Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023

Maestrale is a paradigm-breaking new take on calligraphy, built around a compact, serif-style core and outrageously long, flamboyant extenders. At large sizes, its confident, charismatic lettershapes are ideally suited for branding and decorative uses, whereas longer texts at smaller sizes naturally weave themselves into a flowing texture. The font comprises 1299 glyphs, including many stylistic alternates, ligatures, small capitals, and initial, terminal, and linking forms, and offers extensive OpenType programming to support them. The calligraphic form of Maestrale is complemented by a matching text font (Maestrale Text) with short extenders, available in three cuts (a serif-style Roman, an upright Cursive, and a tilted Italic). Maestrale is all about the lowercase; its capitals are deliberately understated so as not to steal the limelight. In fact, the font works very well when set exclusively in lowercase. Maestrale�s small capitals are fitted into the core space of the lowercase, allowing them to be freely interspersed with lowercase characters. Alternately, an OpenType feature is available to replace a and e in small-caps text with their lowercase equivalents for a fresh unicase look. Since alternates and ligatures play such an important role, Maestrale offers three different modes of use. The most straightforward approach is simply to start typing using Maestrale Pro � the extensive OpenType programming will ensure that collisions between extenders are avoided and attractive ligatures are substituted for common glyph combinations. A more interactive approach is provided by the font Maestrale Manual, which allows the user to manually select alternate forms and ligatures even in typographically unsavvy applications, such as PowerPoint (as long as standard ligatures are supported). Stylistic alternates are simply represented as ligatures of their base forms with one or more instances of the rarely-used by easily-accessed characters "~" (ASCII tilde) and "`" (spacing grave accent); linking forms are built with �_� (underscore), multi-character ligatures with "|" (pipe), and initial and terminal forms with the �less than� and �greater than� characters. For instance, the Maestrale wordmark in the posters above was simply typeset with the string (`ma`est|r_a```l```e)| in Maestrale Manual (The parentheses represent �less than� and �greater than� characters here.) Feel free to type this string into the test line below and see what happens! Make sure Standard Ligatures are enabled. An instruction sheet listing all alternate forms and their accessibility is available from the Gallery tab on this page. The third mode of usage is aimed at professional designers, who make use of sophisticated software with extensive OpenType support. These power users are advised to use the font Maestrale Pro again, where all glyphs are accessible as stylistic alternates. Maestrale Text is a less extravagant but more versatile variation on the design of Maestrale, replacing Maestrale�s swashes with efficiently compact extenders. It is intended to serve as a perfectly matching text companion to Maestrale calligraphy, but constitutes a full-fledged typeface in its own right. It is equally at home at display sizes as it is in pull quotes, titles, and high-impact blocks of text. Maestrale Text comes in three complementary faces: A serif-style Roman, an upright Cursive, and a tilted Italic. Maestrale is the Italian word for �masterful�. It is also the traditional Italian name for the northwesterly mediterranean wind, better known by its French name, Mistral. Acknowledgements: I am grateful to the helpful souls on the Typophile forums for extensive feedback and encouragement on Maestrale, and to the TypeDrawers forum for feedback on Maestrale Text. This font is dedicated to Simone.

Chucara next is the newest font designed by Juan Pablo De Gregorio, a typeface aimed at high readability when set in paragraphs or large chunks of text. Its predecessor "Chúcara", born in 2003, sought after increasing readability by achieving big and simple counterforms. This time around Juan Pablo went further by increasing the X-height and trimming both ascenders and descenders, thus the font appears to be much larger than it is and can be readable at smaller sizes. The DNA of the whole font is marked by the terminal of the "a" character. Juan Pablo used a specially crafted cut to design this counterform, and this shape together with the graceful and winding forms of the letter resembles the form of a horse, hence the name Chúcara, or untamed. The italic version has a 10-degree angle and a 10% condensation, making it way more streamlined than a regular italic font. The Philosophy of a larger counterform is maintained through and through in the italic variant. This version looks different not only due to its inclination, but the sheer effort put into carefully taking care of the condensation and the gestures allow the italic to enrich the texts gracefully, for the highlighting of the words stands out without affecting the grey of the paragraph. Chucara next is a typeface optimal for being used in books, newspapers, magazines, texts, printing, headlines, editorial, quotes, corporate identity, and lo res printing. The typeface has 8 weights, ranging from “thin” to “black”, and two versions: "regular" and "italic". Its 16 files contain 635 characters with small caps, stylistic sets and different kind of numbers. It supports 219 Latin-based languages, spanning through 212 different countries. Chucara next supports this languages: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Corsican Creek,Crimean Tatar (Latin),Croatian, Czech, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)Guadeloupean, Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian, Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotc?k (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, IgboI, locano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, M?ori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu, Zuni.