An original design by Malcolm Wooden of DTP Types Limited.

An original design by Malcolm Wooden of DTP Types Limited.

A bold engraver type style with a Wall Street look.

a decorative caps font digitized in the american type heritage

Honorable Mention at Morisawa Type Design Competition 2019 (Tokyo, Japan).

An original design by Malcolm Wooden of DTP Types Limited.

An original design by Malcolm Wooden of DTP Types Limited.

A revival design by Malcolm Wooden of DTP Types Limited.

One of a few quirky display types by this designer.

A nice loose hand written brush or marker type script.

Yummy dönut ya? Does this type make me look fat?

Based on an early wood type design. An original creation.

Based on an early wood type design. An original creation.

Based on an early wood type design. An original creation.

JT Collect is a hybrid sans-serif typeface for the 21st century that takes a playful approach to the type design heritages of Germany and Switzerland. Confidently built on a geometric structure and infused with elements from traditional grotesque typefaces, it hits the sweet spot between geo and grot. I developed JT Collect purely digitally, drawing from years of experience with analog type design. The letters aren’t based on one particular source but seek to merge different type genres from the first half of the 20th century and lift them to a contemporary quality level. JT Collect is less reserved than strictly geometric designs and brings some industrial workmanship and honesty into the game. The six weights plus three optical sizes of JT Collect offer what you need to make an impact. While cool and elegant in the Light weight, the fonts show more presence on the page as they grow bolder. To this end, I drew the letterforms with a slightly unrefined, brawny air in the bolder weights. This sets them apart from the perceived purity of more geometric designs. The Book weight is ideal for short texts and medium-length copy, and the forceful Bold makes wordmarks look crisp and lets headlines radiate cosmopolitan self-confidence. JT Collect is suitable as a primary typeface for branding, advertising, packaging, stationery, posters, documents, and websites from trades and industries as diverse as food & fashion, media & makers, culture & creators, games & gems, sports & startups. Use JT Collect for film titles or watch faces, for leaflets or store signs, for business cards or billboards: this font family is as adaptable as a chameleon (and like a chameleon, it’s never boring). Try it in different contexts. You won’t be disappointed. Its adaptability also makes JT Collect a great starting point for poised and persuasive font combinations. Even a sans/sans pairing is possible due to hybrid nature of JT Collect—something that’d be hard to achieve with most other sans-serif typefaces on the market. You can add to it a heavy slab from the OGJ library, like Temper Wide. You might go for a geometric or a grotesque typeface as secondary (text) typeface. Or you could set your body copy in a classic serif typeface such as Caslon, Sabon, or Plantin. That’s right: JT Collect is a true team player. Whether you need a grotesque or a geometric sans: try JT Collect. You can get the best of both worlds.

Actium is a contemporary multilingual sans serif typeface developed to help perfect typography automatically. Type Mafia has focussed on words with odd combinations of capital letters and numbers, such as product names and postal codes such as WD40 and H1N5, jump out of the text. They sit awkwardly together as the numerals have been designed to work with the lowercase, not the uppercase letters – affecting readability.To fix this Type Mafia invented Smart Capo™. Smart Capo™ Smart Capo is a feature that automatically activates once you type an uppercase letter together with a number. When a capital letter is sat next to a numeral, Smart Capo converts the letter to a mid-cap — a contemporary alternative to small caps — and the default old-style numeral to a lining numeral. Actium’s mid-caps and lining numerals have been designed with the same height (between cap and x-height) so they sit comfortably next to each other and fit more harmoniously into text. Smart Capo applies equal attention to capitalised words without any numbers, such as NAVO and USA, and are also automatically set into mid-capitals. Working on its own, Smart Capo saves time and money for the typographer — taking the pain out of text formatting — and makes it a more pleasurable experience for the reader. This feature is made possible by the use of ‘contextual alternates’, an OpenType feature used in modern font software, working with a set of characters specially designed at mid-cap height. By default these changes automatically take place so it doesn't need to be switched on, it will just work. Actium Actium’s design has an unusual diagonal contrast — much more common in a serifed face than in a sans serif — giving it more bite. The typeface looks elegant when set in large sizes and remains very legible when shown in small sizes. The family consists of six weights in two styles, making a dozen fonts. Weights range from light to black in roman and true italic. All fonts are fully loaded with functional elements. Actium boasts an extended Latin character set and with Greek. This means a wide range of Western languages are supported: perfect for use in bilingual publications and packaging. For numerals, each font includes old-style and lining figures in both proportional and tabular widths, with superiors and inferiors. These allow you to select the right set of numbers for the right task.

