K-Type’s ‘Banks & Miles’ fonts are inspired by the geometric monoline lettering created for the British Post Office in 1970 by London design company Banks & Miles, a project initiated and supervised by partner John Miles, and which included ‘Double Line’ and ‘Single Line’ alphabets. The new digital typeface is a reworking and extension of both alphabets. Banks & Miles Double Line is provided in three weights – Light, Regular and Dark – variations achieved by adjusting the width of the inline. Banks & Miles Single Line develops the less used companion sans into a three weight family – Regular, Medium and Bold – each with an optically corrected oblique. Although the ‘Banks & Miles Double Line’ and ‘Banks & Miles Single Line’ fonts are based on the original Post Office letterforms, glyphs have been drawn from scratch and include numerous adjustments and impertinent alterations, such as narrowing the overly wide Z and shortening the leg of the K. Several disparities exist between the Post Office Double and Single Line styles, and K-Type has attempted to secure greater consistency between the two. For instance, a wide apex on the Double Line’s lowercase w is made pointed to match the uppercase W and the Single Line’s W/w. Also, the gently sloping hook of Single Line’s lowercase j is adopted for both families. The original Single Line’s R and k, which were incongruously simplified, are drawn in their more remarkable Double Line forms, and whilst the new Single Line fonts are modestly condensed where appropriate, rounded letters retain the essentially circular form of the Double Line. Many characters that were not part of the original project, such as @, ß, #, and currency symbols, have been designed afresh, and a full set of Latin Extended-A characters is included. The new fonts are a celebration of distinctive features like the delightful teardrop-shaped bowl of a,b,d,g,p and q, and a general level of elegance not always achieved by inline typefaces. The Post Office Double Line alphabet was used from the early 1970s, in different colours to denote the various parts of the Post Office business which included telecommunications, counter services and the Royal Mail. Even after the Post Office was split into separate businesses in the 1980s, Post Office Counters and Royal Mail continued use of the lettering, and a version can still be seen within the Royal Mail cruciform logo.

* For when you need the most realistic looking electronic display. * See User Manuals Main advantages: - Spacing between characters does not change when entering a decimal point or colon between them. - Custom characters can be produced by selecting any combination of segments to be displayed. Low cost electronic displays have a fixed number of segments that can be turned on or off to represent different symbols. A digital watch would be the most common example. Fonts typically available for depicting electronic displays are often in the artistic style of these common LED or LCD displays. They provide the look-and-feel, but fall short when technical accuracy is required. Failure to represent an accurate and consistent representation of the real thing can be a cringe-worthy experience for the product design and marketing team, or even the hobbyist for that matter. To solve this problem, Fortune Fonts has released a range of fonts that accurately depict the displays typically found on low cost electronic devices: watches, answering machines, car stereos, alarm clocks, microwaves and toys. These fonts come with numbers, letters and symbols predefined. However, they also allow you to create your own segment combinations for the custom symbols you need. When producing manuals, marketing material and user interfaces, accuracy is an all-or-nothing concept. Instructions in the user manual describe how to turn these fonts into realistic displays according to your own design, in the manner of the images above. If you cannot see a license option for your specific application, such a license may be purchased from here. By purchasing &/or using &/or distributing the fonts the buyer user and distributor (including Monotype Imaging Inc. & Monotype Imaging Hong Kong) agree to (1) indemnify & hold harmless the foundry, for any consequential, incidental, punitive or other damages of any kind resulting from the use of the deliverables including, but not limited to, loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, savings, due to; including, but not limited to, failure of the deliverables to perform it’s described function, or the deliverable’s infringement of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights, contract claims, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights of the foundry, distributor, buyer or other parties (2) not use the fonts to assist in design of, or be incorporated into, non-software displays

* For when you need the most realistic looking electronic display. * See User Manuals Main advantages: - Spacing between characters does not change when entering a decimal point or colon between them. - Custom characters can be produced by selecting any combination of segments to be displayed. Low cost electronic displays have a fixed number of segments that can be turned on or off to represent different symbols. A digital watch would be the most common example. Fonts typically available for depicting electronic displays are often in the artistic style of these common LED or LCD displays. They provide the look-and-feel, but fall short when technical accuracy is required. Failure to represent an accurate and consistent representation of the real thing can be a cringe-worthy experience for the product design and marketing team, or even the hobbyist for that matter. To solve this problem, Fortune Fonts has released a range of fonts that accurately depict the displays typically found on low cost electronic devices: watches, answering machines, car stereos, alarm clocks, microwaves and toys. These fonts come with numbers, letters and symbols predefined. However, they also allow you to create your own segment combinations for the custom symbols you need. When producing manuals, marketing material and user interfaces, accuracy is an all-or-nothing concept. Instructions in the user manual describe how to turn these fonts into realistic displays according to your own design, in the manner of the images above. If you cannot see a license option for your specific application, such a license may be purchased from here. By purchasing &/or using &/or distributing the fonts the buyer user and distributor (including Monotype Imaging Inc. & Monotype Imaging Hong Kong) agree to (1) indemnify & hold harmless the foundry, for any consequential, incidental, punitive or other damages of any kind resulting from the use of the deliverables including, but not limited to, loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, savings, due to; including, but not limited to, failure of the deliverables to perform it’s described function, or the deliverable’s infringement of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights, contract claims, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights of the foundry, distributor, buyer or other parties (2) not use the fonts to assist in design of, or be incorporated into, non-software displays.

* For when you need the most realistic looking electronic display. * See User Manuals Main advantages: - Spacing between characters does not change when entering a decimal point or colon between them. - Custom characters can be produced by selecting any combination of segments to be displayed. Low cost electronic displays have a fixed number of segments that can be turned on or off to represent different symbols. A digital watch would be the most common example. Fonts typically available for depicting electronic displays are often in the artistic style of these common LED or LCD displays. They provide the look-and-feel, but fall short when technical accuracy is required. Failure to represent an accurate and consistent representation of the real thing can be a cringe-worthy experience for the product design and marketing team, or even the hobbyist for that matter. To solve this problem, Fortune Fonts has released a range of fonts that accurately depict the displays typically found on low cost electronic devices: watches, answering machines, car stereos, alarm clocks, microwaves and toys. These fonts come with numbers, letters and symbols predefined. However, they also allow you to create your own segment combinations for the custom symbols you need. When producing manuals, marketing material and user interfaces, accuracy is an all-or-nothing concept. Instructions in the user manual describe how to turn these fonts into realistic displays according to your own design, in the manner of the images above. If you cannot see a license option for your specific application, such a license may be purchased from here. By purchasing &/or using &/or distributing the fonts the buyer user and distributor (including Monotype Imaging Inc. & Monotype Imaging Hong Kong) agree to (1) indemnify & hold harmless the foundry, for any consequential, incidental, punitive or other damages of any kind resulting from the use of the deliverables including, but not limited to, loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, savings, due to; including, but not limited to, failure of the deliverables to perform it’s described function, or the deliverable’s infringement of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights, contract claims, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights of the foundry, distributor, buyer or other parties (2) not use the fonts to assist in design of, or be incorporated into, non-software displays

