"And she, Pasiphae, gave birth to Asterion, who was also known by the name of Minotaur, since he had the face of a bull and the rest of a man. Minos wanted to beware against certain oracles by locking him in a maze. It was the labyrinth, the work of Daedalus, a construction of tangled revolts that strayed from the exit.” - Apollodorus from Atenas. LABERINTIA is a font inspired by Daedalus' masterpiece, The Cretan Labyrinth, an experimental, display typeface that creates textures, plays with the mind and loses anyone who dares to take a walk inside it.

Jobst Gutknecht was a highly successful printer in the city of Nuremburg from 1514 to 1542. He published the "Achtliederbuch" (the first Lutheran hymnal, with a whole 4 tunes) and many works by Martin Luther. This font is an accurate "recutting" of the font face Gutknecht used for the body text in his printed works. It has been extended to over 900 glyphs adding hundreds for modern use. It also presents many ancient things like old ligatures such as "tz", a hedera, and alternate style pilcrow for visual interest. And for those conservative types the modern lower case "k" is also available.

Prospera was designed without reference to existing roman faces. In its initial form, development was partially supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (Design Project Grant), as a design for use on 'low-res' digital output devices. Early releases had simplified detail in cross-bars and serifs, and hand-tuned bitmaps. As an original design, Prospera draws on principles of letterform developed during my studies of lettercarving (in Wales with Ieuan Rees) and Roman proportion. The design is idiosyncratic, perhaps more akin to Gill's Perpetua than to the monotonous corporate flavors so prevalent today.

StoneWash is a funky, grunge font, with a monumental marble finish. The font combines an “old as the hills grunge” look with IN YOUR FACE, modern lines. It has a look of very old, washed out denim, about to disintegrate. StoneWash has all of the grunge characteristics: -- it’s dirty and corroded -- it’s coarse & broken -- it’s rough & pitted It also has the characteristics of an African style font: -- it’s ethnic -- it’s irregular -- it’s primitive -- it’s rustic -- it’s vibrant Use StoneWash for a great variety of applications: -- think advertisements - think flyers - think graffiti art - think posters - think magazine pages. You have to have StoneWash.

The earliest form of Ionic was brought out by Vincent Figgins in 1821 and was intended for display work. In 1863 a more refined version appeared which had more contrast between thick and thin strokes and the serifs were bracketed. Further developments were made, however the robustness of the Egyptian style was retained making the face suitable for newspaper text setting. With a large x-height and strong hairlines and serifs, the Ionic font family became widely used by the newspaper industry as a body type and provided a model for many twentieth century newspaper typefaces.

A pure neo-grotesque typefamily inspired by the first typographies' old wooden characters, and by the marks soft and sometimes imprecise these left on the paper. All typographic elements are also influenced by the Cyrillic alphabet letter-form. -- HT Pavla Prospekt is inspired by ancient wooden typefaces and eastern-style letterform. This reference gives the letters unusual but characteristic proportions. The visual effect of the diffusion of the ink imprinted on the paper, which gives softness to the forms, is also very influential. The proportions of the bold and thin faces are visually balanced to ensure a more modern feeling. --

Weiss Modern Gothic is the first digital re-creation with a lot of improvements of a late seventies well-known edited typeface by Bauer. At the time known as Weiss Initials Extra Bold or Weiß Modern Gothik, the design was inspired by the famous Weiß Initialen N°2 drawn by Emil Rudolf Weiß (1875-1942); also father of the non-less famous "Neuland" typeface. Strangely, this beauty seemed abandoned while sister-flared faces like Friz Quadrata, Flange, Serif Gothic or Romic are in a new wave of revival. Hoping this one will not again disappear... Happy new life.

Monotype Old Style is a nineteenth century update of Caslon Old Face with characteristics of the moderns built in. Monotype Old Style was recut by Monotype in 1901 from a Stephenson Blake & Company version. The design originated at the Miller and Richard foundry in 1860. In some respects it can be seen as transitional between old style and modern, but the spirit of the old styles predominates. By the turn of the century it had become a successful rival to the moderns. The Monotype Old Style font family is an attractive design which gives a light, airy feel to text.

I have no great love for walls, especially when they are built to keep people out. When I started working on this font, I realized it looked a bit like protest graffiti, found on… yes, walls. Down The Wall is a great little font: it is handwritten, messy and in your face. It has no real baseline and glyphs jump all over the place. Use it for book covers, posters, album covers - anything really. It certainly would look good on a wall too! Comes with a whole bunch of diacritics, so whatever you have to say, the world will understand.

The light and the bold. The thick and the thin. Laverne and the Shirley. Peanut Butter and the Jelly. Hoban is about contrast. Hoban wants to be noticed, but only after a second glance. A friend of a friend to the didones, it has smaller, tapering serifs, slightly calligraphic traits, and spindly little terminals that go where they please. It’s a headline face. Period. Set it big and bold. Or light and airy. But preferably next to something with flair. Cuff links, canapés, or corvettes–it’s up to you. Distinct ligatures, ornaments, and swashy alternates provide plenty of character to tailor your style.

