Designed from the perspective of a multi-purpose font family, comprehending the slab-serif and humanist-sans subtypes, the Distéfano typefaces were specifically developed and subsequently tested considering the needs of editorial products, for both print and digital media.   Includes a comprehensive program where formal, style, thickness and slant attributes are especially indicated for the composition of text and headings in newspapers, journals and magazines. For that reason, in addition to the more traditional weights, others, ranging from Light to Black were added. The identity and systemic criteria of this font family doesn’t fall short on diversity of specific solutions, flair and quirks for each variant, especially noticeable in the contrast of the italics to the roman styles. The original drawings of Distéfano date back to 1983; embodied in pencil on paper, provided only the alphabetical characters and punctuation signs for Spanish, and the Sans Serif family. By digitalizing them, their possibilities of use were widened, the set of characters of each typeface were considerably completed considering the current requirements for the majority of the latin and germanic languages, and the slab-serif family was developed. This type family bears the name of the most notable argentinian designer, and it is a homage to his work, that influenced the youth of the 50’s decade of the 20th century, and especially to him, whom I have always recognized as a friend, and a teacher.

Designed from the perspective of a multi-purpose font family, comprehending the slab-serif and humanist-sans subtypes, the Distéfano typefaces were specifically developed and subsequently tested considering the needs of editorial products, for both print and digital media.    Includes a comprehensive program where formal, style, thickness and slant attributes are especially indicated for the composition of text and headings in newspapers, journals and magazines. For that reason, in addition to the more traditional weights, others, ranging from Light to Black were added. The identity and systemic criteria of this font family doesn’t fall short on diversity of specific solutions, flair and quirks for each variant, especially noticeable in the contrast of the italics to the roman styles. The original drawings of Distéfano date back to 1983; embodied in pencil on paper, provided only the alphabetical characters and punctuation signs for Spanish, and the Sans Serif family. By digitalizing them, their possibilities of use were widened, the set of characters of each typeface were considerably completed considering the current requirements for the majority of the latin and germanic languages, and the slab-serif family was developed. This type family bears the name of the most notable argentinian designer, and it is a homage to his work, that influenced the youth of the 50’s decade of the 20th century, and especially to him, whom I have always recognized as a friend, and a teacher.

P22 Brass Script is a new font from an old source. This script font was discovered in a booklet from Dornemann & Co. of Magdeburg Germany, circa 1910. The book was titled Messingschriften fur Handvergoldung, which roughly translates to “Brass types for hand foil stamping.” The mini catalog called this type simply “Script.” It has not been previously digitized or seen in standard metal type form. The antique specimen book featured most of the characters needed for a full alphabet, but a number of letters were not shown. Since no other examples of this style could be found, P22 enlisted the assistance of master calligrapher Michael Clark to draw the missing characters in the same style as the original. The style is very loosely based on the secretarial hands and reminiscent of “French Hand” with a very early 20th century, pre-modern feel. It has an unusual flow that is neither too casual nor too formal. The font would be useful for wedding invitations or packaging and advertising. P22 Brass Script Pro features include: automatic ligatures for common pairs such as ll, tt, qu and a variety of f ligatures, full CE language support including Turkish and Romanian and a variety of swash underscores for different length words that can be added manually in OpenType ready applications with the glyph palette or with the contextual alternates. The length of the word will automatically select the best length of swash for the work.

Artisinal, not to be confused with the term artisanal, is our revival of the Art Deco typeface known as Cubist Bold, by John W. Zimmerman for Barnhardt Bros. & Spindler in 1929, breathes new life into a classic. The original metal cast typeface was designed without a lowercase, as well as some wedge serif capitals made for not always perfect pairings. We've created a lowercase that blends well with the original design to give the typeface more usability. We've also created a fully sans version of the capitals as the default set, and moved the original wedge serif capital styles to a contextual alternates feature. And we created a few stylistic alternates for lowercase characters like the u and y and their accented styles. See the 5th graphic for a comprehensive character map preview. Opentype features include: - Full set of Inferiors and Superiors for limitless fractions. - A Standard lining figure set. - A collection of basic f Ligatures. - Stylistic Alternates for variations of several characters such as u and y. - Contextual Alternates for the original wedge variations of capitals that will mix in where appropriate. Approx. 450 Character Glyph Set: Artisinal comes with a glyph set that includes standard & punctuation, international language support, and additional features

The dearJoe series of fonts had it’s origin somewhere around 1999, the year I created dearJoe 1, which was a first (and half-assed) attempt at converting my own handwriting into a working font. Being able to type in my own handwriting had always been a childhood fantasy, and even though I only partly understood the software, a working font was generated and I decided to put it on the internet for people to use. And that’s what they did: at this moment the dearJoe 1 font has been downloaded millions of times and can be found on just about anything, ranging from Vietnamese riksjas, a Tasmanian gym to a fancy chocolate store on 5th Avenue. The font is not something I am particularly proud of, but it started me of in building what later became the JOEBOB graphics font foundry. Inbetween creating other fonts, the dearJoe series has become a theme I revisit every once in a while, trying to create an update on how my handwriting evolved, along with my abilities in creating fonts that mimic actual handwriting. In the last decade or so I started implementing ligatures and alternate characters, which helped a lot in making something that can almost pass for actual handwriting.