The Postea font family is Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s take on German geometric typefaces, reshaped with the right attributes for setting paragraphs and headings, and perfect for branding and text use. Some typefaces are a rough tool, like a pumice rock: abrasive to the senses, unforgiving, and unhelpful for most reading situations. Postea is an obsidian: smooth and classy, with attractive nuances in any light. The classic curves and purposeful details keep its individuality intact while allowing it to fit an incredible range of geometric font needs. Because of these qualities, Postea makes normal reading in paragraphs a cinch and your branding memorable. Compared to midcentury attributes of restraint and a sparse appearance, Postea’s deliberate play between character widths injects life and distinctiveness into its personality. The default ‘t, f’ have lyrical doses akin to a robust evening drink and are rounded out with a serpentine ‘s’ and rotund ‘o, g, b’. Another nice surprise awaits: spacing for the Hairline weight is tighter for optimal use in large headings and titles, while the regular weights have the expected, slightly looser spacing for text. Setting the test word ‘bogarts’ brings all this together nicely, invoking a balance between a constructed and human feel while brushing away the dust from a century of derivatives. Postea is opinionated and its modern stylistic sets allow it to be accommodating with softer, specially-designed alternative characters. SS01 replaces ‘b, f, M, m, t’, while SS02 changes only the lowercase ‘a’ to the round style, and SS03 swaps out the angled ‘y’ for a straight version. The fourth and sixth stylistic sets are packed with wallpaper-worthy geometric patterns, ornaments, arrows, and symbols aplenty. Postea’s 14 styles (seven upright and italic) and two variable fonts are accompanied by an all-new family of icons in three weights, which we developed a new, easy way to activate. Simply bookend the desired icon name with colons (:arrowUp: :chargingStation: :aid: :firstAid:), making sure to capitalise each word after the first word, then highlight and activate SS05. Icons include wayfinding, social interface, sanitary precautions like face masks, thermometers, and hand washing, and much more. Postea is resilient in the number of ways the family can be used, and its recognisable characters make it a prime selection for branding, signage, corporate typefaces, and magazines. Beginning with midcentury virtues, Postea is the rational response for text — a lyrical take on geometric sans serifs.

* For when you need the most realistic looking electronic display. * See User Manuals Main advantages: - Spacing between characters does not change when entering a decimal point or colon between them. - Custom characters can be produced by selecting any combination of segments to be displayed. Low cost electronic displays have a fixed number of segments that can be turned on or off to represent different symbols. A digital watch would be the most common example. Fonts typically available for depicting electronic displays are often in the artistic style of these common LED or LCD displays. They provide the look-and-feel, but fall short when technical accuracy is required. Failure to represent an accurate and consistent representation of the real thing can be a cringe-worthy experience for the product design and marketing team, or even the hobbyist for that matter. To solve this problem, Fortune Fonts has released a range of fonts that accurately depict the displays typically found on low cost electronic devices: watches, answering machines, car stereos, alarm clocks, microwaves and toys. These fonts come with numbers, letters and symbols predefined. However, they also allow you to create your own segment combinations for the custom symbols you need. When producing manuals, marketing material and user interfaces, accuracy is an all-or-nothing concept. Instructions in the user manual describe how to turn these fonts into realistic displays according to your own design, in the manner of the images above. If you cannot see a license option for your specific application, such a license may be purchased from here. By purchasing and/or using and/or distributing the font, the buyer, user and distributor (including Monotype Imaging Inc. & Monotype Imaging Hong Kong) agrees to (1) indemnify and hold harmless the font foundry and neither the font foundry nor distributor is responsible to the buyer or user or any other party for any consequential, incidental, special, punitive or other damages of any kind resulting from the use of the deliverables including, but not limited to, loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, savings or expected savings, due to; including, but not limited to, failure of the deliverables to perform it’s described function, or the deliverable’s infringement of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights, contract claims, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights of the foundry, distributor, buyer or other parties, (2) not use the fonts to assist in design of, or be incorporated into, non-software displays.

A FEW THOUGHTS Indie is a trendy script, result of the wide range of possibilities that can be achieved using a pointed brush. (1) “You Only Live Once” say The Strokes, (to me, symbols of indie music) so, what would represent that sensation of volatility better than a brush? As you may already know, this time inspiration came from hipsters and indies around us: We may sometimes criticise them, we may sometimes want to be like them, but the truth is that the universo gráfico they generated these past years is gigantic, full of colour and variations. (2) Brush lettering and Sign painting are fields I've been fond of since I started as a designer. Nowadays, these styles are getting a lot of attention and maybe it’s due to the undeniable mark of life that is materialised when using a brush. This tool is so expressive that shows the passions and fears of the artist, and materialises that idea of “living the present”, so popular in this era. When you see Indie, you think of skaters, rollers, surfers, hiphop dancers, street artists, summer, and why not? California beaches. So if you feel life is only one, it’s high time you got Indie into your fonts' collection! STYLES Indie comes in 4 styles plus another one which consists only in capitals. Indie; Indie Shade; Indie Shade Solo; Indie Inline are all open-type programmed and have exactly the same glyphs and metrics, so you can combine them without probem. (I.E. You may use Indie Inline, then write the same word using Indie Shade Solo, and finally put them together). In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, the font has nice results when fi ligatures is activated. However, if you want a more casual look, activate the contextual and the decorative ligatures. NOTES 1. After several years of practicing calligraphy I can say that to me, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to create fonts out of your own handlettering. I owe a lot of this brush-style to Carl Rohrs. He was the very first calligrapher who taught it to me. His style is unique and what he can do with a brush is truly marvelous. I'm serious. 2. In spite of some particular cases, I can say I'm happy to live in a present in which Typography is living a kind of Renaissance along with Lettering. Like it happened with W. Morris a hundred years ago, handcrafts are being revalued/reborn, and some of this may be happening thanks to these indie designers that, trying to be unique, gave new/fresh air to different areas of graphic design.

