Most uppercase letters of these constructivist fonts are made to look like cyrillic letters, so by carefully interspersing those you can set your text and headlines with it and make it look Russian! To a native Russian this of course looks very silly indeed, so to make amends for toying with their letters I have also included a full proper and genuine cyrillic character set. So these are the first CheapProFonts fonts to support languages using the cyrillic script in addition to the usual 65 latin-based languages. Check out Kremlin Pro for a version with different designs for these glyphs: ¡ ¿ 0 3 6 9 K k M m N n R r V v X x ? ! ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Welcome Amica Pro, a workhorse sans designed to give your branding a friendly, approachable look. What is it that makes a typeface friendly? Eclectotype undertook extensive research* in this and the results are in! To cut a long story short, friendliness in sans serif fonts can be summed up in two words – short and fat. Basically, think Danny DeVito in letter form. The shortness in Amica Pro is achieved (somewhat counterintuitively) by pushing up the x-height. This, coupled with short ascenders and descenders, gives the text a squat appearance. For the fatness, that's easy in the bolder weights, but how to carry this through to the lights? Here, the fatness equates to roundness, so the letterforms, even if the stroke weight is light, have a rotund appearance from the wideness and roundness of the circular glyphs. When thinking about friendliness, we think about inclusiveness. To this end, Amica Pro supports a super wide range of latin-based languages, as it uses Underware's Latin Plus character set, as well as extra support for Vietnamese. Amica Pro is best used for branding, logos, infographics etc. It will give your UI a friendlier feel, but that doesn't mean it's not serious. There are many useful typographic features, including alternates, numerous figure styles, automatic fractions and case-sensitive forms. The italics are carefully optically corrected "sloped romans" and as such they are the same width as their upright equivalent, so changing your copy to italics will not mess around with the spacing. *I looked at a few fonts and drew some lazy conclusions.

As designers, we seek perfection and originality. The more we step back and look at our work, the more changes we tend to find necessary. Drastic modifications are inevitable. The same is true of Grayfel. Grayfel began as an exercise at insigne to explore the crowded space of neutral sans. While the world of sans serifs is admittedly crowded, I still managed to find something new and different. The final Grayfel consists of 42 full-featured OpenType fonts containing three widths: Regular, Condensed, and Extended. Every width consists of 14 fonts--seven weights with matching italics, making it a good companion for setting clear text and headlines for print and screen. OpenType features are also available. There’s figure choices, such as proportional and old style figures. Additionally, Greyfel includes sophisticated typographic attributes: ligatures, fractions, alternate characters, small caps, superscripts and subscripts. Its extended character set supports Central, Western and Eastern European languages. Optical compensations also mean the outcome of this family is a hybrid of humanistic proportions. It’s a well-finished design with optimized kerning gives it a friendly look. If you like sans serifs within the tradition of Futura, Helvetica, Avant Garde and Avenir, then you’ll love Greyfel, too. Grayfel works well in a variety of applications. Subtly neutral yet fun, it’s suitable for headlines of all sizes as well as for text. Put it to the task for marketing, packaging, editorial work, branding and even on-screen projects. Try it out: it’s not just fun and playful; it’s Grayfel.

What comes to your mind if I say Architype, Geometric, Gaelic, and Uncial? An impossible combination of features? An unrealistic setup of tastes as weird as your music list? Or some part of a joke told by your favourite comedian? Just chill and stick to the idea that is possible. Gallos combines the conceptual historical elegance of the Uncials with the practical rationalism of the Geometric style. Moreover, this typeface is composed by two sub families: Gallos Uncial and Gallos Architype. The letters “M”, “N”, “W”, “a”, “m”, “n”, “r”, and “w” differ between these two models. The first one is related to both: The Uncial script aspect displaying the leaned “a” with a closed bowl, and the classical geometric style depicting more conventional uppercase and lowercase letters “m” and “n”. The Architype one is inspired by Paul Renner’s Architype model, thus the leaned “a” has an open counter, the “r” is composed by a stem and a dot, and the rest of the mentioned letters were built using square rational features. Both models are connected by classical Uncial features such as the curved stroke “e” and curved shaft “t”, and with Gaelic vibes which can be seen in uppercase and lowercase letters “K” and “X”. Also, the curved descender “g” and “y”, alongside the curved stem “z” connect really well with the rest of the system and provide more uniqueness to the Gallos type family. Without further ado, we say to you: let’s make Uncials popular again!

