The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.

Humanex is the first text typeface of Sébastien Truchet. He created it during the year of postgraduation ‘Systèmes graphiques, typographique & language' in Amiens. The beginning stages of the font development involved calligraphic research based on humanistic ductus. Sébastien’s goal was to introduce modules in a lineal structure. Downstrokes and upstrokes are homogeneous. Links between stem and curve are straight. It gives solidity and thickness to the typographical composition. The first version was a Semi Bold version and its italic. This typeface gave a blackest text. You can see the first display typeface, Humanex Ultralight. Sébastien kept the Semibold structure in order to make a thin typeface. Its goal is to give support to the Semibold version. It is a good typeface in big sizes. In order to add a better legibility, Sébastien built a Book version to have a brightest grey of text. The reading is more comfortable.

Lectio is a Roman font based on a Venetian Renaissance early typefaces, but with a modern and expressive design. His obvious calligraphic influence favors continuous text reading. The generous internal "eye" gives Lectio an appropriate legibility, its soft and organic modulation avoids fatigue, its robust character is attractive and stimulating in large bodies, especially for use in headlines. Lectio comes in two versions: Lectio and Lectio B. Lectio has seven weight and their corresponding slanted variables (true italics). Lectio B is composed only of Italics in six weight. The ascenders are slightly lower, the descending are more regular and the oblique trace of some letters have a more constant rhythm. Each of these faces has the optimum amount of contrast agains the background and clear and open internal letter shape. These fonts include diacritics for CE languages, Old Style figures, standard and discretional ligatures.

Chamberí is designed to be Vogue España's bestpoke typeface. An ambitious typographic branding project made for one of the most iconic magazine headers of the world, it defines the Spanish edition’s personality through a blending of the functionality of XIX Century Modern Romans (also known as “Scotch" typefaces) and the gestural expressiveness of typographic Baroque. Chamberí is a peculiar combination of the rational and the delicate, the sturdy and the feminine. The family is organised in a broad spectrum of 56 variants in which the transition from the restrained text version to the flamboyant, elegant display is modulated by contrast. The family is organised in seven weights: from Extra Light to Black, plus four optical sizes : Text, Headline, Display and Superdisplay. All this with its own Italics, Small Caps and Old Style Figures, besides the due refinement to resolve any editorial and communicative requirement.

This late 19th century design conjures up early 20th century Dutch DeStijl lettering with a mostly strict adherence to right angles and minimal stroke modulation. Geometric began its life as a metal typeface from the Central Type Foundry, circa 1884. Soon after, this design was officially licensed to Morgans & Wilcox and was shown in their 1890 catalog in Regular, Light and Condensed Light variations. After acquiring Morgans & Wilcox, Hamilton Manufacturing offered Geometric Light Face Condensed as their own No 3020 and the Geometric Light Face as No 3021. HWT Geometric has been expanded digitally to include a Regular Condensed version. A heavier wood type specimen was found from an unknown manufacturer and digitized as it was found, resulting in the HWT Geometric Shopworn and Shopworn Inked variations. These digital versions all include a full Western and Central European character set of over 380 glyphs.

Rinzler AOE is a revival of a LetterGraphics film type called Caren. A modular, mechanical, sans-serif stencil all rolled up into one retro typeface. It's not an all-purpose typeface, it's not an everyday typeface, but it is a cool typeface for the right design projects. Rinzler AOE carries itself with a bold weighted style, and stencil cutouts that don't follow standard stencil formatting. It might be considered more of a techno stencil (if there is such a thing). It reminded me in a vague way of TRON, hence the main poster graphic styling, although it looks NOTHING like the Tron titling typeface. Nevertheless, it's a fun typeface that needed to be preserved and used again. WHAT'S INCLUDED: Extensive language support. Rinzler has accented and special characters that support the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan Cornish, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Leonese, Luxenbourgish, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Walloon, & Welsh. One of my guilty pleasures is in taking the time to recreate historical typefaces as digital fonts, but a lot of incredible historical typestyles created as wood or metal or film type usually have bare bones character sets and have been lost or only exist as limited specimen proofs in old books. These typefaces may have more niché uses than modern typefaces, but I believe it is important nonetheless to preserve these typefaces for future generations. These typefaces, if nothing else, can often inspire new creations.

