Rabenau (formerly Lucinde), the distinctly warm and legible type family For 30 years the graphic designer Axel Bertram worked at creating his typefaces: He developed complete new alphabets for magazines and typewriters as well as for the constant demand for typefaces for use by commercial artists. He has developed wall charts the size of advertising posters as teaching aids for training commercial and graphic artists to write in a clean, classic cursive script. In the eighties he used the American Chyron computer to design a screen font for television. In the mid-nineties he discovered for himself the fabulous possibilities offered by the Fontographer font software program and explored them playfully. From the results of these experiments, Axel Bertram selected a design for further development. From 2003 onwards the calligrapher and type designer Andreas Frohloff collaborated with him on the further development and production of the 16 fonts of the Rabenau™ typeface family.The Rabenau font was inspired by many factors: From the fonts used as book covers to typewriter fonts and even printed material from England dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century (e.g. those used by the skilled printer William Bulmer), Rabenau's relatively high contrast is offset by some organic tapers, subtley rounded bracketed serifs, and a fairly generous x-height. This makes for a typeface that looks especially good in print. Its broad repertoire of weights and styles - Condensed, Poster, and Shadow - give it added versatility, and make it ideal for setting both display and text in the same typeface. Throughout the heavier weights, the contrast is maintained. The Poster Italic sparkles, and will make a fine display type for dynamic headlines, or logotypes. This family of sixteen fonts works beautifully together. All Rabenau font styles have a large set of ligatures and thus cover typical letter combinations in many European languages. Besides the standard ligatures for ff, fi and fl, letter connections are also available for tt, th and fj or ffi, ffl and ffk. The range is completed with lovely arched transitions for the characters st, ck or ct. The latter gives the font that certain something, both in continuous text and above all in headlines.

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

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, a solid style that must have different colors when used and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. This typeface contains Escher-like tessellations of birds. A number of years ago I decided to see how many of the 28 Heesch types of tessellations I could use to make birds standing on the backs of other birds. I found standing bird patterns for all 17 of the types that had either translated or glided edges. The TessieStandingBirds typefaces contain the standing-bird shapes that I discovered. At first glance they seem to be quite similar, but small differences matter in how they fit together. Most of the patterns require more than one character. The sample file here shows how pieces fit together to give tessellating patterns. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns.)

Carefully considered letters written long-hand, sealed in an envelope and sent across continents were once the only connection for distant friends and lovers. Dear Sarah is a type that evokes the emotion of those handwritten messages. Using alternates, ligatures and a complex system for randomization and natural connected characters, Dear Sarah seeks to push the boundaries of digital type. The guiding question that drove the design of Dear Sarah was whether it was possible to create a natural looking script that worked well in running text. Hand-written types often work for two or three words, but as soon you you look at them in a paragraph, their unnatural textures make them feel contrived. As one of the first serious types to explore OpenType for a connected script, Dear Sarah uses a unique system to create natural connections. Often script types rely on one connecting point to make sure that all their characters fit together properly. Characters that naturally connect much higher, such as the ‘o’ or ‘v’ are distorted to connect at the same point as an ‘a’ or a ‘c’. Dear Sarah uses multiple sets of lower-case characters to connect at multiple points, creating a much more natural looking script. OpenType is also used to create variety, by using randomization techniques to insert disconnected characters as well as alternates, ligatures, swashes and ink blots to create a natural rhythm across multiple lines.

Nexa Slab is a geometric slab serif font whose design is based on the already popular best-seller Nexa . The font family contains 3 basic forms: italics, obliques and uprights, each of which has 8 different weights. This visual richness makes it the ideal slab serif font family for the web as well as for print, for motion graphics, logos, t-shirts and so on. It is also great for headings, fitting nicely with both small and large typesetting text blocks. Nexa Slab draws from the rich traditions of the classic Neo-Grotesque slab serif fonts such as Lubalin Graph, Rockwell and Memphis, which conceal the richness of typesetting text in its crucial advertising function. Just like these fonts, it’s design is subject to rational, carefully thought-out, thick and thin bars with a low contrast between them. The letters are characterized by the strict geometry and square proportions of the original, extra-fortified by suitably balanced slab serifs. Nexa Slab is serious without being rigid and inflexible, finished and lacking in nothing, systematic without being monotonous, and though it may seem at first glance to be more suitable for short, direct messages; in the hands of a master designer... it can build and create exquisite and harmonic designs. Open Type Features: Lining figures (proportional and tabular) The “f” ligature set Alternate characters (a, g, y) Automatic fractions Automatic numerators Automatic denomerators Automatic subscript and superscript Automatic ordinals Extended language support (most Latin-based scripts supported)*

Franz Kafka’s manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration for designer Julia Sysmäläinen. At first she was just interested in literary aspects but later she noticed that content and visual form can not be separated in the work of this ingenious writer. Analyzing Kafka’s handwriting at the Berlin National Library, Julia was inspired to design the typeface FF Mister – by now a well known classic. Over the years, FF Mister K became a handsome typeface family and even produced offspring: the Josef K Patterns. Some of Kafka’s most expressive letterforms were the starting point for these decorative ornaments. How do the Patterns work? Outlines and fillings correspond to the uppercase and the lowercase letters on your keyboard. You can use them separately or layer them on top of each other. If you write a line of “pattern-text” in lowercase and repeat it underneath in uppercase you get a row of fillings followed by a row of outlines. Now you can color them and then set line space = 0 to get a single line of layered colored ornaments. Alternatively, activating OpenType / stylistic set / stylistic alternates will also unite the two lines to a single layered line. Further magic can be done with OpenType / contextual alternates turned on. On the gallery page of this font family is a downloadable Josef K Patterns.pdf with an alphabetical overview of forms. Hundreds of patterns are possible … we’d love to see some of yours and present them here on the website!

