Grobek is a serif typeface inspired by Garamond and American Typewriter fonts as well as classic 15th century typefaces. Its main features are a diagonal stress and soft curved teardrop shape terminals. Grobek comes in 8 weights, from Thin to Heavy, with matching italics- 32 styles in all. The font consists of 2 subfamilies: the basic family is classic yet contemporary while the alternative version has a stronger personality and allows more design freedom. Grobek is ideal for short text and paragraphs, and specially designed for logos, branding, editorial design and web use. This font contains 576 characters that support over 200 Latin-based languages.

Red Tape is three fonts that were designed by sticking letters together with red tape. It makes for a wonderful makeshift set of fonts. And I really enjoyed sticking those letters together. Of course I did it on screen using bits and pieces of scanned red tape. Just use it as you like, I won't give you any red tape in how to use the fonts. »Red Tape« is since February 2012 on permanent display in the »German National Library« – next to the likes of »Bodoni«, »Garamond« and »Helvetica« – being part of the exhibition about type through the ages. Your (now a little famous) unproblematic type designer, Gert.

Melancholia is a subtle and beautiful sans-serif inspired by calligraphic letterforms. The name describes a feeling of deep sadness, an intense sensitivity to the world. The design of Melancholia is an attempt to introduce some of that wistfulness into the sans-serif form, a typographic classification that is often characterised by an austere functionality. Melancholia includes a set of true italics influenced by old-style serif italics, such as those found in Claude Garamond’s eponymous typeface, as well as a set of stylistic alternates and calligraphic-style swash characters.

RARE BIRD SPECIMEN II Specimen II is an elegant hand by Karla Lim of Written Word Calligraphy. It floats across the page on gossamer wings. Specimen II pairs well with classic typefaces like Baskerville, Garamond and Bodoni. OBSERVATIONS Specimen II is exquisitely delicate but not fragile. Best suited for unforgettable affairs. DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS Opentype programming, formal title & preposition wordart, 7 alternate ëandí options, Roman numerals, in and out-stroked letterforms at beginning and end of words, multiple alternate lowercase t cross-strokes, realistic double-letter ligatures, seamlessly connecting calligraphic letters, alternate capital letters, old style numerals, basic Latin encoding. POTENTIAL SIGHTINGS Wedding stationery suites, logo design, luxury product packaging, fragrance, wine labels.

In 1525, Albrecht Dürer, the well known German great artist, was publishing the so-called “Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt”, printed in Nuremberg. This handbook explained with numeral figures how to draw with a compass and ruler. A large part is devoted to the drawing of Roman characters, which can be used as decorative initials. We are offering two complete historical initial sets and also have entirely redrawn the missing letters: J, U and W, Eth, Lslash, Thorn and Oslash in the two forms, using the Dürer style. The font may be used with all our Humane and Garalde fonts, like 1543 Humane Jenson or 1592 GLC Garamond and others from the GLC foundry catalog.

Gaultier is the result of over 5 years of work on a typeface inspired by my favourite creators in European typography – Claude Garamond, Robert Granjon and Eric Gill. The main idea of the project was to create a sans-serif antiqua with all features reserved for serif typefaces. In addition to the rich set of characters, Neuropa includes: Small Caps, Superscript, Subscript, Ligatures, Discretionary Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, Swash Variants and 5 different styles of digits. Upright styles with delicate contrast corresponds with the expressive form of italics inspired by Granjon italic construction. Gaultier will work wherever we want to emphasize modernity without forgetting tradition. The sharp character of the whole family is perfect for longer texts, visual communications and branding purposes.

Heer Halewijn (The Song of Lord Halewijn) is a 13th century Dutch folk tale which survives in folk ballad. The story tells of a man called Halewijn, who lives in the woods and who lures pretty women with his songs (whom he then kills). One day a princess visits Halewijn, but when he wants to kill her, she requests he remove his robe, so as not to stain it with her blood. He obliges and when he is undressing, the princess seizes his sword and chops off his head. Halewyn is a handmade font, which was loosely based on my Languedoc font and Garamond. Use it for product packaging, books and posters. Comes in 4 weights (with italics) and a ballad full of diacritics.

