Selectric typewriter font. The part of the large, many years project on revival and further development (over 1000 glyphs) of the 20th century’s most famous typewriter Selectric golfball fonts, lost for many decades, not being created since then in digital vector form.

A bold, decorative, striped font for display and headlines.

Gothic Leavenworth, a display type, very bold, sans serif.

A bold, decorative, striped font for display and headlines.

Based on the blobby lettering printed on the sheets of plasterboard (drywall) used in a garage conversion during the summer of 2004.

A black weight decorative typeface with an engraved flare. Merchant was designed for all media and requires subjective display kerning and compensation.

Roller Poster is named after Alfred Roller. In 1902, Roller created a poster to advertise the 16th exhibit of Austrian Artists and Sculptures Association, representing the Vienna Secession movement. The exhibit was to take place in Vienna during January & February 1903. The location is not mentioned because everyone in Vienna knew it would be held at the exhibit hall in the Secession Building at Friedrichstraþe 12, a few blocks south of the Opernring, near the Naschmarkt. Designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1897, the buiilding has been restored and stands today as one finest of the many fine examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Vienna (see vienna_secession_bldg.jpg). Because of its dome, it is called “the golden cabbage.” The poster itself is unique. The word “secession” is in one type style and takes up two-thirds of the elongated poster. At the bottom of the poster are the details in a different lettering style. It is this second style at the bottom that is the basis for the font Roller Poster. In keeping with our regular naming conventions, we were going to call it Roller Gezeichnete (hand-drawn), but the wonderful play on both words and the shape of the three S’s in secession was too compelling. In November 1965 there was an exhibit of Jugendstil and Expressionist art at the University of California. Alfred Roller’s Secession Poster was part of that exhibit. Wes Wilson was designing promotional material at Contact Printing in San Francisco. Among their clients was a rock promoter named Bill Graham, staging dance-concerts at Fillmore Auditorium. Wilson saw the catalog from the UC exhibit and Roller’s lettering. Wilson adapted Roller’s letter forms to his own fluid style. The result was the poster for the August 12-13, 1966 Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead concert at Fillmore put on by Graham (BG23-1). Wilson continued to use Roller’s letter forms on most of the posters he did for Graham through May 1967, when he stopped working for Graham. The posters were extremely successful and the lettering style along with Roller’s letter forms were picked up by other artists, including Bonnie MacLean, Clifford Charles Seeley, James Gardner, and others. The Secession poster and the Fillmore posters have inspired a number of fonts in addition to ours. Among them are JONAH BLACK (& WHITE) by Rececca Alaccari, LOVE SOLID by Leslie Carbarga and MOJO by Jim Parkinson. Each is different and yet each clearly shows its bloodlines. Our font differs in two ways: 1) the general differences in the interpretation of the letter forms and 2) the modification of the basic letter form to incorporate the diacriticals within the implied frame of the letter, after the manner of the original design by Roller. We borrowed Carbarga’s solution to the slashed O and used it, in a modified form, for other characters as well to accomplish the same purpose. We recommend that you buy ours and at least one of the other three. According to Alaccari, a version called URBAN was released by Franklin Lettering in the 70’s (and is shown on page 51 of The Solotype Catalog). For comparison of our font to original design, see image files roller_poster_2s.jpg of original poster and roller_poster_2sx.jpg showing reconstruction using our font for the lower portion (recontructed area indicated by blue bar). Please note the consistency of character width. In the lower case, 23 of the basic 26 letters are 1/2 EM Square wide. The ‘i’ is an eighth narrower, while the ‘m’& ‘w’ are one quarter wider. All the Upper Case letters are 1/8 EM wider than the lower case. This is to make it easier to fill a geometrical shape like a rectangle, allowing you to capture a little of the flavor of Wes Wilson’s Fillmore West poster using only a word processor. We have also included a number of shapes for use as spacers and endcaps. If you have a drawing program that allows you to edit an ‘envelope’ around the letters to distort their shape, you can really get creative. I used Corel Draw for the gallary images, but there are other programs that can accomplish the same thing. The image file “roller_poster_keys.jpg” shows the complete character set with the keystrokes required for each character (see “HiH_Font_readme.txt” for instruction on inserting the non-keyboard characters). The file “roller_poster_widths.jpg” shows the exact width of each character in EM units (based on 1000 units per EM square). You will notice that the font is set wide for readability. However, most programs will allow you to tighten up on the character spacing after the manner of Roller & Wilson. In MS Word, for example, go to the FORMAT menu > FONT > CHARACTER SPACING. Go to the second Drop-Down Menu, labeled ‘Spacing’ and select "condensed' and then set the amount that you want to condense ‘by’ (key on the little arrows); two points (2.0) is a godd place to start. Let your motto be EXPLORE & EXPERIMENT. Art Nouveau has always been one of my favorite movements in art -- I grew up in a home with a couple of Mucha prints hanging on the living room wall. Perhaps because of that and because I lived through the sixties, I have enjoyed researching and designing this font more than any other I have worked on. Let’s face it (pardon the pun), Roller Poster is a FUN font. You owe it to yourself to have fun using it.