Almoneda: Sale at public auction of movable goods, generally used. And also: private and voluntary sale of jewelry and junk that is made without the intervention of justice. Formerly, it was nothing more than the market or sale of things and spoils won from the enemy in war. Nowadays, the almoneda is practically associated with spaces where the sale of "old things" takes place and, in Madrid, they are usually concentrated in the area of El Rastro, an open-air market that is set up on Sundays and some holidays in the center of Madrid. There, you can find everything and, if you walk around a lot and look hard enough, great typographic finds. It is there where I find a large number of elements (usually from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) such as boxes, posters, books, etc.. in which appear uppercase letters with a variety of shapes, letters embedded, rare ligatures ... In addition, many elements extracted from street signs, tiles from bars and commemorative elements of Madrid have been used to complete this font design made with care and patience. Thus was born Almoneda, a modern typeface with a marked axis and great contrast, and an uppercase with several sets of characters to play with and enjoy. It also includes a large number of ligatures and discretionary ligatures. A Variable font is included with the full package license. Almoneda, a typeface that will not leave you indifferent. They take it out of my hands, hey!

East is a simple and confident typeface. It is timeless and current, but with a subtle nostalgia of vintage Jazz albums, film credits, newspapers, and signage. The light weight has excellent legibility at small sizes. The Extra Bold weight will capture attention. Its condensed width allows a lot of text in little space. East is versatile, but would be a good choice for film titles, labels + packages, posters, publications or any design where space is limited. It has six weights between Light and Extra Bold. A variable font with weight and slant axes is available and included in a full family purchase. The OpenType features include; stylistic sets, a one story ‘a’, hooked letters, seriffed uppercase I and 1, a slashed zero, raised colon and punctuation (Spanish), several German eszetts, ligatures, diverse bullets, and vertically stacked pre-built fractions. It will support western and central European languages as well as other Latin-based written languages. Read on if you are not familiar with variable fonts. What makes a variable font special is that all font weights are inside of one file and you can incrementally control the width and italic slant between Light (300) and ExtraBold (800). These changes are commonly made with slide controls in the font/type palette of the software. Variable fonts are also smaller in file size, which benefit both web and software performance. Currently variable fonts are supported by Adobe, Sketch, Corel Draw, and most web browsers. Check for your software support here: www.v-fonts.com/support.

Mono-Spec is a monospaced family of sans-serif type. At least in default settings, all characters across the typeface share a common width. That fixed setting is condensed, and the aesthetic style of Mono-Spec’s letterforms is very industrial. A sister family, called Mono-Spec Stencil, is also available. Its design strays away from the mechanical nature of Mono-Spec, and it channels the spirit of resistance and street culture. Mono-Spec ships in two different formats. Depending on your preference, you can install the typeface as a single Variable Font or use the family’s five static OpenType font files instead. Those weights run from Light through Bold. While the static-format fonts offer a good intermediary-step selection, users who install the Variable Font have vastly greater control over their text’s stroke width. The Mono-Spec Variable Font’s weight axis allows users to differentiate between almost 1,000 possible font weights. That enables you to fine-tune your text’s exact appearance on-screen or in print. Whatever format you choose, the Mono-Spec fonts are equipped with several OpenType features. The most striking of these can be activated via a Stylistic Set. That will replace several letters – like “B”, “E”, “F”, “H”, and “I” with double-width alternates. Those alternates take up as much space as two characters placed next to each other otherwise word. The effect of Mono-Spec’s double-width alternates is striking, and their use strikes a strong chord in any display typography applying them.

This is Tchig Mono, a monospaced type family that doesn't take itself too seriously. Why make a monospaced font? For coding, sure, but display? It’s my humble opinion that it’s the aesthetic choices driven by the constraints of the monospaced environment that makes them attractive. It’s a challenge for the type designer to squash and expand glyphs into a rigid bounding box, and the more unorthodox shapes that spring from this have a feel about them which lends them to postmodernist layouts and hipsterish anti-design. And the payoff for the type designer - no kerning! Yay. So what’s different about Tchig? Like I said before, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Even the name Tchig is just a stupid, fun sound (although it does show off that nice g!). There are a selection of playful alternates that give text a slightly alien feel. Stylistic set 1 chops off ascenders and descenders of lowercase letters, giving it a kind of small caps meets unicase feel (it is also accessible using the small caps feature). The other sets (or stylistic alternates if you don't have access to stylistic sets) make certain letters more twirly, more square, more “experimental”. Automatic fractions use a half-width numerator and denominator so fractions like one half and five eighths have the same width as figures (and every other glyph). There you go then - a monospaced type family not initially intended for use in the usual ways monospaced families are intended to be used. Give it a try. You could even do some coding with it if you like.