The Macarons font family consists of a monoline version, regular and bold weights, and a set of gestural catchwords, which reflects the use of the ruling pen as a freestyle tool. Ornaments and dingbats are also included. Macarons is a display type based on the classic Garamond typeface. It’s inspired by the foodie culture and the slow food movement, which began as a rebellion against fast food and has now grown to a global scale. Every day, thousands of people around the world take pictures of their food, look for new recipes to try and recover old ones, enjoy wine-pairing, and value locally produced food. Macarons is a fresh and spontaneous looking typeface that has been designed by Coto Mendoza, who also has developed a hand-made product line (Ride my Bike, Ride my Bike Serif, Four Seasons, D.I.Y. Time, Dans le Cuisine and In a Jar). This font is not constructed out of modules: each character is drawn by hand. Macarons is ideal for cookbooks, menus, liquor bottle labels, food packaging, wedding invitations, greeting cards, tea boxes, food blogs, small shops, cupcake bakeries and so on. Try! A freshly-baked homemade macaron!

Utily Sans emerges from the question: "What would the world be like if Paul Renner had had greater inclination towards humanism rather than geometry?" Utily Sans glyph proportions and shapes make it suitable for long-form text. This typeface shows geometric simplicity with humanist shapes. It looks like Futura, but has a feel closer to Garamond. Utily Sans is composed of 6 weights with their matching italics, an alternate character set that brings it back to its geometric origin, uppercase discretionary ligatures for expressive titles, as well as small caps, lining figures and old style numbers. These features make the font well-suited for large and small sized compositions, for short or long text. Utily Sans is the first Latinotype font with Cyrillic support, additional to the usual support for over 200 Latin-based languages.

Sabon was designed by Jan Tschichold and released in 1967. Sabon was created in response to the specific needs of a group of German printers who wanted a typeface that would be identical in form when produced by three different metal-casting technologies. Named after Jacques Sabon, a sixteenth century typefounder whose widow married another typefounder, Konrad Berner, who is credited with issuing the first typefounder's specimen sheet. Several types on the sheet were attributed to Claude Garamond, and one of these served Tschichold as the source for Sabon roman. The italic was based on another face on Berner's sheet, cut by Robert Granjon. Tschichold's skillful adaptation of these old style faces has produced an elegant and workmanlike book face. The Sabon font family is a popular choice for setting text.

This family is a compilation created from a Garamond set in use in Paris circa 1651, but similar to those, eroded and tired, that were in use during centuries to print cheap publications, as well as in Europe than in America, and from a large choice of printed symbols—all specially redrawn—used for alchemical, pharmaceutical and astrological books, covering 1550 to late 1800s period. Each alphabet is doubled by a slightly different one, and a special OTF encoding allows to give an irregular effect with never the same twin letters in a single word. The Normal style is enriched by small caps, and the Italic style by Swashes. A lot of symbols, too, are given twice with differences. This font may be used with our calendar specialized 1689 Almanach.

Franko Luin, Odense's designer, on this typeface: With Odense I entered the field where Optima reigns in royal majesty. The first question I received was, in fact, why I designed another Optima. Look closely: Odense has as much in common with Optima as Garamond with Baskerville. Am I right? Odense Neon is a special variant that can be used for logos or single words. I had the idea for it when I noticed that the neon tubes in a sign over a store only partially followed the characters. The name comes from the Danish town Odense, the town of the famous storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, author of, e.g., 'The Little Mermaid.' Odense is also the place where the first book in the Nordic countries was printed, the 'Breviarium Ottoniense', in 1482.

The digital font Technotyp is based on the hot metal typeface created by the German typographer and type designer Herbert Thannhaeuser (1898-1963) for the former East German type foundry Typoart in Dresden. In the typography book ‘Der Schriftsetzer’ (Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig, 1952), by Paul Fritzsche, this absolutely beautiful slab serif design is presented in all its variations. Fritzsche remarked that – because of its rather condensed form and its relatively long ascenders – the 'Werkschrift' of the Technotyp (comparable with our 'Regular') seemed to be very well suited to serve as a text face, and recommended for this purpose that the face be cut for the composing machine. However, this never happened and the entire Technotyp family was made available for hand composition only. This is finally changing and being remedied for good now: URW++ proudly presents the new digital version of this really charming font family with its distinct flavor of the 1950s, adding it to the other digital renditions of Herbert Thannhaeuser fonts at URW++, namely Garamond No. 4 and Magna. The original Typoart family had an italic style for the light version only. The new digital version of Technotyp includes italic styles for the regular, medium and bold weights as well, enhancing the family to meet today’s standards and requirements for professional type setting. To further increase its usefulness, Cyrillic faces were created, too. True to the standard for all digital fonts at URW++, the character set for Technotyp covers all West- and East European languages.

