Who haven't heard the phrase that ‘any past time was better’?. Although I sometimes find this phrase a little too pessimistic (because I try to think that the best is yet to come), it may be true regarding my passion, typography. I'm too young (29) unfortunately, and this means I did not have the pleasure of being contemporary with maybe the man who has influenced my work the most (1). The man that showed that letters are more than just letters to be read. Herb Lubalin (1918-1981), also called sometimes as ‘the rule basher’ (2), smashed the taboos and sacred rules of type design and gave it personality. He rejected the functionalist philosophy of europeans in favor of an eclectic and exuberant style. To him, letters were not merely vessels of form, they were objects of meaning. (3). Nowadays, when looking at his portfolio, who dares to deny that the term ‘typography’ and ‘beauty’ may go hand-in-hand without any problem? Ed Benguiat, one of Herb’s partners, still likes making jokes with the phrase “screw legibility, type should be beautiful” and what I understand of this is not to forget the rules, but to know and break them carefully. In an era of pure eclecticism, we, the lovers of flourishes and swashes, can't do nothing but admire all the legacy that Lubalin, this wonderful type-guru, left. My font Lubaline read as “the line of Lubalin” is my humble tribute to him. Those who know his work, may see the influences easily like in his ‘Beards’ (1976) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) posters; the art-deco forms in many of his amazing logos and practically in all his creations where letters seem to be alive just like you and me. I really hope that the future finds me still learning more and more about type-design and letterforms, and like him, always willing to make innovations in my field: Because letters are not just letters to be read. NOTES (1) These are some of my fonts in which some of Lubalin’s influences can be seen (in order of creation): Reina, Aire, Erotica, String, Beatle, Heroe, Selfie, Model, Seventies, and many others that are still in progress. (2) (3) Steven Heller. Herb Lubalin: Rule Basher. U&lc (1998) http://www.printmag.com/imprint/my-favorite-lubalin/

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

QUALITYPE + VARIABLE FONT FAMILY "QualiTYPE" font extends its use by providing weights from "Thin" to "Black". Natural curves, ridges, and curved bodies grow in character as the font gains weight. "Qualitype" is an exciting serif font with contemporary twists. It has a distinctive sound that preserves the simplicity and elegance of classic "serif" fonts with a fresh, stylish rework. Her personality is bold and fills the space without shouting, she looks elegant and confident. The low X-height provides a great amount of visibility at all weights and is optically corrected for better readability. In the process of working on "Qualitype" we wanted to expand the functionality of the typeface a bit more, so after a few tries two different fonts were born: "Old", "Neo" and "italics" versions. "Qualitype" is perfect for use in magazines, in the fashion industry, in the branding of premium goods and services. "Qualitype" is quite versatile and suitable for use both in headings and in text arrays. In addition, we have done manual hinting in the typeface, and now it can be used with a clear conscience in the web and applications. “Quality” typeface consists of 56 styles: 2 style, 2 Shining, 7 weights and italics. Each typeface style consists of 860+ glyphs (except for the decoratives). “Qualitype” supports over 80+ languages. A variant version of the basic styles has been prepared for the most demanding users. Using the variability slider, you can adjust and select the individual thickness regardless of the current weight distribution. An important clarification - not all programs support variable technologies yet, you can check the support status here: https://v-fonts.com/support/. OPENTYPE FEATURES aalt, dnom, onum, pnum, tnum, lnum, numr, frac, zero, sing, sups, subs, case, c2sc, smack, salt, hist, titl, holing, dig, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, kern FEATURE SUMMARY: - 4 Axes: 2 Style: Old and Neo. 7 weights: Thin, Light, Book, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black. 2 Shining: Dark and Lamp. Matching italics (12º) for all weights and style . - Matching small caps for all weights and widths. - Lining and old style figures (proportional and tabular). - Alternate characters (a, d, g, m, n, p, q, r, u, y). - Unlimeted fractions. - 24 Dingbats. - Extended language support. - Extended currency support. You can contact me at buyuksel@hotmail.com, pre-purchase and post-purchase with questions and for technical support. You can enjoy using it.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

TT Nooks useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Nooks is an experimental font family that includes a high contrast serif, TT Nooks, and an upright italic, TT Nooks Script. Despite the difference in style, both subfamilies get along well, which is partially thanks to their similar proportions. Each of the subfamilies includes 4 weights: Light, Regular, Bold and Black. The main subfamily is TT Nooks—a stylish high-contrast serif with a light touch of self-centeredness. If TT Nooks were a person, it would be an elegant lady with an independent and firm personality. In the original sketches of TT Nooks there were traces of a broad pen, but in the course of further evolution the typeface moved away from this style, retaining only the high contrast of strokes. In addition, in the process of design searches TT Nooks has obtained a touch of geometricity. The serifs in TT Nooks stand out especially visibly thanks to their geometric shape that resembles slippers. In addition to their peculiarity, such serifs add stability to the font and allow better compensation of the black and white ratio within the letters. TT Nooks has small capitals for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, as well as a set of stylistic alternates (including some figures) that makes the typeface a bit more geometric. In addition, we have drawn more than 25 ligatures, including ligatures for capital letters, slashed zero and many other useful OpenType features. TT Nooks Script is a complementary family designed to harmoniously extend the main family and expand its scope. The forms of the characters in bold and light fonts of TT Nooks Script are quite different. For example, Black & Bold have high contrast strokes and an open aperture, and in Regular & Light the aperture of the characters is closed. TT Nooks also has small capitals for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, ligatures, oldstyle figures and other OpenType features. In light faces, TT Nooks Script is more humanist and has artifacts inherent to the continuous movement of a flat pen. In bold faces, TT Nooks Script has a very dense and dynamic typing rhythm, and the shape of the letters begins to geometrize. We had had the difficult task of preserving the continuity of forms between bold and light faces, and we have managed to solve it thanks to the found rhythm, which united different fonts, and proximate stylistic solutions.

