The idea that mathematical precision and the supposed "purity" of geometric forms are part of the discourse of us graphic designers is not new. Studying typography for some time now and learning about all the small alterations and adjustments that this geometry undergoes to better adapt to the imperfect human eye, I found myself with a new way of seeing things. Compasso is, in a way, a result of my growth as a designer. Established and recognized fonts like Futura, Avenir, and their predecessors (including Tempo - published by the Ludlow foundry in the early 20th century) informed the result of Compasso at some level. Others opened my mind to possibilities. Mallory, Azo Sans, the font designed for Audi by Bold Monday, and many other contemporary sans-serif fonts that left me speechless are also responsible for details present in this font. From the first sketch, the family grew on both sides, gaining condensed and extended counterparts. From there - and from a brilliant insight from designer Nicole Rauen - I learned that Compasso was not about geometry. Compasso is about rhythm. It's about the rhythmic movement that provides a foundation, supports, and also makes you dance and swing. My musical taste is too eclectic, I can go from classical to funk in less than two songs on Spotify. Compasso is also eclectic. It's a font to take your project anywhere, a record to listen to on any occasion.

Saracen is the Latin (wedge serif) member of The Proteus Project, a collection of four interchangeable type families designed in different nineteenth century styles. The Saracen typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 1992. Saracen is a design in the ‘latin’ style, characterized by wedge-shaped serifs, a genus of type that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. A part of The Proteus Project, the typographic theme-and-variations based on related Regency styles, Saracen was created for Rolling Stone, in whose pages the typeface first appeared in 1993 . From the desk of the designer: Though the wedge serif printing type is a nineteenth century innovation, Saracen does not resemble any font from this era. It’s mysterious that typefounders of the Victorian age who sought the extreme and fanciful in their work — exploring all manner of serif treatments, and creating extra-condensed and super-expanded designs — never made a latin font of this straightforward proportion. <

The Latin, or Roman, alphabet was originally adapted from the Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BC to write Latin. Since then it has had many different forms, and been adapted to write many other languages. According to Roman legend, the Cimmerian Sibyl, Carmenta, created the Latin alphabet by adapting the Greek alphabet used in the Greek colony of Cumae in southern Italy. This was introduced to Latium by Evander, her son. 60 years after the Trojan war. There is no historical evidence to support this story, which comes from the Roman author, Gaius Julius Hyginus (64BC - 17AD). The earliest known inscriptions in the Latin alphabet date from the 6th century BC. It was adapted from the Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BC. The letters Y and Z were taken from the Greek alphabet to write Greek loan words. Other letters were added from time to time as the Latin alphabet was adapted for other languages.

This great Victorian display font of the late 19th century was revived for today’s use. You also find two frame elements. To start setting a frame, type [shift] + [alt] + p for the corner, and continue with typing [alt] + p. Duplicate and mirror the lines to get a fantastic frame.

This font was inspired by lettering found on old stock certificate on the 19th century and comes with two guilloche borders, which makes national currency very useful.

One of the classic display types of the 19th century, an Egyptian with bracketed serifs. There are many variants of this face and its uses are many.

Inspired by printed texts from 18th century France, Millesime has a gritty grainy texture that adds a natural and sentimental feel to this stylish rusty style font.

This set of letters and ornaments is loosely based on on a typeface that was offered by the DeVinne Press at the turn of the century. We can speculate from its name that this type was used as a display font to try to equate the look of letters on 15th and ­16th century heraldic cartouches, seals, stamps, medals and other inscriptional lettering. The sample was digitized with an “antiqued” outline to further enhance this ancient inscriptional theme. The letters were then grouped in the font with the more traditional Roman letters as the capitals and the Lombardic forms as the miniscules. The original type sample contained some unusual 15th century inscriptional numbers which have been included as extras in the font so the user the has the option to create an authentic looking design.

This is Alter Littera’s second original design. It started as an attempt at translating into roman forms the lowercase metrics of classic blackletters, in particular those of The Oldtype “Alter Gotisch” Font. Eventually, the design process led naturally to an innovative and modern re-creation of the overall forms and style of classic bold condensed letters from the early twentieth century, especially those of the “Century Bold Condensed” type from American Type Founders (ATF) Company’s American Specimen Book of Type Styles, Jersey City, 1912 (pp. 274-7) [also seen in McGrew, M. (1993), American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, New Castle: Oak Knoll Books (pp. 76-7)]. In addition to the usual standard characters for typesetting in modern Western languages, the font includes a comprehensive set of special characters, alternates, ligatures and ornaments, plus Opentype features, that can be used for creating distinctive and attractive texts with virtually unlimited variations. The glyphs are clean, smooth and definitely readable, so the font will be suitable not only for large titles and headings, but also for full text pages. Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Alter Headletter” Font Page.