Manufacturer JNL is a reinterpretation of the classic type face Venus Extra Bold Extended, and is available in both regular and oblique versions. According to Wikipedia: “Venus or Venus-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family released by the Bauer Type Foundry of Frankfurt am Main, Germany from1907 onwards. Released in a large range of styles, including condensed and extended weights, it was very popular in the early-to-mid twentieth century. It was exported to other countries, notably the United States, where it was distributed by Bauer Alphabets Inc, the U.S. branch of the firm.”

Niveau Grotesk—the companion of Niveau Serif —is a type family of six weights plus matching italics and small caps. It was designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2013. Influenced by classical nineteenth-century faces, the fonts are based on geometric forms. Because of its straight architecture, Niveau Grotesk has a “punch” in big sizes but is very legible in smaller sizes and longer texts—in print or on screen. Niveau Grotesk is equipped for complex, professional typography with alternate letters, arrows, fractions and an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European Languages.

It hit me one day that the '60s-vintage labelmaker I had lying around might make an interesting display face. I began playing with it -- clicking out letters at various pressures, scanning the results, going over the scans in a vector-graphics program. Looked pretty good. To my chagrin, however, I soon afterward got a glimpse of someone else's label-tape font. Though modeled after a more modern device, its rocketing popularity prompted me to set Chromosome aside for a year or so. Finally finished it up in late-1995. Full release has light and heavy weights, regular and reversed styles.

Sheet music at the beginning of the 20th Century reflects both the musical and artistic tastes of the times in often colorful ways. It seemed to be a favorite thing amongst songwriters of that era to come up with very wordy song titles. The cover of the sheet music for 1907’s “Every Little Bit Added to What You’ve Got Makes Just A Little Bit More” checks in at fourteen words, but the hand lettered title (done in an Art Nouveau style) made it worthy of transposition into a digital type face. Nouveau Years JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Petulante is a striking and creative hand-drawn face with a scribbled feel. It's an all-caps font and brings two options for each letter and numeral for a more organic and natural look. There are yet a few ornaments to add an extra something here and there. Petulante is ideal for book covers, packaging, apparel, album art, posters, or any situation where you want a stylish and uncommon hand-crafted look. And let's not forget to mention the broad language coverage: Petulante speaks more than 208 languages, including Russian and Greek. Yes, just take it everywhere!

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

ATF Headline Gothic cries out to be used in headlines, and that is exactly how it was used after it was first created by American Type Founders in 1936 with newspapers in mind. It would be hard to imagine a better typeface for a shocking, front-page headline in a scene from an old black-and-white movie. With its all-caps character set, and its big, bold, condensed design, ATF Headline Gothic is the epitome of its name. “Extra! Extra!” The style of ATF Headline Gothic recalls the bold, condensed gothic display faces of the 19th century, but with more refinement in its details than many large types of the time (typically wood type). Its most recognizable trait is the restrained, high-waisted M, with short diagonal strokes that end with their point well above the baseline; this avoids the sometimes cramped look of a bold condensed M with a deep “V” in the middle, common in many similar headline faces. The digital ATF Headline Gothic comes in a single weight, all caps, like its predecessor, but offers two styles: one crisply drawn, and a “Round” version with softer corners, to suggest a more “printed” feel, reminiscent of wood type. Of course, in either style it includes a full modern character set, including symbols such as the Euro, Ruble, and Rupee, that didn’t exist in 1936.

Essay is an elegant serif typeface intended for setting books, with many stylistic alternates and other typographic goodies, designed by Stefan Ellmer. It is a highly legible text face with a natural flow of reading. This is enhanced by a slight slant of the roman, the combination of open and closed apertures and the amalgamation of organic strokes and counters with a static, fully straight baseline. Essay Text Regular looks back to the spirit of the french Renaissance, when the roman typographic letterforms came to full emancipation. Departing from that historical reference, Essay Text gets rid of all sentimental antiquity and becomes a contemporary interpretation of the “archetypes” of that period. Essay Text Italic refers to that more vaguely, resulting in a formalised look with fairly upright and open shapes and little cursiveness. As in the Renaissance, before the mating of roman and italic, Essay Text Italic works as a separate text face and a perfect secondary type. The name Essay derives from the literary meaning of the word, attempt or trial. Therefore, the typeface Essay can be seen as an attempt to express an opinion about reading, the omnipresence of history, the importance of calligraphy and the importance to deviate from that calligraphic source; as well as an attempt to crystallise lettershapes in balance between convention and the designer’s personal idiom.

