're going to have a lot of fun typing with this. Even if you haven't seen these old greeting cards, the lettering style has a familiar visual to it. Bring back a little nostalgia, add a little wonkiness, or just have fun typing with Supaduper PB today!