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

ATTENTION CUSTOMERS :) There's a new Selfie available, have a look here; Selfie Neue is better done and more complete in every aspect. However, you can stay here if you still prefer the classic version. -But first, let me take a Selfie!- said that girl of the song and almost all of you at least once this year. While some terms and actions get trendy, some font styles do it too. It wouldn't be crazy to combine these worlds, in fact it happens often. Selfie is a connected sans serif based in vintage signage scripts seen in Galerías of Buenos Aires. These places are, in general, very small shopping centres which pedestrians sometimes use as shortcuts to get to other parts of the city. Their dark corridors take you back in time, and all of a sudden you are surrounded by cassettes, piercings, and old fashioned cloth. For some reason, all these shops use monolined geometric scripts. Surely, neon strings are easier to manipulate when letterforms have simple shapes. My very first aim with Selfie was to make a font that would serve as a company to those self-shot pictures that have become so popular nowadays. However, the font turned into something more interesting: I realised it had enough potential to stand-alone. Selfie proves that geometry itself can be really attractive. In this font, elegance is not achieved with the already-known contrast between thicks and thins of calligraphy, but with the purity of form. Its curves were based in perfectly shaped circles which made the font easy to be used at different angles (some posters show it at a 24.7º angle) without having problems/deformities. In addition to its nice performance when used over photographs, the font can be a good option for packaging and wedding invitations. TIPS Adding some lights/shadows between letters will for sure catch the eye of the viewer: Words will look as if they were made with tape/strings; so trendy nowadays. Try using Selfie at a 24.7º angle so that the slanted strokes become perfectly vertical. Having the decorative ligatures feature (dlig) activated is a good option to see letters dance. TECHNICAL It is absolutely recommended to use this font with the standard ligatures feature (liga) activated. It makes letters ligate perfectly and also improves the space between words.

A sign of something better When designer Stuart de Rozario surveyed the fonts used in signage on London’s public transport systems, he reached a dead end. They seemed staid, sterile, lacking in personality, and ill-suited to use by modern brands. He was pointed in another direction entirely. ‘The driving force behind my thoughts was to design something more current and fresh without compromising legibility and clarity. A font with both personality and function, that’s versatile and large and small sizes, and effortless to read, but which also says something new.’ Speed reading Late for a meeting and can’t find your way? Trying to catch a flight? Lost in a hospital? Reading signs is a different business to reading a book or a newspaper. Text on signs needs to be deciphered quickly and effortlessly. So the legibility criteria for signage letterforms are different to those for normal reading, too. Throughout FS Millbank’s uppercase and lowercase alphabets, characters have been given features for extra definition, including: wide ink traps on the A, K, M, V, W, X and Y; a serifed i, accentuated spurs on the a, d, l u; and different x-height shapes on the b, g, p and q. Distinctive forms and generous, open internal shapes all help the quick reading of sign text, and wide, open terminals and counters allow similar letter shapes to be distinguished easily when viewed at different angles. Running down a corridor, maybe... Positive/negative Standard type tends to glow on the kind of dark backgrounds often used for signage, and look heavier than its true weight. To correct the imbalance caused by this optical trick, special weights of the typeface have to be drawn for these ‘negative’, light-on-dark applications. These are lighter than their comparable positive weights to overcome the ‘glow’ effect. After extensive tests of the negative weights, at all sizes, we achieved the right optical balance. Glowing, glowing, gone. Icons This wouldn’t be a signage typeface without its own set of icons, or symbols, to help people find what they’re looking for. So, to sit alongside the positive and negative fonts, we’ve created a comprehensive set of 172 icons, covering a wide range of applications from transport and user interface to information and directional. Designed within the typeface capital height, they sit on the baseline and are spaced centrally.

New for 2020 Bodoni Ornamental now has two italics to choose from, one basic italic and a second which is more of a true italic with a few uppercase letters that have been stylized. Only one italic can be style linked to the regular upright version so in the second italic we've added Avanti to the name which means forward in Italian. When purchasing the regular upright and Avanti italic together they will install as two separate families. Bodoni Ornamental is a revival of a very old typeface based on the Poster Bodoni letter shape. Giambattista Bodoni passed away in 1813, this decorative version was created in the 1820’s or 1830’s which was the time period when many of these ultra bold decorated type faces began to appear, the original artist is currently unknown. The original version of this ornate classic was only available as a set of uppercase letters, today over one hundred eighty years later this font is now complete with a new lowercase, numbers and accented characters for Eastern, Central and Western European countries. Due to the ornate detail in Bodoni Ornamental when printing itís recommended to use a laser printer 600dpi or greater, a 1200dpi printer will give you the best results rendering the most detail at the smallest possible point size for this font. Small home user Ink Jet printers are not recommended for Bodoni Ornamental unless you set the font to a very large point size. With Ink Jet printers much of the detail in the letters will bleed together as the ink hits the page, commercial Ink Jet printers such as GiclÈe printers may give good results. When using Bodoni Ornamental for digital images including web site graphics it may help to add a one pixel stroke fill around the letters setting color to white or grey, this may help the web site images display better on some computer's. You will need a photo editing application such as Adobe Photoshop to create your image adding the stroke fill and save as a jpg , png or gif file. I hope you enjoy this old font as much as I did making it. Note: When previewing the Bodoni Ornamental font in the Windows font preview you may notice some letters appearing lighter and some darker, this is a problem with the preview window and some ornate fonts, Bodoni Ornamental will print normal and not with mixed light and dark letters.