The former hot-metal font Sebaldus Gotisch, a 19th century Berthold in-house design, was carefully redesigned and updated for today’s use. This font contains a long s which you can access by typing alt b or by using the historical alternate OTF feature.

Based on the original design of Nicholas Jenson 1470-76, this is a revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century. This font was also created in a slightly different version by William Morris circa 1890. Suitable for text.

SchwarzKopf is an 18th Century European "Schwabacher" blackletter which features a distressed edge for creating authentic "antique" documents. Old features the long "s" and other archaic forms. Both Old and New variations feature many additional ligatures such as tz, sch, ss, ff and ck.

Designed at Polygraphmash type design bureau in 1986. Based on "English" bold styles of the Ossip Lehmann type foundry (St.-Petersburg), of mid-19th century. The digital version was developed at ParaType in 1992 by Vladimir Yefimov. For use in advertising and display typography.

Palace Script is a formal English script from the 1920s. This typeface, inspired by centuries-old copperplate engravings, could add the perfect touch to any number of holiday cards. You could also make cute little names tags for all of your presents with Palace Script.

Here's a collection of Art-Noueveau-era border elements, gleaned from the pages of various German type foundry catalogs from the first decade of the twentieth century. Refer to the accompanying PDF guide for instructions on constructing twelve different, distinctive and elegant border sets.

Morris Fuller Benton, the principal designer of the American Type Founders, designed Mariage in 1901. Mariage, which has been sold under a plethora of different names during the last century, is a blackletter typeface belonging to the Old English category. The term blackletter refers to typefaces that stem out of the historical printing traditions of northern Europe. These letters, called gebrochene Schriften, or "broken type" in German, are normally elaborately bent and distorted. Their forms often print large amounts of ink upon the page, creating text that leaves a heavy, black impression. The Old English style is a subset of blackletter type that dates back to 1498, when Wynken de Worde introduced textura style printing to England. Continental printers had been printing with textura style letters since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press fifty years earlier. Italian printers stopped using them around 1470. For northern Europeans, texturas remained the most popular form of typeface design until the invention of the fraktur style in Nuremberg. Mariage is heavily classicized sort of Old English type. During the Victorian era, designers admired the Middle Ages for its chivalric, community-based values and its pre-industrial lifestyle. Yet they also found the basic medieval textura letterform too difficult to read by present standards. They desired to modernize this old style. Today, this sort of update is often referred to not as "modernization" but as classicism. Benton's design for ATF builds upon earlier Victorian classicist interpretations of Old English/textura letters. For an example of what these Victorian designs looked like, check out the popular 1990 revival of the genre, Old English . Old English style types often appear drastically different from other blackletters. For contrast, compare Mariage to a classical German fraktur design, Fette Fraktur , a schwabacher style face, or the popular early 20th Century calligraphic gothic from Linotype, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch . Especially in the United States, classicist Old English typefaces are thought to espouse tradition and journalistic integrity. These features, together with the inherent, complex beauty of Mariage's forms, make this typeface a perfect choice for certificates, awards, and newsletter mastheads.

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.

Josephine, named for Josephine Baker, the legendary dancer of the 1930s, is a twenty first century sans serif typeface that harks back to the earlier part of last century. Although very modern, it has been greatly influenced by the many art deco fonts produced during the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century.In it I have tried to capture the art deco spirit in a modern humanist font. Josephine is exceptionally readable and yet completely characteristic of the Art Deco period. It can be used for text passages as well as display in posters, advertising, labels and packaging. It is professionally finished and contains all upper and lower case characters as well as all special characters, punctuation and symbols.

Boardley Script is a script-style display font in two layers, Boardley Script was the result of an exploration of mid-century American and European bold script lettering for advertising. is an attractive contemporary typeface drawn from scratch with brand-new, more vigorous detailing — and layerable variations for chromatic use.