"I digitized and to revitalize NurnbergSchwabacher by the extinct Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei, a German/Swiss foundry established in 1790 and based in Basel/Münchenstein. Many of its shares were acquired by D. Stempel in 1927. On the Luc Devroye site this foundry is listed on the Extinct Foundries of the 18th century page. This design is very similar to another Intellecta best seller: Hostetler Fette Ultfraktur Ornamental, both drawn from the classical type specimen book from Hostetler. The ornamental frame that completes the font is a fantastic baroque ornament that I found in another old book, unfortunately lost now. Luc Devroye, whose book is the source for all of my fonts, writes this about Rudolf Hostettler: He was a Swiss type designer, author of “The Printer’s Terms” designed by Jan Tschichold, of "Technical Terms of the Printing Industry" (5th edition was printed in 1995), and of "Type: eine Auswahl guter Drucktypen; 80 Alphabete klassischer und moderner Schriften" (Teufen, Ausser-Rhoden: Niggli, 1958). He also wrote "Type: A Selection of Types" (1949, fgm books, R. Hostettler, E. Kopley, H. Strehler Publ., St. Gallen and London) in which he highlights type made by European houses such as Haas, Enschedé, Deberny and Nebiolo. Jost Hochuli wrote his biography.

The PARATYPE library is our latest major addition, consisting of more than 370 typefaces. In the spirit of the perestroika changes and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Russian type designers quit the state-owned Polygraphmash foundry to establish ParaType, the first, and now largest Russian digital type foundry. The ParaType team under the supervision of Vladimir Yefimov creates new typefaces and explores the Russian typographic heritage by making digital versions of existing Russian designs: these include the hits of Soviet typography such as Literaturnaya and Journal Sans. Most ParaType fonts are available in Western/Roman, Central European, Turkish and Cyrillic encodings. The Russian constructivist and avant garde movements of the early 20th century inspired many ParaType typefaces, including Rodchenko, Quadrat Grotesk, Ariergard, Unovis, Tauern, Dublon and Stroganov. The ParaType library also includes many excellent book and newspaper typefaces such as Octava, Lazurski, Bannikova, Neva or Petersburg. On the other hand, if you need a pretty face to knock your clients dead, meet the ParaType girls: Tatiana, Betina, Hortensia, Irina, Liana, Nataliscript, Nina, Olga and Vesna (also check Zhikharev who is not a girl but still very pretty). ParaType excels in adding Cyrillic characters to existing Latin typefaces — if your company is ever going to do business with Eastern Europe, we recommend you make them part of your corporate identity! ParaType created CE and Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces licensed from other foundries, including Bell Gothic, Caslon, English 157, Futura, Original Garamond, Gothic 725, Humanist 531, Kis, Raleigh, or Zapf Elliptical 711.

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.

Castile is a central region of Spain that formed the core of the Kingdom of Castile, under which Spain was united in the 15th and 16th centuries. "Castile" is a Kufic modern Arabic typeface. It is suitable for books' covers, advertisement light boards, and titles in magazines and newspapers. It is very distinctive when used in black and white printout. It decorates colored pages and makes artworks more attractive. This font comes in three different weights. I adore Spain and the historical achievements of the Islamic civilization existed there in the past. By designing "Castile" Typeface, I wanted to refer to the Islamic civilization that Muslims had in Spain and especially in Andalusia. Today the name of Castile survives in two autonomous regions of Spain: Castile-La Mancha (capital city is Toledo) and Castile-Leon (capital city is Valladolid). The main characteristic of "Castile" Typeface is in its modern open-end style for some of its Arabic characters such as "Sad", "Dad", "Seen", "Sheen", "Qaf", "Faa", "Yaa" and others. The shape of the characters' "dot", "dots", and "point" is innovative; a triangle with a semi-circle shape. "Castile" Typeface is suitable for books' covers, advertisement light boards, and titles in magazines and newspapers. Its charactersí modern Kufic styles give the typeface more distinction when it is used also in posters, greeting cards, covers, exhibitionsí signboards and external or internal walls of malls or metroís exits and entrances. It can also be used in titles for Arabic news and advertisements appeared in different Arabic and foreign satellite channels.

Geodeco font family brings to you the recovery of the typographic forms from the beginning of the 20th century, with a strong ArtDecó flavour but from a new point of view: modernity and geometry. Modernity in the visual contrast between lowercase and capital letters, where rounded shapes are opposed to the breaks and graphic tensions of the strokes of the capital letters. which gives it an enormous originality. Generous doses of internal whites, assure a powerful legibility even with the spite of its short ascending and descending strokes. What we get is a coherent and martial look where fluidity and homogeneity is the main note. Soft and rounded minuscule, with large internal whites for super legibility, bombproof, especially on screens, where Geodeco lives with an astonishing naturalness. The capital letters, used alone as display, or as companions of the minuscule characters, give the family a touch of originality and exotic flavor. Like the spices in the food; a brief but intense note. Breaking the rectangular shapes so that the appearance of the letter comes out benefits from enlarging the internal whites and making them consistent with the white of the lower case. GeoDeco works very well in plain text with the obvious limitation that it is not a type for small bodies, but exceptionality weldon for plain text and signage. Maximum visibility, total beauty on screens. A family of this new century with the flavour of that epoch of experimentation that were the years 20. Extensive multilanguage support and almost all Opentype functionalities. Try it and it will convince you - for sure!