Birka is the first typeface I designed from scratch. It took a whole year of my weekend and evening hours and is the typeface that teached me everything I know about type design. It is easy too see that I had Garamond in mind when drawing it. Birka is beautiful" was the comment of the well known Swedish designer Bo Berndal when he first saw it. That comment gave me the courage to design more and more typefaces. In a Danish article about Scandinavian type design, Birka was taken as example of a typical Swedishness in typography. I am not sure what the writer had in mind, but it surely sounded well. Birka has its name from the ancient Viking town Birka, whose remains are found not far away from Stockholm. Birka was released in 1992."

This typeface is an attempt to offer as a font the well known marvelous Hans Holbein “Death Alphabet”, first published in 1523. We have tried to preserve as much as possible the spirit and appearance of the original Initials set — incredibly fine and enriched with detailed figures — trying at the same time to create a font not too complex to be usable. Neverteless, the font files are large, and when used, the decorated initials may appear on screen more slowly than ordinary characters. (Minimum size recommended : 96 pts) We are offering here two complete standard sets (no accented characters) : Initials and capitals. We have reconstructed the missing letters : J and U, Eth, Lslash, Thorn and Oslash. The font may be used with all our Humane and Garalde fonts, like 1543 Humane Jenson or 1592 GLC Garamond and others from the GLC foundry catalog.

Praxis® Next has the same robust shapes and proportions as the original 1976 Praxis design. Its large x-height, substantial counters and open apertures guarantee high levels of legibility and reading ease in print and on screen. More weights, condensed designs and true cursive italics differentiate Praxis Next from the older design. Praxis Next shines where space is at a premium. The regular designs are modestly narrow while the condensed typefaces perform with grace in the most crowded of environments. The bold designs create powerful headlines and banners and the lighter weights are ideal for both long and short-form text copy. Because of its many weights and proportions, Praxis Next is also an ideal design to build a brand identity. Praxis Next Variables are font files which are featuring two axis and have a preset instance from Light to Ultra and Condensed to Roman. Pair Praxis Next with old-style designs like Bembo® Book and Stempel Garamond™ to create a dynamic typographic contrast. Or complement the design with its serifed counterpart, Demos® Next . Unger also drew ITC Flora® as an alternative italic design. Looking for something a little different? Pair Praxis Next with Masqualero™ .

FF Kievit Serif subtlety melds oldstyle design traits and a 21st century mien into a clean, straightforward suite of typefaces. As part of the FF Kievit super family it helps brands carry their voices effectively and legibly. This includes small text to display sizes, in both print and digital environments, for internal and external audiences. FF Kievit takes inspiration from classic designs like Garamond and Granjon, and is available in seven weights, plus italics. Drawn as a collaboration between Michael Abbink, Paul van der Laan, FF Kievit Serif is a natural extension to the other members of the FF Kievit super family, that also includes FF Kievit and FF Kievit Slab. FF Kievit Serif stands on its own as a multi-talented and exceptionally legible design. Large counters, a generous x-height and ample apertures ensure that FF Kievit Serif translates well to both hardcopy and interactive environments. FF Kievit Serif is available in carefully defined weights, ranging from Light to Black. The Regular, Book and Bold weights are ideally suited to long form text copy. Ligatures, several suites of numbers and small caps are also available. In addition, FF Kievit Serif benefits from the same extensive language support of the other designs in the family.

This set of initial letters is an entirely original creation, inspired by French renaissance patterns used by Bordeaux printers circa 1580-1590. It contains two roman alphabets : the first of decorated letters, the second of single large capitals, all with Garamond style, and a few fleurons using the same background pattern style. Both containing Thorn, Eth, L slash and O slash. It can be used as variously as website titles, posters and flyers design, publishing texts looking like ancient ones, or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, as a very decorative, elegant and luxurious additional font... This font is conceived for enlargements, possibly strong ones, remaining very smart and very fine (especially decorated initials). This font may be used with all GLC Foundry blackletter fonts, but preferably with 1543 Humane Jenson, 1557 Italique, 1589 Humane Bordeaux, 1742 Civilite, 1776 Independence without any fear of anachronism.