This quintessential nineteenth-century offering is based on a typeface from the 1912 American Type Founders catalog called Lining Central Antique. Quaint, yet crisp and clean, it is equally suitable for headlines or body copy. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Legasov is an original font family designed for logos, titles, book covers, and branding identity. You can also use it for small text fragments. Legasov is a modern geometric grotesque inspired by the Ukrainian modernism of the last century. It has a dynamic shape of characters and an avant-garde nature.

A stylish cartoon sans reminiscent of lettering by Harvey Kurtzman on early issues of Mad, or other casual mid-century types. The three widths give full versatility for expressive, customised headlines and layouts, while the lighter weights can be used for text. Conveys an approachable, light touch with style and finesse.

ATF Alternate Gothic is a new, significant digital expansion of Morris Fuller Benton’s classic 1903 type design. Originally available in one bold weight, the metal typeface came in three slightly different widths for flexibility in copy-fitting layouts.  ATF Alternate Gothic has impact at any size. Its letterforms are instantly familiar: Benton’s original metal type family was used throughout the 20th century in newspapers, magazines, and advertising, providing “strong and effective display” in a compact space. Monotype issued its own metal version for machine typesetting, and Alternate Gothic likely served as inspiration for Linotype’s ubiquitous Trade Gothic® Bold and Bold Condensed. ATF Alternate Gothic expands on the characteristics that perhaps made Trade Gothic so popular, providing a wider range of weights and widths to address the needs of today’s designers and technologies. The space-saving clarity of ATF Alternate Gothic brings readability to the world of advertising typefaces. With its finely graded range of ten weights, with four widths of each weight (40 fonts total), this extensive type family can be used to pack a lot into a narrow space, and the range makes it easy to create variations of an advertisement or announcement for different formats and media. The tall x-height and narrow proportions, combined with a relatively low waist and springy, tension-filled forms, make ATF Alternate Gothic strong and effective in display. All ten weights have been carefully spaced for readability, caps and lowercase work well together, while attention-grabbing all-caps settings are clear and never crowded, no matter how narrow.

This font was inspired by the lettering on a shop sign along a very classy shopping street in Bordeaux, France. There were similar styles among mid-nineteenth century types.

This font was inspired by Claude Garamond antique. The original set of letters from 16th century is enlarged by several characters that were not in use in that time.

Happy-Go-Lucky is my interpretation of an antique typeface of the nineteenth century. The font includes upper and lowercase alphabets, numbers, punctuation, accented characters, symbols, and miscellaneous characters.

JT Collect is a hybrid sans-serif typeface for the 21st century that takes a playful approach to the type design heritages of Germany and Switzerland. Confidently built on a geometric structure and infused with elements from traditional grotesque typefaces, it hits the sweet spot between geo and grot. I developed JT Collect purely digitally, drawing from years of experience with analog type design. The letters aren’t based on one particular source but seek to merge different type genres from the first half of the 20th century and lift them to a contemporary quality level. JT Collect is less reserved than strictly geometric designs and brings some industrial workmanship and honesty into the game. The six weights plus three optical sizes of JT Collect offer what you need to make an impact. While cool and elegant in the Light weight, the fonts show more presence on the page as they grow bolder. To this end, I drew the letterforms with a slightly unrefined, brawny air in the bolder weights. This sets them apart from the perceived purity of more geometric designs. The Book weight is ideal for short texts and medium-length copy, and the forceful Bold makes wordmarks look crisp and lets headlines radiate cosmopolitan self-confidence. JT Collect is suitable as a primary typeface for branding, advertising, packaging, stationery, posters, documents, and websites from trades and industries as diverse as food & fashion, media & makers, culture & creators, games & gems, sports & startups. Use JT Collect for film titles or watch faces, for leaflets or store signs, for business cards or billboards: this font family is as adaptable as a chameleon (and like a chameleon, it’s never boring). Try it in different contexts. You won’t be disappointed. Its adaptability also makes JT Collect a great starting point for poised and persuasive font combinations. Even a sans/sans pairing is possible due to hybrid nature of JT Collect—something that’d be hard to achieve with most other sans-serif typefaces on the market. You can add to it a heavy slab from the OGJ library, like Temper Wide. You might go for a geometric or a grotesque typeface as secondary (text) typeface. Or you could set your body copy in a classic serif typeface such as Caslon, Sabon, or Plantin. That’s right: JT Collect is a true team player. Whether you need a grotesque or a geometric sans: try JT Collect. You can get the best of both worlds.

