A few bold caps drawn by Albert Du Bois for the 1906 Henderson Sign Painter book started me in the direction of looking at how sign painters approached slabs after the industrial revolution. The usual happened from there. My exercise in the early lettering roots of what eventually became the definition of geometric typography ended up having a life of its own. The majuscules led to minuscules, one idiosyncratic bold weight led to six more, and uprights led to italics. What was kind-of-interesting in the early twentieth century persuaded me to make it interesting enough a century later. This of course meant alternates, swashes, the standard baggage that keeps calling my name. Henderson Slab is a family of seven weights plus italics, all full of open features and extended Latin language support. Part of this family’s appeal is its coverage of nearly the entire of the slab serif through the last 100 years — the basis is the manual, humanist origins, the swashed forms come right out of the phototypesetting era, and the alternates and mostly modern constructs of contemporary ideas. The result is a set with the ability to function in modern spaces, from corporate to editorial, in text or display, while both winking and nodding at the roots of what is now considered a geometric endeavor. (Basic version do not include alternates, swashes, etc).

John Seddon (1644-1700), was a famous English writing master, the leading calligrapher of his time, and master of Sir John Johnson’s Free Writing School in Priest’s Court, Foster Lane. His portrait was drawn by William Faithorne and was engraved by John Sturt as the frontispiece for his copy-books, such as ‘The Ingenious youth’s companion’ of c.1690 and 'The pen-man’s paradise' of c.1695. These were engraved after his work by others. Your extra-rare book - "The Pen-mans Paradise Both pleasent & Profitable OR Examples of all ye usuall hands of this Kingdome. Adorn'd with variety of ffigures an Flourishes done by Command of hand. Each ffigure being one continued & entire Track of the pen most where of may be struck as well Reverse (or to answer bothwayes) as Forward", London (1965). - (YES, that is the title of the book!) was the starting point to these new extra accurated works of Iza W, a series of revivals of the penmanship Seddon’s artworks, like this highly ornamented animal kingdom inspired capitals and alphabets: the Seddon Penmans Paradise Capitals typeface. And, on the other hand, you can get the animal and human kingdon inspired penmanship forms in the Bestiario font. The “SeddonsFleurons” will complete the collection. Fantastic choice to elaborated barocque/renaissance inspired and historical accurated layouts.

Novin Font family is designed by Naghi Naghashian. This Font is developed on the basis of specific research and analysis on Arabic characters and definition of their structure. This innovation is a contribution to modernisation of Arabic typography, gives the font design of Arabic letters real typographic arrangement and provides more typographic flexibility. This step was necessary after more than two hundred years of relative stagnation in Arabic font design. Novin supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. It also includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. Novin Font is available in Light, Regular and Bold. Novin design fulfills the following needs: A Explicitly crafted for use in electronic media fulfills the demands of electronic communication. Novin is based on Aldo Novareses Eurostile Extended. B Suitability for multiple applications. Gives the widest potential acceptability. C Extreme legibility not only in small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Novin’s simplified forms may be artificial obliqued in InDesign or Illustrator, without any loss in quality for the effected text. D An attractive typographic image. Novin was developed for multiple languages and writing conventions. E The highest degree of geometric clarity and the necessary amount of calligraphic references. This typeface offers a fine balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic now common in Latin typography.

Sabine is an Arabetic type design with a calligraphic flavor. It follows the guidelines of the Mutamathil Taqlidi type style with one glyph for every basic Arabic Unicode character or letter, as defined in Unicode Standards version 5.1, and one additional, final-position, glyph for each Arabic letter that is normally connected with other letters from both sides in traditional cursive Arabic strings. Sabine employs variable x-height values. It includes all required Lam-Alif ligatures and uses ligature substitutions and selected marks positioning but it does not use any other glyph substitutions or forming. Text strings composed using types of this family are non-cursive with stand-alone isolated glyphs. Tatweel (or Kashida) glyph is a zero width space. Keying it before any glyph will display that glyph isolated form. In Sabine Kashidah, Irsal, and Tasmim keying Tatweel (shift J) after certain glyphs will replace it with a long stroke glyph. In Sabine Tasmim, keying it a second time will replace glyph with a final form swash (Irsal) glyph. In Sabine Irsal all final forms are swash glyphs. Keying Tatweel before Alif Lam Lam Ha will display the Allah ligature. Sabine family includes both Arabic and Arabic-Indic numerals; all required diacritic marks, Allah ligature, in addition to standard English keyboard punctuations and major currency symbols. Fonts are available in regular and italic styles.

officially funky is a brand new, creative & unique font duo. It is a part of my font duo series and after French Lovers & Silver Garden it was time to create a font that is both modern and nostalgic. It is a 2 in 1 font, where the sans makes it modern and alternate serif letters & cool ligatures will make each of projects projects 100% unique. The font also includes over 45 ligatures and I am sure you will love this funky vibe. It also includes full language support, punctuation, numerals and detailed instructions how to use alternate letters most of the apps on your computer, as well as in Canva. I invite you to check out the preview images, and I hope you will be immersed in my vision for this creative typeface that, I am sure, will work for all kinds of interesting projects you might be working on this year. If you end up publishing your designs on Instagram, tag me - @silverstagco and I will make sure to showcase your design and work to my audience as well! Officially Funky - Modern Font Duo Includes: Over 45 ligatures in sans & serif font Numerals & Punctuation Web Font Kit is included as well Detailed instructions on how to use alternates in most of the apps on your computer and in Canva Happy creating everyone!

