Brandold is based on the repetition of one shape, the equilateral triangle. Using these triangles as pixels I built a medieval-like font that looks new, but follows an old aesthetic. I chose to make this font because I hadn’t seen anything similar.

I made Company into a font after several inquiries from designers in America. I always liked Company and was quite happy to digitize it.

Some time ago I bought my smallest book ever: Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet* 57 x 72 mm. I thought it was the sweetest little book I had ever seen. Not knowing about the fame of the designer Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), I put it in some dark drawer and looked at it from time to time. Kate’s books were all outstanding successes in English publishing history; she was an icon of the Victorian era. Some of those books are still being reprinted today. This little gem I had accidentally acquired has become very rare and I have not found any reprints yet. So I thought maybe I could adapt her drawings for use on today’s computers. I ventured to redraw her delicate illustrations, blowing them up 300 percent, being forced to simplify them without losing her touch. It took quite some time! While redrawing them, I discovered that she most certainly drew them in at least three different sessions as well. Then I scanned my drawings and put them in a font. To make the font more usable, I added the ten numerals in Kate’s style; the original does not have those. I hope she would have liked my adaptations. Yours in a very preserving mood, Gert Wiescher. * Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet, edited by George Rutledge & Sons, London and New York, ca. 1885.

This font was called differently when I started out building it, but after a long and insightful conversation with a good friend, I decided to call it Nebulous Promise. Nebulous Promise was made using a broken satay skewer (I like using those!) and Chinese ink. It comes with a full set of alternates for the lower case letters and extensive language support.

This font is based on a lot of the downtempo culture in Paris. Smoky bars, jazz clubs, that sort of thing. How a font can be influenced by intangibles is a question that I can't quite answer, but I can say that when I created it, it strongly reminded me of a couple of times spent in Paris back in the mid-90s.

It began as a series of photographs of the rusty metal brand names on old tractors in a museum. When I scanned the photos and began to trace the letters, I found the rust and deterioration created a level of detail which gave my letters a psychotic anger which, as an art director in an advertising agency, I closely identified with.

In the middle of 18th century Leibniz Fraktur appeared in German print shops. This blackletter font with its great x-height preserved the then fashioned trunk in many of its uppercase letters. It was a cast font of Genzsch & Heyse, Hamburg. Leibniz Fraktur contains a bunch of useful ligatures, and by typing 'N', 'o' and period plus activating the Ordinals feature you get an oldstyle number-sign.

Bernhard Blackletter can be compared to a tuba, adding its deep bass sound to the orchestra of blackletter fonts. This font contains a bunch of useful ligatures, and to access all, it is recommended to activate both Standard and Discretionary Ligatures. You find the round s on the # key, and typing the combination N-o-period and activating the OT feature Ordinals gets you the numero sign.

Sign Man JNL is a reworking of Sign Shop JNL, with a lighter font weight and a number of changed characters (including extended horizontal crossbars on the B,E,F,H,K,P and R).