Take your reader far away to a tropical morning, where the inviting aroma of a fresh roast introduces them to a gentle breeze and the first, warm light of day. Take them there with Barcis. This organic face with its tall x-height and neo-humanist attributes shows its free spirit through unique terminals, calligraphy-inspired strokes, and a rich variety of OpenType alternates All insigne fonts are loaded with OpenType options. Barcis is geared up for pro typography. The font features many numeral sets, with fractions, old-style figures, superiors and inferiors. OpenType-capable programs like Quark or the Adobe suite allow you to quickly change ligatures and alternates. You can see these options shown in the .pdf brochure. Barcis also features the glyphs to aid a variety of languages, together with Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Barcis supports around forty languages that utilize the Latin script, earning Barcis the pick for for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Barcis features three different widths and seven weights from exceptional Light-weight to dense Black. Each of these individual fonts offers its own authentic italics and alternate glyphs as well. With its high versatility, Barcis is without a doubt an amazing titling font, a great choice for journals, a solid option for web use, or even for clearly defining your mark in logotype. Bring Barcis into your library, and use it to carry your audience away.

A display fontface for titles inspired on Latin America, Ethnic, Native, Tribal, Mysthical, Handmade, Aboriginal, Pre-Hispanic, Pre-Columbian, Textured. By mid-1997 I was developed the early type edition was called «Muisca Sans» as my work for the degree in Graphic Design (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), based on the concept of pre-Columbian figures characteristics within some of the very few visual elements recovered from the Muisca culture, ancient pre-Columbian tribe disappeared before the arrival of the Spaniards in what is now central Colombia. In fact, the name of the capital Bogotá (the capital of Colombia) goes back to Bacatá as primary or village downtown of what was once the imperial capital of tribe Muisca. Although this unfinished early typographic project has not yet been published, Tequendama is the evolution of the first one. Tequendama reminds the myth of Muisca culture and religion of this tribe. The god Bochica, a wise old man with a white beard heard the cries of his tribe suffered against flooding of their land losing harvests before the divine punishment resulted by the offended god Chibchacun. However Bochica appeared wearing a white robe sitting on a huge rainbow and he broken the mountain towards the southwest wise old man with a golden staff broke the mountain to drain the flooded savanna. This emblematic and iconic place would later be called as «Salto de Tequendama». Tequendama name also been adopted to a nearby province to Bogotá.

The first versions of Nimbus Sans have been designed and digitized in the 1980s for the URW SIGNUS sign-making system. Highest precision of all characters (1/100 mm accuracy) as well as spacing and kerning were required because the fonts should be cut in any size in vinyl or other material used for sign-making. During this period three size ranges were created for text (T), the display (D) and poster (P) for small, medium and very large font sizes. In addition, we produced a so-called L-version that was compatible to Adobe’s PostScript version of Helvetica. Nimbus was also the product name of a URW-proprietary renderer for high quality and fast rasterization of outline fonts, a software provided to the developers of PostScript clone RIPs (Hyphen, Harlequin, etc.) back then. Also in the 80s, a new, improved version of the Nimbus Sans, namely Nimbus Sans Novus was designed. Nimbus Sans Novus was conceptually developed entirely with URW’s IKARUS system, i.e. all styles harmonize perfectly with each other in terms of line width, weight, proportions, etc. On top of that, Nimbus Sans Novus contains more styles than Nimbus Sans. Now, Nimbus Sans is also available as Round (like the popular URW fonts Futura Round and Eurostile Round). The Round versions are intended to facilitate the work of designers and typographers. The fonts can be used directly, without further preparatory work in graphic programs as finished, high-quality Rounds.

PF Stamps covers a wide range of applications which require the stamp effect. This is a form of lettering which was very popular in the mid-twentieth century for product labeling. Special machinery was developed by mainly two companies, one in the United States and the other in Germany. This machinery produced paper die cuts which were later used as a base for the marking with a paintbrush. PF Stamps Paint was developed to simulate this type of lettering. Two other styles, Metal and Flex, have been very popular since its original release. The first one was developed from a metallic stamp imprint, whereas the second one with its slight 3-D look simulates letters stamped on plastic. To insure realistic results, uppercase letters are different from lowercase. This is very useful when two similar letters sit next to each other. There 3 more styles: Solid (the stencil in its regular clean form), Rough and the very interesting Blur. The all new “Pro” version comes to complete this series with what was missing: 93 matching frames and frames parts which will satisfy the most demanding designer. This is a bonus font which is available only with the purchase of the whole family. Use these frames “as is” at any size, or connect the frame parts to each other to create longer frames. Finally, this series supports more than hundred languages which are based on the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic scripts.