Introducing Future Flow typeface - 8 fonts Looking for a font that combines classic elegance, romance, and a futuristic vibe? Look no further than Future Flow! This unique typeface offers eight distinct font styles, each with its own personality and flair. Plus, it's designed to support a whopping 87 different languages, making it a versatile choice for designers and creatives around the world. So whether you're creating a logo, designing a website, or crafting a marketing campaign, Future Flow has got you covered. Try it out today and see where its flowing curves and sleek lines can take you! Language Support : Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Breton, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusi,i Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian, Bokmål, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish, Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss, German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Upper, Sorbian, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh, Western Frisian, Zulu FEATURES Uppercase, lowercase, numeral, punctuation & Symbol Regular and italic Cut, display, futuristic, line, stencil, two line styles 8 fonts No special software is required to type out the standard characters of the Typeface. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions! Mock ups and backgrounds used are not included. Thank you! Enjoy!

Grafical is a contemporary take on 19th-century sans serifs. In this family, the amount of geometry inherent within the letterforms has been amped up. Many shapes have received further streamlining, too. All the geometric forms you see have been optically corrected, ensuring their delivery of better legibility. Grafical ships in two different formats: depending on your preference, you can install the typeface as two Variable Fonts or use the family’s 16 static OpenType font files instead. The static fonts offer eight weights, running from Extralight through Black. Each weight has an upright and an italic font available. While the static-format fonts offer a good intermediary-step selection, users who install the Variable Fonts have vastly greater control over their text’s stroke width. The Grafical Variable and Grafical Variable Italic font’s weight axes allow users to differentiate between almost 1,000 possible font weights. That enables you to fine-tune your text’s exact appearance on-screen or in print. Grafical is the perfect tool for a range of design uses, including text on the web, text in print, and text in motion graphics. Its fonts are typographic workhorses – not just from their legibility perspective but also because of the amount of OpenType features they include. There are ligatures, for instance, as well as proportional and tabular lining and oldstyle figures, fractions, numbers placed inside circles, and even Roman numerals. Users can also substitute alternate versions of the “a”, “g”, “i”, “j”, “y”, “G”, and “Q” into their work.

Hi there! Let me introduce Symply – a handwritten signature-style font. Symply is perfect for logos, branding, quotes, blog headlines, magazine and book design, product packaging, web design – or for any text on postcards and your favorite photos. Symply contains: a standard set of characters with wide multilingual support: Western-, Central- and Eastern-European, Baltic, Turkish, Latin-type Africans, and Asian (94 languages in total) 2 additional sets of alternative characters for lowercase letters 8 alternative characters for some initial letters 28 ligatures for double letters and frequent combinations a bonus font with 62 swashes and doodles Symply has two types of embedded auto-replacements: lowercase letters without connecting strokes (for a case of the last character of the word), and ligatures (for a case of two letters that do not pair well together). These features work well in many apps (even simple ones like Notepad/TextEdit), and if you need to customize their application – you could use programs that support OpenType features (for example, Adobe apps or CorelDraw). All these additional glyphs are PUA-encoded, so if your software does not support OpenType — you could access them through Character Map (Windows) or Font Book (Mac) Swashes and doodles come in a bonus font, Symply Swashes. To type them, please press keys with letters A – X, a – x, and numbers 0 – 9 I hope you will like Symply and create great designs with it! And if you have any questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail: triple.hely@gmail.com