Mr Eaves is the often requested and finally finished sans-serif companion to Mrs Eaves, one of Emigre’s classic typeface designs. Created by Zuzana Licko, this 2009 addition to the Emigre Type Library expands the versatility of the original Mrs Eaves with two complimentary families: Mr Eaves Sans and Mr Eaves Modern. Mr Eaves was based on the proportions of Mrs Eaves, but Licko took some liberty with its design. One of the main concerns was to avoid creating a typeface that looked like it simply had its serifs cut off. And while it matches Mrs Eaves in weight, color, and armature, Mr Eaves stands as its own typeface with many unique characteristics. The Sans version relates most directly to the original serif version, noticeably in the roman lower case letters a, e, and g, as well as in subtle details such as the angled lead in strokes, the counter forms of the b, d, p, and q, and the flared leg of the capital R, the tail of the Q. The distinctly loose-fitting letter spacing of Mrs Eaves was applied also to the Sans version. This, together with generous built-in line spacing due to a small x-height and extended ascenders and descenders, renders the same kind of lightness and airiness when setting text that is so characteristic of Mrs Eaves. Deviations from the original Mrs Eaves are evident in the overall decrease of contrast, as well as in details such as the flag and tail of the f and j, and the finial of the t, which were shortened to maintain a cleaner, sans serif look. And the lower case c had to be balanced out differently after it lost its top ball terminal. And with the loss of serifs, Mr Eaves set width is slightly narrower. Mr Eaves Italic also carries over many forms from its Mrs Eaves model, most notably the v, w, and z, which are unusually flamboyant for a sans italic design. It also utilizes lead in and terminal tails that are reminiscent of the serif italic. The biggest departure here is the width of the characters. The extra narrow gauge and delicate features seemed more appropriate for the Serif than the Sans. To allow for a comfortable fit, Mr Eaves Italic has a more robust design and wider character width. Meanwhile, the Modern family provides an overall less humanistic look, with simpler and more geometric-looking shapes, most noticeably in the squared-off terminals and symmetric lower case counters. This family has moved furthest from its roots, yet still contains some of Mrs Eaves’ DNA. The Modern Italic is free of tails, and overall the Modern exhibits more repetition of forms, projecting a cleaner look. This provides stronger differentiation from the serif version whenever a more contrasting look is desired. Each version (Sans and Modern) contains its own set of alternates providing unique options for applications such as headlines, word logos, letterheads, pull quotes, and other short text settings. Both the Sans and Modern come in six weights. The simpler forms of a sans-serif provide the opportunity of more weights than do serif letter forms, which are more complex in structure, making it difficult to accommodate additional weight without distortions. Regular and Bold match the original Mrs Eaves weights, while the Heavy provides an additional weight for extra emphasis.

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Mr Eaves is the sans-serif companion to Mrs Eaves, one of Emigre’s classic typeface designs. Created by Zuzana Licko, this 2009 addition to the Emigre Type Library expands the versatility of the original Mrs Eaves with two complementary families: Mr Eaves Sans and Mr Eaves Modern. Mr Eaves was based on the proportions of Mrs Eaves, but Licko took some liberty with its design. One of the main concerns was to avoid creating a typeface that looked like it simply had its serifs cut off. And while it matches Mrs Eaves in weight, color, and armature, Mr Eaves stands as its own typeface with many unique characteristics. The Sans version relates most directly to the original serif version, noticeably in the roman lower case letters a, e, and g, as well as in subtle details such as the angled lead in strokes, the counter forms of the b, d, p, and q, and the flared leg of the capital R, the tail of the Q. The distinctly loose-fitting letter spacing of Mrs Eaves was applied also to the Sans version. This, together with generous built-in line spacing due to a small x-height and extended ascenders and descenders, renders the same kind of lightness and airiness when setting text that is so characteristic of Mrs Eaves. Deviations from the original Mrs Eaves are evident in the overall decrease of contrast, as well as in details such as the flag and tail of the f and j, and the finial of the t, which were shortened to maintain a cleaner, sans serif look. And the lower case c had to be balanced out differently after it lost its top ball terminal. And with the loss of serifs, Mr Eaves set width is slightly narrower. Mr Eaves Italic also carries over many forms from its Mrs Eaves model, most notably the v, w, and z, which are unusually flamboyant for a sans italic design. It also utilizes lead in and terminal tails that are reminiscent of the serif italic. The biggest departure here is the width of the characters. The extra narrow gauge and delicate features seemed more appropriate for the Serif than the Sans. To allow for a comfortable fit, Mr Eaves Italic has a more robust design and wider character width. Meanwhile, the Modern family provides an overall less humanistic look, with simpler and more geometric-looking shapes, most noticeably in the squared-off terminals and symmetric lower case counters. This family has moved furthest from its roots, yet still contains some of Mrs Eaves' DNA. The Modern Italic is free of tails, and overall the Modern exhibits more repetition of forms, projecting a cleaner look. This provides stronger differentiation from the serif version whenever a more contrasting look is desired. Each version (Sans and Modern) contains its own set of alternates providing unique options for applications such as headlines, word logos, letterheads, pull quotes, and other short text settings. Both the Sans and Modern come in three weights. The simpler forms of a sans-serif provide the opportunity of more weights than do serif letter forms, which are more complex in structure, making it difficult to accommodate additional weight without distortions. Regular and Bold match the original Mrs Eaves weights, while the Heavy provides an additional weight for extra emphasis.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

The Eskapade font family is the result of Alisa Nowak’s research into Roman and German blackletter forms, mainly Fraktur letters. The idea was to adapt these broken forms into a contemporary family instead of creating a faithful revival of a historical typeface. On one hand, the ten normal Eskapade styles are conceived for continuous text in books and magazines with good legibility in smaller sizes. On the other hand, the six angled Eskapade Fraktur styles capture the reader’s attention in headlines with its mixture of round and straight forms as seen in ‘e’, ‘g’, and ‘o’. Eskapade works exceptionally well for branding, logotypes, and visual identities, for editorials like magazines, fanzines, or posters, and for packaging. Eskapade roman adopts a humanist structure, but is more condensed than other oldstyle serifs. The reason behind this stems from the goal of closely resembling the Fraktur style to create harmony in mixed text settings. Legibility is enhanced by its low contrast between thick and thin strokes and its tall x-height. Eskapade offers an airy and light typographic colour with its smooth design. Eskapade italic is based on the Cancellaresca script and shows some particularities in its condensed and round forms. This structure also provided the base for Eskapade Fraktur italic. Eskapade Fraktur is more contrasted and slightly bolder than the usual darkness of a regular weight. The innovative Eskapade Fraktur italic, equally based on the Cancellaresca script previously mentioned, is secondarily influenced by the Sütterlin forms — an unique script practiced in Germany in the vanishingly short period between 1915 and 1941. The new ornaments are also hybrid Sütterlin forms to fit with the smooth roman styles. Although there are many Fraktur-style typefaces available today, they usually lack italics, and their italics are usually slanted uprights rather than proper italics. This motivated extensive experimentation with the italic Fraktur shapes and resulted in Eskapade Fraktur’s unusual and interesting solutions. In addition to standard capitals, it offers a second set of more decorative capitals with double-stroke lines to intensify creative application and encourage experimental use. The Thin and Black Fraktur styles are meant for display sizes (headlines, posters, branding, and signage). A typeface with this much tension needs to keep a good harmony between strokes and counters, so Eskapade Black has amplified inktraps and a more dynamic structure seen in the contrast between straight and round forms. These qualities make the family bolder and more enticing, especially with the included uppercase alternates. The Fraktur’s black weights are strident, refusing to let the white of the paper win the tug-of-war. It also won’t give away its secrets: Is it modern or historic, edgy or amicable, beguiling ornamentation or brutish presentation? That all depends on how the radically expanded Eskapade family is used, but its 16 fonts certainly aren’t tame.