Capitolium was designed in 1998 at the request of the Agenzia romana per la preparatione del Giubileo for the Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church in 2000. This type design was the central part of the project for a wayfinding and information system to guide pilgrims and tourists through Rome. Capitolium also continues Rome’s almost uninterrupted two-thousand-year-old tradition of public lettering . It is a modern typeface for the twenty-first century and strongly related to the traditions of Rome. Soon after the completion of this project Unger began contemplating the possibility of bringing the atmosphere of this design to newspapers. Though Capitolium works well in most modern production processes and also on screens, it is too fragile for newsprint. For newspapers sturdier shapes were required as well as more characters to a line of text, and Capitolium News has a bigger x-height than Capitolium. Capitolium News is a thoroughly modern newsface, with classic letterforms linked to a strong tradition. Capitolium News for running text comes in the variations regular, italic, semibold, semibold italic, bold and bold italic. As is possible with most of Unger’s type designs, Capitolium News can be condensed and expanded without any harm to the letterforms. The update to this beautiful font family, Capitolium News, includes the addition of over 250 glyphs featuring full Latin A language support, new ligatures, 4 sets of numerals, arbitrary fractions and superiors/inferiors. Furthermore, kerning was added and fine tuned for better performance.

Boardwalk Avenue is an elegant type collection of three styles and two weights of each. It’s divided into Boardwalk Pen, Boardwalk Antiqua and Boardwalk Serif. Boardwalk Avenue’s core is a connected mono linear script that works fantastic when paired with either of the impressive serif styles. All the fonts work great on their own but try putting them all together for a complete display font setup for a project. Here’s a short introduction on what’s included: Boardwalk Avenue Pen is a connected Script. It’s great for headlines, quotes or in packaging. It has a casual hand drawn vibe to it but it’s clean and legible. It’s equipped with automatic Contextual Alternates that keep the connections smooth and versatile. For instance when you type double letter another of them will automatically change to add variation. Or if you type “i” for example, as a first letter after space or after capital letter the code will add starting point to the letter to keep the letterforms more balanced. If you need more ambitious letterforms you can try Swash or Titling Alternates -there’s alternates for every standard letter and seek for even more alternates from the glyph palette. Boardwalk Avenue Antiqua is a high contrast serif with strong character. It’s great for glamorous headlines or as a logotype. Boardwalk Avenue Serif is a low contrast serif with bulky character. It’s great for strong and sturdy headlines or as a logotype.

Designed to be set in big, large and huge sizes in classic TNT (tight-not-touching) style, Benguiat Caslon is dynamite for a wide range of display demands. We also included outline and drop-shadow versions as well as numerous swash caps, ligatures, contextual alternates and automatically-shifting punctuation. Ed Benguiat originally designed this alphabet for the Photo-Lettering library during his tenure as the legendary type house’s art director. When we purchased Photo-Lettering in 2003, one of the first things we did was start picking some of our favorite films to digitize as fonts. Photo-Lettering partner Christian Schwartz chose this expressive serif specimen for its high contrast strokes that stand up to the most vigorous display typography demands without withering against pesky design limitations like screen resolution, ink spread and dot gain. FEATURES: Alternate characters, ligatures and contextual substitutions add an unexpected flair to words and phrases. We also provided a drop shadow to add depth and dimension. Shifting punctuation marks take care of those optical tricks so you don't have to. A delicately expressive outline version adds color even in black and white. BENGUIAT CASLON CREDITS: Typeface Design: Ed Benguiat Typeface Digitization: Christian Schwartz, Bas Smidt Typeface Production: Ben Kiel, Jason Campbell Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

STF Eclectic One is a visual cornucopia of symbols, like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Stuff you'll need someday for a graphic element, bullet or dingbat application. Perfect for website icons! The Eclectic family is legendary, with a cult-like following among the inititated. As one of the first dingbat fonts available on the web, it gain popularity after its design in the early 1990s. With over 150 characters in the complete set, you'll find yourself using Eclectic One almost daily to add spice to your otherwise san-serif typographic existence. This font is essentially a soap opera of typographic image elements, created for projects when I couldn't find the "thingbat" I needed. Almost more of a collection of illustrations, there are many characters which connect to form patterns, and of course it's like a "small neutral European country" army knife for the creative community. EcOne features complete hour, quarter, and half-hour notations in an analog clock design glyph, recycled/recyclable symbols, a registration mark, a toaster, globes, sideways diamond arrows, spaceships, stoplights, the "running man," several atomic references, da buzz saw, target icons, the unusual smiley face floating in a ball (with a drop shadow, no less!), and the fish skeleton which complements the fallout shelter symbol, and more. Make your own juxtapositions! One reviewer proclaims "for whatever you do, Eclectic One is an excellent dingbat source." Available in Mac and PC formats. License it today!