Out of a lifelong inner struggle, Philip Bouwsma unleashes a masterpiece that reconciles classic calligraphy with type in a way never before attempted. Maestro takes its cue from the Italian chancery cursive of the early sixteenth century. By this time type ruled the publishing world, but official court documents were still presented in calligraphy, in a new formal style of the high Renaissance that was integrated with Roman letters and matched the refined order of type. The copybooks of Arrighi and others, printed from engraved wood blocks, spread the Italian cancellaresca across Europe, but the medium was too clumsy and the size too small to show what was really happening in the stroke. Arrighi and others also made metal fonts that pushed type in the direction of calligraphy, but again the medium did not support the superb artistry of these masters or sustain the vitality in their work. As the elegant sensitive moving stroke of the broad pen was reduced to a static outline, the human quality, the variety and the excitement of a living act were lost. Because the high level of skill could not be reproduced, the broad pen was largely replaced by the pointed tool. The modern italic handwriting revival is based on a simplified model and does not approach the level of this formal calligraphy with its relationship to the Roman forms. Maestro is the font that Arrighi and his colleagues would have made if they had had digital technology. Like the calligraphic system of the papal chancery on which it is modelled, it was not drawn as a single finished alphabet, but evolved from a confluence of script and Roman; the script is formalized by the Roman to stand proudly in a world of type. Maestro came together on screen over the course of several years, through many versions ranging widely in style, formality, width, slant, weight and other parameters. On one end of the spectrum, looking back to tradition it embodies the formal harmony of the Roman capitals and the minuscule which became the lower case. On the other it is a flowing script letter drawing on the spirit of later pointed pen and engravers scripts. As its original designers intended, it works with simple Roman capitals and serifs or swash capitals and baroque flourishes. The broad pen supplies weight and substance to the stroke which carries energy through tension in balanced s-curves. Above all it is meant to convey the life and motion of formal calligraphy as a worthy counterbalance to the stolid gravity of metal type. The Maestro family consists of forty fonts distributed over two weights. The OpenType version compresses the family considerably down to two fonts, regular and bold, each containing the entire character set of twenty fonts, for a total of more than 3350 characters per font. These include a wide variety of stylistic alternates, ligatures, beginning and ending letters, flourishes, borders, rules, and other extras. The Pro version also includes extended linguistic support for Latin-based scripts (Western, Central and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Welsh/Celtic, Maltese) as well as Greek. For more thoughts on Maestro, its background and character sets, please read the PDF accompanying the family.

Imagine being printer in the early nineteenth century, your stock isn’t the finest, your lead characters are worn out: Voilá Kandidat Rough. But wait, Kandidat isn’t the usual scan-an-old-book,-put-the-glyphs-in-a-font-and-you’re-done-font. Kandidat Rough has a variety of whopping 14 alternates for most characters. Our algorithm changes the letters automatically. All you have to do is turn on Contextual Alternates in your layout app. The algorithm is the best we’ve seen so far, and it’s so good that even same words appear in different forms. And should by coincidence words have the same glyphs, just assign a different Style Set to the first letter, and all other letters in the word will change as well (well, it depends a bit on your software). The mechanism isn’t perfect and maybe we stretched OpenType capabilities a bit over the top, but we yet haven’t seen any better routine for switching letters on the fly. Is it worth to mention that Kandidat Rough not only speaks English, but also German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian, Turkish and most likely some other languages? Maybe. To be sure whether your language is supported, this is the typeset of all letters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝĆČĐĞ݌ފŸŽ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïñòóôõöøùúûüýÿćčđğıœşšž Apart from that we also included the following punctuation and currency symbols: !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;?@[\]_{|}¡©«®°±¶·»¿×–—‘’‚“”„†•…‹›⁄≠☞ €¢$£¥ This sums up to nearly 3000 glyphs per font, and we have three of them: Regular, Italic and Bold. All neatly kerned. All in all a great repertoire for even the most demanding book or advert jobs with a look of old times. And now imagine you are sick of the rugged print experience Kandidat Rough delivers: go for Kandidat. This is our Scotch-ish ancestor the Rough version was made from. A sturdy, friendly, round, warm friend from the beginning of the nineteenth century. A bit dark, maybe. You will like it. Kandidat has the aforementioned type set plus complete Baltics, Eastern Europe and Cyrillic. Plus a couple of gimmicks like fleurons, stars, circled numbers, arrows, and, and, and… Kandidat Regular additionally has small caps for Latin based scripts (not Cyrillic). The spick and span Kandidat font set also consists of Regular, Italic and Bold cuts. The bold cut is on the very bold side and can nicely be used for headings, whereas Italic is a great companion for Regular. It took us some time and trouble to finish this project, but after all we are very proud of our little feat and hope you will enjoy Kandidat as much as we do. Enjoy!

It's a very happy day when we stumble upon beautiful alphabets that were never digitized. It is even a happier day when the beautiful alphabet finds its way to us through friends and people who like our work. Some two months ago, the forms of this gorgeous font were pointed to us by a friend who saw it in an old Dover Publications specimen book showcasing historical alphabets. It was there under the name Vanessa, with nothing else to go by. We looked and researched for further information but found nothing else. So this gem comes to you like a coal that winked its way out of the ashes because it wanted to shine again. Flirt is very authentic art deco with a noticeable element of artistic pride, swashy delicate majuscules and very aristocratic, fashionable and flirty minuscules. The majuscules can be used as every other capitals usually are, or as initial caps. The minuscules can very nicely stand on their own quite independently from the caps whenever desired. These letters are quite similar to the hand lettering used on of the kind of theater posters, specifically burlesque and opera entertainment, which are now considered very retro-chic and fashionable to see hanging on walls in home or office. The initial specimen we worked from showed a single basic art deco alphabet with numerals which seemed as they belonged to another font. That alphabet became the base Flirt font, the numerals were redrawn to fit much better with the minuscules, and the character set was greatly expanded to include punctuation, accented characters, and many many alternates, especially for the majuscules. Majuscules with a descending right vertical stroke were a common artistic touch in the high days of theater posters, so we thought they would be great additions to the character set. These alternates can be found all over the font. So to maximize the design fun, have a character map or glyphs palette handy when you use Flirt. After the base font was finished, we thought it would be a good idea to give it a bold treatment unlike anything seen out there, and the farthest thing from the mechanical bolds seen everywhere now. This bolding treatment consisted of thickening the lowercase's vertical strokes inwards, but leaving the horizontal stroke weight as is, and thickening only the thicker vertical strokes of the uppercase. The result is quite the visual feat. We encourage you to test both the regular and bold weights and see for yourself.