The name of this font brings back memories of an old fried chicken restaurant in Willow Springs Illinois circa 1960’s and 1970’s, my family would all get in the car and take a long drive down to an old country road Illionis Rt 171 through a forest preserve where we’d come upon the old Willowbrook motel with a bar and restaurant next door. The restaurant was called Kegal’s, when you entered the building you had to walk through the smoky bar first to get to the restaurant, I can still see the hard wood floors with all the finish worn off from decades of foot traffic. Up until the mid 1960’s Kegal’s used to raise their own chickens behind the restaurant, back then fried chicken in the Midwest was either coated in flour or bread crumbs, Kegal’s was covered in a beautiful layer of golden bread crumbs. Before your meal arrived they’d bring a basket of dinner rolls along with crackers, bread sticks and country butter, on the side they’d serve coleslaw with a vinegar sauce, which is very common in the Midwest, the first time you try it your face puckers up like you just sucked on a lemon but you get used it over time. After waiting for what seemed like forever to a child the waitress comes out of the kitchen with a huge tray of that golden deliciousness and your mouth begins to water, in her other hand was another tray filled to overflowing with crinkle cut french fries all made by hand, I’d eat a hole handful of those french fries first then take a bite of that tender juicy farm raised chicken. Today a fine Italian restaurant occupies the old Kegal’s building and the motel is long gone, only my fond memories remain. Fast forward to 2020 and FontMesa has just made some Fried Chicken as an eight weight type font family with alternates. With the Fried Chicken slab serif font family we’ve broken some rules by removing a few of the slabs on certain letters for a unique homemade look. Fried Chicken is perfect for your next product label, t-shirt design, logo, headline or cookbook cover. Treat yourself to some good ol’ Fried Chicken today.

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.

Batmeton Script is a free-flowing script font created for packaging products, invitation cards, flyers, mockups, event posters, and anything else that requires high-quality vibes. It has a beautiful and balanced character, that fits well with the large design pool.

Meet The Glamz, a brand new auto-chic font. Designed to fulfil your trend-catching things with the edgy style and undeniable artsy look. Perfectly fit for your fashion branding stuff, handwriting logo, inspirational quote poster, oh well you name it.

This font is a collection of simple calligraphic ornaments suitable for invitations, gift tags, and anything that can benifit from a "spoonful of sugar" visually. This font includes fewer line fillers, and more "ferns and fans" than our previous swirlies.

Magnivera is a display serif font family. inspired from oldstyle serif with a high contrast letterforms, the characteristic of the typeface is flamboyant and fit for fashion theme. Magnivera consist of 4 styles from regular to heavy with matching italics.

Arroyo is based on water flow. Little creeks on the surface of the earth formed by the action of fast-flowing water, this phenomenon inspired me to create this font. The little gaps/creeks form the letters of the font.

Come on... You want Jiminy, don’t you? It’s FUN! And carefree! It will turn any project into something enjoyable. You really must have it! But don’t just listen to me, Mr. Cat and Mr. Fox. Let your conscience be your guide...

Seleniak's outlines are based on the logo of the eponymous MSX video game, also created by its designer. Thus, all ratios are multiples of the typical 8x8 px video character unit, giving the typeface a characteristic appearance and interesting fitting properties.

Aquatype Signature is a free-flowing script font created for packaging products, invitation cards, flyers, mockups, event posters, and anything else that requires high-quality vibes. It has a beautiful and balanced character, that fits well with the large design pool.

Ambie Skratch was inspired by grudge fonts, as well as rock music, and deconstructed art work. It was made by shacking a sharpie marker in a fast angled motion. Then these images were scanned and altered further on the computer.

An extra-bold, hand lettered type design with a casual feel was used for the 1942 movie poster “Tortilla Flat”. This served as the inspirational model for Movie Ad Deco JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Bill Smith is a fast writing brush script with textures and swashes. This will make your design or project look perfect with authentic characteristics. It's perfect for branding, marriage invitations, poster designs, business cards, bulletins, stationery, logos, packaging, design and more.

Stay Gold Script is a highly usable, powerful typeface. Perfect for everything from street wear brand to wedding invitations, sports team logos to band logos. Use it however you see fit. Just one thing - it’s not designed for all-caps settings.

Janet Murphy designed ITC Wild West Pi in 1997. A symbol font containing all of the cowboy-like pictograms one could ever need, ITC Wild West Pi includes such symbols as a ten-gallon hat, horseshoes, revolvers, and steer skulls.

Floris was developed on a four-dimensional grid of several axes or parameters: weight, width, x-height and ascender/descender height. This makes it possible to allow for fast customization – i.e., the design of Floris versions made according to customers’ specifications.

Quorfid JNL is Jeff Levine's version of an old classic- Orplid. Especially popular in the 1950s, this cast shadow outline font has a decidedly hand-made look to it. From headlines to point-of-sale signage, it fits into all applications.

Adelaide Sky is a fun and relaxed display font. Casual and versatile, this font fits a wide range of designs, such as branding, product packaging, invitation, quote, t-shirt, label, poster, logo or any other idea that you wish to develop.

Bush Market is a handwriting script typeface designed to give off a bouncing, fast writing vibe, and informal. It can be used as a handwritten header display or as a stylish text for magazine, blog, branding, packaging, wedding invitation project, etc.