A 14-weight sans family based on the original British ‘M.O.T.’ (Ministry of Transport) alphabet. A capitals-only, single-weight design was drawn up around 1933 for use on Britain’s road network, and remained in use until Jock Kinnear and Margaret Calvert’s ‘Transport Alphabet’ was introduced for Britain's first motorway in 1958. The identity of the original designer is not preserved; however, Antony Froshaug in a 1963 ‘Design’ magazine article mentions Edward Johnston as an advisor. Speculation that it was based on Johnston’s London Transport alphabet is discussed in archived government documents from 1957: “So far as I am aware, the Ministry alphabet was not based on Johnston’s design; indeed, it has been suggested that Gill got his idea from Johnston. Our alphabet was based on advice from Hubert Llewellyn-Smith (then chairman of the British Institute of Industrial Art) and Mr. J. G. West, a senior architect of H. M. Office of Works.” A 1955-57 revision of the alphabet which polished the somewhat mechanical aspects of the original may be the work of stone carver and typographer David Kindersley. For the digitisation, Rian Hughes added an entirely new lower case, italics and a range of weights. The lower case mimics the forms of the capitals wherever possible, taking cues form Gill and Johnston for letters such as the a and g, with single-tier versions in the italic. A uniquely British font that is now available in a versatile family for modern use.

Huai and Huai Thai marks the first professional typeface release by Potch Auacherdkul and represents the culmination of research into the duality of influences between handwritten, vernacular Thai lettering and Latin typefaces. The result is a warm, expressive typeface that doesn’t abandon the human hands and the language that produced them. With Thai script, there are two different terminal styles—the Loop terminal style, associated with the original forms of Thai glyphs; and the Loopless, which has evolved to best coordinate with Latin sans serif typefaces. In recent years, this Thai Loopless style has continued to influence and even change to become ‘more Latin.’ One would go so far as to define these heavily Latin-influenced typefaces as Thai Latinized. This curiosity with shifting influences, turns the idea around and explores what would happen if the vernacular Thai scripts actually influenced their Latin counterparts instead. An Inversion of Thai Latinized is the result. The street signs of Bangkok, local vernacular writing, quick, fluid strokes… these influences form the DNA behind the Huai Thai typeface. Refining and systematizing those natural, handwritten strokes into a Thai typeface and then using those solutions to serve as the pioneer proportions behind the development of its Latin script companion was the product. Huai adopted the essence of these Thai glyphs into the Latin and uniquely embraced the contemporary writing system (and soul) of the Thai people in its letterforms.

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

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

ITC Werkstatt is a result of the combined talents of Alphabet Soup's Paul Crome and Satwinder Sehmi, along with Ilene Strizver and Colin Brignall. It is inspired by the work of Rudolph Koch, the renowned German calligrapher, punchcutter, and type designer of the first third of this century, without being based directly on any of Koch's typefaces. Werkstatt has obvious affinities with the heavy, woodcut look of Koch's popular Neuland, but also with display faces like Wallau and even the light, delicate Koch Antiqua. Brignall began by drawing formal letters with a 55mm cap height, which Sehmi reinterpreted using a pen with a broad-edge nib. “Not an easy process,” says Brignall, “since one of the features of Koch's style is that while it was calligraphic in spirit, most of the time his counter shapes did not bear any resemblance to the external shapes, as they would in normal calligraphy. This meant that Sehmi could not complete a whole character in one go, but had to create the outside and inside shapes separately and then ink in the center of the letters.” The process was repeated, only without entirely filling in the outlines, for the Engraved version. Crome handled the scanning and digitization, maintaining the hand-made feel while creating usable digital outlines. “The collaboration of artisans with particular skills,” says Brignall, “in a modern-day, computer-aided studio environment, seems very much in step with the 'workshop' ethos that Rudolph Koch encouraged and promoted so much.”

The Richie™ typeface grew out of a lettering experiment inspired by the work of Czech type designer Oldrich Menhart (1897-1962). Menhart’s typefaces were primarily text designs with a strong personal calligraphic influence. Monotype Studio designer, Jim Ford, wondered what a display typeface from Menhart might look like, and began drawing bold script characters with a broad-tipped chisel marker. “It was a familiar but laborious exercise,” explains Ford, “I tried to achieve an authentic – yet controlled – randomness that would serve as the foundation of a typeface.” Ford first drew a large suite of characters using the marker. All the drawings were then carefully adjusted, and scanned. Ford then pieced together a typeface from the best versions of letters, and refined those further. The result is a rugged, somewhat eccentric and playful script built on an obvious hand-drawn foundation. In a world of smooth scripts, the Richie design is heavy, chunky and rough. Its hand-made feel and vigorous rhythm put the power of raw brush lettering into the typographer’s hands. OpenType® fonts of Richie include standard, contextual and discretionary ligatures, in addition to contextual and stylistic alternates, old style, lining and superior figures, plus a large complement of swash characters. The name “Richie”? It grew out of Ford’s original premise for the design. “I wondered what it might it look like if ‘Old Richie’ had designed a heavy display face or script.”