A FEW THOUGHTS Indie is a trendy script, result of the wide range of possibilities that can be achieved using a pointed brush. (1) “You Only Live Once” say The Strokes, (to me, symbols of indie music) so, what would represent that sensation of volatility better than a brush? As you may already know, this time inspiration came from hipsters and indies around us: We may sometimes criticise them, we may sometimes want to be like them, but the truth is that the universo gráfico they generated these past years is gigantic, full of colour and variations. (2) Brush lettering and Sign painting are fields I've been fond of since I started as a designer. Nowadays, these styles are getting a lot of attention and maybe it’s due to the undeniable mark of life that is materialised when using a brush. This tool is so expressive that shows the passions and fears of the artist, and materialises that idea of “living the present”, so popular in this era. When you see Indie, you think of skaters, rollers, surfers, hiphop dancers, street artists, summer, and why not? California beaches. So if you feel life is only one, it’s high time you got Indie into your fonts' collection! STYLES Indie comes in 4 styles plus another one which consists only in capitals. Indie; Indie Shade; Indie Shade Solo; Indie Inline are all open-type programmed and have exactly the same glyphs and metrics, so you can combine them without probem. (I.E. You may use Indie Inline, then write the same word using Indie Shade Solo, and finally put them together). In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, the font has nice results when fi ligatures is activated. However, if you want a more casual look, activate the contextual and the decorative ligatures. NOTES 1. After several years of practicing calligraphy I can say that to me, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to create fonts out of your own handlettering. I owe a lot of this brush-style to Carl Rohrs. He was the very first calligrapher who taught it to me. His style is unique and what he can do with a brush is truly marvelous. I'm serious. 2. In spite of some particular cases, I can say I'm happy to live in a present in which Typography is living a kind of Renaissance along with Lettering. Like it happened with W. Morris a hundred years ago, handcrafts are being revalued/reborn, and some of this may be happening thanks to these indie designers that, trying to be unique, gave new/fresh air to different areas of graphic design.

Norwich Aldine ML is a all-cap typeface with enlarged serifs, designed and produced in wood by William Hamilton Page of Norwich, Connecticut in 1872. Norwich Aldine ML is a fine example of the strength of decorative wood types: large, simple type forms that provide the visual boldness sought by advertisers of the Victorian period. While our marketing has gotten so very sophisticated, there is always a place for a simple, visually strong typeface. Although about 14 miles inland, Norwich, Connecticut lies at the head of the Thames River. The river is both wide and deep, and therefore was not bridged in the early 20th century. Until then, if you wanted to get from Groton on the west bank to the whaling port of New London on the east bank by land, you had to go by way of Norwich. Because of its size, the Thames is navigable all the way from Norwich to New London. Docks were built in Norwich around 1685 and the city became Connecticut’s 2nd largest port by 1800. With the construction of the Norwich & Worcester Railroad in 1835, Page could easily ship his wood type north by rail or south by coastal schooner. Included with our font, Norwich Aldine ML, are two 19th century printer’s ornaments of sailing ships similar to those that sailed up the Thames to Norwich. Reference: Moon’s Handbooks, Connecticut 2nd Edition (Emeryville CA 2004) The family has expanded from one to four fonts: 1. Norwich Aldine ML: the concept font, computer-sharp corners and smooth curves, as we imagine it was designed. 336 Glyphs including some reduced-width alternatives for better letter spacing. 2. Norwich Aldine Worn ML: the way actual wooden type would look after have been used for a while. 332 Glyphs 3. Norwich Aldine Distressed ML: the way the wooden type would look after it had really been used, perhaps abused. Alternatives to the more popular letters reflect the damage that typically occurs on a well-wormn font, with nicks, cuts and scratches and the overall wear that reduces the overall height and leads to uneven inking due to varying heights in the chase. A couple of bullets look like bullet holes. 345 glyphs. 4. Norwich Aldine Cyrillic: Cyrillic includes alll English and Cyrillic letters for MS Windows Code Page 1251, ISO 8859-5 and MacOS Cyrillic. 235 glyphs. We did Cyrillic because is was fun and we felt the basic design cried out for Cyrillic. While obviously subjective, we hope you will agree.

Oxford Street is a signage font that began as a redrawing of the capital letters used for street nameplates in the borough of Westminster in Central London. The nameplates were designed in 1967 by the Design Research Unit using custom lettering based on Adrian Frutiger’s Univers typeface, a curious combination of Univers 69 Bold Ultra Condensed, a weight that doesn’t seem to exist but which would flatten the long curves of glyphs such as O, C and D, and Universe 67 Bold Condensed with its more rounded lobes on glyphs like B, P and R. Letters were then remodelled to improve their use on street signs. Thin strokes like the inner diagonals of M and N were thickened to create a more monolinear alphabet; the high interior apexes were lowered and the wide joins thinned. The crossbar of the A was lowered, the K was made double junction, and the tail of the Q was given a baseline curve. K-Type Oxford Street continues the process of impertinent improvement and includes myriad minor adjustments and several more conspicuous amendments. The stroke junctions of M and N are further narrowed and their interior apexes modified. The middle apex of the W is narrowed and the glyph is a little more condensed. The C and S are drawn more open, terminals slightly shortened. The K-Type font adds a new lowercase which is also made more monolinear so better suited to signage, loosely based on Univers but also taking inspiration from the Transport typeface both in a taller x-height and character formation. The lowercase L has a curled foot, the k is double junctioned to match the uppercase, and terminals of a, c, e, g and s are drawn shorter for openness and clarity. A full repertoire of Latin Extended-A characters features low-rise diacritics that keep congestion to a minimum in multiple lines of text. The font tips the hat to signage history by including stylistic alternates for M, W and w that have the pointed middles of the earlier MOT street sign typeface. Incidentally, Alistair Hall (‘London Street Signs’, Batsford, 2020) notes that when the manufacturer of signs was changed in 2007, Helvetica Bold Condensed was substituted in place of the custom design, “an unfortunate case of an off-the-peg suit replacing a tailored one” and a blunder that has happily since been rectified, though offending nameplates can still be spotted by discerning font fans.