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Andrea Tartarelli with Maria Chiara Fantini, Lovelace is Zetafonts homage to the tradition of nineteenth century “Old Style” typography - a revival of Renaissance hand-lettered shapes driven by the desire to create a less formal and more friendly alternative to Bodonian serifs. While taking inspiration from the letter shapes created by Pheimester or Alexander Kay - with their calligraphic curves and heavy angled serifs that influenced Benguiat and Goudy’s typefaces in the 70s - we also tried to add elegance and contrast by following another 19th century revival style: the Elzevir. This digital homage to victorian typography, aptly named after the algorist daughter of lord Byron, is developed in two optical sizes, both in a six weights range from extralight to extrabold. The text variant offers maximum readability thanks to the generous x-height and screen-friendly design, while the display variant excels in the sharp contrast and thin details needed for editorial and large-size titling use. The italics, strongly influenced by calligraphy, have been complemented with a display script family, including luscious swashes and connected lowercase letters, lovingly designed by Zetafont in-house calligrapher. All the thirty weights of Lovelace cover over 200 languages that use latin, cyrillic and greek alphabets, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Small Caps and Case Sensitive Forms.

Volta is a robust typeface from the 1950s. A revisit to styles that were en vogue at the turn of the century, Bauer type foundry designers Walter Baum and Konrad Bauer designed this type family in1955. The form of Volta's letters are similar to those in New Transitional Serif typefaces, like Cheltenham and Century. Developed after the Didone (i.e., Bodoni) style types, New Transitional Serifs speak more to the zeitgeist of the late 19th Cntury, and were typographic adaptations to it's newer technologies. Already in the period of mass production, typographers and printers at the dawn of the 20th Century had to cope with larger print runs on cheaper materials. The robust letterforms of New Transitional Serifs were designed to compensate for this, but they were also ingenious little inventions in their own right. Form the beginning, the new, peculiar forms of New Transitional Serif letters were adopted for use by advertisers. Their robustness also allowed them to be used in virtually all sizes. Volta was designed especially with advertising display usage in mind. The x-height of Volta's letters is higher than average for serif faces. It is recommended that Volta be used exclusively for shorter tracks of text, above 12 point. Headlines look dashing set in Volta. Four different font styles are available for the Volta typeface: Regular, Medium, Medium Italic, and Bold."

And the day in which I introduce my second typographic family has arrived. In order to do this, I borrowed several passages from this beautiful book by Maurice Maeterlinck, “Life and Flowers”. His poetic observation of Nature made me reflect about the small discoveries behind the flow of my pen on paper. About that quick, spontaneous, overwhelmed stroke, with some awkwardness as well as certainty in it. About the writing that looms line after line. About the mischievous stains of ink flooding my writing tool. Lady Dodó was born as a product of these drawings, pieces of writing and reflections. Following the steps of its ancestor and friend, Lady René, it takes advantage of the goodness of the Open Type technology to propose a systematized as well as a personalized writing font. Both friendly and challenging. Due to the large number of alternate characters (both for lower and upper case as well as for numbers) and to its precise programming, it proposes to design diverse and rich typographical sets with multiple strokes in a simple way. However, Lady Dodó is not just made of typographical signs; it also proposes a set of modules to make patterns and another one to design frames. From the combination of these modular signs, an infinite universe of possibilities for decoration arises. Here is Lady Dodó, ready to get started and write its destiny. July 2015.

Stone and steel FS Benjamin is a flared serif typeface designed by Stuart de Rozario. Consisting of 12 styles ranging from Light, Book, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold with Italics it has clear, delicate letterforms, punctuated with brutal chiselled angles. With a pure and crafted feel to the forms the typeface has traditional roots but has been designed to work in a contemporary setting. Archetypal proportions in terms of x-height to cap height and ascender to descender ratio, allow the typeface to feel familiar and be legible in all platforms. Delicate brutalism Inspired by the contrasts of London and named after Big Ben, FS Benjamin was designed by Stuart de Rozario and founder, Jason Smith. Walking around London Jason was inspired by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Glass and steel architecture can often be found amongst traditional signage and coats of arms seen around the City. These surroundings sparked an idea to create a modern design based on an alphabet that would traditionally be carved from stone. “Much of the typography we see today is so similar. I thought what if we created a typeface with traditional roots but modernised it to sit amongst the punk and noise of the streets of London? Old with new. Business with busyness. This is what London is all about.” Jason Smith

OkayCursive began over coffee, in a local flower shop, where my wife takes a floral arrangement class. I discovered a book there, with old photographs from Paris of flower shop displays. What caught my eye in the background of one of these photos, was the hand-painted lettering on a sign. Inspired, I quickly sketched some of the letters on a napkin and stuck it in my pocket. I began to sketch more over the next few days, looking to construct a full-out cursive font with this distinct French look. I wanted my design to be creative & free flowing, but I also wanted it to be at least somewhat proper. So, I consulted some schoolbooks for reference on the correct cursive forms. After more drawing, I began to create the final vector art. Gradually, these ideas -- plus many hours of careful kerning and metrics -- came together to form OkayCursive. Use OkayCursive any time you want fancy, legible, and luxurious text. Works great if you are designing a logo, or use it to create some beautiful titling. Use it for advertisement copy, or even for short to medium-length bodies of text -- go ahead and have fun with it. OkayCursive is extended, containing the full West European diacritics & a full set of ligatures, making it suitable for multilingual environments & publications.