Tramuntana 1 Pro was inspired by the late Renaissance and Mannerist spirit and it was designed by Ricardo Santos during 2009 for his Master in Advanced Typography (Eina-Barcelona). This project was also inspired by Robert Granjon, Garamond and Sabon typefaces. The name tramuntana (Tramontane) is the Catalonian word for the cold wind that comes from the Pyrenees mountains and goes as far as the Balearic Islands. It was designed for editorial purposes (books and magazines). This typeface family contains different font versions for different optical sizes, caption, text, subhead and display, all of them with different x-height proportions and contrast. The serifs are asymmetrical and the letterforms have geometric modulated strokes which simulates the calligraphic variations. Its design approach gives a dynamic feeling, contributing to text flow and continuous reading. The kerning has been optimized for Baltic languages and Western, Southern, and Central European languages.

Think of Garamouche as Garamond's drunken cousin. This font replicates a long lost document ravaged by time and the elements (with a little sloppy printing for good measure.) Unlike the fake bolding option found in software programs, Garamouche Bold is a variant with more appropriate thick and thin features. The "dancing along the baseline" that has made Garamouche a favorite, is also a feature in Garamouche Bold, but the letters align and tilt in on their own terms. Using the two Garamouche fonts together can produce much more expressive results than just hitting "bold". P22 Garamouche Ornaments is a set of 72 ornamental embellishments designed to complement the Garamouche fonts but can be used with almost any layout that calls for historical decoration.

Re-introducing the classic mid-1500s Garamond forms for the twenty-first century is never an easy task. But Hans van Maanen makes a fine attempt at just that by remodeling the traditional shapes through a modern lens with stunning results. Aragon is a workhorse family that performs very well in a variety of text sizes, from footnotes and legal copy to lengthy body sets. Its combination of wedge serifs with uniquely tapered stems offers a sturdy Dutch touch that improves legibility altogether, while at the same time the slight stress shift to the top half of the characters makes the immersive reading experience very open and comfortable. The Aragon family comes in a standard two-weight set with corresponding italics, a roman small caps font with its own italics, and very attractive initials for display uses. All fonts come in the usual popular formats, and include a glyph repertoire that covers Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Turkish and Welsh/Celtic.

This family was created inspired from the Garamond patern set of fonts used by S. Millanges "imprimeur ordinaire du Roy", in Bordeaux, circa 1580-1590. Especially for reprint L'instruction des curés (Instructions to parish priests), from Jean Gerson. The set contains two styles, Normal and Italic, the second one with a lot of caps and ligatures variants. The initials, except a few decorated letters (six in total) where only large caps, covering no more than three lines. Added are a few fleurons. It can be used as variously as web-site titles, posters and flyers design, publishing texts looking like ancient ones, or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, as a very elegant and legible font... This font supports strong enlargements as easily as small size (legible from 6 points when printed) remaining very smart and fine. Its original cap height is about five millimeters. Decorated letters like 1512 Initials, 1550 Arabesques, 1565 Venetian, can be used with this family without anachronism.

Emilio is a modern serif family available in 14 styles. It's an elegant typeface with friendly and warm personality which seeks a balance between traditional and modern. Emilio is inspired by the visuality of the 1980s and the typefaces that were widely used in advertising at the time, such as Times and Garamond. However, Emilio offers a contemporary take on the serif font family, adding new elements such as reductive, calligraphy-inspired details or the "K" and "R" legs shape. If you want a more traditional look, you can achieve it with the stylistic alternatives available. Of course, the typeface also provides standard and discretionary ligatures and many other Open Type features. In addition, it offers support for most Latin languages. The big headlines and titles are where Emilio shines the most, but due to large x-height and decent contrast will work for smaller text as well. Emilio is the ideal typeface for editorial design, posters, covers, branding and much more.

Aldine 401 is a Bitstream version of Bembo type family. It was designed on the base of artwork of Francesco Griffo for Aldus Manutius. Originally the font appeared in “De Aetna” in 1495 — the book by Pietro Bembo about his journey to Mount Etna. Griffo’s design was one of the first old style typefaces followed by Garamond. It was the forerunner for the standard text types in Europe for the next two centuries. A modern version of Bembo was designed at Monotype under the supervision of Stanley Morison in 1929. Aldine 401 is still very popular in book design due to its well-proportioned classic letterforms and lack of peculiarities. Italic was based on the handwriting of Giovanni Tagliente. Books and other texts set in Aldine 401 can encompass a large variety of subjects and formats because of its classical beauty and high readability. Cyrillic version was developed by Isabella Chaeva and released by ParaType in 2008.

