A classic “American” sans serif with a kink Desphalia belongs to the kind of sans serif fonts that were created in the 19th century. You could also name it “American Gothic”, a sans serif in the style of fonts like Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and similar. Above all, the high x-height characterizes this typeface style, as do the identical heights of uppercase and ascenders. However, I allowed myself a few peculiarities ;-) On the one hand, there is the gently sloping horizontal middle line on letters such as H, E, F, A and e. The M also got gently slanted sides. Some of the lower-case letters have an up- or down-stroke: a d m n p u. This "kink" on the shaft also serves to better distinguish the small l from the capital I — as can be seen clearly with the term »Illinois«. In keeping with the tradition of American typefaces, Desphalia does not have a true italic. Rather, the letters of the “Italic” have the same character forms as the normal upright variant, but in oblique — and so it is not called “Italic” but “Oblique”. Style Set 01: Another American peculiarity is the capital I with dashes above and below. It is included in the Desphalia as an alternate character form. An alternative small l with the “kink” in the ascender is also included — as is a y with the “kink” in the descender. Style Set 02: The corresponding “straight” forms a d l m n p u without the break are included as alternatives in a separate style set. Small caps are uppercase letters that are optically the same size as lowercase letters. They offer a very classy way of emphasis. Desphalia is available in the widths Condensed, Normal and Expanded, the weights include Thin, Light, Book, Bold, Black. Using the variable font, all intermediate levels can be freely selected. The figures are optionally available as tabular figures, proportional lining figures or old style figures.

"Punk is not dead, grunge is not dread, skateboarding and grafitti is forever" - shouted by some (possibly drunk!) person one late night. I had these "wise" words in the back of my mind, while making this font. I wanted to capture the wildness of both punk/grunge/skateboarding and grafitti without overdoing any of them!

Picking up a concept of Fritz Richter, Circensis is the realization of an adorned diplay font which had not been hitherto available, neither as a hot-metal font nor digitally. It is a great and legible font for circus and variety ads and posters, as well as for films, cafés, ice-cream parlors etc.

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

The late-19th-century Prussian-American printer and publisher Louis Prang, the “father of the American Christmas card”, was well-known for his efforts to improve art education in the United States. He published many instructional books and even founded a training school for art teachers. One of the books he published included a series of alphabets for sign painters, lithographers, illuminators, architects and civil engineers. There was nothing truly original there — in the book’s preface, Prang says that the alphabets were “based on foreign forms and adapted for American taste”. The one alphabet that caught my attention in that book was one simply called “Italic”. It’s a high- contrast modern, a Didone really, but with an interesting little twist: the lowercase is almost entirely connected, which makes for an interesting mix of modern typography and classic calligraphy. That stuff is right up my alley now. Whenever my eyes happen on a modern, it’s easy, even almost impulsive for me to envision swashes coming out of serifs and terminals. The caps melt and the minuscules dance with them. And so I brought my vision to life. Prangs is an italic set of three weights, each containing more than 1400 glyphs with plenty of OpenType features and Latin language support. This set celebrates the convergence of three centuries of fancy display alphabets. These fonts should work wherever moderns are used to elevate and scripts are used to appeal — namely today’s branding, packaging and glossy publications.

The Crew Pro is based on the logo of the seminal punk band 7 Seconds. It was expanded to include extended Latin, extended Cyrillic and Greek alphabets so it will work with most languages in Europe and the Americas.

Cape Horn is a typeface inspired by seafarers who have perished by navigating the treacherous seas surrounding Cape Horn, which is at the southern-most tip of South America. A-Z Numbers Multi-language support Symbols Special Characters Uppercase

Ilustrations of different "moves" in Mexican wrestling; a sport popular in the late 60s and 70s.

Kaaos Pro is based on the logo of the Finnish hardcore band of the same name. It was expanded to include extended Latin, extended Cyrillic and Greek alphabets so it will work with most languages in Europe and the Americas.