Body graphic project at Behance Body is a type family designed for Zetafonts by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini with Andrea Tartarelli. Conceived as a contemporary alternative to modernist superfamilies like Univers or Helvetica, Body tries to maximize text readability while providing a wide range of options for the designer. It comes in two variants (Body Text and Body Grotesque), each in four widths and four weights: regular and bold for basic typesetting, light and extrabold for display use. Body Grotesque applies to the sans serif modernist skeleton little imperfections and quirks inspired by our research in early 20th century type specimens. Curves are slightly more calligraphic and a light inverse contrast is applied to bold weights, giving the typeface a slight vintage appearance in display use. Body Text, on the contrary, challenges the modernist aesthetics maximizing horizontal lines and using open terminals for letters like “s” and “a” that appear normally dark in modernist grotesques. For both variants, the normal width family is slightly condensed in an effort to maximize space usage; the Slim width is provided for extremely dense texts or side notes while the Fit width is optimized for display usage as in logos, headings or titles. The Large width manages to look elegant in its light weight while becoming a valid heading or subtitle font in its extrabold weights. All the 64 fonts in the Body superfamily include a complete latin extended character set with small caps for over 70 languages, Russian cyrillic, open type positional numbers, stylist sets and alternate forms.

Swiss 721™ is a sans serif family that ranges in style from thin to black while mixing in a few unexpected, but beautifully made and ironically flattering, outline weights that spice up the grotesque design. Couple these upstanding letterforms with matching italic styles and you have yourself a beautiful tool that is as legible on screen as it is off, has the technical prowess to conquer even the trickiest of design riddles and will work in a myriad of projects. Swiss 721 is a staple sans serif that you’ll never be sorry you have in your library. It’s been said that a simple sans serif is one of the most difficult typefaces to design. This is because when letters are reduced to their most basic details, irregularities and inconsistencies in design become immediately visible. The Swiss 721 typeface family is a quintessential example of letterforms distilled to their essence while still possessing warmth and verve. Based on mid-century sans serif typefaces, Swiss 721 is a versatile family of weights and proportions ideally suited to a wide variety of print and interactive design projects and is equally at home as headlines on billboards as it is navigation content on small screens. Swiss 721 takes the essence of mid 20th century sans serif typefaces and melds it with modern design consistency and a systematic weight range. OpenType® fonts of Swiss 721 also benefit from a rich character set and a range glyphs supporting most Western European and many Eastern European languages.

DIN has always been the typeface you root for—the one you wanted to use but just couldn’t bring yourself to because it was limited in its range of weights and widths, rendering it less useful than it could be. The century-old design has proven to be timeless, but modern use cases demanded an update, which resulted in DIN Next—a versatile sans serif family that will never go out of style. This classic design turned modern must-have includes seven weights that range from light to black, each of which has a complementary italic and condensed counterpart. The family also included four rounded designs, stretching the original concept’s range and core usability. DIN Next also boasts a suite of small capitals, old style figures, subscript, superscript and several alternate characters. A quintessential 20th-century design, its predecessor DIN was based on geometric shapes and was intended for use on traffic signs and technical documentation. Akira Kobayashi’s update made slight changes to the design, rounding the formerly squared-off corner angles to humanize the family. Rooted in over 100-years of history, it’s safe to say that there will always be a demand for the DIN design, and thanks to DIN Next, now it’s as usable as it is desired. Wondering what will pair with it perfectly? Check out Agmena™, Bembo® Book, Cardamon™, Joanna® Nova, FF Quadraat® and Quitador™. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for Tattoos

In designing the Millenium® typeface, Patrice Provost was inspired by great typographers in the great French typographic tradition to create a unique and modern variable font. His goal was to reinterpret the mid-20th century sans serif style in a variable typeface that will conform to the need of the 21st century. He succeeded with mastery in drawing large characters. In doing so, patrice provost added an exceptional dimension to the design of this typeface, a graphic personality that evolves over the styles. The attention to detail brought to each letter, each accent, each diacritic, make this font a solid tool for all Western graphic designers and layout artists. With more than 1000 glyphs per style, Millenium® can be used in more than 210 countries. With its 13 styles drawn in Classical Roman style, in Italics and in condensed Millenium® provides designers from all walks of life with a fantastic tool to bring novelty and class to your creations. Ideal for signage, Millenium, thanks to its "wide case", is also widely used for posters. It is also a gold mine for creating logos for dynamic tech start-ups. The Millenium family is made up of designs with progressive weight changes. it is very extensive. It ranges from "Super Thin" to "Extra Black". Unique in the world, its thinness makes it possible to design a very light style even to print on posters and other large formats. Designed from the outset as a variable typeface, Millenium offers a range of 900 possible variations and an infinity of creations...