Phrasa is a robust humanist sans-serif typeface family which will carry you through most of your design needs. Designed for legibility, she truly shines in running text. However her solid (yet elegant) construction allows for usage in such settings as branding or signage. Phrasa's most prominent features are: 13 weights, from hairline to black Moderate x-height Large apertures Modern capitals proportions Designed for readability… … without sacrificing good looks True Italics Small capitals Adobe Latin 3 language range Cyrillic alphabet Old-style and tabular figures The idea behind Phrasa was to create a stylish typeface but with legibility in mind. The inspiration came from history, namely from two of the most legible typefaces known: Garamond and Gill Sans. The new typeface boasts a smooth, easy-on-the-eyes texture which allows the reader to simply sink into the text. It also posses a set of true italics to compliment it. Phrasa has a broad linguistic range, spanning from extended latin alphabet to cyrillic.

Aragon ST is a special version of Hans van Maanen’s Aragon family. It was developed for science writing, and it serves as the very first introduction of SciType, an innovative new way of building fonts specifically for typesetting science text. For more information about SciType, please consult the SciType FAQ PDF in the Gallery section. The Aragon design is a remodelling of the classic mid-1500s Garamond forms through a modern lens. It is a text workhorse that performs very well in a variety of sizes, from footnotes and legal copy to lengthy, immersive-reading body sets. Its efficient and legibility-asserting traits are wedge serifs and uniquely tapered stems that slightly shift the weight stress to the top half of the forms while maintaining the clarity and synergy of the counterspace’s sequence. Aragon ST takes all that a step further for science writers. For details about the functionality of Aragon ST, please consult the Aragon ST Access Chart PDF in the Gallery section.

The Trump Mediaeval Office family is designed after the model of the original serif family produced by Georg Trump in 1954. Trump released this typeface through the C.E. Weber type foundry in Stuttgart, and Linotype quickly cut the face for mechanical composition. Thereafter it became popular around the world. One of the most prolific German type designers of the 20th century, Trump created numerous typefaces in several different styles, but Trump Mediaeval is often regarded as his best work. Trump Mediaeval is an old style serif typeface, with new inherent quality that could only have come about after centuries of variation on this theme. It bears some resemblance to the classic Garamond typefaces, yet its characteristic letters set it apart in a positive way. Akira Kobayashi, Linotype’s Type Director, released his own revived design, Trump Mediaeval Office, in 2006. Trump Mediaeval Office has two weights, each with an italic companion. Unlike the original design, Kobayashi has harmonized the varying letterforms across the two weights, allowing Regular and Bold text to stand side by side harmoniously. Trump Mediaeval’s numbers now match across weights as well, optimizing their legibility in sizes large and small. Decades ago, Trump Mediaeval was a popular choice for setting book texts, because of its robust serifs. These are exactly what make the face a good choice for office application today; on lower-resolution printers, these serifs will still remain a strong feature on the letterform, increasing legibility along the line of text.

Sans-serif typefaces compensate for their basic handicap – an absence of serifs – with a softening modulation typical of roman typefaces. Grotesques often inherit a hypertrophy of the x-height, which is very efficient, but not very beautiful. They are like dogs with fat bodies and short legs. Why do we love old Garamonds? Beside beautifully modeled details, they possess aspect-ratios of parts within characters that timelessly and beauteously parallel the anatomy of the human body. Proportions of thighs, arms or legs have their universal rules, but cannot be measured by pixels and millimeters. These sometimes produce almost unnoticeable inner tensions, perceptible only very slowly, after a period of living with the type. Serifed typefaces are open to many possibilities in this regard; when a character is mounted on its edges with serifs, what is happening in between is more freely up to the designer. In the case of grotesques, everything is visible; the shape of the letter must exist in absolute nakedness and total simplicity, and must somehow also be spirited and original.

The Ampersand Forest has its first book family! Budinger Oldstyle is elegant and approachable at the same time, with five different weights, making it a perfect choice for text or display in situations that require a hint of scholarship, fine arts, craft, erudition, and clarity. Budinger Oldstyle has the legibility of a Garalde (like those of Garamond, Manutius, et al.), with a whiff of Venetian revival (after the fashion of Schneidler & Goudy). The letters are arbitrary, with conventions like cupped serifs and leftward stress. It also has a higher x-height than might be expected, to give it an upright posture and openness in the counters. The italic is more compact, with more clearly calligraphic letterforms and conventions like Swash Caps. Its many features include OpenType alternates (a one-story a and g, and a K, R, and Q with elongated descenders), full and true small caps, both standard and discretionary ligatures, oldstyle and lining numerals, and Swash letterforms in the Italic (all capitals and descenders, plus the ascender of the d). Plus, the most adorable pudge of an ampersand you've ever seen!