Ciseaux Matisse was inspired by the exhibition Drawing With Scissors, which I visited at the Kunsthalle Schirn in my hometown of Frankfurt am Main in 2003 and the book Jazz published in 1947 by Henri Matisse. Admittedly, before that time I wasn’t a fan of Matisse’s work, neither his late nor the early work. That definitely changed after the exhibition. While his motifs have been overused on postcards and mouspads, in front of the originals you forget those tiny pictures. Some of the works were massive—larger than 24ft. By cutting directly into the color Matisse created shapes with strong dynamics. Years later, in 2007, I used that inspiration to cut an exclusive font for a newspaper that I designed at that time (see Gallery Pictures). Later I developed that font into the four styles featured here. The cut-out style is a paper cutout; boxed is the paper background. Both linear and boxed linear have no curved outlines, so they are more aggressive. As drawing with scissors implies, all characters are cut by hand. With only uppercase letters, this font is designed for editorial use: headlines, slogans in ads, or musical usage in posters and flyers that need the little touch of the jazz scissors. In special cases the lowercase letters contain alternate shapes to the uppercase forms.

Originally designed in 1998 as a 3-font family, updated in 2016 by new italics, small caps and many OpenType functions, resulting in a set of highly visible poster typefaces. If a  text is set in a  good Egyptienne, we can observe a  kind of sparkle in the lines. Slab-serifs are cheerful typefaces, possibly due to the fact that they developed simultaneously with Grotesque typefaces. The design principle originating from the first half of the 19th century does not have such firm and long-established roots as for example, the Venetian Roman typefaces, hence it’s much more prone to a  “decline”. We know of Egyptiennes with uneven color, with letters falling backwards (this often happens in the case of “S”), and especially with slightly bizarre modeling of details. In the course of time, however, it was realized that such things could be quite pleasant and tempting. After a  century and a  half, we find that such Egyptiennes could refresh uniform computer typography. The forms of many twisted letters resemble the gestures of a  juggler: others, rectangularly static ones, reflect the profile of a  rail or a  steel girder – things which, in their times, were new and were observed by the first creators of Egyptiennes. These typefaces are ideal for circus posters and programs for theatre performances, just as for printing on cement sacks.

Arturo is a brand new font family drawn from the original inspiration of an old alphabet in one of Dan Solo 's Dover Clip Art books. It has moved far away from those raw roots, however. Every character has been redrawn. For example, I had a light version that I never could get working. Arturo is based on that light style and called Arturo Book. The name comes from a good friend of mine in El Paso. He was the guinea pig upon whom I foisted off the beginnings of this style so many years ago. I did several marketing pieces for him using the raw drawings. I figured that he deserved to have the family named after him, at the very least. This is a normal font family for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, small caps, proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures, plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

There are a few professions in which being left-handed confers an advantage-think of the great southpaw pitchers in major league baseball, like Sandy Koufax. Now, think of all the great left-handed calligraphers. Not so easy, right? Here's a hint: Luis Siquot. Far from being an advantage, Siquot's lefty orientation proved a hurdle to overcome. When I was young, I had serious problems writing," he recalls. "If there was a lot of text, I almost always soiled the paper with wet ink as my hand followed the pen." Then, a friend told Siquot about a special store in London that catered to left-handed people. It was there that he found an Osmiroid pen specially designed for left-handed calligraphers. ITC Cali is based on Siquot's use of this pen. "Electronic scans of my calligraphy were the foundation of the design," he says. "I was careful to leave in some imperfections to avoid an excessively mechanical look, and added the little notches in the strokes to imitate the texture of writing on a rough cotton paper." ITC Cali works equally well in text and display sizes, but it is a calligraphic script, Siquot warns, "and shouldn't be set in all capitals." That said, ITC Cali is a remarkably versatile design, well-suited to a variety of communication projects."

Fishmonger originated from a commission of two fonts for the corporate identity of a fishmonger shop. When sketching the elementary principles for the lettering, the idea for a modern, extensive font family with a large number of styles was born. The first step consisted of defining the range of widths and weights. Then the master design Medium Regular was completed. The next step was adjusting the Extra Condensed Thin, the Extra Condensed Bold, The Extra Extended Thin and the Extra Extended Bold weights, as they are the vertices of an imaginary square map of the face. This meant that, in order to achieve a harmonious result, the x and y axis needed to be defined. From top to bottom, from the widest to the most condensed cut, the proportions are linear. However, from light to black, the line curves gently, allowing lesser difference between the light cuts, and a dramatic one between the heavier cuts. To ensure the original parameters were respected each position on the vertex was checked against the Medium Regular. After sorting out the ideal set-up, the remaining characters of each of the weights were drawn, and the remaining cuts were interpolated according to the principles above. Fishmonger is a functional, clean design, free of any buoyant, ornamental shapes, almost minimalist. Maybe this is what lends the type family its unique appearance.