LaFarge is a typeface primarily inspired by the historic mosaic titling capitals found in the New York City Subway, designed by architect Squire J. Vickers and his staff between 1915-1927. These elegant but industrial signs are characteristic of early-20th century American architectural lettering, and show an evolution of the classical Roman capitals to lower contrast, bolder serifs, and more regular character widths. The majority of this lettering still remains in subway stations today, and though elements of the style vary from sign to sign, many carry the unique features that are reflected in LaFarge: high-waisted crossbars with angled serifs, elegantly curved “R” leg, and distinctive trapezoidal serifs. LaFarge expands this style into a lower case, taking cues from contemporary typefaces like Bookman, Cheltenham, and Della Robbia. A number of typographic features are included, such as small caps, ordinal indicators / superscript letters, arrows, and a set of borders inspired by early subway tile. The result is a fashionable, architecturally-minded typeface that is just as at home on the façade of a grand public building as it is on packaging, magazines, or the web. LaFarge works well in both text and display settings, remaining readable at small sizes but showing off its elegant details in larger uses. LaFarge has received the Communication Arts Typography Award, the ADC Annual Merit Award, is included in the 2020 STA 100, and was part of designer Greg Shutters’ winning portfolio in the 2019 Type Directors Club Ascender Awards. You can download a PDF specimen of LaFarge, and also view a video of LaFarge in action.

Straying outside of our usual logo driven typestyles, but remaining within typographic styles that have a strong brandable vibe to them comes our Decade font. Spawned from the 1938 book "Letters and Lettering" by Paul Carlyle and Guy Oring, this display style has been fleshed out into a full blown typeface, rich with a personality that evokes Art Deco and Jazz sensibility yet rooted in Russian Avant Garde Constructivism. Decade has a constructivist feel, yet contains letterforms that take take its appeal to album covers, holiday cards, minimalist corporate branding, and beyond. It adopts a sturdy yet approachable style with its geometric forms and curves, creating a straightforward, powerful presence that creates a solid foundation for designers and design trends. Here's what's included with the Decade typeface: - 368 glyphs per style - including All Capitals, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 5th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Here's why Decade is right for you: - You're in need of geometric typestyle evocative of the Jazz Era - You love that Constructivist look, but are seeking something "different" - You're looking for an Art Deco Showcard style typeface. - You're looking for a typeface with letter minimalist styled geometry. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

Classic Grotesque by Rod McDonald: a traditional font with a modern face. The growing popularity of grotesque typefaces meant that many new sans serif analogues were published in the early 20th century. Setting machines were not compatible with each other but all foundries wanted to offer up-to-date fonts, and as a result numerous different typeface families appeared that seem almost identical at first glance and yet go their separate ways with regard to details. One of the first fonts created with automatic typesetting in mind was Monotype Grotesque®. Although this typeface that was designed and published by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 has since been digitalised, it has never achieved the status of other grotesque fonts of this period. But Monotype Grotesque was always one of designer Rod McDonald’s favourites, and he was overjoyed when he finally got the go-ahead from Monotype in 2008 to update this “hidden treasure”. The design process lasted four years, with regular interruptions due to the need to complete projects for other clients. In retrospect, McDonald admits that he had no idea at the beginning of just how challenging and complex a task it would be to create Classic Grotesque™. It took him considerable time before he found the right approach. In his initial drafts, he tried to develop Monotype Grotesque only to find that the result was almost identical with Arial®, a typeface that is also derived in many respects from Monotype Grotesque. It was only when he went back a stage, and incorporated elements of Bauer Font’s Venus™ and Ideal Grotesk by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry into the design process, that he found the way forward. Both these typefaces had served as the original inspiration for Monotype Grotesque. The name says it all: Classic Grotesque has all the attributes of the early grotesque fonts of the 20th century: The slightly artificial nature gives the characters a formal appearance. There are very few and only minor variations in line width. The tittles of the ‘i’ and ‘j’, the umlaut diacritic and other diacritic marks are rectangular. Interestingly, it is among the uppercase letters that certain variations from the standard pattern can be found, and it is these that enliven the typeface. Hence the horizontal bars of the “E”, “F” and “L” have bevelled terminals. The chamfered terminal of the bow of the “J” has a particular flamboyance, while the slightly curved descender of the “Q” provides for additional dynamism. The character alternatives available through the OpenType option provide the designer with a wealth of opportunities. These include a closed “a”, a double-counter “g” and an “e” in which the transverse bar deviates slightly from the horizontal. The seven different weights also extend the scope of uses of Classic Grotesque. These range from the delicate Light to the super thick Extrabold. There are genuine italic versions of each weight; these are not only slightly narrower than their counterparts, but also have variant shapes. The “a” is closed, the “f” has a semi-descender while the “e” is rounded. Its neutral appearance and excellent features mean that Classic Grotesque is suitable for use in nearly all imaginable applications. Even during the design phase, McDonald used his new font to set books and in promotional projects. However, he would be pleased to learn of possible applications that he himself has not yet considered. Classic Grotesque, which has its own individual character despite its neutral and restrained appearance, is the ideal partner for your print and web project.