Paverify is an all-caps geometric slab serif display face inspired by a particular pavement tile component which is evoking a blocky “I” letter. All other characters were interpreted based on its look and drawn accordingly. There are three uppercase Roman fonts in different weights and widths substantially. With the additional versions, type family consisting of 7 fonts in total. Over 220 Latin, Cyrillic and Greek script languages supported. Each font contains an extensive multilingual support with more than 1600 glyphs and OpenType features, including number forms, fractions, and stylistic alternate sets those provide different looks by the typographic preferences. For the lowercase letters there are small caps variants, i.e., shorter caps. These also have identical glyphs and matching marks to enable “Small Capitals From Capitals” feature. Narrower Medium and Bold styles was produced to accompany the Black first design. Paverify comes with an ornaments font named as “Extras”, which contains geometric graphical elements, i.e., paver stone patterns, banner/sticker background sets, star comps and a collection of catchwords to simplify creating feature rich layouts. As is known as interlocking paver in certain regions — a rectangular shape with the distinctive diagonal tabs — transcribing the simplest letter to draw into the whole alphabet was a challenging task. Not only it was the single thing that can be used as a source, considering its thick form in roughly 1.2:1 proportions compared to the sophistication of letterforms was the challenge. Starting point was keeping design consistent while both avoiding and preserving a particular appearance to achieve a similar texture, basically a repeating pattern on the streets. In contrary of a traditional approach, Paverify tend to have more contrast than the other slab serifs which helps to reduce massive stem weight of the source form. This look contributes to its hand painted sign effect achieved in a certain degree, which may otherwise impractical to transform because the source material is an inorganic, static form by definition. Tight and even spacing of the pavement tiles was inspirational for the kerning balance of the letters. Although the lighter weights have more space between the letter pairs, black weight adjusted as to be close to each other as the original grid. Tight spacing can be ignored by using Capital Spacing OpenType feature for the Outline versions as layer fonts. In one stroke, this gives an extra space between the letters to avoid diagonal armed letter terminals overlap. Black typographic colour and texture gives a sturdy appearance to the lines, it is useful for the projects where a robust display faces preferred for the titling, strong headlines, letter stacks, dropcaps, initials, short names on materials such as advertisements, book covers, posters, logotypes, wordmarks, package designs, and more in print or digital. Paverify can be paired as a complimentary face in a combination with broader type systems, where vintage look compositions and woodcut style fusions requiring an extra stunning texture.

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

An inline adaptation of a distinctive slab serif, Cesium is an unusually responsive display face that maintains its high energy across a range of different moods. The Cesium typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2020. An energetic inline adaptation of Hoefler’s broad-shouldered Vitesse Black typeface (2000), Cesium is named for the fifty-fifth member of the periodic table of the elements, a volatile liquid metal that presents as a scintillating quicksilver. From the desk of the designer, Jonathan Hoefler: I always felt that our Vitesse typeface, an unusual species of slab serif, would take well to an inline. Vitesse is based not on the circle or the ellipse, but on a less familiar shape that has no common name, a variation on the ‘stadium’ that has two opposing flat edges, and two gently rounded sides. In place of sharp corners, Vitesse uses a continuously flowing stroke to manage the transition between upright and diagonal lines, most apparent on letters like M and N. A year of making this gesture with my wrist, both when drawing letterforms and miming their intentions during design critiques, left me thinking about a reduced version of the typeface, in which letters would be defined not by inside and outside contours, but by a single, fluid raceway. Like most straightforward ideas, this one proved challenging to execute, but its puzzles were immensely satisfying to solve. Adding an inline to a typeface is the quickest way to reveal its secrets. All the furtive adjustments in weight and size that a type designer makes — relieving congestion by thinning the center arm of a bold E, or lightening the intersecting strokes of a W — are instantly exposed with the addition of a centerline. Adapting an existing alphabet to accommodate this inline called for renovating every single character (down to the capital I, the period, and even the space), in some cases making small adjustments to reallocate weight, at other times redesigning whole parts of the character set. The longer we worked on the typeface, the more we discovered opportunities to turn these constraints into advantages, solving stubbornly complex characters like € and § by redefining how an inline should behave, and using these new patterns to reshape the rest of the alphabet. The New Typeface The outcome is a typeface we’re calling Cesium. It shares many of Vitesse’s qualities, its heartbeat an energetic thrum of motorsports and industry, and it will doubtless be welcome in both hardware stores and Hollywood. But we’ve been surprised by Cesium’s more reflective moods, its ability to be alert and softspoken at the same time. Much in the way that vibrant colors can animate a typeface, we’ve found that Cesium’s sensitivity to spacing most effectively changes its voice. Tighter leading and tracking turns up the heat, heightening Cesium’s sporty, high-tech associations, but with the addition of letterspacing it achieves an almost literary repose. This range of voices recommends Cesium not only to logos, book covers, and title sequences, but to projects that regularly must adjust their volume, such as identities, packaging, and editorial design. Read more about how to use Cesium. About the Name Cesium is a chemical element, one of only five metals that’s liquid at room temperature. Resembling quicksilver, cesium is typically stored in a glass ampule, where the tension between a sturdy outer vessel and its volatile contents is scintillating. The Cesium typeface hopes to capture this quality, its bright and insistent inline restrained by a strong and sinuous container. Cesium is one of only three H&Co typefaces whose name comes from the periodic table, a distinction it shares with Mercury and Tungsten. At a time when I considered a more sci-fi name for the typeface, I learned that these three elements have an unusual connection: they’re used together in the propulsion system of nasa’s Deep Space 1, the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by an ion drive. I found the association compelling, and adopted the name at once, with the hope that designers might employ the typeface in the same spirit of discovery, optimism, and invention. —JH Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