Dolsáb was designed from scratch with uniqueness in mind. The subtle movement from thick to thin and the variants of sharp to rounded make this cutting edge san serif a must have. The inspiration for Dolsab was a simple pairing of a rhombus and calligraphy. While neither of those two elements can be seen in their entirety in any instance, the influence of both is strong. The rhombus can be notice on most ascenders like on the lowercase t & l, for example. And the calligraphy inspiration is most easily captured on the descenders such as the lowercase y & g. The most beautiful characteristics of Dolsab is definitely the calligraphy-influenced movement. These features really stand out on the lowercase a & e. It's almost amusing to let your eye follow the contours of those two letter forms as they travel from thick to thin, sharp to rounded and back again. Users are welcomed to try all font styles of Dolsab in any applique of their choosing. However, it will be quickly noticeable that only Dolsab Air & Demi (the thiner of the styles) will be best suited for body copy. Personally I like to see these letterforms as large as they can be to really showcase the subtle movement, especially in Dolsab Heavy where these movements become much more dramatic. You'll never know what really works best unless you experiment. Dolsab surely isn't the answer to all projects, but it's certainly worth trying. No other typeface moves quite like Dolsáb.

An authentic script from the tip of the ball point pen. This hasn’t been seen yet: A typeface which truly looks as if it were handwritten. Calligraphy is, actually, the art of fine writing. And actually, written scripts as typeface for the computer are 100% nonsense. And yet, an obvious thought: Create a typeface which truly derives from everyday handwriting. And since we, if we write at all, utilize practically only a ball point pen anymore, then a modern cursive writing form must look like just that. As a counterpart to the artistic ”handwritings“ which have long been available as typeface, the thought of digitalizing a truly ”ugly“ handwriting is appealing. After all, time and again there is the need for a text to look ”handwritten“. Biró Script is written freehand with a ball point pen. Finally a truly individual script! Biró Script includes more than 300 authentic ligatures in addition to the customary alphabet. By the way, the most convincing effect is obtained with a font size of about 18 to 22 points, at which the thickness of the stroke is now about the same as that of a real ball point pen. There's a difference between the anglo-american forms of some characters (esp. the numerals 1 and 7, but also capitals I and F) and how it's written in the rest of the world. For those of us who aren’t used to the world-wide usual forms, Biró Script includes a US version with the appropriate characters.

Most uppercase letters of these constructivist fonts are made to look like cyrillic letters, so by carefully interspersing those you can set your text and headlines with it and make it look Russian! To a native Russian this of course looks very silly indeed, so to make amends for toying with their letters I have also included a full proper and genuine cyrillic character set. So these are the first CheapProFonts fonts to support languages using the cyrillic script in addition to the usual 65 latin-based languages. Check out Kremlin II Pro for a version with different designs for these glyphs: ¡ ¿ 0 3 6 9 K k M m N n R r V v X x ? ! ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Michael Hoffmann manufactures digital fonts for 30 years. At URW++ he contributed to the technological progress. Over the years, he also specialized in the ideal representation of fonts on screen and the complex assembly of international fonts with scripts of all countries. In his latest project he put the emphasis on developing a highly readable typeface. Less interested in the design as in the functionality of this typeface, he designed Arsapia which he has now installed as a system font on all his computers. Michael Hoffmann studied Japanology at the University of Hamburg and traveled in the early years of his professional activity frequently to Japan, there to train the IKARUS font production tools to Japanese customers. In his spare time he plays guitar or golf depending on the weather. The typeface Arsapia has been designed in such a way that all three font styles Light, Regular and Bold have the same width. When a user therefore opts for the use of Arsapia Light, even though he has already written his text in Regular, nothing changes with respect to the letter tracking. When choosing the Bold for emphasis: Nothing changes except the blackness of the letters. A font change does not engender unwanted line and page breaks of itself. All letters can be clearly distinguished from each other. 1 l I O 0 are all different. For programmers and lovers of monospaced fonts Michael Hoffmann has developed a fourth typeface: Arsapia Mono. This is the perfect terminal font.