Rotis is a comprehensive family group with Sans Serif, Semi Sans, Serif, and Semi Serif styles, for a total of 17 weights including italics. The four families have similar weights, heights and proportions; though the Sans is primarily monotone, the Semi Sans has swelling strokes, the Semi Serif has just a few serifs, and the Serif has serifs and strokes with mostly vertical axes. Designed by Otl Aicher for Agfa in 1989, Rotis has become something of a European zeitgeist. This highly rationalized yet intriguing type is seen everywhere, from book text to billboards. The blending of sans with serif was almost revolutionary when Aicher first started working on the idea. Traditionalists felt that discarding serifs from some forms and giving unusual curves and edges to others might be something new, but not something better. But Rotis was based on those principles, and has proven itself not only highly legible, but also remarkably successful on a wide scale. Rotis is easily identifiable in all its styles by the cap C and lowercase c and e: note the hooked tops, serifless bottoms, and underslung body curves. Aicher is a long-time teacher of design and has many years of practical experience as a graphic designer. He named Rotis after the small village in southern German where he lives. Rotis is suitable for just about any use: book text, documentation, business reports, business correspondence, magazines, newspapers, posters, advertisements, multimedia, and corporate design.

The most exciting new feature of DynaGotesk is the Vintage Italics stylistic set, which activates the decorative forms. It includes the looped "w", curved ascenders and descenders of many lowercase letters. These can significantly change the feel of a poster or invitation. DynaGrotesk may look like a revival of an old typeface, but it is not. It uses only some historical reminiscences, sharp edges and curved shapes, but it’s completely original design aimed at ease of use. The bigger the size, the more evident and pronounced are the spicy details. In smaller and even smallest sizes it’s appearance is qieter, very well suited even for long portions of text. DynaGrotesk was created in 1995 with the use of Multiple Master interpolation. But the MM fonts never achieved the desired application in industry, so designers returned back to single fonts. Over the following decades, the font was modified several times as an old house, and the present re-animation includes the Variable font format. Since its first release in the mid-nineties, it is widely used in all areas of graphic industry from small publishing to international corporate identity. The warm character of DynaGrotesk derives from early sans-serif typefaces, those which appeared before Helvetica. All 60 styles contain common OTF features like Small Caps, various sorts of figures, ligatures, Cyrillics, Greek, and full Latin diacritics. Perfect for branding systems and corporate identities, lettering, as well as cultural posters and catalogs.

Breathe Neue is not just an update of my renowned Breathe of 2010, this is something else... Many times I find myself looking for inspiration in my previous creations. The original Breathe has something on its essence: Something that almost 10 years later still caught my attention. Like its name suggests, letters seem to be breathing, moving, alive. Many years passed so I asked myself if there was still something I could do for it, something to get the most of that beautiful essence... Suddenly, I was already working on its curves: Many new loops, more polished, more refined. Also the proportion and spacing were altered to embellish the font. Breathe Neue’s swashes are addictive. I couldn't find another word. Irresistible? Maybe. Once you see some of its loops you want to see more. I believe this might be due to its very geometrical feel, which match well with the bodonian curves of the font. See also how well it works with Breathe Caps. And what if you combine them with Breathe Special? wow. I'm still young (yeah, sure) and I believe there're still many years ahead to enjoy this great profession, and to make many new (and astonishing, I hope) fonts. But I also think, it’s time to pamper my first creations. They deserve the best treatment, after all, they were once a success! This is what I did with my lovely Breathe. I hope you like it.

The Roos family is a digitization and expansion of the last typeface designed by Sjoerd Hendrik De Roos, called De Roos Romein (and Cursief). It was designed and produced during the years of the second World War, and unveiled in the summer of 1947 to celebrate De Roos's 70th birthday. In 1948, the first fonts produced were used for a special edition of the Dutch Constitution on which Juliana took the oath during her inauguration as the Queen of the Netherlands. To this day this typeface is widely regarded as De Roos's best design, with one of the most beautiful italics ever drawn. In contrast with all his previous roman faces, which were based on the Jenson model, De Roos's last type recalls the letter forms of the Renaissance, specifically those of Claude Garamont from around 1530, but with a much refined and elegant treatment, with stems sloping towards the ascending, slightly cupped serifs, a tall and distinguished lowercase, and an economic width that really shines in the spectacular italic, which harmonizes extremely well with its roman partner. The Roos family contains romans, italics and small caps in regular, semibold and display weights, as well as a magnificent set of initial caps. All the fonts contain extended language support, surpassing the usual Western Latin codepages to include characters for Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese, and Turkish.

Hassan is a traditional-style Arabic text face designed by Hassan Sobhi Mourad, an experienced calligrapher and teacher of the art and first produced by the Linotype Design Studio (U.K.) as a PostScript font in 1993. An individual Naskh style, Hassan cleverly combines elegant proportions, echoing an inscriptional Thuluth in its tall vertical stems and deeply rounded final jim and ain. The effect of verticality is enhanced by the tense, reined-in kerning strokes of ra and waw, the well-poised lam-alif, and the compactly drawn ligatures. The broad-band strokes of Hassan Bold smooth some of the angularity and relax the tension apparent in the Light. The traditional-style ligatures are rendered with an easy flow. Because of the economical character count, Hassan Light and Bold text may be headed by the compact titling styles (Hisham, Mariam) as well as designs like Ahmed or Kufi which answer to the inscriptional qualities of Hassan. In addition to other uses, Hassan would be particularly suited to document text-setting. Hassan’s two OpenType weights include Latin glyphs from Janson Text Roman, and Janson Text Bold, respectively, inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. The OpenType glyph ranges incorporate Basic Latin and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The fonts include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