X RUFFIAN Ruffian was a champion thoroughbred horse who won 10 consecutive races. A feat worth mentioning & repeating. Her tenacity & steadfast approach established the basis for this variable based font. The X represents both the Roman numeral 10, but also the X-factor for creating bespoke works of art. It is quite befitting that this font be named after a legendary champion. Which begs the question...Do you champion variety? X Ruffian's design motif uses a broad tipped chiseled marker that was set at an angle for that extra bit of vigor. Identical letter forms defeat that truly "hand rendered" look that we ultimately strive for. Each uppercase letter offers 10 (X) or more stylistic alternatives, the lowercase and number sets have 3+ options and an over under for those special characters that yield a long bottom or top (see images). Ligatures & bonus characters can add that unique offering to your already individual style & can easily be found via the glyphs panel in any open type program. With a gigantic glyph count of 688, you'll never run out of options. As a right of passage, we felt obliged to include a roman numeral set as the name beckons, which differs from the standard letter form in which you would use to create. This is a variable winner. See you at the races!

Rotis is a comprehensive family group with Sans Serif, Semi Sans, Serif, and Semi Serif styles. The four families have similar weights, heights and proportions; though the Sans is primarily monotone, the Semi Sans has swelling strokes, the Semi Serif has just a few serifs, and the Serif has serifs and strokes with mostly vertical axes. Designed by Otl Aicher for Agfa in 1989, Rotis has become something of a European zeitgeist. This highly rationalized yet intriguing type is seen everywhere, from book text to billboards. The blending of sans with serif was almost revolutionary when Aicher first started working on the idea. Traditionalists felt that discarding serifs from some forms and giving unusual curves and edges to others might be something new, but not something better. But Rotis was based on those principles, and has proven itself not only highly legible, but also remarkably successful on a wide scale. Rotis is easily identifiable in all its styles by the cap C and lowercase c and e: note the hooked tops, serifless bottoms, and underslung body curves. Aicher was a long-time teacher of design with many years of practical experience as a graphic designer. He named Rotis after the small village in southern Germany where he lived. Rotis is suitable for just about any use: book text, documentation, business reports, business correspondence, magazines, newspapers, posters, advertisements, multimedia, and corporate design.

Brinca is an intrepid ‘full spectrum’ typeface with emotional range and a dynamic heart. Morphing sharp tight pleats that relax into office ready neutral sans, then plump into joyful bouncy letters with mesmerizing fluency, Brinca is ready to adapt to a wide variety of expressive needs. Named after its jumping extremes of the type’s styles; from coiled spring to stuffed and bouncy, Brinca is also a leap into new possibilities for display type design. Because of its chameleon-like range of styles, Brinca is a versatile workhorse. It’s a great choice for brand identities ready to embrace expressive range, and it’s perfect for fine-tuned packaging, events promotions, merch, product lines, and much more. WIth its very wide spectrum of options, It’s a single typeface that can be used to design a library’s worth of book covers. (We put it to the test!) About Brinca was designed by Alexander Wright and Rodrigo Fuenzalida with Michu Benaim Steiner for In-House Int’l foundry, the type foundry of brand consultancy In-House International. It was developed by Rodrigo Fuenzalida at FragType, and available through YouWorkForThem. In-House foundry offers bold, fearless, and expressive, display typefaces that tell a story. Its previous releases have been featured on Design Milk, DesignBoom, Slanted, PAGE. They’ve also been used to create standout work by designers around the world, and even won some awards.

The Metro Office family is designed after the model of the original sans serif family – Metro No.1 – produced by W.A. Dwiggins and Mergenthaler Linotype’s design studio during the late 1920s and 1930s. A distinctly new interpretation of the sans serif idea, Metro was a thoroughly “American” sans serif when it was released. However, over the ensuing decades, it became a favorite the world over. Moreover, it is one of the first “humanist” sans serif typefaces designed. While redesigning Metro in 2006, Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi drew from his own knowledge of humanistic letterforms. The result is a redefined Metro; a typeface that is finally ready for heavy text setting. The original Linotype Metro No.1 never had italic variants. Kobayashi has created oblique variants, extending its use in document setting. A double-storey a and g, as well as a wider w were features of Dwiggins’ original Metro design that were filtered out by Mergenthaler Linotype in the 1930s. Kobayashi remedied this historical slight, retooling Dwiggins’ original forms and optimizing their legibility. Kobayashi has additionally retooled some of Metro’s more troublesome letters, which has black elements that became too dense. By opening up the troublesome joins (like that on the Q), Kobayashi has given his new Metro a more even color in text, improving its legibility while retaining its original spirit.