This vintage, iconic typeface of original Czech letter-founding has been faithfully revised, extended and newly rendered in 2012. The majority of Vojtěch Preissig’s type faces have been, from their very creation, subject to controversial evaluations which might perhaps fill more pages than have been set in these type faces so far. The considerable technological backwardness of Czech typography between the world wars intensified the author’s creative effort even more. He had been devoting thought to his Antikva type face from 1912 onwards and dozens of hardly perceptible nuances of the same design have been preserved in his drawings. It was his only book type face, but it shows no signs of any hard struggle in creating it. Its extraordinary vividness and elegance are really surprising. It may be still indebted to the forms of Art Nouveau, which was withering away at that time, but its proportions, colour and expression inspire other Czech type designers. Preissig’s Antikva, Menhart’s Figural (and also Růžička’s Fairfield) and Týfa’s Antikva represent a clear line of development, very far away from the soft aesthetics of Tusar, Dyrynk or Brunner. The co-author of the modification for computer composition is Otakar Karlas. Without his experience the work would remain only a shadow of Preissig’s design. Our aim was to produce a large family of type faces for the setting of both books and jobbing works. The digital transcription of Preissig’s Antikva came into existence from summer till winter 1998. The direct model for this type face is the most successful, two-cicero (24 pt.) design dating from 1925. The designs of other sizes (12 pt., 14 pt., 16 pt. and then 36 pt. and 49 pt.) lack vividness and are the source of the widespread mistaken belief that Preissig’s Antikva consists of straight lines. That is, unfortunately, how even Muzika and Menhart describe it. Neither is it a Cubist type face as many of the semi-educated think today. Special attention had to be paid to italics. It is apparent that their design is not as perfect as that of Preissig’s Antikva. In contradistinction to the original we have deleted almost all lower serifs in the lower-case letters, enlarged the angle of inclination and completely redesigned the letters a, e, g, s, k, x, ... All crotches have been lightened by marked incisions. In other words, none of the italic letters corresponds to Preissig’s model. The signs which were missing have been supplemented with regard to the overall character of the alphabet. Preissig did not deal with bold designs, but the crystal-clear logic of his “chopping-off” of the round strokes enabled us to complete the type face family without any greater doubts. An excessively fragile type face, however, cannot be used for setting in smaller sizes; that is why we have prepared a separate family of text designs which has shortened ascenders, normal accents, slightly thickened strokes, and is, in general, optically more quiet and robust. We recommend it for sizes under 12 points. By contrast, the elegance of the basic design will be appreciated most in the sizes used for headlines and posters. Preissig’s Antikva is suitable not only for art books and festive prints, but also for poetry and shorter texts.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

The Tecn@ Dark&Light Triangle Background Nomenclature Font family is differentiated by the direction of the triangle tip in the 4 cardinal points. The family were designed to head, enumerate, indicate or highlight writings or design plans, for this reason, the characters are available only in capital letters and some signs or symbols that can serve such purposes. A triangle or empty character is included so that the user can use it overlaying any character of his choice or to be used alone. What is Lorem Ipsum? Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum. Why do we use it? It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like). Where does it come from? Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32. The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced below for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham. Where can I get some? There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

The Generic Typeface Collection is a series of sans-serif typefaces inspired by the craftsmanship of graphic design, typesetting, and printing in the analogue era – before Adobe, Macintosh computers and desktop publishing – when dinosaurs ruled the earth. With the use of various typesetting apparatuses or dry transfer type, photo copiers, and shooting layouts and paste-ups to film, the printed results was not as exact, precise and predictable as it is today. When examining old prints, it is difficult not to like the way that characters in over- or underexposed film have a special type of vibe to them that is often sadly lost in today’s pursuit of total perfection. Encouraged by this, I saw a need for a collection of typefaces that are non-clinical and non-conformist, and some that are coarse, rough and distorted – errors that might come from poor exposure when put on film, enlargements from small point texts, or maybe quality loss from successive generations of photocopies. Or all of the above. This is an attempt to incorporate spirit and personality into a set of typefaces without losing distinction. You might call it a homage to non-perfection. I call it human. The Generic Typeface Collection consists of 11 fonts divided into four series. The three standard series – the Formal Release series, the Coarse Copy series, and the Rough Display series – all contain three fonts each. The Extra Splendor series contains a couple of shadow fonts for that little extra sparkle. Formal Release – Handcrafted & Clean The Formal Release series features sans-serif typefaces for everyday use. They are handcrafted and clean, human and uncomplicated. The Formal Release series contains three typefaces that add tons of personality to any text. G10 FR ‘Slim’ – a slightly under-exposed and clean typeface in a regular weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) G20 FR ‘Classic’ – a properly exposed clean typeface in a bold weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) G30 FR ‘Bulky’ – a heavily over-exposed clean typeface in an ultra weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) Coarse Copy – Dirty & Rough The Coarse Copy series features non-conformist typefaces that are worn and rough, maybe after going through that bad copier a few times too much. The Coarse Copy series contains three sans-serif typefaces that add tons of spirit to any text without compromising too much on legibility. Try them on in poster-sizes and everyone will know that you mean business. G40 CC ‘Slender’ – an under-exposed coarse typeface in a regular weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) G50 CC ‘Typic’ – a properly exposed coarse typeface in a bold weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) G60 CC ‘Huge’ – a heavily over-exposed coarse typeface in an ultra weight (228 glyphs - 1 alternate) Rough Display – Faded & Decorative The Rough Display series features attention-seeking decorative typefaces in three feature-packed fonts. Faded and gritty like the image distortion and degradation from successive generations of photocopies, they are eye-catching typefaces intended to stand out in bigger point sizes. Use these typefaces for signage, headlines and similar situations were a strong typographic statement is desired. We have packed no less than 1,334 alternate characters and 212 discretionary ligatures into this series for a greater chance of not having characters that look exactly the same more than once. G70 RD ‘Slinky’ – an under-exposed rough and decorative typeface in a regular weight (741 glyphs – 448 alternates – 66 discretionary ligatures) G80 RD ‘Standard’ – a properly-exposed rough and decorative typeface in a bold weight (748 glyphs – 448 alternates – 73 discretionary ligatures) G90 RD ‘Swollen’ – a heavily over-exposed rough and decorative typeface in an ultra weight (748 glyphs – 448 alternates – 73 discretionary ligatures) Extra Splendor – Sparkling & Extraordinary The Extra Splendor series features two shadow typefaces for that little extra sparkle. One clean shadow to be used with G20 FR ‘Classic’, and one rough shadow to be used with G80 RD ‘Standard’. Having the shadows separate from the main typeface adds another layer of expressiveness in that you can try out color combinations for that extra splendor. Tips for matching (applies to both the base font and the shadow font): Set the kerning to Metric, not optical. Increase tracking to accommodate for the shadows extra width. G25 ES ‘Classic Shadow’ – a clean shadow to be used with G20 FR ‘Classic’ (228 glyphs – 1 alternate) G85 ES ‘Standard Shadow’ – a rough shadow to be used with 80 RD ‘Standard’ (227 glyphs) OpenType features – alternate characters and discretionary ligatures – can be accessed by using OpenType friendly professional design applications, such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, and Adobe Photoshop.