Martian Grotesk is a large typeface family originally designed for the screen which consists of a variable font with 2 axes of variation and 63 styles: Condensed to Ultra Wide, Thin to Ultra Black. Aesthetics The font style is characterized by some brutality and assertiveness. Overhanging terminals, a closed aperture, and an almost complete lack of contrast lead to this effect. Additionally, some elements of the letters are especially enlarged. This font gives any text the impression of being a “signature” style. Nevertheless, we still maintain the golden mean between its rebellious nature and readability. Perfect for web development We created Martian Grotesk for the web and digital project world. When laying out web pages, frontend developers are constantly faced with the fact that uneven metrics do not allow text to be evenly placed on some design element, for example, on a button. Instead, they have to compensate in some way, like making the top padding smaller and the bottom padding larger in CSS. This little deal really hurts. Also, if your project adheres to design system principles, you might be unable to stand a lack of systematic approach when working with fonts. We researched and calculated vertical metrics and set them up in a way that guarantees equal space above the cap height and under the baseline. This enables the text labels to be evenly placed on buttons, inputs, lists, and forms. In addition, we found a proper ratio of the letter heights, so, with commonly used font sizes—10, 15, and 20 pixels—the glyph heights stick to the pixel grid. As a result, the letter shapes become sharper, which reduces the load on the reader's eyes and simply looks much better. The typeface also comes equipped with OpenType and TrueType hinting, and Martian Grotesk appears legible on most platforms, even when being rendered in small sizes. When coupled together, all the above features make Martian Grotesk a reasonable choice for any user interface design. Roadmap Martian Grotesk right now is a work-in-progress product. The font is completely ready for professional use, however, many great features are still ahead! For example, support for Extended Cyrillic characters, and italics. Pricing Purchasing an early version of the font presents the opportunity to get it at a very attractive price! That’s because with every new version, costs will go up to reflect the additional value that comes with every release. But after purchasing Martian Grotesk, all its future updates are included for free!

Solantra is a solidly crafted handwritten script. I’ve long felt that beautiful writing is more pleasing to the eye than the more attention grabbing swashes and flourishes. That being said, both have their role in design and Solantra has a large slice of each. Solantra combines vintage style handwriting with all its quirks and English Roundhand of that same era. The result is a solid setting script filled with charm and personality. With default Adobe Illustrator settings for Ligatures and Contextual Alternates active, the vintage charm is in full display. Want to add more flair? There are loads of more embellished letters inside the full version. Solantro takes into account how scripts are actually written so that connections from letter to letter are more fluid and rhythmic than the average script font. In natural script/handwriting most letters end at the bottom right and move up to connect with the next. Some letters like o, v, and w, however; end at the top right. Rather than force these letters to dip down and go back up they should ideally connect from that upper right point. This is accomplished through a series of alternate letters and ligatures with extensive contextual feature programming. So, for example, you might get one version of a ligature in the middle of a word and a different one at the beginning or end of that word. Solantra also takes into account another often overlooked feature of natural handwriting. When you write you inevitably pick your pen up from the paper at times. This is often just to reposition the hand, but in the days of writing with dip pens this was also needed to attain a fresh supply of ink. Having these occasional breaks in connections makes the writing less static and more rhythmic. While the Basic versions are limited to a standard character set and several ligatures and alternates for better settings of text, the full pro versions contains 1292 glyphs and an abundance of features. Even with numbers there are options like Oldstyle numbers, fractions, and ordinals. Central European language support is included as well as some select ligatures that use accents. To see more on the technical aspects and instructions on using Solantra, please check out the user’s guide in the Gallery section. **Note: The Pro versions of Solantra which do not have the word “Basic” attached to the title, have everything in them. So if you license a Pro version there is no need to get the Basic versions.

Greetings: We are introducing an advanced version of the Kage font released and received great exposure from users and worldwide font enthusiasts. The massive development puts forward experimentation on the alternate letters. We redesign each shape to make it more functional and comfortable when text size escalation occurs. In addition to rejuvenating the letterform, we also apply an oblique style to provide diverse style choices. Learn more about Kage Pro here: Graphics presentation | Type Specimen | The Inspiration: The radical exploration world of fashion inspires us. It leads our minds to the Neo-classical type style created during the age of enlightenment in the 18th century. It has a reasonably extreme contrast from the previous serif style, making the impression that it is emitted more expensive and classy. Organically, this Neo-Classical typeface is closely related to the fashion world, especially in Europe, and even spread across the globe. Fashion and this typeface reflect each other. After, we boldly observed Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Famous for radical & deconstructive fashion, which makes the world of fashion more flexible and dynamic. The Design: As well as the typeface that we made, we started it with a cultural foundation of the Didone typeface. We tried to deconstruct the appearance. The decoration that better reflected the dynamic of fashion implemented in the fashionable alternate and calligraphical stylistic set ended with ball terminals. The versatile impression created is like taking off a scarf on the model's hair during a fashion show. The deconstructive image is combined with a legibility structure like the appearance of the Neo-Classical style. Kage Pro is designed to visualize a costly and exclusive image of a thing, product, world clothing brand, famous fashion magazine, etc. The modern transitions of each letterform are softer, so when repositioning and escalating the size of this font, it will remain beautiful without injuring other elements. So, Kage Pro is a bold choice on headlines and more prominent media with a portion of 50% even more. The Feature: Kage Pro has 11 upright and 11 oblique styles from thin to black; all family-style consist of one variable font with 2 axes. The total number of glyphs is 1,665 in each style. She comes with tons of swirly ligatures and stylistic alternates in Advance OpenType features, including: Case-sensitive forms, small caps, standard and discretionary ligatures, stylistic alternates, ordinals, fractions, numerator, denominator, superscript, subscript, circled number, slashed zero, old-style figure, tabular and lining figure. Support multi-language including Western European, Central European, Southeastern European, South American, Oceanian, Vietnamese.