Delirian Script & Ornaments Delirian is elegant script with contemporary mood and perfect forms, inspired by immortal classic calligraphy. Not too thin and not too thick, good balanced and variable, born for luxury and beauty. In my examples I show how this script can be used. It's great for logotypes, branding, wedding invitations, romantic cards, alcohol labels, packaging, spelling of names and others. Delirian Script comes with beautiful Uppercase and Lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation. In addition to the main character set, there are 158 alternates characters, 36 ligatures and 10 lengths of end-swashes. You also get Ornament set of 26 elements which harmoniously complements original script. Multilingual Support Script support Western European characters and works with following languages: English, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish. OpenType Stylistic Alternates works on the principle of simple combinations with activated Standard Ligatures option in OpenType panel (Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator). To get alternate just add for example number 2 (two) after any letter. Every Uppercase has 1-2 variations and Lowercase about 3-4 alternate characters. For example: A2 A3 - Uppercase; a2 a3 a4 - Lowercase; a.1 a.2 - Lowercase with underline. _1 _2 _3 - End-swashes Ligatures works with activated Discretionary Ligatures option in OpenType panel. This special features don't work in Microsoft Word.

The Times Europa Office family is designed after the model of the original serif family produced by Walter Tracy and the Linotype Design Studio in 1974. A redesign of the classic Times New Roman typeface, Times Europa was created as its replacement for The Times of London newspaper. In contrast to Times New Roman, Times Europa has sturdier characters and more open counter spaces, which help maintain readability in rougher printing conditions. Times Europa drastically improved on the legibility of the bold and italic styles of Times New Roman. Overall, text set in Times Europa is easier to read, and quicker to digest. Akira Kobayashi, Linotype’s Type Director, brought Times Europa up to speed for the new millennium in 2006. Now optimized for office communication instead of newspaper design, Times Europa Office offers a familiar yet refreshingly new appearance for serif text. Because of The Times of London’s specific printing conditions in the early 1970s, Times Europa originally had some intentional errors built into its letterform design. These inconsistencies created an even image in newspaper text in the long run. However, these design elements bear no role on modern office communication and its needs. Kobayashi redrew these problem forms, eliminating them completely. Now Times Europa’s font weights appear clearer and easier to read than ever before.

Remastered in 2019. Wasabi is the re-imagining of my very first release, Iru. Like Iru, Wasabi was heavily influenced by the monument lettering style, Vermarco. The simple, geometric forms allowed for small lettering sizes to be sandblasted cleanly and has been a monument lettering workhorse for decades… the only issue centered around the lack of a lowercase or any other letters beyond the 26 uppercase glyphs and the numerals. Wasabi solves this with the same simple, efficient line reminiscent of the old Vermarco while bringing it into the 21st century. Visual and optical incongruities of the original uppercase were replaced with new interpretations for the capital letters, a new lowercase and small caps were​ produced and the original single weight alphabet was replaced with six new weights. Wasabi has several ‘lighter’ weights primarily because the thin lines and simple transitions produce very elegant relationships… and I wanted to make sure those relationships could be explored regardless of the scale of letter. Stylistic Alternates show up through the upper, lowercase and small cap glyphs that attempt to simplify these shapes even more when the opportunity arises. Wasabi is as much a utilitarian typeface as it is a headline face. This realization led to the decision to produce a companion Condensed version shortly after the initial regular weights were developed and tested; so, try them all!

Sultan is a revival and expansion of a 1954 Matrin Kausche typeface called Mosaik. This design highlights the unmistakable Arabic/Moorish calligraphy influence on Celtic lettering, by way of the highly active Andalusian culture from the ninth century until the crusades in the early eleventh century. Although Celtic lettering evolved on its own and prompted different calligraphic styles after the crusades, elements of the Arabic influence survived with it, its appeal remaining evident to this very day. For instance, this kind of lettering is very similar to the one Louis Tiffany used to make the most recognizable athletic insignia in North America - the New York Yankees logo, which is now over 110 years old, and has inspired hundreds of spin-offs in many athletic and non-athletic fields all over the world. The original character set made by Kausche was quite minimal, consisting of only numerals and uppercase letters along with a few alternates. But in this digital version the set has been considerably expanded into uppercase, lowercase, numerals, punctuation, a complete set of accented characters, and more than 15 alternate letters built into the font. Sultan is a great font choice particularly for design contexts of fantasy, middle ages legend, mystical and new age content, pirate literature, and Irish history. But it is also an excellent all-purpose display and poster font in general.

While I was in Boston in 2014, I visited the Museum of Fine Arts and to my good fortune there was an exhibit of etchings by Rembrandt, one of my favorite artists. As to be expected, many were simply gorgeous, but one especially caught my eye. It was an etching of a priest (Jan Cornelis Sylvius, Preacher) with an extensive amount of writing in Latin. While I'm not certain that it was Rembrandt's own hand, the script was beautiful and I was fascinated by it because it had to be written on the etching plate in reverse. I snapped a few photos using my phone and later found other editions on line. I was so taken by the script that it begged me to create a modern typeface from it. The result is Saskya, named after Rembrandt's wife Saskia. There were many ligatures and glyph variants in the print, of which I captured many of them and made them accessible via OpenType features. The complete alphabet was not present in the sample, however, I discovered some other source material to sensitively fill in those gaps, with a remaining last few that I created myself. A truly romantic hand, Saskya will work well for invitations of many sorts, and when you're looking for that 'old thyme' scripty feeling in your graphics.