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

The beauty of a classic is that it never really goes out of style. The pure, simple elements which define its greatness only strengthen and solidify with time and exposure--elements like those that inspired Ranelte, the new sans serif from insigne design. While it pays homage to the enduring DIN series of the early-20th century, the new Ranelte is far from outdated. The classic style happily connects with its more modern side, incorporating a more pronounced curve than many of its contemporaries do. This accentuated curve helps pad the type against being cold or overly technical, especially with its inherent semi-modular form and geographic feel. In short, you end up with a good vibe at the intersection of high-tech and friendly. A versatile typeface, Ranelte is designed for headline use as well as print and web copy. Within this family’s three widths and eight weights (along with italics), the letter proportions remain easily readable through their tendency toward equalisation, while still avoiding strict monospacing. The typeface also features sophisticated typographical help in the form of OpenType features. Included in the set are case-sensitive types, fractions, super- and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes using a comprehensive array of old style and lining figures. All features comprehensively cover the Latin-based languages. Thinking about it again, a classic may never go out of style, but that doesn’t mean you can’t improve on it. A little adjustment can have a beauty all its own. So discover the tuning of Ranelte, and enjoy all the new things you can do with a classic.

The long awaited and much requested revival of Robert Hunter Middleton's very popular classic is finally here. Mayfair Cursive was an instant hit for Middleton in 1932, and it went on being used widely until late into the 1970s, in spite of it never having crossed over to film type technology. Like a few of its contemporary designs, most notably the work of Lucien Bernhard, Mayfair is a formal script that is somewhat based on traditional italic forms with swash uppercase, but also employs subsidiary hairline strokes in some of its lowercase as an emphasis to the script's cursive traits. Why these gorgeous letters never made the leap into photo typesetting is a mystery to us. But here they are now in digital form, almost three quarters of a century since they first saw the light in metal. Mayfair was redrawn from original 48 pt specimen. It also underwent a major expansion of character set. Plenty of swash characters and ligatures were added. An alternate set of lowercase was also made, in order to give the user a choice between connected and disconnected variations of the same elegant script. Mayfair ships in all popular font formats. While the Postscript Type 1 and True Type versions come in two fonts (Mayfair and Mayfair Alt), the OpenType version is a single font containing all the extra characters in conveniently programmed features that are easily accessible by OpenType-supporting software applications. We are quite sure today's graphic designers will be appreciative of having access to the face that all but defined menus, romance covers, wine and liquor labels and chocolate boxes for almost two 20th century generations.

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

ITC Greengate is the result of a time-traveling, intercontinental collaboration--one between 21st century South African designer Richard Every, and early 20th century Scottish artist Jessie Marion King. Jessie Marion King (1875-1949) began her professional career as a book designer and illustrator, but over time her creativity found its outlet in many forms, including posters, jewelry, ceramics, wallpaper, fabrics, murals, interior design and costumes. After eventually settling in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, she founded Green Gate Close, a center for women artists. Although her style is reminiscent of the Art Nouveau artist, Aubrey Beardsley, King's aesthetic was an offshoot of the “Glasgow Style,” a Scottish hybrid of the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau. Often, her illustrations included hand lettering. It was just this kind of lettering that gave Richard Every his inspiration for ITC Greengate. When he saw some children's book illustrations that King created in 1898, he knew on the spot he had to complete the hand lettering as a typographic font. He began working on the typeface in 1996, but it took six years to be released as an ITC typeface. Every simplified and harmonized King's letterforms slightly and, most importantly, added a suite of lowercase characters. The result is a somewhat earthy Art Nouveau design, with a character quite distinct from typical digital revivals. Every's career has been as diverse as King's. He was born in Durban, South Africa and studied graphic design at ML Sultan Technikon in Durban. He's been an art director, freelance designer, the owner and manager of a nightclub and co-manager of a South African band. “Through it all,” he says, “typography has always been one of my passions.”

Sapore is a script font family, mostly monoline, inspired by the elegant handmade signs in the beautiful city of Venice, Italy, where I work and live. Many of these signs were made at the beginning of the 20th century by skillful craftsmen and artists, carrying that distinct vintage Italian flavour, and this is why I named the font Sapore, which means precisely flavour (also, one of the signs is from a pastry shop that makes the most delicious things). The design takes this retro vibe into the 21st century, making it up-to-date and fresh, while keeping it authentic. It is a script font, but I added some stand alone capitals that you can use in all caps words and texts effortlessly, as the open type code is taking care of using the right set of letters at the right time, I could have made two separate fonts, but I wanted to give you the best value I could and ease of use. Make sure contextual alternates are always on! There are also swashes, alternate styles, stylistic sets, small caps, 2 figure sets and decorative elements, all accessible through open type. I think the font is particularly suited for display use, as in logos, packaging design, branding, but it is readable enough for small text blocks. You can access the non-linking caps by clicking on the discretionary ligatures button. You can access the loopy caps by clicking on the titling alternates button. The main version has straight terminals but I included a round version and a calligraphic one, called “classico”. Hope you like it!

