Low stroke contrast, generous spacing, and fine-grained weights from Light to Extra Bold make FF Hertz a workhorse text typeface which holds up well under today’s widely varying output conditions from print to screen. The quite dark Book style works well on e-ink displays which usually tend to thin out letters, as well as in print when you want to evoke the solid letter image of the hot-metal type era. Two sizes of Small Caps are included: A larger size for abbreviations and acronyms, and a smaller size matching the height of the lowercase letters. FF Hertz is a uniwidth design, that means each letter occupies the same space in all weights. This feature allows the user to switch between weights (but not between Roman and Italic styles) without text reflow. Jens Kutilek began work on FF Hertz in 2012. From a drawing exercise on a low-resolution grid (a technique proposed by Tim Ahrens to avoid fiddling with details too early), it soon evolved into a bigger project combining a multitude of influences which up until that point had only been floating around in his head, including his mother’s 1970s typewriter with its wonderful numbers, Hermann Zapf’s Melior as well as his forgotten Mergenthaler Antiqua (an interpretation of the Modern genre), and old German cartographic lettering styles. Jens likes to imagine FF Hertz used in scientific books or for an edition of Lovecraftian horror stories.

Whether with pen on paper, or in digital, realistically connecting vertical handwriting is never an easy task to accomplish. After working with many handwriting fonts, and after intently dissecting so many different handwritings, one tends to expect such things to be quirky, disconnected, and almost never upright. In fact, in spite of vertical handwriting’s academically-sung virtues of rationality, efficiency, clarity and logic, very few people manage to deviate from the natural slant when writing. Even fewer manage to make the vertical handwriting connect and keep its natural flow. Calligraphy and upright cursive aside, it is almost impossible to make a vertical letters connect and maintain a real handwriting appearance. This is where the genius of this design comes in to bridge the gap between upright handwriting and calligraphy. Sincerely is based on one of the most fascinating handwriting designs to ever come out of Germany: Karlgeorg Hoefer’s 1968 Elegance for the Ludwig & Mayer foundry. It is a handwriting with the full meaning of the word, yet it possesses the rare, very commanding and appealing trait of being both vertical and connected while managing to remain realistic. It is the ultimate branding iron of handwriting fonts. When set and printed, Sincerely simply cannot be ignored. Ideal for humanity-asserting poster designs, lettering of short wording with plenty of space, poetry, notes, greeting cards, craft literature, book covers, history-related designs, and a whole range of other applications.