The first versions of Nimbus Sans have been designed and digitized in the 1980s for the URW SIGNUS sign-making system. Highest precision of all characters (1/100 mm accuracy) as well as spacing and kerning were required because the fonts should be cut in any size in vinyl or other material used for sign-making. During this period three size ranges were created for text (T), the display (D) and poster (P) for small, medium and very large font sizes. In addition, we produced a so-called L-version that was compatible to Adobe’s PostScript version of Helvetica. Nimbus was also the product name of a URW-proprietary renderer for high quality and fast rasterization of outline fonts, a software provided to the developers of PostScript clone RIPs (Hyphen, Harlequin, etc.) back then. Also in the 80s, a new, improved version of the Nimbus Sans, namely Nimbus Sans Novus was designed. Nimbus Sans Novus was conceptually developed entirely with URW’s IKARUS system, i.e. all styles harmonize perfectly with each other in terms of line width, weight, proportions, etc. On top of that, Nimbus Sans Novus contains more styles than Nimbus Sans. Now, Nimbus Sans is also available as Round (like the popular URW fonts Futura Round and Eurostile Round). The Round versions are intended to facilitate the work of designers and typographers. The fonts can be used directly, without further preparatory work in graphic programs as finished, high-quality Rounds.

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

Espíritu is the first font illustrated and designed by talented Graphic Designer, lettering artist, illustrator and musician Agustín Pizarro Maire. For this entirely made-by-hand project, Agustín pushed his limits forward, significantly improving his notions in the type field, by applying his expertise and experience as an illustrator and letterer. With Type Direction and design assist by Guille Vizzari, both joined forces to face this voyage together. The result is a peculiar font family that seeks for a free spirit, one that is imperfect and unpretentious. With its soul deeply rooted in wanderlust, just enjoying the journey, like an endless road trip. Espíritu is a type family guided by the impulse of the hand, getting lost in the details of infinite drawn letters and icons, that perfectly fit meticulous designs, achieving also great impact when needed. Espíritu consists of five styles that complement each other to get different voice tones for each kind of design piece. Espíritu Regular, the heaviest one and most versatile; Espíritu Condensed, for tall and compact compositions; Espíritu Expanded, a wide serif style that’s great for billboards and short messages; Espíritu Script, a mono-weight cursive to add softness to the family; and finally a huge set of illustrations, symbols, badges and more in Espíritu Dingbats. Each of the alphabetical fonts offer an overflowing amount of alternates, swashes, and ligatures to maximize their capabilities. To all the wild spirits out there, meet Espíritu, join the ride.

The current trend is social media, friendship connection applications and personal web portfolios. This media is used to tell about existence, most people like to upload photos on social media networks, even for personal web portfolios, sometimes people prefer to see the side of daily activities rather than products which are offered. Photos are visual responses, and there are many stories that can be told from a photo. But it will look more interesting if it is added with captions. The very appropriate caption is a text in handwriting. This is what inspired us to create attractive handwriting for social media and networking. We started to do a little research to see the trends of this type of font. Here are some of our notes; 1. Texts are usually in the form of relaxed, non-connected handwriting. 2. There are several connected glyphs, usually by the letters 'o', 'i' and 'y'. And double letters like ‘ll’ and ‘tt’. We anticipate this by making ligature for common texts written concatenated. 3. For personal web portfolio needs, provide affirmation as a characteristic. So the first letter is usually in the form of uppercase which is more prominent than the lowercase rhythm. Prominent but still in proportion. So this is "Brotherhood", a handwritten font that you can use for personal brands, captions and even paragraph writing. Expand your friendship and make your business more closely to your customers as a "Brotherhood" with this font.

Tambau is a display typeface crafted by Matheus “Fio” Gonçalves, a Brazilian design student, still in college, inspired by Brazilian concert urban posters and wood type that I saw at the Oficina Tipográfica São Paulo. The font was first made for a magazine project in design school, making it beautiful on giant pages headlines, billboards, signs, etc. There’s no lowercase, the character set is dramatic and objective. The uppercase is actually expanded letterforms causing some eyes and breathing paths to the very condensed and very modular glyphs, which creates a quite interesting striped texture between form, counterform and spacing. The lots of ligatures come to give it more closure between the letters, when they try to form blank spaces. So do the diacritics, fitting in the space given to them by the dynamic letterforms, making dense rectangular blocks. You may use Tambau as big as you can or do a high tracking to it and still it will be pretty. The titles can be dynamic, just condensed or just large. It’s on your own. Don’t be afraid to play with Tambau, it’s an alive typography. Curiosity: For the magazine in design school, the pilot project of Tambau was cut in a MDF board, to print it with texture and paint. Later was added more characters, languages and special glyphs to it. Set: Tambau is a singular font typeface, with extended and condensed characters, numbers, ligatures, punctuation and symbols for Basic, Western, Central and South Eastern Latin languages.