MarshmallowPopHeart is a cute font that imagined a sweet marshmallow. Since hearts are mingled in various places such as voiced points and parts of kanji(chinese characters), it may be fun to look for it. Because the heart is missing, it is recommended for when you want to designing cute. I think whether it's good for contents for young ladies. Because it is a thick font, it may be good to use it for headlines and where you want to make it stand out. It corresponds to Hiragana · Katakana · Alphabet · Numerals · Symbols · Kanji(chinese characters). You can also write vertically. You can use it easily, because it contains JIS first · second level, and IBM extended Kanji(about 6700chinese characters). I think it's better to become a font that makes people who use or watch them fluffy and feel happy like when eating a pastel colorful sweet marshmallow. ＜「ましゅまろポップ　ハート」紹介文＞ ぷにぷにの丸っこい甘いマシュマロをイメージしたかわいいフォントです。 濁点や漢字の一部など、色んな場所にハートが紛れ込んでいるので、探してみるのも楽しいかもしれません。 ハートが紛れ込んでいるので、かわいくデザインしたい場合などにオススメです。 若い女性向けコンテンツにもいいかと思います。 太めのフォントなので、見出しや目立たせたい所に使うのも良いかも知れません。 ひらがな・カタカナ・アルファベット・数字・記号類・漢字を収録、縦書きもできます。 漢字はJIS第一水準・第二水準・IBM拡張漢字に対応（約6700文字）してますので、使い勝手も良いかと思います。 パステルカラーのカラフルな甘いマシュマロを食べる時みたいに、使ったり見てくださる方がふわふわ幸せな気持ちになれるフォントになればいいなぁ…と思います。 ＜スタイルカテゴリー＞ ファンシー、装飾

With its well-defined characters that are readily legible even in the small font sizes, Mantika Sans by Jürgen Weltin is ideal for typesetting. The elaborately designed and highly individual set of italics enhances the attractiveness of the font.Jürgen Weltin developed the Mantika™ Sans sans serif font using older designs for an serif font as his inspiration. Nothing more than the merest suggestion of the original serifs has survived. Bevelled line endings and the slight variation in thickness of verticals, in particular, provide Mantika Sans with a very dynamic character that evokes manuscript. Short ascenders and descenders give the font a compact appearance that is also underscored by its condensed proportions. Weltin has achieved his aim of producing a typeface with excellent legibility even in small sizes not just by means of the x-height, which is tall in comparison with the capital letters, but also by using clearly defined and well differentiated designs for critical letters, such as i", "I" and "l". Lower case "i", for example, has a serif while the "l" has a curved base.In addition to uppercase numerals, Mantika Sans also has lowercase or old style numerals that have been designed so that they can be used in both tabular and proportional settings. The uppercase numerals are slightly shorter than the uppercase letters, ensuring that the latter can be sympathetically incorporated within continuous text.The Mantika Sans italics are very unusual. They are inclined at only 4.5° (the usual angle for italics is 10 - 12°) and so appear to be almost upright. In addition, they also have quite distinctive forms. The overall effect calls attention to their curvilinear, manuscript character, enhances contrasts and further emphasizes the terminals. Weltin explains: "Within the variety of forms of the italics there are many contrasting terminal elements that create dynamism. The result is a diversity of interaction between the rounded and angular forms". Mantika Sans Italic thus has all the features of a display typeface, but can also be happily used on its own to set longer text passages. Mantika Sans is available in two weights; Regular and Bold, both of which have corresponding italics sets. Mantika Sans has been designed so that the widths of the four related cuts are identical, meaning that a change of font within a single layout will have no effect on justification. In addition, the members of the Mantika Informal font family, designed by Jürgen Weltin in 2010, also have the same thickness. Other font families having weights with equal thickness can be found in the "Linotype Office Alliance series".The Mantika Sans character sets are paneuropean. There are characters for setting texts in Eastern European languages, Greek and Cyrillic. There is also a range of special symbols, including right-angled brackets, subscript and superscript lower case letters, together with numerals, arrows and many different bullet points.As a vibrant and highly legible text font, Mantika Sans has a broad spectrum of potential applications. Its unusual italics are not just perfect for use in display text. The fact that it has only four cuts means that Mantika Sans is particularly suitable for office use or for the setting of business reports. Its excellent legibility even in the small font sizes also makes it ideal as a text for electronic reading devices; this also applies to Mantika Informal.At the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition Granshan 2010, Mantika Sans was awarded in the category Greek text typefaces."

With its well-defined characters that are readily legible even in the small font sizes, Mantika Sans by Jürgen Weltin is ideal for typesetting. The elaborately designed and highly individual set of italics enhances the attractiveness of the font.Jürgen Weltin developed the Mantika™ Sans sans serif font using older designs for an serif font as his inspiration. Nothing more than the merest suggestion of the original serifs has survived. Bevelled line endings and the slight variation in thickness of verticals, in particular, provide Mantika Sans with a very dynamic character that evokes manuscript. Short ascenders and descenders give the font a compact appearance that is also underscored by its condensed proportions. Weltin has achieved his aim of producing a typeface with excellent legibility even in small sizes not just by means of the x-height, which is tall in comparison with the capital letters, but also by using clearly defined and well differentiated designs for critical letters, such as i", "I" and "l". Lower case "i", for example, has a serif while the "l" has a curved base.In addition to uppercase numerals, Mantika Sans also has lowercase or old style numerals that have been designed so that they can be used in both tabular and proportional settings. The uppercase numerals are slightly shorter than the uppercase letters, ensuring that the latter can be sympathetically incorporated within continuous text.The Mantika Sans italics are very unusual. They are inclined at only 4.5° (the usual angle for italics is 10 - 12°) and so appear to be almost upright. In addition, they also have quite distinctive forms. The overall effect calls attention to their curvilinear, manuscript character, enhances contrasts and further emphasizes the terminals. Weltin explains: "Within the variety of forms of the italics there are many contrasting terminal elements that create dynamism. The result is a diversity of interaction between the rounded and angular forms". Mantika Sans Italic thus has all the features of a display typeface, but can also be happily used on its own to set longer text passages. Mantika Sans is available in two weights; Regular and Bold, both of which have corresponding italics sets. Mantika Sans has been designed so that the widths of the four related cuts are identical, meaning that a change of font within a single layout will have no effect on justification. In addition, the members of the Mantika Informal font family, designed by Jürgen Weltin in 2010, also have the same thickness. Other font families having weights with equal thickness can be found in the "Linotype Office Alliance series".The Mantika Sans character sets are paneuropean. There are characters for setting texts in Eastern European languages, Greek and Cyrillic. There is also a range of special symbols, including right-angled brackets, subscript and superscript lower case letters, together with numerals, arrows and many different bullet points.As a vibrant and highly legible text font, Mantika Sans has a broad spectrum of potential applications. Its unusual italics are not just perfect for use in display text. The fact that it has only four cuts means that Mantika Sans is particularly suitable for office use or for the setting of business reports. Its excellent legibility even in the small font sizes also makes it ideal as a text for electronic reading devices; this also applies to Mantika Informal.At the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition Granshan 2010, Mantika Sans was awarded in the category Greek text typefaces."

