The Dalecarlian runes, or dalrunes, was a late version of the runic script that was in use in the Swedish province of Dalarna until the 20th century.The province has consequently been called the "last stronghold of the Germanic script. When Carl Linnaeus visited Älvdalen in Dalarna in 1734, he made the following note in his diary: The peasants in the community here, apart from using rune staves, still today write their names and ownership marks with runic letters, as is seen on walls, corner stones, bowls, etc. Which one does not know to be still continued anywhere else in Sweden. The Dalecarlian runes were derived from the medieval runes, but the runic letters were combined with Latin ones, and Latin letters would progressively replace the runes. At the end of the 16th century, the Dalecarlian runic inventory was almost exclusively runic, but during the following centuries more and more individual runes were replaced with Latin characters. In its last stage almost every rune had been replaced with a Latin letter, or with special versions that were influenced by Latin characters.

“Fanfare is such a fun typeface,” says Toshi Omagari, who revived the design for The Wolpe Collection. “It was my happiest discovery when I was digging through the Monotype archive. I came across it and had to check the designer’s name.” No wonder: Fanfare is modern, light and playful – not what you’d expect from an 80-year old design. From the original, very heavy weight design, Omagari started by creating a black weight, followed by four lighter weights for Wolpe Fanfare, preserving the character of the letterforms all the way down to a thin version. “I wanted to do more than digitize the original weight,” he says. “It’s surprisingly modern, and its skeleton, its basic structure, is so beautiful.” The new design packs more into a small space than most typefaces. It’s a natural for publication and advertising design. With displays capable of revealing fine details such as Fanfare’s subtly slanted baseline, its lovely forms will easily translate to mobile devices. With an extended European character set that includes Greek and Cyrillic language support, Wolpe Fanfare can speak in many languages.

Vialog is a large and versatile sans serif family consisting of four weights of roman with corresponding italics, each with small caps and Old style Figures. Designers Werner Schneider and Helmut Ness based the concept for Vialog on the forms in "Euro Type," an unpublished type designed by Schneider in 1988 for the German Federal Transportation Ministry. For Vialog, Schneider made comprehensive legibility studies of the existing European transportation fonts, and combined and adapted the best features to make a new information system font family. He fine-tuned Vialog's characters and spacing with a special regard to the legibility problems of transportation settings, such as viewing type at distances and while moving. For example: cap I, J and lowercase i, j are common legibility problems in sans serif fonts, so in Vialog, these characters have serifs. In addition to its usefulness to the transportation industry, the Vialog family confidently meets the needs of corporate design and branding systems with its space-saving attributes for text settings, as well as the large number of weights and styles.

The year 1914 marked the appearance of Washington Ludlow's first typograph machine. This remarkable invention permitted typesetters to quickly cast a full line of lead type in one operation using supplied brass matrices, a procedure which was for the time a major technological improvement over the usual hand-set foundry type methods. Casting type the Ludlow way necessitated the creation of an entire range of new Ludlow typefaces, a development which made Ludlow not only a major manufacturer of printing machinery, but also one of the world's leading sources of professional type design. Renowned typographers such as Douglas C. McMurtrie and Ernest F. Detterer created original faces at Ludlow's request. Robert Hunter Middleton was Ludlow's design director for over fifty years, and during his distinguished career produced an entire library of typefaces representing virtually every known typographic style. He is recognized as one of the most prolific type designers of all time. Today, new Ludlow computer fonts are in preparation, including optically-correct versions of many classic Ludlow typefaces, drawn directly from the originals in the Ludlow company library.

Once upon a midnight dreary, this Comicraftsman pondered, weak and weary, For a name synonymous with Mighty and Marvelous comics lore. Solid, Outline, Inline was the nameless font I'd crafted, I nodded, nearly napping o'er the work I'd grafted When suddenly came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my cubicle door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my cubicle door-- Calling out "EXCELSIOR!" Then an Amazing Vision beguiled my sad fancy into smilin', By the Spectacular decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven," he said, "thou art sure no craven, And thy font should not remain nameless here forevermore!" Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From comic books surcease of sorrow, letters that called out "EXCELSIOR!" Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking of the nominative neuter singular thing Like Some Silvered Surfer wandering from the Nightly shore-- The Vision shrieked, upstarting--"Tell me what thy lordly name is thus!" Quoth the Craftsman: "EXCELSIUS!"