Utshani means "grass" in the African language: Zulu. Grass has softness but it also has great strength and many African craft implements are made from it. When we describe someone as being "like the grass", it is meant as a compliment for it means that they can be tender and strong. The fluid African font, Utshani, was designed to suggest the flexibility and strength of grass. In this way it contrasts with the majority of other "African-inspired" fonts, which tend to be heavy and hard-edged. It can be used in a wide variety of situations, in adverts and on posters and invitations. The font includes all upper and lower case letters, all numerals and punctuation as well as all special and accented characters. The font has been professionally letterspaced and kerned, and the inter-line gap has been carefully checked.

Eyeballs was designed at Bitstream by designer David Robbins. Its beginnings can be found in Bitstream’s Old Dreadful No. 7, where Mr. Robbins first conceived the capital I. He was later asked by Bitstream to develop the entire character set. The result is a humorous meld of cartoon and typography. A word of caution: Watch how you use it!

DF Mercat is a tribute to the famous marketplace situated at ‘La Rambla’ in Barcelona's historic centre. It is a picture font containing over 240 illustrations of fish, crustacean, clams, poultry, game, meat, sausages, herbs, vegetables, fruit, bread, butter, a variety of cheese, wines and spirits, small dishes, drinks (coffee, beer, soft drinks), ice cream, pastry, etc.

I bet a lot of people would love to have a Veggie Spray - I bet they would use it to turn candy, ice cream, cakes and other fattening products into something more healthy! Well, this font has zero calories and is 100% handmade, and comes with contextual alternates - which means that every letter has 5 different versions!

Party Doodles Too is the companion font to the popular font Party Doodles. 29 fun icons including a tray of champagne glasses, appetizers, balloons, pinwheel, stork with a baby, ace of hearts playing card, top hat and tunes, dice, bowling ball and pins, gifts, party umbrellas, cakes, cupcakes, ice cream, lollipop, drinks, corkscrew, noise makers, banners and candy.

Cursivica is a decorative font. Its letters are an odd mixture of script forms and block letters straightening and slimness. Cursivica supports several writing systems and besides supports extended Latin characters, also it contains extended Cyrillic (including Tatar letters), Greek alphabet and Hebrew. This font will perfectly fit for invitation letter design, packaging of cosmetic products, creams, etc.

Roadstar is a script designed in the style of the classic American advertising font from the 1940's-1950's. Roadstar is a retro brush-style script designed for logotype, packaging, posters, T-shirts, signage & design projects with a retro & vintage feel. Roadstar comes with two styles that both contain all upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals and mathematical operators, as well as all accented characters.

Caslon Antique was designed by Berne Nadall and brought out by the American type foundry Barnhart Bros & Spindler in 1896 to 1898. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to Caslon, but has the quaint crudeness of what people imagine type looked like in the eighteenth century. Use Caslon Antique for that “old-timey” effect in graphic designs. It looks best in large sizes for titles or initials.

The pattern for this face was designed by Will Bradley in 1894 for the cover of Inland Printer magazine, and was licensed the following year to American Type Founders. Its classic lines and condensed footprint make this typeface a natural for elegant and inviting headlines. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

He's a man of character; a Man for All Seasons. He upholds the values of Truth, Justice and the American Way and he's never averse to a slice of Ma's homemade apple pie. He's not a man of yesteryear, nor a man caught in the here and now. He's a human being of great honor, a citizen of the world -- a Man of Tomorrow!

Hello! Do you need a poster for the ASL study? Maybe you want to understand sign language or share your message. Please try it. Here is a set of hand-drawn illustrations of American Sign Language (ASL). The font is in 4 styles: * with sleeves * with sleeves & Latin symbol * clear hand * clear hand & Latin symbol If you have any questions or issues, please contact me: kaer.pro@gmail.com

Fighting American and all around Superman Ed McGuinness joins our Masters of Comic Book Art with a font inspired by his gamma ray saturated handwriting! Ed is officially a friend of Comicraft and a big smile in Hulk form! Now a small slice of this Jolly Green Giant is available as an alphabet waiting for puny humans to arrange in words of no more than two syllables.