The story of Freigeist is a journey into the past, back to the early grotesk fonts and long before Helvetica and Co were standard fonts in operating systems. For what we take for granted today is the result of innovation and pioneering spirit of type foundries such as Caslon or Stephenson Blake in the 19th century, whose expressive designs are mostly forgotten today. The Freigeist family captures this untamed spirit — hence the name (German for “free spirit”) — and puts it into a contemporary context, resulting in a multi-faceted family with a wide range of applications, font styles and features for modern typesetting. Design Details Unlike other modern grotesk typefaces like Helvetica or Univers, Freigeist is characterized by a warm and dynamic appearance. It draws inspiration from various historical models such as Caslon’s Doric or the Grotesque variants of Stephenson Blake. Particularly noticeable are the narrow terminals, the serpentine S or the dynamic g in combination with ascenders that reach to the cap-height only. Italics Many italic grotesk fonts are strongly oriented towards their upright counterparts. Unfortunately, this often means that they cannot do justice to their actual task, which is to highlight words or sections of a text. The italic cuts of Freigeist try to remedy this situation by using the greatest possible formal distance while reinforcing the untamed spirit. What adds to this, is a reminiscent of handwritten forms, which can be found in a, n, y or g, as well as the German sharp s or the ampersand. Alternate Characters Alternative letterforms are ideal for customizing the overall appearance of a text, for usage in logos or they can even work as custom fonts for companies. Freigeist comes with ten stylistic alternatives that are easy to insert via the Opentype window, such as the single-storey a, a tail-less version of the a for compact text, when uses in condensed widths or a dialed down version of the r. Languages Freigeist has a built-in support for Latin and Cyrillic based languages and covers more than 210 languages. Opentype Features and Symbols The family comes with many opentype features to support modern typesetting. This includes ligatures, different number sets or alternative shapes for texts set in all caps. Styles Freigeist is available in five widths (XCon, Con, Normal, Wide, XWide) and six weights (Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Black). Including the accompanying italics, the family comes in 60 cuts that are suitable for any application. Testfonts If you like to test the fonts before buying the full version, please follow the link below: https://www.renebieder.com/test-fonts Update 1 A lot has changed in this first update. It is more than just a 1.01 or 1.02. It is actually the 2.0! I’ve gone through all! single glyphs of the 18 master files, making the family more sharp and even a bit more modern. I’ve added some new opentype features and redesigned the italics, because I wasn’t happy enough with the result. I’ve added new kerning pairs, new metrics, and even new glyphs. Please check my website for more details on the new design and overview about the opentype features and alternate shapes. If you purchased the Freigeist family already, thanks a lot!! It is the most advanced family that I published so far. I hope that you’re happy with this new version. Thanks!

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.

Rolphie can be your go-to sans-serif, with 16 easy-to-read weights and 10 versions for each weight, and the subtlety of choice that represents. The versions contained in each weight are: Regular; Condensed; Half-Condensed; Expanded; Small Capitals: and their italic counterparts. (At heavier weights particularly it seemed to be justified to have two Condensed versions). Plus there's 20 funky versions with the letters all shook up (that would make a good title for a song), or jumbled around, plus some Shadow, Doubled-Up, College, and other FX versions. In total there's 180 variations, giving a comprehensive selection of both standard and funky fonts, and that subtle degree of choice of weight. To make things easier, the weights are put in ascending numerical order from 01 to 16, and the FX versions have been stuck in the 80s and 90s, (like two musicians I know). There are grouped packages available for certain weights (which have 10 fonts in them) and the complete family package (180 fonts) which represent better value than the individual fonts, and there's a basic package containing the Normal and Italic versions of all 16 weights (32 fonts). A limit of 5 sub-family packages has been imposed, unfortunately, which precludes a more comprehensive selection. To let you know what's in the font that you might otherwise never know about . . . With Discretionary Ligatures on, you get special characters if you type Mc St. Rd. Bd. Ave. c/o No. (p) (P) - include the full-stop/period. With Stylistic Alternates switched on, you get plenty of extra characters - including a WiFi symbol (type Wifi or WiFi) / bullet numbers instead of ordinary numbers / that different U-dieresis / special characters for c/o No. Mc / an upside down ~ / a huge bullet, and different forms for cent, dollar, percent, per-thousand. As you'd expect, there's all the accented characters for all Western European scripts using Latin letters, and standard ligatures, plus other Open Type features including Class Kerning, Slashed-Zero, Historical Forms, Sub- and Superscript numbers, fractions for halves, thirds and quarters, Ornamental forms giving bullet numbers, etc. There's also the main mathematical operators, symbols like card-suits and male/female signs and so on, and some more obscure stuff like schwa and O-horn, U-horn - and there's lots more if you can Access All Alternates. Much will depend on what your software recognises. The Small Caps versions have (intentionally) lost the ligatures for lower case ff, fi, fj, fl, fr, fu, ffi, ffj, ffl, ffr, ffu. The names for the weights are not absolute - we had to make up some names to make them stretch out to sixteen - so rather - see them as relative to each other, being in ascending numerical order by weight.