ITC Chivalry is a calligraphic hybrid that honors the tradition of combining Roman capitals with italic lowercase letters. Drawn by Missouri lettering artist Rob Leuschke, who used a flat-nib pen on textured watercolor stock and then converted the drawings into a digital font, the design combines an old world" feel with "new world" legibility. A companion set of black letter caps completes the suite of characters. "I've loved drawing letters for as long as I can remember," says Leuschke. "Even in kindergarten, I tried to draw letters like my teacher." After graduating from college, Leuschke worked for a short time at a sign company in St. Louis, and in the early 1980s began working at Hallmark Cards in Kansas City. His talent as a calligrapher and lettering artist eventually brought him back to St. Louis to begin a freelance career. Since then Leuschke has created over 250 fonts, primarily for the greeting card industry, that are now being used on work for his clients all over the world. Leuschke first conceived of the face as just the black letter caps; he later added the Roman letters to give the design more versatility. The Roman caps of ITC Chivalry combined with the lowercase are well suited to blocks of copy, while the more decorative black letter caps are ideal for showcasing short text of just a few words. Both sets of capitals also make great initial letters."

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

Sánchez Niu is a redesign of Sánchez—one of the first font families by Latinotype designed in 2011. In the typedesign industry the terms ‘nova’, ‘neue’, ‘next’, ‘new’ are often used to refer to a typeface that has been modified in different ways: redesign, technical readjustments, greater number of characters, etc. At Latinotype we are now starting to use the word ‘niu’ to refer to these kinds of typefaces. Niu is an adaptation of the original word ‘new’, i.e., we have adapted this English word to the phonology and spelling of our own language but keeping the original meaning. Race mixing, diversity, change and adaptation are part of the essence of Latin American culture and, at Latinotype, we are all constantly expressing these elements in everything we do. Latin Power! This new version includes improvements that make it work well with longer text. Such improvements have not had a major effect on the look of the font, though. We have adjusted the original proportions and added a number of new characters as well as OpenType features such as small caps, oldstyle figures, tabular numbers and stylistic alternates. Sánchez Niu contains a set of 720 characters that support 219 languages. The font is well-suited for long text, headlines and logotypes, and it has been optimised for web usage. Sánchez Niu comes with two free fonts—Regular and Regular Italic! Corrections, digital editing and review by César Araya, Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Alfonso García.

Tricorn Mono is a monospaced font with two styles – regular filled for uppercase and an outline version for the lowercase. Tricorn Mono was first hand drawn (sketched) as an exploration for a headline font and also developed on from a previously unreleased font. It was then expanded to feature multi language support and custom symbols. Tricorn Mono contains unique forms that explores the use of a rigid grid that is tested with negative form to provide legibility and balance. The conceptual design is focused on a modern, futuristic design aesthetic around the gaming, e-sports markets and future technology. Tricorn Mono typeface has been tightly monospaced and intended for use at larger sizes as a display typeface. The font can be tightly stacked to create strong, impactful typographic forms. This 612 glyph font has language support for 87 languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Catalan, Cebuano, Chiga, Cornish, Corsican, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Icelandic, Ido, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Jju, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kinyarwanda, Lojban, Low German, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyanja, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Portuguese, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, South Ndebele, Southern Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swati, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Taroko, Teso, Tsonga, Tswana, Vunjo, Walloon, Welsh, Western Frisian, Xhosa and Zulu.

Plener is a type family of layered fonts available in four weights: Light, Regular, Bold, and Heavy. The properties of layered fonts are matched with the classical type family structure, which makes Plener specific. The letters have humanist origins, interpreted expressively with short brush strokes separated in layers. These humanist forms keep the text set in Plein Air surprisingly legible. Layer structure allows the user to play with colors and transparency, giving the text a more personal feel. Plener comes in two additional styles, made of layers from the Light and Heavy weight. These new, display styles, named Plener LLH and Plener LHH are separated from the main family. To make the work easier, we created basic fonts out of merged layers (for every weight and style). We recommend users to set the text using these basic fonts first, then apply an opacity value lower than 100%. When satisfied, copy the text on multiple layers, changing the font to Layer A, B, and C. Apply a unique color to the text on each layer or use the same color but different opacity value. Plener fonts have the following features: ligatures, oldstyle figures, proportional and tabular lining figures, fractions, etc. Besides, there are fifteen dingbats set as discretionary ligatures. Contains Latin and Cyrillic. For some extra tips on how to work with the Plener family, see the pdf file attached to the gallery.

Zira is a playful hand-drawn font family designed by Daniel Bak (Artcity). It is available in three handy weights: regular, bold and screaming. It contains international language accent marks and diacriticals, including Greek and Cyrillic. Zira can be considered as smoothed serif version of Cornelius font. Zira as Cornelius as well is a chimpanzee character in the novel and movie series Planet of the Apes. Dr. Zira is a chimpanzee psychologist and veterinarian, who specializes in the study of humans, in the novel and subsequent movie series Planet of the Apes. Zira was played in the first three Apes movies by actress Kim Hunter. Unique among the Apes characters, Zira has blue eyes. Zira is the fiancée (later wife) of Cornelius, and both are ultimately responsible to the Minister of Science, Dr. Zaius. Zira's character and role are essentially the same in both the novel and the movies, though some story details differ. Her work in each involves both working with humans under laboratory conditions (e.g. learning and behavioural experiments), and working on them physically (lobotomy and other brain surgeries, vivisection, physical endurance and tolerance experiments, and subsequent autopsies). Zira is an outspoken liberal by nature, deploring war and militancy (and despising the gorillas, who seem to make both a way of life), and eager to seek and develop intelligence anywhere it can be found. Zira literally stands for her principles - or refuses to stand, as the case may be.