A robust oldstyle, an elegant slab, 8 styles Geneo, created by Stéphane Elbaz, is a synthesis of historic and present-day visions of typography, a slab serif constructed on an oblique axis. Its subtle contrast evokes both Renaissance elegance and the robustness of the Egyptian typefaces that were in vogue during the 19th century. Geneo falls halfway between the classic styles of Garamond and Transitionnals, with aspects of contemporary slab serifs like Rockwell, Boton, as well a bit informal. From this blend of styles and genres, it emerges with a singular identity perfectly suited for modern illustrations of quality, savoir-faire, and culture. Geneo’s limited contrast has been carefully crafted to make the font adaptable for use as both text and headlines, as well as for small-print elements like footnotes, appendices, and captions. The variety and precision of certain weights, like Regular, allow minute adjustments of the font color in text compositions. This flexibility is especially useful for displaying on devices with high pixel densities such as the latest iPhone or iPad, on which text may appear too thin. Flexibility and sturdiness The sturdiness of Geneo makes it a perfect choice for posters, logos, print and any project that requires finesse and sophistication. It provides alternate versions of some letters such as g and a to give you the flexibility you need for your typographic projects. Geneo pairs perfectly with contemporary typeface genre. Geneo, a new typeface designed by Stéphane Elbaz Tokyo TDC 2014 Type Directors Club 2009

PHOENICA is a contemporary humanistic typeface family suitable for traditional high-resolution print purposes, office application and multi-media use. Of the creation formed the basis an idea which was developed for the first time by Lucian Bernhard approx in 1930 with the Berhard Gotic and was taken up in the last time by different written creators repeatedly: the repeated elimination anyway (in comparison to a Antiqua, e.g. Garamond) already very much diminished form Grotesque (as for example Helvetica) by systematic leaving out of the serifs. The horizontal direction of the writing is thereby stressed remarkably by which so-called »Rail effect« originates. The eyes can grasp the line to be read very well what is ordinarily left to a Serif-stressed font. By this desired effect is suited PHOENICA also for big text amounts. In numerous test runs Stems and tracking was compared to experienced fonts and was adapted. The experienced was taken over without renouncing, nevertheless, the modern and independent character PHOENICA. PHOENICA offers to you as a welcome alternative to the contemporary humanistic Sansserif. It is a very adaptable family for text and Corporate design uses. Several companies have discovered PHOENICA meanwhile as a Corporate font for themselves and use them very successfully. She provides a respectable typeface combined with refinement and elegance. Every PHOENICA family has at least six weights in each case in regular and italic. In addition more than three fine Haarline weights (Hairline 15, 25, 35). These are a total of 27 possibilities. Phoenica as well as Phoenica Condensed are excellently readable fonts, because they were optimised especially for amount sentence. Both basic styles (Regular and Condensed) are tuned on each other and follow the same form principle. The family is neither exclusively geometrical nor is constructed humanistically, the forms were sketched on quick and light Recognition effect of every single letter. The PHOENICA family design and logo is suited for all only conceivable uses like newspapers and magazines, for the book typography and Corporate Design.

The Roos family is a digitization and expansion of the last typeface designed by Sjoerd Hendrik De Roos, called De Roos Romein (and Cursief). It was designed and produced during the years of the second World War, and unveiled in the summer of 1947 to celebrate De Roos's 70th birthday. In 1948, the first fonts produced were used for a special edition of the Dutch Constitution on which Juliana took the oath during her inauguration as the Queen of the Netherlands. To this day this typeface is widely regarded as De Roos's best design, with one of the most beautiful italics ever drawn. In contrast with all his previous roman faces, which were based on the Jenson model, De Roos's last type recalls the letter forms of the Renaissance, specifically those of Claude Garamont from around 1530, but with a much refined and elegant treatment, with stems sloping towards the ascending, slightly cupped serifs, a tall and distinguished lowercase, and an economic width that really shines in the spectacular italic, which harmonizes extremely well with its roman partner. The Roos family contains romans, italics and small caps in regular, semibold and display weights, as well as a magnificent set of initial caps. All the fonts contain extended language support, surpassing the usual Western Latin codepages to include characters for Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese, and Turkish.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.