Franklin Gothic was designed by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders Company in 1903-1912. Early types without serifs were known by the misnomer "gothic" in America ("grotesque" in Britain and "grotesk" in Germany). There were already many gothics in America in the early 1900s, but Benton was probably influenced by the popular German grotesks: Basic Commercial and Reform from D. Stempel AG. Franklin Gothic may have been named for Benjamin Franklin, though the design has no historical relationship to that famous early American printer and statesman. Benton was a prolific designer, and he designed several other sans serif fonts, including Alternate Gothic, Lightline Gothic and News Gothic. Recognizable aspects of Franklin Gothic include the two-story a and g, subtle stroke contrast, and the thinning of round strokes as they merge into stems. The type appears dark and monotone overall, giving it a robustly modern look. Franklin Gothic is still one of the most widely used sans serifs; it's a suitable choice for newspapers, advertising and posters.

Some years ago, a good friend and typophile, Gonzalo García Barcha, approached me with the idea of designing a typeface for his editorial project Blacamán Ediciones. He had just came across an hitherto unknown manuscript by Luis Lagarto, a colonial illuminator and scribe, working in Mexico City and Puebla in the late 1500s. The manuscript calligraphy was incredible and stunningly original. It featured three different hands by the scribe, intermingled in the text: a kind of baroque «Roman» roundhand; a very ornate, lively «Italic»; and some sort of irregular, playful, even funny «small caps». All imbued with an eccentric, convoluted zest and vivacious rhythm. Lagarto is the final result of translating these extraordinary hands into a digital type family. Since the manuscript had no numerals, math signs and many other characters now in use, part of the fun of the job was to infer them from the stylistic peculiarities of Luis Lagarto's calligraphy. Lagarto received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.

Following the huge success of Legendary, Manuel Corradine proudly introduces his new ornamented script font. He remarks: “Designing Plebeya was a very tough and exhausting process, but learning to use it correctly and harnessing its whole potential is equally a job demanding great skill and dedication”. Plebeya is a font with an elegant and decorative style. Its calligraphic strokes are full of minute imperfections evoking real hand writing and provide it with a rustic and natural touch. Because of this we advise to preferably use it in the smaller sizes and only in larger ones when consciously you want to highlight its rustic characteristics. Plebeya is ideal for logos and short texts design, but can also be very useful in a wide variety of applications like wedding invitations, magazines, restaurant menus, advertisement and in any project requiring a touch of elegance and exclusivity. Its wide set of alternative ornated characters make Plebeya Pro an excellent tool for both the professional designer as well as any enthusiast wishing to elaborate a project with unique style.

The first version was created in 2022, Avita was again revised and improved in V.2.0 in 2024, reborn with sharper sharpness and a cosmic gaze. This geometric sans serif is not just a font; he is more than that, weaving clean forms into a dance of precision and imagination. The tall x-height and playful ascender ensure it fits perfectly into any design in its 54 styles, whispering a subtle secret or a bold statement as your design demands. Don't be limited by the ordinary. Avita embraces the future, whether it's sleek sci-fi, minimalist style, or the unexpected charm of a skincare brand. Let Avita speak to the world in 103 languages, including Cyrillic and Greek, or reach for the stars with special astrological and astronomical glyphs. Unleash your typographic art with an arsenal of OpenType alternatives, ligatures, fractions, arrows, and more. It's not just a font; this is the sculpting tool for your wildest design dreams. Avita's clean lines and limitless versatility are an invitation to push boundaries, elevate your vision, and let your creativity soar.

Oswald Cooper is best known for his emblematic Cooper Black™ typeface. Although he was responsible for several other fonts of roman design, Cooper never drew a sans serif typeface. But that didn’t stop George Ryan from creating one. Ryan saw a sans serif example of Cooper’s lettering in an old book and decided that it deserved to be made into a typeface. Ryan’s initial plan was to make a single-weight typeface that closely matched the slender and condensed proportions of the original lettering. While the resulting Oz Handicraft™ typeface proved to be very popular, Ryan was not satisfied with the limited offering. So, between other projects – and over many years – Ryan worked on expanding the design’s range. The completed family includes light, semi bold and bold weights to complement the original design, plus a matching suite of four “wide” designs, which are closer to normal proportions. Fonts of Oz Handicraft include a Pan-European character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

In the early 1980s, at the start of my career, I had the opportunity to work in a print shop with classic lead setting. In those days I would study issues of U&lc magazine from ITC. What really caught my attention were scripts in the Spencerian style. I’ve been fascinated by this American penmanship tradition ever since. A few years ago I developed a font. Boris Bencic used it when he was redesigning L’Officiel magazine in Paris. I took these initial forms and developed them into the font Mommie when I started my own foundry. Although I usually design text typefaces, working on Mommie taught me how complex it can be to create a script headline font. The biggest challenge in this process has been to keep it alive and fresh. The Regular weight is only made for very big headlines. The thin lines with the bold drops are very elegant. For smaller sizes use the Medium and Small weight. It won the TDC 2008 award and was Judges Choice of Christian Schwartz.