The word Text" in Goudy Text™ is short for Textura, and textura is the style of blackletter or gothic writing developed in Northern Europe in the middle ages. The use of space in blackletter is quite different from what we know about Roman letterforms. Lowercase forms in blackletter writing and typefaces must be evenly textured with black and white elements, like the texture of weaving or fabric. Capital letters can provide either an integration of the even texture (by the use of decoration in their construction) or, if they are wide and open and filled with white, they provide bright spots of visual emphasis. Goudy, despite being an American in the twentieth century, understood well the fundamental texture of medieval blackletter and the importance of both density and light. He designed Goudy Text in 1928 for Lanston Monotype after studying the type in Gutenberg's 42-line bible; still one of the best models for designers of blackletter typefaces. The lowercase of Goudy Text has impact and medieval authenticity. The standard caps have some Victorian eccentricities but are mostly well drawn. The alternate, or "Lombardic" caps are spectacular - they set beautifully with the lowercase letters, providing the proverbial shafts of light through the Gothic cathedral's stained glass windows. Use this potent font in sizes 14 point or larger, for Christmas greetings, certificates, wedding invitations, advertising, or music collateral pieces."

Cosmopolitan Elegance Named after a southerly wind that blows over the Mediterranean Sea, FS Ostro breathes warmth into letterforms with their roots in colder, stark Modern typefaces. FS Ostro is a typeface imbued with balanced and sophisticated elegance. It’s discerning and sensitive, self-assured but understated. One for the well-travelled reader. Thoughtful contrast FS Ostro draws inspiration from a wide range of sources, such as 19th century British Scotch Roman designs, Italian modern style typefaces and highly contrasted display Spanish examples. Its text version offers a consistent rhythm and robust texture that is easy on the eye. This elegant, cosmopolitan typeface is characterised by its thoughtfully modulated contrasts between thick and thin, sharp angles, and sophisticated curves. Exaggerated touches in display “What is more restrained and sober in text, becomes purposefully prominent and more detailed in display,” says Fontsmith designer Alessia Mazzarella. These exaggerated details for the display version can be seen in the letter terminals, such as those in the ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the tail of the ‘Q’, as well as in the set of numerals, fractions, arrows, borders and ornaments, which can be used to build decorative framing elements. Fluid italics The less rigid and curvaceous italics of modern style typefaces were the inspiration for FS Ostro’s own subtle, flowing italic styles. The letterforms are confident and fluid, creating an overall sense of refinement and modernity.

Banana Yeti is a brush script typeface with a condensed vertical slant, inspired by a handmade sample drawn by the calligrapher Ross Frederic George and depicted in Speedball 1947 Textbook Manual. Banana Yeti has a vintage brush script look, perfect for food packaging, display and logo design and period advertising. The original design has been completely reworked and extended by the Zetafonts Masterclass 2016 Team to provide three lighter weights, and a monoline variant, as well as to produce an extended character set with open type support for ligatures, alternates, European languages and ending swashes. Banana Yeti covers over 40 languages that use the Latin alphabet, with a full range of accents and diacritics. It comes in four weights plus a special monoline weight. Banana Yeti makes full use of Open Type ligatures to provide swashes, arching letters and a wide array of ligature characters for a more handmade, natural look. Swashes can be accessed through glyph palette or by typing one to six underscores after the letter. Typing an underscore before a phrase creates arching text; close arch with another underscore. Variant ampersands can be accessed through glyph palette or by typing multiple ampersand characters. Take care: open type features are developed using open type technology, fully compatible with Adobe software and major design softwares and OS, but not supported by every software. Check before buying!

Remastered in 2019. Wasabi is the re-imagining of my very first release, Iru. Like Iru, Wasabi was heavily influenced by the monument lettering style, Vermarco. The simple, geometric forms allowed for small lettering sizes to be sandblasted cleanly and has been a monument lettering workhorse for decades… the only issue centered around the lack of a lowercase or any other letters beyond the 26 uppercase glyphs and the numerals. Wasabi solves this with the same simple, efficient line reminiscent of the old Vermarco while bringing it into the 21st century. Visual and optical incongruities of the original uppercase were replaced with new interpretations for the capital letters, a new lowercase and small caps were​ produced and the original single weight alphabet was replaced with six new weights. Wasabi has several ‘lighter’ weights primarily because the thin lines and simple transitions produce very elegant relationships… and I wanted to make sure those relationships could be explored regardless of the scale of letter. Stylistic Alternates show up through the upper, lowercase and small cap glyphs that attempt to simplify these shapes even more when the opportunity arises. Wasabi is as much a utilitarian typeface as it is a headline face. This realization led to the decision to produce a companion Condensed version shortly after the initial regular weights were developed and tested; so, try them all!