A 'quick' font, originally made for the 25th anniversary of SSP Printing Co. in Amsterdam. First used for an intro spread in Wired Magazine (#3.05, May 1995): "The problem with computers is that they don't have enough Africa in them. What's pissing me off is that they use so little of my body" (Brian Eno).

This font is one of the most used broken letter fonts today. Fette Fraktur is used to invoke a nostalgic or rustic feeling and found often on restaurants with hearty homemade food’ or breweries who use the good old recipes’ of the founder. The font was designed in the 19th century and from the beginning intended as an advertisement typeface. The lower case letters have a gothic character with only the ornamental flourishes making them broken letters, while the capital letters are more characteristic of broken letter typefaces. One could say Fette Fraktur is a true mix of styles, not unusual for typefaces created at the turn of the 19th century.

The Ancient North Arabian scripts Ancient North Arabian is the name given to a group of scripts belonging to the South Semitic script family, which also includes the Ancient South Arabian alphabets (musnad and zabūr) and the vocalized alphabets used in Ethiopia for Geʿez, Amharic, etc. The Ancient North Arabian scripts were used both in the oases (Dadanitic, Dumaitic, Taymanitic,) and by the nomads (Hismaic, Safaitic, Thamudic B, C, D, and possibly Southern Thamudic). There are tens of thousands of inscriptions and graffiti in these scripts which were used in the period roughly between the sixth century BC and the fourth century AD. See the descriptions of the individual scripts below

The main inspiration is from Art Nouveau which flourished in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This design included furniture (Majorelle, Lalique) and architecture (Victor Horta, Henry Van de Velde, Gaudi, Alfons Mucha). But Hector Guimard remains the favorite for all aspects of its art and, of course, its typefaces used on the Parisian Metropolitan posters. In particular, the various kerning of the various letters he used to make the poster a whole design from singular designs, leading to numerous variations. As a designer, I first worked with the individual glyphs Hector Guimard designed and I discovered that they vary constantly from a poster to another, depending on the overall result he was looking for. Another difficulty in transferring his design to printing is that there was no lower case. I was excited to create the whole font from the original designs of Hector Guimard, incorporating its variations and "crazy kerning". After several attempts, it appeared to be impossible to include all variations and I slightly moved to my own new design as a complete font, upper and lower case, with kerning. I voluntarily limited the ascenders and descenders to the usual typography so that it can be used from 10 / 12 points. This version can be used to edit letters and books in the context of Art, specially Art Nouveau and Art Deco of course, posters of any kind.

Orlando is the work of British designer Freda Sack. It is an all capital, outline typeface including a complete set of swash initials and an array of stunning flourishes designed especially for this typeface. Orlando was inspired by and modelled upon 19th century antique type styles.

Orlando is the work of British designer Freda Sack. It is an all capital, outline typeface including a complete set of swash initials and an array of stunning flourishes designed especially for this typeface. Orlando was inspired by and modelled upon 19th century antique type styles.

Pomponianus comes from a 4th century inscription found in North Africa. It is an attractive example of early uncial lettering. Uncial inscriptions are quite uncommon, because although the style was well suited for writing on vellum, the curved letters made it more difficult to carve in stone.

Antique is a bold, classic font with high stroke contrast and no bracketing on the serifs. This letter style was hugely popular during the early 19th century and was the basis for a myriad of other designs. This version is based on wood type of unknown origin.

This is a simplified Tuscan, free from excessive ruffles and flourishes. Types of this general design began to appear in profusion in the 1830, and continued as a popular form until the end of the nineteenth century. We added the lowercase to this one for increased usefulness.

Vox Populi was modeled after an early 17th century Latin translation of a Greek epos. It is a cursive typeface with a rough edge to it - not unlike the rather decayed original. Vox comes with a whole bunch of alternates and ligatures for that ‘ancient parchment look’.

Noisetoy is an up-to-date font that can be used widely and successfully, as it is a simple, clear, minimal and funky and it clearly depicts 21st Century design.

Pacella was designed by Vincent Pacella and fashioned in the tradiation of Century Schoolbook, Corona and Nimrod. Pacella maintains high legibilty and exhibits a character and personality all its own.

Encorpada Classic, designed by Eduilson Coan, brings the best features of the Didone genre, but with a 21st century look and feel. With smooth details Encorpada Classic is an elegant choice for your type library. The family has three widths – compressed, condensed & normal, support for more than 40 languages and opentype features.