Diotima Classic is a total upheaval for the 21st century of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse's mid-20th-century Diotima, one of the most beautiful types ever cast in metal. Its roots lay in a calligraphic sheet written by Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. The text was the Hyperion to Diotima" by Friedrich Hölderlin; Diotima is the name of a Greek priestess in Plato's dialogue about love. In the philosopher's imagination, she should appear slim and beautiful. In 1948, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse finished the typeface's Roman. The Diotima family was released as a metal typeface for hand setting by D. Stempel AG in 1951-53. This original Diotima is a festive design particularly suited to invitations, programs, and poems. The delicate Italic drew attention to text passages that should be emphasized. Linotype's previous digital Diotima only had one weight, which looked great in display sizes, but was too thin for text setting. Diotima Classic has four weights. The new Regular has more robust serifs and thicker hairlines, making it more appropriate for text sizes. The Diotima variation with finer serif remains under the name Light. Gudrun Zapf von Hesse also took the opportunity in 2008 to add an extremely heavy weight to the family. In comparison to the old Diotima, letterforms of the Diotima Classic are more harmonious and balanced. The rhythm of the Italic letters in Diotima Classic is more consistent. The lining figures of the Diotima Classic align with caps, and the letter spacing of the tabular lining figures in Diotima Classic is significantly better. The forms of the figures have been improved as well."

Mackay is a powerful transitional serif in 6 weights plus matching italics, designed for screen and print. The eccentric serifs on uppercase letters like E, F, L and T are inspired by Alexander Kay’s “Ronaldson” from 1884, working as the starting point for the family. The lowercase letters follow the traditional Antiqua model with attributes tracing back to drawings from the early 20th century. The “grotesk” lowercase a, as well as the sharp lowercase s, derived from the closed shapes of uppercase letters like C, G or S, create a compact and bold appearance while a large x-height and small descenders add a modern look. In favor of a dynamic and elegant impression, the design of the italic cuts come with a strong calligraphic influence. This results in completely new shapes for letters like lowercase a or g, ensuring a smooth integration into their surrounding letters while maintaining a distinctive appearance when combining with romans. The family comes with a variety of opentype features like case sensitive shapes, old style figures, fractions, ordinals and many more. Additional attention was given to the standard and discretionary ligatures, extending the structure of the basic glyphs with elegantly designed letter combinations for g/i, i/t or s/t. According to their dynamic architecture, the italic weights are equipped with additional initial swash characters to subtle accentuate the calligraphic roots. As a result of a high stroke contrast the family works great in paragraphs with medium to large font sizes like headlines, short paragraphs or logos. With its 12 cuts, the family meets all requirements on high quality typography.

Hermann is one of our most readable typefaces so far. Since last year, the W Design team had been examining closely the possibility of developing a text font. Thus, we dug into concepts within some of our favorite novels, such as The Steppenwolf and Brave New World, written by Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley respectively. Ideas like duality, surrealism, and wildness mainly appeared. With these concepts in mind, we analyzed carefully the typefaces used in both Hesse’s and Huxley’s creations; Sabon and Garamond showed up catching our attention and, of course, awakening our admiration. Consequently, the challenge was to combine the key features of these fonts with the concepts already identified. At first, we made a text font which was suitable to compose long texts. However, we realized that we needed to refine some characteristics to convey all the ideas. A full set of capital discretionary ligatures was designed, which convert Hermann in a display font when is required. We also designed swashes (from A-Z) and final forms (in letters h, k, m, n, r and x in romans, and in letters a, d, e, h, i, l, m, n, r, t, u, x and z in italics), conveying more dynamism and versatility when it comes to composing visually. Hermann was designed not only to be accurate in terms of legibility but also to be wild and bold. That is why we took a big leap and designed from the beginning a font that is inspired by the world of 20th-century novels, using the name of one of its greatest exponents, Hermann Hesse.

Temet Nosce - Serif font family - Multilingual - 6 Styles Temet Nosce Serif font family help you develop your creative projects with its 6 styles and multilingual supports. It was inspired by the famous saying from ancient Greek mythology. The characters that make up its structure were influenced by the carved letters in the old stone inscriptions. According to ancient Greek and Roman authors, there were three maxims prominently inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "know thyself", "nothing too much" and "give a pledge and trouble is at hand". Their exact location is uncertain; they are variously stated to have been on the wall of the pronaos (forecourt), on a column, on a doorpost, on the temple front, or on the propylaea (gateway). The date of their inscription is also unknown, but they were present at least as early as the 5th century BC. Although the temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the years, the maxims appear to have persisted into the Roman era (1st century AD), at which time, according to Pliny the Elder, they were written in letters of gold. This font comes with uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, symbols and numbers, ligatures and multilingual supports. Ideal for books and magazines, editorials, headlines, websites, logos, branding, advertising and more. This font family can meet your needs in all creative projects, modern and classic. With this font you can create your unique designs. Have a good time.