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005

Tavern is a super font family based on our Algerian Mesa design, with Tavern we've greatly expanded the usability by creating light and bold weights plus all new for 2020 with the introduction of extra bold and black weights Tavern is now a five weight family. The addition of the bold weight made it possible to go further with the design by adding open faced shadowed, outline and fill versions. Please note, the fill fonts are aligned to go with the open faced versions, they may work with the outline versions, however you will have to apply them one letter at a time. The Tavern Fill fonts may also be used a stand alone font, however, the spacing is much wider than the regular solid black weights of Tavern. In the old days of printing, fill fonts rarely lined up perfect with the open or outline font, this created a misprinted look that's much in style today. To create that misprinted look using two different colors, try layering the outline fonts offset over the top of the solid black versions. Next we come to the small caps and X versions, for a font that's mostly seen used in all caps we felt a small caps would come in handy. The X in Tavern X stands for higher X-height, we've taken our standard lowercase and raised it for greater visibility in small text and for signage where you want the look of a lowercase but it needs to be readable from the street. In August of 2016 I started the project of expanding this font into more weights after seeing the font in use where someone tried creating a bold version by adding a stroke fill around the letters. The result didn't look very good, the stroke fill also caused the shadow line to merge with the serifs on some letters. This lead me to experiment to see if a new bold weight was possible for this font and I'm pleased to say that it was. After the bold weight was finished I decided to type the regular and bold weights together in a first word thin second word bold combination, however the weight difference between the two wasn't enough contrast. This lead me to wonder if a lighter weight was possible for this font, as you can see yes it was, so now for the first time in the history of this old 1908 type design you can type a first word thin second word bold combination. So why the name change from Algerian to Tavern? Since the original font was designed in England by the Stephenson Blake type foundry I decided to give this font a name that reminded you of the country it came from, however, there were other more technical reasons. During the creation of the bold weight the engraved shadow line was sticking out too far horizontally on the bottom right of the serifs dramatically throwing the whole font off balance. The original font encountered this problem on the uppercase E, L and Z, their solution was a diagonal cut corner which was now needed across any glyph in the new bold weight with a serif on the bottom right side. In order to make the light and regular weights blend well with the bold weight diagonal cut offs were needed and added as well. This changed the look of the font from the original and why I decided to change the name, additional concerns were, if you're designing a period piece where the font needs to be authentic then this font would be too new. Regular vs. Alt version? The alternate version came about after seeing the regular version used as a logo and secondary text on a major product label. I felt that some of the features of the regular version didn't look good as smaller secondary text, this gave me the idea to create an alternate version that would work well for secondary text in an advertising layout. But don't stop there, the alternate version can be used as a logo too and feel free to exchange letters between both regular and alternate versions. Where are the original alternates from Algerian? Original alternates from Algerian are built into the regular versions of Tavern plus new alternates have been created. We're excited to introduce, for the first time, all new swash capitals for this classic font, you're going to love the way they look in your ad layout, sign or logo. The best way to access alternate letters in Tavern is with the glyph map in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign products, from Adobe Illustrator you can copy and paste into Photoshop as a smart object and take advantage of all the text layer style features Photoshop has to offer. There may be third party character maps available for accessing alternate glyphs but we can't advise you in that area. I know what you're thinking, will there be a Tavern Condensed? It takes a lot of hours to produce a large font family such as this, a future condensed version will depend on how popular this standard version is. If you love Tavern we're happy to introduce the first weathered edge version of this font called Bay Tavern available in February 2020.

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

Aphrodite Slim Pro is not just a lighter version of its sister Aphrodite Pro. Aphrodite Slim Pro has duplicated the quantity of characters of its partner, and that means more than 500 new glyphs, reaching a total of more than 1000. More delicate and meticulous, Aphrodite Slim Pro is once more a new typography with deep calligraphic ideals: We immersed ourselves into the world of each calligraphy ductus and each calligraphy masters by studying from decoration to lettering books. This was the key for the logic of Aphrodite Slim’s behavior. The new concept of Aphrodite Slim Pro was to join diverse styles of calligraphy in one in order to achieve an autonomous expressiveness, in fact, this is what calligraphy aims to, and we agreed to bring those ideals to the world of typography: It is justifiable to be inspired in hundred-year-old calligraphies, but it is even better if the results you obtain have a plus. A personal plus. During the creation process we were wondering whether it was possible to mix certain strokes of such rigid styles as uncial, (Li·n’s favourite style), with strokes of the copperplate, (Sav’s favourite style), and also to take and mix cualities of cancelleresca cursiva, formata and moderna; finally giving our creation a roman-transition italic look. So Aphrodite Slim takes ideals and aspects from those formal styles, following its own logic though, and emphasizing the fact of being a decorative typography. Calligraphy masters of our past are who we are in debt with. They are the cause we have lovely letters now. They have been spontaneous at the moment of creation, what differs from the type-designers of nowadays, whose spontaneity is more limited. Digital faces that we are used to see these days are a result of long hours of optical adjustments, grids, macros and inspirations of other existing typography, but without personal contributions. Aphrodite Slim wants to refute this. Its mission is to rescue de spontaneity of the artesanal lettering in order to obtain unique words; those which only calligraphy masters of our past or lettering artists of our present could give us. We have worked hard to achieve this, making Aphrodite the most universal font we could: It was necessary to study the most common words, focalizing more in the ones referring to “sensitivity”, of four of the most spoken languages in the world. Aphrodite Slim has an enormous quantity of decorative characters and special ligatures for phrases and words in English, French, Spanish and German. (See English, Français, Español, Deutsch PDF in the gallery section). We promise there is no existing type that decorates/ligates glyphs and words like Aphrodite Slim does: It is the first time a font like this really considers its purpose. -The way glyphs are ligated is insane- : Aphrodite Slim rescues some ideals of persons like Jan van den Velde (Italian cancilleresca writing of XVI Century) who understands ascenders and descenders as possibilities to beautify the lines of writing with curved strokes that seem to be dancing above and below of the words. This master also creates ascenders and descenders even where they are not necessary, on letters that do not actually need them: Aphrodite Slim takes this ideal. The font counts with a wide range of glyphs that seem not to be satisfied with its more primitive form and prefer to extreme their parts to be decorative. It also existed masters of calligraphy like José de Casanova of XVII Century, who, with a magnificant skill and a really personal mark, had the particularity of ligating words that were actually separated with spaces. This is another innovative feature in Aphrodite Slim. An investigation of the most common beginnings and endings words of the English language was done. Having that feature activated (discretionary ligatures), common words will start to ligate or to be decorated even when they are separated by spaces. Impossible to forget Francesco Periccioli of XVII Century and our experience us designers to face with works of him: His letters, that today are included in the group of cancellerescas modernas, have been a direct inspiration to the oldstyle figures and historical forms variables in Aphrodite Slim. Giovanni Antonio Tagliente (XVI Century) and his particular way of making tails and diagonals longer than usual, qualities that our creation reflects too. Finally, our adventures in Biblioteca Nacional and Barrio San Telmo, Buenos Aires, were essential for us to make Aphrodite Slim more complete and interesting: Sav did an excellent work when studying how the decorative miscellanea and swirls of early XX century were. She also investigated what particularities made those roman titling characters look antique so she could rescue some ideals for the oldstyle figures and historical forms variables. This also leaded her to create the ornaments variable in Aphrodite Slim. We are really proud of presenting Aphrodite Slim Pro, a typography that was the result of days and nights of working hard, because we do love what we do; and we are glad we are living in a present that gives us the possibility to spread this kind of art, because that is the way we consider our job: Aphrodite Slim Pro is Art. Hope you can appreciate the enormous work this type has. Features. Aphrodite Slim Pro is the most complete variable. It includes more than 1000 glyphs. Thanks to the Open-Type programming, it counts with a easy way to change/alternate glyphs if the application in which the font is used supports this. The variables contained in Aphrodite Slim Pro are also offered separately. Aphrodite Slim Text: It is the variable for lines and paragraphs. Thus it is the least ornamental and the most accurate to achieve a satisfying legibility. It has the Standard Ligatures feature in order to improve the possible conflicts some glyphs could have by others. Aphrodite Slim Contextual: It is the one that makes emphasis in decorating. It has the particularity of ligating/decorating words of common use in English, French, Spanish and German. It also has the quality of ligating common beginnings and endings of the common words in English. Aphrodite Slim Stylistic: With similar features of Slim Contextual. It includes a set of decorative numbers for a display use. Aphrodite Slim Swash: This one has special beginnings and endings to decorate words. Aphrodite Slim Endings: It makes words look as a signature. Aphrodite Slim Historical: It adds an antique look to the written word. It also has the special historical ligature function. Aphrodite Slim Titling: This one is the most decorative. Its copperplate inspired ornaments give words a special color, in order to handle the quantity of decoration, it comes with the standard ligature feature, which has the most common ligatures plus others that make decorative swirls not to be conflictive. Aphrodite Slim Ornaments: A set of 52 ornaments. Aphrodite Slim Pro includes all this features plus the Stylistic Set 1; Stylistic Set 2 and the possibility of Slashed Zero. We recommend you to check out the gallery in order to see all these features in action.