Ad Lib designed by Freeman Craw for the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1961. A bold Grotesque with irregular rectangular counters in round characters. This type was designed by cutting the letter images out and thus has some wood-cut character. Some lower case characters have slight inclination. Initially numerous alternative characters were provided. Unusual shapes make this typeface useful for advertising and display work.

This typeface is inspired from the old display fonts that used to decorate the world around us, but just because we don't see such beautiful signage these days, doesn't mean we should lose the great typefaces used. Foreman is a condensed serif display typeface, with hard geometric lines inspired from fonts used in the 1930s and 1940s, and very much used by the American Art Deco movement.

Neue Rinjani is a all-caps sans serif with Wide Stretch contemporary typographic, vintage futuristic art-deco touch Streamline influence of the 1930s and 1940s. A mix from the old Euro-American signage/advertising letters and modern clean sans serif, carefully mousecrafted to bring you the genuine feel of the era. If you're into classic/vintage letter designs, then this typeface suits best for you.

This is an American face designed by Lucian Bernhard for ATF in 1929. An extra light face with tall ascenders and stylized bars that extend off to the left. The lower-case sits on the baseline and the much-taller-than-normal capitals have an imaginary baseline that sits about two-thirds of the distance from the real baseline to the bottom of the EM.

Karaoke JNL is one of the many alphabets created by the late Alf R. Becker that was showcased in Signs of the Times magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (and who is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for providing Jeff Levine the research material from which this font design was modeled.

Pittsburgh is the latest (as at August 2011) in a range of inter-war American inspired commercial faces, and takes its place alongside the popular Bettendorff and the Spargo family. These shaded stab-serif capitals speak of the heyday of heavy manufacture and engineering and bring a gritty feel of the 20s and 30s to any project. Why not indulge in a little heavy engineering today?

Yukas is a funky and sexy typeface where the proportions are based on the optical balance between black strokes and white shapes. Ideal to enjoy on a large scale. It takes its references from the psychedelic movement, old-school western movie posters, and mid-19th century American wood type with those big, heavy capital letters. Includes several Open Type alternatives to customize your design however you want.

Generous curves above and below the straight-sided Railroad Gothic parallel those of Figgins’s elephantine Grotesques, lending to both British and American series their monumental qualities. Shrinking the center strokes and counters to emphasize a massive periphery, David Berlow has used this curious similarity to suspend a complete family of sanserifs between the two forms, a manly series of great dignity and presence; FB 1997

Working at American Type Founders from a Bruce Foundry recutting, Morris Fuller Benton worked out the dramatics of the English Fat Face, and in 1928 produced Ultra Bodoni, a headline spectacular. Using Benton’s 1933 Ultra Bodoni Extra Condensed, Richard Lipton digitized Bodoni FB Bold Condensed, then took compression even further and designed Bodoni FB Bold Compressed, a real technical tour de force; FB 1992

General Chang JNL is one of a number of fonts redrawn by Jeff Levine from the creative output of the late Alf R. Becker. Becker's alphabets were a monthly feature of Signs of the Times Magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media (who also is the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio) for the resource material.

ITC Kristen is the work of American designer George Ryan. He describes it as not your average text or display font." The inspiration for the design came from the handwritten menu at a neighborhood restaurant. With time, the forms moved away from the originals and towards something more like a child's scrawl. The result is singularly unique. ITC Kristen remains legible without losing any charm.

Introducing Laguna Font Collection. Inspired from American motor inn signs and vintage restaurant signs in 50s-70s. Laguna comes with open type features such stylistic alternates, stylistic sets, contextual alternates & ligatures. Also available in variable font format. Laguna Font Collection is best uses for headings, Logo type, quotes, apparel design, invitations, flyer, poster, greeting cards, product packaging, book cover, printed quotes, cover album, movie, etc

The pattern for this graceful, subtly modulated Art Deco typeface was designed by Willard T. Sniffin for American Type Founders in the 1930s. True to the original design, the Swash Caps version features Sniffin's twelve decorative variants. The Postscript and Truetype versions contain a complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252); in addition, the Opentype version supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages as well.