Axiforma was designed with the single idea of creating a font that starts with the letter A, because let's face it, this is the best letter. For those of you who didn't see it coming, Axiforma is a /drum roll/ geometric sans in 20 weights. If you are thinking "Oh boy, another geometric sans", you clearly know your stuff. Yet, Axiforma is different in at least three crucial ways: 1) It's made by me 2) It's not free 3) It's polite and humble Additionally, Axiforma is packed with Opentype such as oldstyle numbers, fractions, case sensitive alternates, localized forms, stylistic sets, cyrillic alphabets (Bulgarian & Russian) and many more. Basically it's quite extensive and kinda great. Upon using Axiforma, clients will start to behave differently around you and may even start paying you. Your spouse will start working out again just to gain your attention and your kid will become instantly popular at school. After all you are using Axiforma and rumors do spread quickly. That's what we are talking about - raw font power. With Axiforma regular typed text is suddently transformed into first class design. That includes branding, posters, headlines, display, presentation materials, websites, logotypes, etc. The world will now be your playground. To sum it up, Axiforma is badass, thus you should have it and use it everywhere.

Another variation on the Renaissance-Baroque Roman face, it extends the selection of text type faces. In comparison with Jannon, the contrast within the letters has been enhanced. The dynamic elements of the Renaissance Roman face have been strengthened in a way which is illustrated best in the letters "a", "b" and "s". These letters contain, in condensed form, the principle of this type face - in round shapes the dark stroke invariably has a round finial at one end and a sharp one at the other. Another typical feature is the lower-case "g"; the upper part of this letter consists of two geometrically exact circles, the inner of which, a negative one, is immersed down on the right, upright to the direction of the lower loop and the upright knob. The vertical strokes slightly splay out upwards. Some details of the upper-case letters may seem to be too daring, but they are less apparent in the text sizes. It has to be admitted that typographers tend to draw letters in exaggerated sizes, as a result of which they stick to details. Serapion Italic are italics inspired partly by the Renaissance Cancelleresca. This is obvious from the drop-shaped finials of its lower-case descenders. The type face is suitable for illustrated books, art posters and short texts. It has a rather ugly name - after St. Serapion.

For several years I have been thinking about the design of a type family that explores, on the one hand, the modernist aesthetic that we know, from the Alphabet "a.r." designed by Władysław Strzemiński, and on the other, to the multiscript pre-war Warsaw. This is how the idea of creating the Polin Sans typeface was born. After researching on geometric variants of the Cyrillic alphabet, I was inspired by the text "Towards an open layout: A letter to Volodya Yefimov". I was intrigued by the fact that circular forms, which we are mostly familiar with in the Bulgarian Cyrillic, can be implemented in the classical version, without disrupting the reading process. At the same time, while working on typoteka.pl, I was fascinated by the Hebrew typeface jaffa, published by the Idźkowski & Sk-a foundry, which at some points looks like the Hebrew equivalent of the Alphabet "a.r.". Ben Nathan from Israel joined the project and was responsible for creating his native script. The idea of creating a multiscript family expanded to include Greek and Vietnamese. As a result, Polin Sans is a historical journey through the nooks and crannies of Polish modernism, which was created by people with diverse cultural backgrounds. The Polin Sans family was designed by Mateusz Machalski and Ben Nathan with the support of Michał Gorczyca and Małgorzata Bartosik.

This old classic font has an interesting history, it was originally cut with lowercase by the Bruce Type Foundry in 1865 and listed as Ornamented No. 1514. Around 1903 the Bruce foundry was bought by ATF, in 1933 this font was revived by ATF as Caps only and was given the Gold Rush name but was sometimes called Klondike. A similar version of this font with lowercase and radiused serifs was produced by the James Conner's Sons Type Foundry around 1888. In the past other foundries such as the Carroll foundry, Type Founders of Phoenix and the Los Angeles Type Foundry have produced an all caps version of this font. After examining several printed sources of this font from more recent books I found that the original from Bruce's 1882 book was by far the best in design quality, it was also the only printed source that included the lowercase. New open faced, ornamented and distressed versions have been added to this old classic font, there are also many extended characters for Western, Central and Eastern European countries. The Gold Rush Trail OpenType version has alternate double letter pairs included in the font and will automatically be substituted when used in Adobe CS products or other software that takes advantage of OpenType features. Also available is a spurred version of this font listed under the name Gold Spur.

This font is based on an alphabet published by Luca Pacioli in his 1509 mathematical treatise De divina proportione. In this book, Pacioli describes how to build the Roman alphabet geometrically using lines, squares and circles. Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes. I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Le Havre Rough. It’s high-resolution, hand-crafted letterpress to the core. Based on insigne’s popular Le Havre typeface, this new heat-treated, weathered face of all caps joins the realism and appeal of the top-quality Le Havre family. Rough’s eroded, printed look is extremely customizable, offering eleven distressed choices that appear fantastic even at large output sizes. Go ahead. Try it on, say, a billboard. Maybe even Times Square. The font includes hand-printed texture and distinctive shadow choices, too. Options include three inline versions, two shadow layers, and a clean primary version. Combine and match the options easily as you need, layering normal and shadow variations to alter appearance and texture. You can activate Art Deco alternates by using OpenType contextual alternates. Rough has an extra-large character set for many languages. Additionally, the typeface offers 62 extra ornaments like arrows, emblems, numbers & lines. Use its full texture and grit to capture the classic, genuine print feel that you need in your project. A few suggestions for use: - In Photoshop, jigger with various 'anti-aliasing' options for best outcomes. Smooth or strong is generally best. - In Illustrator, the shadow layer occasionally doesn't align when using the regular layer. To fix the alignment, open the type drop-down menu and choose Area Type Options > Em Box Height. Learn more about the using layered type styles on this informative video.