For Vega antikva, too, 16th and 17th century typefaces stood models. I made a free interpretation of them, with a nice result, if I am allowed to express myself. Vega antikva makes a beautiful impression in books, but even as a web typeface it behaves well. The name Vega can be traced down to a constellation, a mathematician, a writer, a movie character, or a research ship, as you like. Now there is a typeface with that name, too. Vega antikva was released in 1994.

Himawari means ‘Sunflower’ in Japanese. It was raining while I worked on this font, so I needly something to cheer me up - like bright yellow sunflowers! Himawari Script is a nice and neat handmade font, which was (more or less) inspired by an older font of mine, called mama Bear and, like the font it was modeled on, was made with a bamboo pen and Chinese ink. Himawari Script comes with some swashes and a cute smiling sunflower (just enable Stylistic Alternates and hit *).

Douglass Pen was inspired by the handwriting of Frederick Douglass, who was born an American slave but died a distinguished 19th century statesman, orator, and abolitionist leader. He also had fine penmanship. Douglass Pen is modeled chiefly after Douglass's handwritten account of John Brown's famous 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. It simulates his somewhat condensed cursive, dashed off in a swift, bold style. The OpenType release has more than 800 glyphs, including scores of ligatures, alternative upper cases, inkblots, crossouts, and Eastern European characters.

Something about the swoopy loops in the uppercase characters of this typeface, originally called "Ronde", reminds one of the signature 'do of a certain real-estate-mogul-turned-TV-celebrity, and so this font was named. Delightfully different, this face can be playful or formal, as suits the the occasion. To complete its nineteenth-century creds, the font includes classic bishops fingers at the ASCII tilde and ASCII circumflex positions. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

The "Architect's Font" for Everyone! Having taught Mechanical Drawing - BC (before computers), I have always wanted to digitize my every day lettering as I have previously done with my calligraphic lettering. Based on my own daily lettering style, which in turn is modeled after the hand lettering of draftsmen and architects, Fran Hand comes with Regular and Italic versions each for the same low price. Use "Fran Hand" for writing letters, fax cover sheets, invoices, spec drawings, or for enjoying a change from the prosaic and commonplace.

HS Almaha is a modern OpenType Arabic Typeface. It combines the features of linear Naskh and modern Kufi. Segments of its letters are curvy and sharp. They are refinement more readable and present in extended texts in magazines, newspapers, books and other publications. This typeface supports Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Kurdish languages and it contains four weights; light, regular, medium and bold which can add to the library of Arabic fonts contemporary models that meet with the purposes of various designs for all tastes.

Kanona JNL is modeled from one of the numerous alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker for Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to a wealth of source material provided by Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio), Jeff Levine has been redrawing many of these alphabets and presenting them in digital form. The original variations in letter widths from Becker’s hand-painted alphabet have been left intact.

Brass Rail JNL is a novelty font, with its name derived from two key components of the source material. It was modeled from examples of vintage small letters stamped out of brass with "rails" above and below each character to fit within a slot. The most likely use of these letters would have been for either decorative initials or small merchandising signs (similar examples of both have been seen in the past). From these few examples comes a typeface with numerals, punctuation and an extended character set.

Plants Clean & Rough is 2-style family. The brush script is beautiful and unique; it is a model of modern calligraphy typefaces, in combination with a calligraphy writing style. Can be used for various purposes.such as headings, logos, wedding invitation, t-shirt, letterhead, labels, news, posters, badges etc. This font's features are: - Contextual Alternates - Standard ligatures - Discretionary ligatures - Stylistic Alternates - Stylistic sets OpenType features can be accessed by using OpenType smart programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator CS, CorelDraw X6-X7.