Arsinoe is a condensed geometric typeface noted for their unorthodox long ascenders and low x-height. Family consists of five different weights plus two special versions accompanied by their italic version. The Arsinoe type family includes extended Latin characters, ligatures, lining figures, OSF (Old Style Figures), scientific inferiors and many OpenType features. From poster design to editorial layout, Arsinoe is intended for a wide range of uses but use in small sizes are not recommended. Important technical notice: Combining diacritical marks (U+0300, U+0301, U+0303, U+0309, U+0323) are only 'compatibility characters' for codepage 'MS Windows 1258 Vietnamese'. Combining diacritical marks (U+0312, U+0315, U+0326) are only 'compatibility characters' for Czech, Latvian, Romanian and Slovak language. OpenType features 'Mark to Base' and 'Mark to Mark' is not supported. Kerning is prepared as single ('flat') table for maximum possible compatibility with older software.

Inspired by New Transitional and Egyptian fonts, Tanger Serif has elements of a sturdy work-horse text face and finely detailed headline font. A wide variety of widths and weights support many text sizes. Typically Narrow is used in headlines, Medium in body and Wide in smaller print. Nothing is predefined, though. By combining the right widths with the right weights this traditional approach can easily be challenged. Let’s take an oversized (over 10 pt) body copy for instance. In conjunction with using a bigger size to enhance readability, a narrow and slightly lighter weight will save space and brighten text color. Tanger Serif Narrow is a slim normal rather than a condensed face. As an Open Type “Pro” font each weight includes an expanded character set, small caps, old style figures, tabular figures, ligatures, fractions etc. All these are easily accessible through OpenType features.

Dignus was inspired in two clever and famous typefaces: Bank Gothic and Microgramma. Bank Gothic designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF in 1930. Microgramma typeface designed by Alessandro Butti and Aldo Novarese for Nebiolo in 1952. Those typefaces were based on a stable rectangular shape with rounded corners, denoting the constructivist heritage and technological spirit of '50. We'd intended to review that typographic scenery with our contemporary point of view, aiming to obtain the formal synthesis of the signs and increase its legibility. Dignus fonts support Central, Eastern and Western European languages. Each font comes with full OpenType features like: standard and discretional ligatures, swashes, stylistic alternates, old style numerals, Tabular figures, numerators, denominators, scientific superior - inferiors, Case sensitive forms and vectors. The Dignus fonts include 7 weights, from Thin to ExtraBlack. The family is completed with condensed and expanded version all with their corresponding italics.

The most notable characteristic of this typeface is that it has a compact and regular shape that is slightly condensed but fluidly connected. Its glyphs emulate the look of handwritten, inked characters. Their exuberant graphic strokes and sharp edges maintain the influences of printed types produced by mechanical processes. Unlike most of the italic type of today, the capital letters are as high as the ascending lower-case letters. The brush script style (Originally designed in 1942 by Robert E. Smith for the ATF) inspired many contemporary and beautiful typefaces, such as Wisdom Script, Mission Script, Marketing Script, Motion Picture, Thirsty Script, Lauren Script, Deftone Stylus and many others. This font has more than 700 glyphs, Central European languages support, including Open Type features, swashes, and contextual stylistic alternates. It also includes old-style figures, discretional and standard ligatures, is case-sensitive and has a set of tails and ornaments.

Bilokos Pro is a cool and modern display font. Designed by experts to make your design look out of this world, this font has the potential to take your creative ideas far. This is a condensed sans serif display font. On the one hand, it has rounded curves with very open terminals that make this font family elegant, user-friendly and contemporary and on the other hand very useful for writing titles in any medium. It also comes with stylistic variations of 0-9, A-Z and a-z to satisfy the most demanding professionals. It has OpenType features like full ligatures, tabular figures for tables, old style figures to elegantly insert numbers into your sentences. With its large character set, it meets the needs of professionals because it will support several languages ​​of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, Greek and Cyrillic for international communication.

Unique and decorative signage for many drive-ins, motels, food stores and other businesses of the 1940s had what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblem on a decorative panel, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Drive-In”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by the Art Deco sans serif style of those vintage signs, Privilege Sign Two JNL recreates the type design in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses. This is a companion font to Privilege Sign JNL, which recreates the condensed sans serif lettering of other privilege signs from the 1950s and early 1960s.

OBL Gianis is a family of compact geometric sans-serif typefaces designed with a strong focus on headline utility while infusing a touch of subtle naivety. We drew inspiration from the rigid yet rhythmic construction principles found in late 20th-century geometric classics like Avant-Garde, Futura, and Kabel. OBL Gianis seeks to salvage and build upon the legacy of geometric typefaces as they continue to evolve in the 21st century. We've considered various real-world scenarios and use cases, adapting to the ever-changing visual culture. This evolution has given OBL Gianis its unique quirks, including a larger x-height to accommodate bold usage in tighter typesetting, a compact double contour to balance the larger x-height, and shorter descenders and ascenders in lowercase characters. With extensive Latin character support (over 1000 glyphs) and 18 different weights and accompanying italics, OBL Gianis is well-equipped to meet the ever-changing demands and trends in headline typesetting.