Blank Manuscript allows you to produce sophisticated musical scoresheets even on basic Word Processors - anything from simple plain staves to complex full-page orchestral scores of your own design, to write in the notation yourself. The basic stuff is really easy and straightforward, but there's some quite advanced things you can do as well. So Copy and Save these Instructions. • The main stuff is simple and tends to follow the initial letter. Treble, Bass and Alto clefs are on upper case T B A (there are more clefs, below). The 5 Lines for the clefs are on L or l. • A small v will give a small vertical line (like a bar line) and a Big U will give a Big Upright - these can start or end a line or piece. • Time Signatures - type the following letters: Think of W for Waltz and it's easy to remember that 3/4 time is on W. Then from that they go up or down together like this: V=2/4 W=3/4 X=4/4 Y=5/4 Z=6/4 Compound Times are on H I J K like this: H=3/8 I=6/8 J=9/8 K=12/8 Common Time and Cut Common symbols can be found on semi-colon and colon respectively (all begin with Co- ). 2/2 3/2 are on lower case a and b, 7/4 and 7/8 are on lower case c and d, 5/8 is on small k (think POL-k-A) • Flat signs are on the numbers. Flat signs on LINES 1 to 5 are on numbers 1 to 5. Flat signs on SPACES 1 to 5 are on numbers 6 to 0 (space 1 being above line 1, space 5 being above the top line of the stave). Sharp signs are on the letters BELOW the long-row numbers. Which is q w e r t for the sharp signs on Lines 1 to 5, and y u i o p for sharp signs on spaces 1 to 5. Doing it this way means it works the same for all clefs, whether Treble, Bass, Alto, Tenor or any other. Sharp and Flat Signs always go in this order, depending on how many sharps or flats your key signature requires: Treble Clef Sharps t i p r u o e Flats 3 9 7 4 2 8 6 Bass Clef Sharps r u o e t i w Flats 2 8 6 3 1 7 = Alto Clef Sharps o e t i w r u Flats 7 4 2 8 6 3 1 • Guitar Chord Boxes are on G and g (G for Guitar) Upper Case G has a thick line across the top Lower case g has an open top, for chords up the fretboard TAB symbols are available: Six-string Tablature is on s & S for Six. Four-string Tablature is on f & F for Four. (Lower case has the "TAB" symbol on it, Upper Case has just the lines to continue.) Five-string tablature, is on lower case "j" (as in BAN-j-O) and of course L or l will continue the 5 lines. •RARE CLEF SIGNS including Tenor Clef, are on various punctuation marks, i.e. dollar, percent, circumflex, ampersand & asterisk, above the numbers 4 to 8. NOTE: The important symbols were kept on the letter and number keys, which are fairly standard all over, but some of the less important symbols are on various punctuation keys, which in different countries are not the same as on my keyboard. If it comes out wrong on your system, all I can say is it's right on the systems we've tried, and they'll be in here somewhere, probably on a different key. CLOSING THE ENDS OF THE LINES and BAR-LINES is done with the 3 varieties of brackets - brackets, brace and parentheses - Left/Right for the Left/Right end of the line. Parentheses L/R () which are above 9, 0 give a clef with a small vertical upright (the same as a bar line). Brace L/R and Brackets L/R (both on the 2 keys to the right of P on my keyboard) will close off a staff line with tall upright bars. Brace gives a double upright - one thick, one thin. Brackets give a single tall upright. A Big Upright is on Big U, (Big U for Big Upright) and a small vertical line is on small v (small v for small vertical). The Big Upright is the maximum height, and the small vertical is exactly the same height as a stave. And there's a tall upright Bar, on Bar (which is to the left of z on my keyboard, with Shift,) which is the same height as the bar on upper case U but twice as broad. • There's a staff intended for writing melodies, which is a little bit higher up than an ordinary treble clef giving a space underneath to put lyrics in - on m and M for Melody line. Lower case has the Treble Clef on, Upper case M has just the higher-up staff lines with no clef. (Use mMMMMMMM etc.) However this clef will be in the wrong place to put in sharp and flat signs, key signatures and so on, so if you use this clef you'll have to write the sharps, flats and key signature yourself. There's also a clef that's smaller (less tall) than the ordinary clef, but with the same horizontal spacing so it will align with other standard-sized clefs - on slash (a plain clef) and backslash (with a Treble Clef). • There are some large brackets for enclosing groups of staves, such as you'd use on large orchestral scores, on Upper Case N O P Q R, which can aid clarity. N and O on the left, Q and R on the right. P is a Perpendicular line to be used on both sides to increase the height of the enclosure, in this way but with the staff lines in between: N Q P P P P P P O R OTHERS —————————————— • Repeat marks are on comma (left) and period/full stop (right). • Hyphen is left as a sort of hyphen - it's a thin line like a single staff line, with the same horizontal spacing as ordinary staff lines - in case you want to draw a line across for a Percussion Instrument, or a Title or Lyric Line. • Space is a Space, but with HALF the width or horizontal spacing as ordinary staff lines, so 2 space symbols will be the same width as a clef symbol or line. • Grave (to the left of 1 on the long row, or hold down Alt and type 0096 then let go) gives a staff line that is one eighth the width of an ordinary staff line. • If you want manuscript in a clef and key which requires a flat or sharp sign in the space underneath the 5 lines, they’re on = equals and + plus . SYMBOLS • Many of these symbols will only be useful if you have worked out in advance which bars will need them, but they are here in case you've done that and wish to include them. • Symbols for p and f (piano and forte) are on 'less than' and 'greater than' < > (above