Boardwalk Avenue Rough is a textured version of Boardwalk Avenue. It’s a robust type collection of three styles and two weights of each. It’s divided into Boardwalk Pen, Boardwalk Antiqua and Boardwalk Serif. Boardwalk Avenue’s core is a connected mono linear script that works fantastic when paired with either of the impressive serif styles. All the fonts work great on their own but try putting them all together for a complete display font setup for a project. Here’s a short introduction on what’s included: Boardwalk Avenue Rough Pen is a connected Script. It’s great for headlines, quotes or in packaging. It has a casual hand drawn vibe to it but it’s clean and legible. It’s equipped with automatic Contextual Alternates that keep the connections smooth and versatile. For instance when you type double letter another of them will automatically change to add variation. Or if you type “i” for example, as a first letter after space or after capital letter the code will add starting point to the letter to keep the letterforms more balanced. If you need more ambitious letterforms you can try Swash or Titling Alternates -there’s alternates for every standard letter and seek for even more alternates from the glyph palette. Boardwalk Avenue Rough Antiqua is a high contrast serif with strong character. It’s great for glamorous headlines or as a logotype. Boardwalk Avenue Rough Serif is a low contrast serif with bulky character. It’s great for strong and sturdy headlines or as a logotype.

Hanna has its roots in the Plato and Cilantro fonts published earlier by Wilton Foundry. It is an informal roman and very legible at any size - a rare combination for many applications. Hanna was specifically designed to generate additional income for an orphanage in Ethiopia. Hanna Teshome runs an orphanage of roughly 140 children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She is an amazing lady with a deep passion for orphan kids as well as innocent kids that find themselves in jail because their mothers have been imprisoned - they are treated as prisoners and are typically sexually abused - it is not uncommon for them to commit suicide when they are released from jail at age 18. Most of the orphans end up with Hanna because one or both of their parents have died from AIDS. Hanna relies entirely on donations to keep her orphanage running and this font is a small but tangible way for you to help make a difference in the lives of the orphan kids. I am committed to helping Hanna after visiting the orphanage several times and seeing the jails from where the kids have been rescued. Hanna is my hero because she stepped out of her comfort zone, with no financial support, to take care of the kids. My hope is that you will use this font as a messenger of good. All of Wilton Foundry royalties for this font will go to the support of Hanna’s orphanage in Ethiopia. Thank you in advance for your support on behalf of Hanna and the kids!

The name Corpid derives from “Corporate Identity” — which is what this family of low-contrast sans-serifs was made for. Corpid was originally commissioned by Studio Dumbar in the Netherlands as a corporate typeface for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fishing. The font was designed to replace the existing standard typeface (a well-known business-like sans-serif) to provide the organization with a unique and strong identity. Although it was designed to fit strict technical requirements, Corpid has a personality all of its own. This was in part a result of what Luc(as) calls “creating tension” between the inner and outer curves of each character. “I tend to put a little more diagonal contrast into fonts than is the case in most neutral sans serif fonts. This brings a certain humanistic touch to the typeface. Much more subtle here than in Thesis – but although it is almost invisible, it is still palpable.” Corpid was gradually expanded into a five-weight, three-width family. The new Corpid SemiCondensed has double functionality. It is a no-frills, compact headline font that offers optimum legibility in sizes from small to huge. It is also a great space-saving text typeface for magazines, newsletters or annual reports: economic, versatile, and provided with several different numeral sets. In this OpenType type version, all weights come with Small Caps. With its wealth of numeral styles and complete character sets (including Central European) the Corpid family is now well equipped to tackle the most complex of typographic tasks.

Classical Calligraphy Script With Ornament Is a calligraphy Vintage script font that comes with beautiful alternate characters. copper plate mix calligraphy with handlettering style. to show its performance. Classical Calligraphy is attractive as a typeface that is smooth, clean, feminine, sensual, glamorous, simple and very easy to read. Classical Calligraphy Script comes with a Clean and Aged version, beautifully binding upper and lower case, binding and loved by many finishes. It has Multilingual support (Western European characters) and works with the following languages: English, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish. In my example I show how this script can be used. It's perfect for logos, wedding invitations, alcohol labels, romantic cards, and more. Products include: Classical Calligraphy Script, Classical Calligraphy Extras Ornament Alternate Upper & Lower Case Style Binding, as well as a touch of ornament make this font look elegant. Recommended for use in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop. Special features don't work in Microsoft Word. How to access all alternative characters using Adobe Illustrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzwjMkbB-wQ How to use font style set in Microsoft Word 2010 or later version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVJlZQ3EZU0 There are additional ways to access the alternative/swash, using the Character Map (Windows), Nexus Font (Windows) Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as PopChar (for Windows and Mac). How to access all alternative characters, using Windows Character Map with Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9vacoYmBw If you need any help or suggestions please contact me via email: creativescaleup@gmail.com

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.