More than a century ago, Frank H. Atkinson presented this hand lettered style as Broken Poster. It was one of a hundred styles he demonstrated in his manual on sign painting. Even before his book was published (and certainly after), Broken Poster was a favorite with sign painters and letterers. It has graced show cards and movie posters, signs and windows displays, and advertisements of all varieties. We presented the our first digital revival of this classic in 2000. It is long overdue for an upgrade. Broken Gothic expands the basic Broken Poster to four weights, two specialty formats and some cool layed effects. The language base includes Greek, Cyrillic, Latin A, and some of Latin B and Latin Extended. There are also some nice alternates and ligatures. All weights are quite suited to posters, headlines, display copy, web headers, etc. At first glance, Broken Gothic may seem to have limited uses. Give it a chance and it will surprise you. Broken shouts out that there is a sale, a giant monster or the end of the world. Broken Gothic is comfortable in a wide range of themes and applications from zombie movie titles to salsa jar labels. While I can't recommend it for text, Broken is great for headers, banners, signs, titles, product presentation and other display applications. When you need a rough customer, Broken Gothic fills the bill.

The branding agency's client wanted an ultra modern"" typeface that was ""futuristic without being gimmicky or ephemeral,"" according to the design brief. Designer Sebastian Lester took on this intriguing custom font assignment, but soon, a bureaucratic decision cancelled the project. ""I was left with a sketchbook full of ideas and thought it would be a shame not to see what came of them,"" says Lester. He decided to finish the design on his own. Lester's research confirmed that the principal ingredient of an ""ultra modern"" typeface was simplicity of character structure: a carefully drawn, monoline form, open letter shapes and smooth, strong curves. To conceive a typeface that crossed the line from modern to futuristic, Lester decided to amplify these qualities. About a year after Lester's initial conceptual work, two highly functional and versatile typefaces emerged. These are Neo Sans and Neo Tech, designs Lester describes as ""legible without being neutral, nuanced without being fussy, and expressive without being distracting."" Both the Neo Sans and the more-minimalist Neo Tech families are available in six weights, ranging from Light to Ultra. Each has a companion italic, and Neo Tech offers a suite of alternate characters. While engineered to look modern as tomorrow, Neo Sans and Neo Tech display the functional and aesthetic excellence that earns them a place in the list of classic designs from the Monotype typeface library.

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Now check this, Underware’s blockbuster type, Bello. Bello Pro is a brush typeface for headline point sizes - it’s big & beautiful. Bello has lots of ligatures and start and ending swashes. They are automatic in Bello Script Pro, which is a cross-platform OpenType font with many OpenType features. Bello has Underware’s world-dominating Latin Plus character set, supporting a total of 219 languages (Latin 1 + 2 and beyond). After a period of hand sketching and lettering, Bello got two main styles: Script and Caps. These two fonts create a strong typographic contrast - while Bello Script Pro is flourished and flowing, Bello Caps Pro provides upright and sturdy capital lettering. As sturdy as brush lettering allows, of course. Careful spacing and kerning ensures* that Bello appears like fluently written handwriting. However, that’s not enough for a hand-lettered feel. Therefore Bello comes with a set of 64 ligatures. Some of them are typographic, some made simply to create a more intimate, natural impression. For the same reasons we have added a few ornaments and a set of snap-on beginning and ending swashes which attach to the lowercase letters of Bello. With Bello Words Pro you can add some two-color words in your text by the pre-designed word logotypes. Trust the brush! *So take care: use ‘metrics’, not ‘optical’ as a spacing setting in layout apps.

The branding agency's client wanted an ultra modern"" typeface that was ""futuristic without being gimmicky or ephemeral,"" according to the design brief. Designer Sebastian Lester took on this intriguing custom font assignment, but soon, a bureaucratic decision cancelled the project. ""I was left with a sketchbook full of ideas and thought it would be a shame not to see what came of them,"" says Lester. He decided to finish the design on his own. Lester's research confirmed that the principal ingredient of an ""ultra modern"" typeface was simplicity of character structure: a carefully drawn, monoline form, open letter shapes and smooth, strong curves. To conceive a typeface that crossed the line from modern to futuristic, Lester decided to amplify these qualities. About a year after Lester's initial conceptual work, two highly functional and versatile typefaces emerged. These are Neo Sans and Neo Tech, designs Lester describes as ""legible without being neutral, nuanced without being fussy, and expressive without being distracting."" Both the Neo Sans and the more-minimalist Neo Tech families are available in six weights, ranging from Light to Ultra. Each has a companion italic, and Neo Tech offers a suite of alternate characters. While engineered to look modern as tomorrow, Neo Sans and Neo Tech display the functional and aesthetic excellence that earns them a place in the list of classic designs from the Monotype typeface library.

Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world. Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning. And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights. Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while. To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted. That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great. Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience. Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel. Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair. The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.