comma and full stop) and m for mezzo is on Question, next to them. They can be combined to make mp, mf, ff, pp, etc. These signs -- and other signs and symbols like Pedal Sign, Coda Sign and so on -- can be found on various punctuation mark keys, including above 1, 2, 3 in the long row, and others around the keyboard. There's a sort of logic to their layout, but in different countries the keys are likely to give different results to what is stated here, so it's probably best to just try the punctuation and see if there's any you might want to use. (But on my keyboard a Coda sign is on circumflex - because of the visual similarity. Pedal sign is on underscore. A "Sign" symbol is on exclamation mark.) They were only included in case you really need them to be printed rather than handwritten. • However, a Copyright symbol is deemed necessary, and also included are a "Registered" symbol and a TradeMark symbol. They are found in the conventional places, and can be accessed by holding down ALT and typing 0169, 0174 or 0153 respectively in the numberpad section and letting go. • Staff lines with arco and pizz. above are on capital C and D respectively ---C for ar-C-o. • An empty circle above a staff line (to indicate sections by writing letters A, B, C or 1,2,3 inside for rehearsal marks) is on n. The actual signs for an A, B, C and D in a circle above the staff line can be produced by holding down ALT and typing 0188, 0189, 0190 and 0191 respectively and letting go. • The word "Page", for indicating page numbers, is on the numbersign key. • The two quotes keys, (quote single and quote double) have symbols representing "Tempo is", and "play as triplets", respectively. • INSTRUMENT NAMES There's a whole lot of Instrument Names built in (over a hundred) which can be printed out above the clef, and you do it like this. Hold down Alt and type in the given number in the numberpad section, then let go. For Piccolo it's 0130, for Flute it's 0131, Cornet is on 0154, Violin is on 0193, and the numbers go up to over 0250, it's a fairly complete set. There's also a blank which is used to align un-named clefs on 0096. Put them at the very beginning of the line for the best results. Here they are: WOODWIND Piccolo 0130 Flute 0131 Oboe 0132 Clarinet 0133 Eng Horn 0134 Bassoon 0135 Soprano Sax 0137 Alto Sax 0138 Tenor Sax 0139 Baritone Sax 0140 Saxophone 0142 Contrabassoon 0145 Recorder 0146 Alto Flute 0147 Bass Flute 0148 Oboe d'Amore 0149 Cor anglais 0152 Pipes 0241 Whistle 0242 BRASS Cornet 0154 Trumpet 0155 Flugelhorn 0156 Trombone 0158 Euphonium 0159 Tuba 0161 French Horn 0162 Horn 0163 Tenor Trombone 0164 Bass Trombone 0165 Alto Trombone 0166 Piccolo Cornet 0167 Piccolo Trumpet 0168 Bass Trumpet 0170 Bass Tuba 0171 Brass 0172 VOICES Vocal 0175 Melody 0176 Solo 0177 Harmony 0178 Soprano 0179 Alto 0180 Tenor 0181 Baritone 0182 Treble 0183 Bass 0197 (see also PLUCKED STRINGS) Descant 0184 Mezzo Soprano 0185 Contralto 0186 Counter Tenor 0187 Lead 0206 BOWED STRINGS Strings 0192 Violin 0193 Viola 0194 Cello 0195 Contrabass 0196 Bass 0197 Double Bass 0198 Violoncello 0199 Violin 1 0200 Violin 2 0201 Fiddle 0252 PLUCKED STRINGS Harp 0202 Guitar 0203 Ac. Gtr 0204 El. Gtr 0205 Lead 0206 Bass 0197 Ac. Bass 0207 El. Bass 0208 Slide Gtr 0209 Mandolin 0210 Banjo 0211 Ukelele 0212 Zither 0213 Sitar 0214 Lute 0215 Pedal Steel 0216 Nylon Gtr. 0238 Koto 0239 Fretless 0244 KEYBOARDS + ORGAN Piano 0217 El. Piano 0218 Organ 0219 El. Organ 0220 Harpsichord 0221 Celesta 0222 Accordion 0223 Clavinet 0224 Harmonium 0225 Synth 0226 Synth Bass 0227 Keyboards 0228 Sampler 0249 PERCUSSION and TUNED PERCUSSION Percussion 0229 Drums 0230 Vibes 0231 Marimba 0232 Glockenspiel 0233 Xylophone 0234 Bass marimba 0235 Tubular Bells 0236 Steel Drums 0237 Kalimba 0240 OTHERS Harmonica 0246 Mouth Organ 0247 FX 0251 Intro 0243 Verse 0245 Refrain 0248 Chorus 0250 un-named 0096 (this is a small spacer stave for aligning clefs without a name) ALSO copyright 0169 registered 0174 TradeMark 0153 Rehearsal marks 0188-0191 (giving A, B, C, D in a circle, an empty circle is on n ) Clef signs for Treble Bass Alto without any staff lines 0253-0255 An Alphabetic List of all signs: a 2/2 time b 3/2 time c 7/4 time d 7/8 time e sharp sign, centre line f Tab sign for 4-string tab g Guitar Chord Box, no nut h half-width stave I sharp sign, third space up j Tab sign for 5-string tab k 5/8 time l Lines - 5 horizontal lines for a stave m Melody Clef - a standard clef but placed higher up, with Treble sign n Stave with an empty circle above o sharp sign, fourth space up p sharp sign, space above stave q sharp sign, bottom line r sharp sign, fourth line up s Tab sign for 6-string tab t sharp sign, top line (fifth line up) u sharp sign, second space up v vertical line (bar-line) w sharp sign, second line up x Fretboard, four strings y sharp sign, first space up z Fretboard, five strings A Alto Clef B Bass Clef C “arco” above stave D “pizz.” above stave E Double Vertical Lines F Four Horizontal lines (for 4-string tab) G Guitar Chord Box with nut H 3/8 time I 6/8 time J 9/8 time K 12/8 time L Lines - 5 horizontal lines for a stave M Melody Clef - a standard clef but placed higher up, plain N Bounding Line for grouping clefs - top left O Bounding Line for grouping clefs - bottom left P Bounding Line for grouping clefs - Perpendicular Q Bounding Line for grouping clefs - top right R Bounding Line for grouping clefs - bottom right S Six Horizontal lines (for 6-string tab) T Treble Clef U tall, thin Upright line V 2/4 time W 3 / 4 time X 4/4 time Y 5/4 time Z 6/4 time 1 flat sign, first line up (the lowest line) 2 flat sign, second line up 3 flat sign, third line up 4 flat sign, fourth line up 5 flat sign, fifth line up (the top line) 6 flat sign, first space up (the lowest space) 7 flat sign, second space up 8 flat sign, third space up 9 flat sign, fourth space up 0 flat sign, space above stave

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.