Primarily based on the work of German settlers in Pennsylvania, this collection showcases a variety of needlework and folk art styles of the early United States. Produced in conjunction with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this set is a digital recreation of homespun Americana.

The Englishman William Caslon (1672–1766) first cut his typeface Caslon in 1725. His major influences were the Dutch designers Christoffel van Dijcks and Dirck Voskens. The Caslon font was long known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum, the Americans used it as well for their Declaration of Independence. The characteristics of the earlier Renaissance typefaces are only barely detectable. The serifs are finer and the axis of the curvature is almost or completely vertical. The overall impression which Caslon makes is serious, elegant and linear. Next to Baskerville, Caslon is known as the embodiment of the English Baroque-Antiqua and has gone through numerous new interpretations, meaning that every Caslon is slightly different. American Type Founders presented a Caslon in 1905 which is true to the forms of the original. This font is relatively wide and comes complete with small caps and old style figures.

The retail storage box for a vintage metal numbering stamp manufactured by the American Numbering Machine Company had its brand name hand lettered in an Art Nouveau style that most likely went back to the 1920s, as the company was in existence from 1908 to around 1971. Numbering machines were used in offices, schools, libraries, and anywhere a series of numbers needed to be marked onto printed items. Similar to what was called a ‘crash numberer’ used in letterpress shops, the machines could be set to do a run of digits [for example: 4000, 4001, 4002] or repeat numbers for forms used as carbon copies. As computers took over most forms of printing, the use of numbering machines dwindled, but they are still available. The American Numbering Machine Company was one of several Brooklyn, New York companies that specialized in the manufacture of these machines. Retail Packaging JNL replicates the lettering from their packaging, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Brophy Script is a bold connecting brush alphabet. This brush script typeface was designed in 1953 by the American type designer Harold Broderson. Broderson worked for ATF (the American Type Founders), who were the original publishers of this design. Brophy Script is a version with more handwritten letters than to its other version called Body. This a brush script face that mimics the show card style of lettering, which was very popular throughout the United States during the first half of the 20th Century. The letters appear as if they were drawn quickly and spontaneously with a wide, flat lettering brush. The lowercase letters connect to each other, cursive script style. Brophy Script is the perfect display face to provoke a nostalgic feeling for the 1950s. Anything having to do with apple pie, home cooking, or last minute sales would look great in this face. You could outfit a whole supermarket signage system in a snap with Brophy Script.

The inspiration source for Monarchy Initials is the 1934 Book of American Types by American Type Founders. In that specimen book, they had created a sophisticated two color initial design they called "Stationers Initials" which was only available in metal type at 24, 36, and 48 points. This wonderfully detailed initial style is now digitally recreated and revived for modern use. Monarchy Initials is only capable of initial or single letter monograms due to its unique design. The two color aspect of the original design has been preserved and made accessible within all programs. The Capital character slots contain the background color glyphs, and the lowercase slots hold the outline art for the letters. You can choose a color, type a capital letter, then switch to black and type a lowercase letter for the two color effect, or just tpe a lowercase letter on its own. It's that easy! Download and view the Monarchy Initials Guidebook if you would like to learn a little more.

A unicase typeface inspired by Latin American wrestling. Versus is a type system designed for use with short and block text. The font, based on well-known typefaces found on boxing posters, combines Latin American elements and wrestling; it is this mixture of widths and weights and different styles which helps give your designs a unique flavour and personality. Versus is a unicase sans serif font well-suited for display use; its orthogonal terminals and short ascenders and descenders make it ideal for block of texts. By mixing different weights, you can have a wide range of design options—short text, isolated words, logos, titles, branding design, posters, etc. The Versus family comes in 9 weights—from a lightweight and condensed Extra Light to an expanded and heavy Ultra. Its character set supports over 200 different languages. The font also includes a large number of stylistic alternates and a complete ligature set which give your compositions a strong identity and personality.