Berimbau is a whimsical narrow hand-drawn typeface. It’s stylish, versatile and loaded with amazing OpenType features that do their magic in OpenType savvy applications. Its sprightly swashes and twisting stylistic alternates (say that 3 times fast!) play together to deliver a really cool contextual feature that, in a push-button way, substitutes the first letter in a word with its left swash version and the last letter with its right swash version (please type a space before and after the words).The feature also applies stylistic variants to some of the intermediate letters. Which button to push? The Contextual Alternates one! If you're not a one-click-way-person you can pick your preferred glyphs through the glyphs palette. There you’ll find at least 4 variations for each letter: left swash, right swash and 2 regular forms that correspond to the upper and lower case keys. Some letters also have a 5th variation that acts as stylistic alternate. This font is conveniently packed with the ‘access all alternates’ functionality, so when you click on a glyph at the glyphs palette you’ll see all variations available for it, making it easier to choose the one that will fit better. A bold weight was made to provide that extra-strength when a bit of… boldness is needed. Please note that it doesn’t have the advanced OpenType features (but is still very charming!). Yet, both weights have a handy set of ornaments for added yumminess.

Condemned is a light destructive sans typeface created from an old damaged ATF Specimen Book from 1912, and looks reminiscent of poorly transferred rub off type. It contains a complete alternate core character set for a subtly randomized look. Here's what's included with Condemned: 684 glyphs - including Capitals, Lowercase , Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 5th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Contextual Alternates that auto-switches between Capitals & Alternate Capitals, Lowercase and Alternate Lowercase, as well as Numerals and Alternate Numerals for visual randomness. To access the Contextual Alternates feature, you will need to be using software with Opentype compatibility otherwise you can access the alternate glyphs via a Glyphs panel. Stylistic Alternates feature that swaps all standard Capitals, Lowercase, and Numerals with their Alternates Alternate Capitals and Lowercase are complete with all international accented characters Font is provided in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here's why Condemned is for you: You're into legible but distressed typestyle that imitates a random distress to it You love condensed gothics, and want to pair them with a distressed condensed gothic You're a fan of old Letraset/Transfertype rub off lettering You're recreating weathered military ephemera and want a typeface with some tooth to it You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

Anna Gagarin is the loving matriarch of the Gagarin Family. Her life was full of love and passion. She had several affairs with Futurist and Contstructivist artist in the beginning of the 20th century. She was in love with the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovski (born on July 19th, 1893 and died in Moscow on the April 14th, 1930). She gave birth to his son Boris. She called him 'a cloud with trousers'. After this love story, Anna Gagarin met the designer and artist Gustav Klucis in Italy. His radical and political ideas were much too childish for her. After a period of love and passion Anna gave birth to his son. At that time they were in Italy, which explains his italic forms. After her return to Moscow in the beginning of the 1920's Anna was introduced by Alexander Rodchenko. They were heavenly in love but Ilja Stepanova was very jealous on her husband. Anna once said that 'Alexander fills mine construction with love...' That phrase can be an explanation for the term Constructuvism as an art movement. Alexander was the great love of Anna. She gave birth to their love-baby Dimitri Gagarin. That night Alexander designed his most famous poster. A decade before that Anna told it was
'a time for a change'. In a local bar in Sint Petersburg she met Gregory Rasputin. At that time Rasputin was a well known person and a respected member of the Sint Petersburg upper class.His diabolic character influenced Anna and after several months she gave birth to their son Kurt. He inherited the main characteristics of his father. The Gagarin Family wants to give love and wants be loved...

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

TT Corals useful links: Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Corals is a modern humanist sans-serif which has many typical traits of the beginning of the 20th century. For increased functionality, we created 6 styles of various weights: thin, light, regular, bold, extrabold and black. Its distinctive smooth lines and separate elements allow TT Corals to be used for a variety of design applications. It fits classical literature or music perfectly, and is appropriate for any creative or innovative content. TT Corals inspires new ideas for your creativity and art with its freshness and novelty. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Corals language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Conrad X. 'Cobb' Shinn (Sept. 4, 1887- Jan. 28, 1951) was a Fillmore, Indiana-born post card illustrator who sold a series of successful novelty postcard lines which included (among others) Charlie Chaplin, automobiles and the Dutch culture in the beginning years of the 20th Century. After serving in World War I, Shinn found the market for novelty postcards dwindling, and he also lent his artistic skills to cartoon features and illustrating many children's books [including his own, under the nickname 'Uncle Cobb'] which taught easy step-by-step drawing methods. Some time in the 1920s, he eventually migrated into the field of supplying electrotypes and stereotypes of 'stock cuts' of photos and line art to the printing trade. In the days of letterpress printing, this was the forerunner of paper clip art and its successor, electronic clip art. Purchasing many of his designs from 'journeyman' artists of the time, the diversity of Cobb Shinn's stock cuts library grew with the passing years, reflecting changing times, styles and topics. Some of the illustrators whose signed works were presented in Shinn's 'CUTalogs' [as he called his stock cuts catalogs] include Mary Clemmitt, Louis H. Hippe, E.C. Klinge, Nelson White, Harvey Fuller, Bess Livings, Lois Head, Harvey Peake and Van Tuyl. Upon his passing in 1951, it's not known how long the Indianapolis-based company existed before finally closing its doors. One of the more popular series of cartoons were the line illustrations of men and women affectionately called 'little big head guys' by many modern fans of these cuts because the heads of the characters were drawn somewhat larger than the rest of their bodies. Shinn Kickers JNL is a collection twenty-six of these illustrations, and just like a kick in the shin (as the pun in the name implies), these charming cartoons get your attention.

