In the 1970s I was anxious and distressed about the future. I was right. In 1975 Future Imperfect was submitted to, and rejected by, Letraset. I wish I’d kept the rejection slip.

Burger Royale JNL by Jeff Levine is a bold, sans serif font with a slight Deco feel, inspired by the logo of a former Florida chain of hamburger shops called Royal Castle.

Basic Pixel is the right font to have fun with. With 15 different styles you can combine styles and color like building blocks to create endless new combinations and intriguing visual outputs.

S6 sans is a contemporary neo-grotesque sans serif typeface with strong stylistic geometric contrasts. Its distinctive wide-open stance was designed to give the right visual consistency for branding and communications.

While researching the history of Onitsuka Tiger's branding and graphic design, I came across an odd, yet highly appealing piece of custom lettering on the company's ONICK ski boots from the 1970s. Reminiscent of aspects of the typeface Black-Out by Eli Carrico (released by my type foundry Wordshape), yet vertically compressed with razor-sliced counters and odd stencil element that makes up one of the legs of the "K", the ONICK lettering is a potential source for an intriguing modular font. I immediately thought of Ryoichi Tsunekawa as a potential collaborator to bring this piece of lettering to full-fledged life in the contemporary context. Based in Nagoya, Tsunekawa runs an independent type foundry called Dharma Type, including three specialized foundry sub-labels: Flat-It, devoted to display lettering; Prop-A-Ganda, a series of fonts inspired by and based on retro propaganda posters, movie posters, retail sign lettering & advertisements in the early 20th century; and Holiday Type, a series of decorative and retro scripts for holiday use. The past year has seen a flurry of notice of his work abroad, having been featured in both MyFonts' "Creative Characters" and YouWorkForThem's newsletter. As the work of most Japanese type designers is almost wholly unnoticed abroad, for Tsunekawa to be interviewed by two of the most popular type distribution companies in the world is definitely something beyond the norm. Perhaps it is because he works independently, or perhaps it is due to the charm and friendliness with which his typefaces are infused. Either way, this attention is both welcome and appreciated. Beyond mere charm, Tsunekawa's work is nuanced, detailed, and accessible due to its high level of finish. His fonts stand apart from his contemporaries in Latin typeface design in Japan due to his fascination with pop, vernacular and historical lettering from "non-pure" sources- whereas type designers like Kunihiko Okano and Akira Kobayashi have spent years analyzing the essence of Western letterform construction and unlocking the essence of Latin forms, Tsunekawa views surface and the awkward nature of his sources as being of value, as well. His irreverence for the formal doctrines of history imbue his typeface designs with a rugged inventiveness that would be missed by most- glyphs without source designs are guessed at and approximated, often in a manner wildly divergent from what Western eyes would assume. It is in these moments that I find sheer delight in Tsunekawa’s work and what make me most pleased to invite him aboard Neojaponisme and Onitsuka Tiger’s type development project. His assorted typefaces show an eclecticism in finish and as holistic systems- Tsunekawa's return email to me about the proposed type project showed a digital sketch of how a completed typeface family from the source lettering might look, rendered with an effortlessness and dedication to detail that belies a skilled craftsperson. Further development showed Tsunekawa’s rigor- the typeface in development rapidly featured glyphs ignored by many: a full set of fractions, Eastern European diacritics and accents, superior and inferior numerals, alternate characters, and custom ligatures - all designed with regulated, detailed spacing. ONICK is a typeface Tsunekawa should be proud of- an homage to a moment in history rendered in the absolute best fashion. We are proud to present it to the world! --Ian Lynam

Michaelangelo. da Vinci. Bellini. Rafael. Masters of Italian art whose names have dwarfed those of many other great Italian artists. Yet relics from these other artists remain, though often unnoticed because of their practical nature. These unknowns are the Italian Masters of vernacular sign painting, and insigne now gives a nod to their work with its new sans serif, Gineso. Based on its inspiration, Gineso was created for posters, headlines and logotypes. (It does well in apps, too, though the sign painters probably weren’t thinking about that at the time.) Aesthetically remedied, yet still with an uncut charm, Gineso’s condensed qualities make it especially nice for signs and titling where horizontal space is at a premium. The tight, narrow forms of its geometric design leave you with a robust flavor that will remind you of mamma’s spaghetti. But don’t worry; the font’s ample counters ensure your audience won’t be reading through a bowl of pasta. These condensed forms look great on their own or when their seven different weights and matching italics are utilized together. With the included OpenType features, fractions and superior/inferior positions are also available to broaden your palette. Even more, this font is ready for complex, professional typography with OpenType features like alternate letters and a large character set including Central and Eastern European Languages. So when you find yourself (or your project) in a tight space, stir in Gineso to get the right taste for your copy. It may just make all the difference.

Cocomat has been designed by Francesco Canovaro and Debora Manetti as a development of the Coco Gothic typeface system created by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini. It shares with all the other subfamilies in the Coco Gothic system a geometric skeleton with open, more humanistic proportions, a sans serif design with slightly rounded corners and low contrast proportions, without optical compensation on the horizontal lines, resulting in a quasi-inverted contrast look in the boldest weights. What differentiates Cocomat from the other subfamilies in Coco Gothic are some slight design touches in the uppercase letters, with a vertical unbalancing reminiscent of art deco design, notably evident in uppercase "E", "A","F","P" and "R" - while lowercase letters have been given some optical compensation on the stems, like in "n","m", "p" and "q". These design choices, evoking the second and third decade of the last century (Cocomat is also referred as Coco 1920 in the Coco Gothic Family) all give Cocomat a slight vintage feeling, making it a perfect choice every time you need to add a period vibe or an historical flair to your design, like in food or luxury branding. The typeface, first published in 2014, has been completely redesigned by the original authors in 2019 as Cocomat PRO to include eight extra weights (thin, medium, black and heavy in both roman and italic form), extra open type features (including alternate forms, positional numerals), and extra glyphs making Cocomat cover over two hundred languages using latin, cyrillic and greek alphabets.