Taking its name from the arabic word for "king", Malik is a flared sans serif typeface family designed in 2020 by Andrea Tartarelli. The designer wanted to find a way to bridge the classical letterforms of Roman Old Style typefaces with the readability of contemporary sans typefaces. This was achieved by using the so-called flared serif that emerges gradually from the stem of the letter, ending in a sharp angle. It's something that also reminds of the peculiar shapes of the Simoncini Method, invented by italian type designer Francesco Simoncini to get a sharper definition of letterforms. To this blend of classical elegance and modernist expertise, Malik adds the calligraphic influence of modern masters like Frederic Goudy or Ed Benguiat, visible in signature details like the reverse contrast uppercase B, or the calligraphic lowercase k. Malik also means "owner", and this font surely wants to rule the page. It manages to be extremely readable when used in body text size, but looks surprising and expressive in display use. The inclusion of the Malik Heavy Display weight, with its black texture balanced by deep inktraps, allows for striking logo design. The weight range of the family is extremely wide, including a Book alternative to the Regular weight for fine-tuning readability, a range of light display weights and a solid choice of bold weights for branding, all coming with matching true italics. The 16 cuts of Malik have been equipped with all the features you need to solve your editorial and design challenges, including a wide language coverage (thanks to over one thousand latin and cyrillic characters) and a complete set of open type features (including small capitals, positional numbers, case sensitive forms). Alternate characters and stylistic sets allow you to fine-tune your editorial and branding design by choosing variant letter shapes. Malik is the typeface for everyone who wants to design like a king...or like he doesn't care who the king is!

Geometric typefaces are a staple in every typographer’s toolbox since the 1920s. It was a time when iconic faces such as Futura, Erbar, and Kabel appeared on the scene and turned the world of type upside-down. Inspired by those early giants as well as later epigones with a legacy of their own (such as 1970’s Avant Garde Gothic), Flink Neue is the Identity Letters take on this genre, characterized by a clean and focused appearance. With neat shapes and the look of pure geometry, Flink Neue adapts to a vast range of applications and topics, from the fine print in contract to website body copy to logo design to billboard-size slogans. Its x-height is considerably larger than in classic geometric sans-serif fonts; its proportions are harmonized as opposed to strictly constructed. This makes for a more contemporary look, setting it apart from the classics. With three different widths, Flink is a true all-rounder. Geometric fonts are usually quite wide, which often leads to text-settings problems with headlines or small print. The Condensed and Compressed variants of Flink Neue solve this problem easily. This font family comes along in 18 weights from Thin to Black with matching Italics. There are almost 1400 characters per style, including nine stylistic sets that offer variations to the look and feel of Flink Neue, making it even more versatile. Besides the default mood of Flink Neue, there is also a Text and Bauhaus variant, where different letters have been changed to create a new mood. In theory, you just need one single font file to change between all three moods, but to make it easier for you, we also exported each mood within a separate file. Plenty of additional Open Type Features like ligatures, small caps, case sensitive forms, old-style figures, tabular figures and symbols make Flink Neue a valuable tool for the discerning typographer. Flink Neue is the reimagination of a classic genre, designed to suit the needs of our time.

Black Drum is a rare revival typewriter face, made digital from analog samples gathered with great care by Coniglio Type. A time and place; type and life. Black Drum is contemporary designer type, made from the struck steel hammers of an Art Deco Period san serif face transferred from a mechanical 1926 custom editor Royal Portable typewriter. Anna Conroy of Type Heritage, LLC, Philadelphia comments on Black Drum and its new place in time today: “Wow! nice lookin’ face Joseph! —Perfect, somewhere between Cable; [Rudolph Koch, 1927] (which was about the first transatlantic telegraph cable) with its raised x-height; and Futura [Paul Renner, 1928]. Yup, it has that great “Monopoly Game” question mark -- and all on a period-piece typewriter! You should have no trouble grafting that sorely needed Euro symbol.” –And he very well did! Author: Joseph Coniglio Producer: Coniglio Type MyFonts debut: October 2021

HWT Artz is the newest wood type to be cut at Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. It was designed by venerable type designer Erik Spiekermann exclusively for his own print studio (P98a in Berlin), specifically to be cut into large size wood type. The digital version is being offered to the general public with proceeds of sales to benefit the museum's ongoing operations. HWT Artz evokes bold early 20th century European poster lettering. The design itself is intended to minimize hand-finishing and thus production time with rounded corners rather than sharp interior corners that would normally have to be hand-finished. In keeping with the tradition of naming new Hamilton designs after key figures from the living history of Hamilton (and following Spiekermann's tradition of four letter font names), Artz is named after Dave Artz- Hamilton Manufacturing retiree and master type trimmer.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.