Soho is the latest addition to the growing range of typefaces from Sebastian Lester. This grand opus of a project resulted in a typeface that comprises nine weights and five widths of precision engineered OpenType. 40 fonts, 32,668 characters and 24 OpenType features. Hot on the heels of the popular Neo Sans and Neo Tech range, and his first typeface release Scene, Soho represents three years of work by Lester. As a type designer I'm preoccupied with finding ways in which I can address modern problems like good legibility in modern media, and create fonts that work precisely and efficiently in the most technically demanding of corporate and publishing environments." Slab serif typefaces are enjoying something of a renaissance, offering versatility whether for corporate identity, product branding, text or display use. With 40 weights to choose from Soho gives designers endless possibilities from the ultra chic lines conveyed by the lighter weights to the rock solid statement made by the heavier weights. Soho is cross-platform compatible. The Pro version provides extended language support for Central European languages. Used in conjunction with software applications that support OpenType many useful features like "stylistic sets" can be leveraged -- in which a wide variety of alternative characters can be introduced at the click of a mouse button giving one font several "tones of voice" from conservative to cutting edge. The wide range of glyphs includes ligatures and small caps."

Our eye is able to join missing parts of worn letters back into undisturbed shapes. We tend to see things better than they really are. Thanks to this ability we ignore faults of those close to us as we can’t accept the fact that every once in a while we convene with an impaired entity. Typography is merely a man’s invention, hence imperfection and transience, albeit overlooked, are its key features. This typeface is based on worn-out letterings on tombstones in the St. Croce basilica in Florence. For hundreds of years, microscopic particles of marble are being taken away on the soles of visitors: the embossed figures become fossilised white clouds, fragments of inscriptions are nearing the limits of legibility. First missing are thin joins and serifs, then the main strokes finally slowly diminish into nothingness over time. Unlike an archaeologist, for whom even completely featureless stele is valuable, the typographer must capture the proper moment of wear, when the type is not too “new” but also not too much decimated. Such typeface is usable for catalogue jackets, invitations and posters. Calligraphy is a natural human trait. To write is to create characters of reasonable beauty and content, according to the nature of the writer. A natural characteristic of architecture is to create an aesthetic message very similar to the alphabet. A doric column, the gabled roof, the circle of the well plan: these are the basic shapes from which all text typeface is derived.

The Jazayeri Kufic Shoushtar font is a beautiful typographic implementation of the decorative Kufic calligraphy inscribed on the walls of the historic Grand Mosque of Shoushtar in southwestern Iran. This mosque contains many other inscriptions added over time for documentary purposes but its four monumental Kufic inscriptions which are revived in this font are the most essential ones to understand its design and meaning. Built in the ninth century CE, this mosque is one of the earliest hypostyle mosques in Iran. It was built in “the city of scholars” when its residents included two great Sufis, Sahl Ibn Abdullah Tostari and Mansur Hallaj. The designer and producer of the font is Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri, a well-known Iranian master calligrapher, designer, scholar, and author. Mousavi Jazayeri has taken a personal interest in the Kufic script and devoted years to independent research, visiting archaeological locations, historic buildings and cemeteries, mosques, libraries and museums to study the script through direct contact. He has developed a systematic research methodology and published his findings in several books. His professional interest in script and calligraphy stimulated his discovery of the historic method for cutting the Kufic pen, which has had a direct impact on his own work, as seen in several well-received exhibitions and workshops. The historical research and achievements of Mousavi Jazayeri brought together the first international group dedicated to the study and revival of the historic Kufic script operation through kuficpedia.com.

P22 Klauss Kursiv is the first ever digital revival and expansion of the last face Karl Klauß designed for the Genzsch & Heyse foundry in Stuttgart before he died in 1956. Karl Klauß’s classical training in the graphic arts gave him solid chops to use as a springboard for design ideas that remained relevant among the countless trends fleeting around the turmoil of two world wars. By the mid-1950s, a kind of ornamental deco aesthetic was well on its way into mainstream design in post-war Europe, and demand was high for unique, lively and non-minimal ad faces. Klauß, a reliable designer with a proven track record of calligraphic faces, pushed the envelope on his own calligraphy and designed something that packages elegance in a boldness seldom seen before in luxury scripts. Quite a bit of talent is on display in Klauss Kursiv. In spite of the restraint this kind of design imposes on itself almost by default, the interplay between thick and thin never seems forced or challenging. Clear, natural strokes build a compact alphabet that demonstrates the wrist control of a veteran calligrapher. Creative nib angling segues into very clever start-and-stop constructs to make attractive forms that work quite well together, yet stand well to individual scrutiny. P22 Klauss Kursiv comes with a load of built-in alternates and ligatures in a font of over 470 glyphs, providing extended support for Latin languages.