As good as Nylon is, there’s nothing better than a nice woolly blanket. The smell and coarse, uneven texture are relaxing and feel reassuring. More comfortable. In a world where technology can reach millimetric precision, sometimes it’s good to connect with the imperfect and controlled impurity that is nature. Font design in particular has matured through software that can generate the most perfect letters in the world. But most of them don’t have soul. Landa is a glimpse from the cutting edge into the past. Inspired by Venetian lettering from the 15th century, whilst giving them new meaning, its letters become expressionist and have a modern touch. A rendez-vous between Nicolas Jenson, Oldřich Menhart, and nature itself. In Landa you can feel the texture of trunks and branches, from full fertile splendour to dried-out frailty. It takes the reader for a stroll through the woods on a late autumn evening, or on an adventure through the Amazonian rainforest, depending on the weight chosen. In the lighter and italic options, Landa text is organic and rustic, and very comfortable to read. What’s more, while it’s discreet on smaller screens, when enlarged it reveals brittle and expressive calligraphic shapes. This also makes it ideal for packaging or display elements. Landa provides advanced typographical support in several languages and OpenType features including case-sensitive forms, small caps, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions, proportional and tabular figures. In this case it is technology that serves lettering, not the latter being technology dependent. Let’s not forget, as Erik Spiekermann said “we are still analogical beings. Our brains and eyes are analogical.” Perhaps that’s why to disconnect we always need to go back to forests, rivers, nature. Perhaps that’s why we still prefer wood to steel or wool to nylon.

The bâtarde flamande is a style of writing used predominantly in France and present-day Belgium in the 15th century. The style shares an ancestry with other writing styles traditionally grouped as blackletter— fraktur, textura, rotunda, and schwabacher. It had evolved, however, into an æsthetic far removed from its relatives. While high-contrast in nature, the bâtarde flamande is more delicate and dynamic than the austere and condensed fraktur and textura. Quick curves lack the rigidity of the schwabacher and rotunda. Flair through swashes is thematic, as are the variations in letterforms. The flowing rhythm, achieved through a letterform axis that is overall slightly rightward, is most noticable in the hallmark f and long s. Round forms are fused together for economy of space. It is a writing hand that, with its syncopation and fluidity, produces a vibrance uncharacteristic of other blackletters. Givry has been created in the spirit of the bâtarde flamande. It melds the particular traits compiled from the works of the style’s prominent scribes—Jean Fouquet, Loyset Liédet, and Jean Bourdichon. While suitable as an elegant and energetic display face, Givry was conceived for setting continuous text. The result of many refinements and adjustments is the preservation of the style’s irregular nature, as well as a consistency that continuous-text typography requires. Carefully researched and developed in OpenType format for a wealth of typographic features and support for more than forty languages, Givry is neither derivative nor experimental, but historically accurate. Of the many blackletter digital typefaces available, fraktur and all its connotations have become representative. In contrast, the bâtarde flamande is essentially non-existent in digital form, and has until now been overlooked. Givry provides designers and anyone searching for typographic expression a lively, delicate, and striking side to blackletter.

Minimal, modular, modern—at first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of the »future«. Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the egdes – like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »egdy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentation all on information in a nonconfomist way. Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-set-principle. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects or highlighting within the letters. For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch – Lithos, designed by Koma Amok, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

The Bauer Typefoundry first released the Beton family of types in 1936. Created by the German type designer Heinrich Jost, the present digital version of the Beton family consists of six slab serif typefaces. First developed during the early 1800s, by the 1930s slab serif faces had become one of many stock styles of type developed by foundries all over the world. Because of their distance from pen-drawn forms and their industrial appearance, they were seen as “modern” typefaces. (Their serifs kept them from being too modern.) The first slab serif typefaces were outgrowths of didone style text faces (e.g., Walbaum). As newspapers and advertising grew in importance in the western world (especially in “Wild West” America), type founders and printers began to create bigger, bolder typefaces, which would set large headlines apart from text, and each other. Through display tactics, businesses and industry could begin to visually differentiate their products from one another. This craze eventually led to the development of monster sized wood type, among other things. By the 20th Century, the typographic establishment had begun to tame, categorize, and codify 19th Century type styles. It was in the wake of this environment that Jost developed Beton. The Beton family is a type “family” in a pre-1950s sense of the word. Although six styles of type are available, only four of them fit in logical progression with each other (Beton Light, Beton Demi Bold, Beton Bold, and Beton Extra Bold). The other two members of the family, Beton Bold Condensed and Beton Bold Compressed, are more like distant cousins. They function better as single headlines to text set in Beton Light or Beton Demi Bold, of as companions to totally separate typefaces.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.