A gentle breeze caressed his face as his body took on the easy posture of a dancer on break. Flickering sparklets of light sprinkled the glass-smooth surface of the aqua liquid on which he floated. His mind wandered; he was only days away from his scheduled departure date. This day was no different from a hundred other days he had spent melded to his windsurfer, skittering along the breadth of the modest lake, soaking up the sun's rays and forgetting about the entire rest of the world. Lake Quannapowitt, and the town of Wakefield, Massachusetts, were familiar to Steve, a long-time resident of the picturesque New England town. This is where he grew up; this is where he married and lived for many years; and this is the place he was preparing to leave, not one week hence. Not generally prone to nostalgia, it was in just such a state he nonetheless found himself once Zephyrus retreated, as was his custom, periodically, while patrolling the resplendent lake. Steve was going to miss the lake, and he was going to miss the town. How many hours of how many days had he spent exactly like this, standing on his motionless board, waiting for his sail to fill, and staring at the lake's shores, its tiny beach, the town Common with its carefully maintained greenery, and equally well-tended gazebo, the Center church - its spire shadow piercing the water's edge, like a scissor-cut the better to begin a full-fabric tear? Yes, he was going to miss this place - this town which all of a sudden had become a place out of time, just as he was about to become a person out of place. Once this idea struck him, he couldn't shake it. He was transported back in time four score years, now watching his ancestors walk along the shore. Nothing in view belied this belief - not the church's century old architecture, not the gazebo frozen in time, nor the timeless sands of the beach, nor the unchanging Common. Everything belonged exactly where it was, and where it always would be. This, he decided, was how he would remember his hometown. And this is when it occurred to Steve to design a typeface that would evoke these images and musings - a typeface with an old-fashioned look, reflected in high crossbars, an x-height small in size relative to its uppercase, and an intangible quality reminiscent of small-town quaintness. Wakefield, the typeface, was born on Lake Quannapowitt in the town for which it was named, shortly before Steve moved away. It is at once a tribute to his birthplace and a keepsake.

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.

Welcome to the old version of Kage. "Old does not mean obsolete" In April 2022, we updated whole letterforms. We redrew all glyphs and refined the nodes, corners, rounded shapes, flowing tails, etc. Of course, you can still use the update of an older version of Kage, although we highly recommend you move to the Pro version for the full benefits. Kage Pro has massive development, puts forward experimentation on alternate letters, and applies an oblique style to provide diverse style choices. Come with tons of swirly ligatures and advanced opentype features include case-sensitive forms, small caps, standard and discretionary ligatures, stylistic alternates, ordinals, fractions, numerator, denominator, superscript, subscript, circled number, slashed zero, old-style figure, tabular and lining figure. Learn more about Kage Pro here: Kage Pro 2.0 | Type Specimen About Kage The Inspiration: The radical exploration world of fashion inspires us. It leads our minds to the Neo-classical type style created during the age of enlightenment in the 18th century. It has a reasonably extreme contrast from the previous serif style, making the impression that it is emitted more expensive and classy. Organically, this Neo-Classical typeface is closely related to the fashion world, especially in Europe, and even spread across the globe. Fashion and this typeface reflect each other. After, we boldly observed Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo. Famous for radical & deconstructive fashion, which makes the world of fashion more flexible and dynamic. The Design: As well as the typeface that we made, we started it with a cultural foundation of the Didone typeface. We tried to deconstruct the appearance. The decoration that better reflected the dynamic of fashion implemented in the fashionable alternate and calligraphical stylistic set ended with ball terminals. The versatile impression created is like taking off a scarf on the model's hair during a fashion show. The deconstructive image is combined with a legibility structure like the appearance of the Neo-Classical style. Kage is designed to visualize a costly and exclusive image of a thing, product, world clothing brand, famous fashion magazine, etc. The modern transitions of each letterform are softer, so when repositioning and escalating the size of this font, it will remain beautiful without injuring other elements. So, Kage is a bold choice on headlines and more prominent media with a portion of 50% even more. The Feature: Kage has 11 styles, from thin to black; all family-style consist of one variable font with two axes. The total number of glyphs is 748 in each style. She comes with tons of swirly ligatures and stylistic alternates in Advance OpenType features, including: discretionary ligatures, stylistic alternates, ordinals, fractions. Support multi-language including Western European, Central European, Southeastern European, South American, Oceanian, Vietnamese.

Gundrada ML was inspired by the lettering on the tomb of Gundrada de Warenne. She was buried at Southover Church at Lewes, Sussex, in the south of England in 1085. The Latin inscription on her tomb, STIRPS GUNDRADA DUCUM, meaning “Gundrada, descendant of the Duke” may have led to the speculation that she was the daughter of William, Duke of Normandy and bastard son of Robert the Devil of Normandy and Arletta, daughter of a tanner in Falaise. In 1066 William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned William I of England. More commonly known as William the Conquerer, he commissioned a string of forts around the kingdom and charged trusted Norman Barons to control the contentious Anglo-Saxon population. William de Warenne, husband of Gundrada, was one of these Barons. There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility. The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension. Features 1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist. 3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures. 4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets). 5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages. 6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic. 7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #. 8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl. 9. Historic alternate longs. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Varidox, a variable typeface design, allows users to connect with specific design combinations with slightly varied differences in style. These variations in design enable the user to reach a wider scope of audiences. As the name suggests, Varidox is a paradox of sorts--that is, a combination of two disparate forms with two major driving influences. In the case of type design, the conflict lies in the age-old conundrum of artistic expression versus marketplace demand. Should the focus center primarily on functionality for the customer or err on the side of advancing creativity? If both are required, where does the proper balance lie? Viewed as an art, type design selections are often guided by the pulse of the industry, usually emphasizing unique and contemporary shapes. Critics are often leading indicators of where the marketplace will move. Currently, many design mavens have an eye favoring reverse stress. However, these forms have largely failed to penetrate the marketplace, another major driving factor influencing the font world. Clients now (as well as presumably for the foreseeable future) demand the more conservative forms of monoline sans serifs. Typeface designers are left with a predicament. Variable typefaces hand a great deal of creative control to the consumers of type. The demands of type design critics, personal influences of the typeface designer and the demands of the marketplace can all now be inserted into a single font and adjusted to best suit the end user. Varidox tries to blend the extremes of critical feature demands and the bleeding edge of fashionable type with perceptive usability on a scalable spectrum. The consumer of the typeface can choose a number between one and one-thousand. Using a more conservative style would mean staying between zero and five hundred, while gradually moving higher toward one thousand at the high end of the spectrum would produce increasingly contemporary results. Essentially, variable fonts offer the ability to satisfy the needs of the many versus the needs of the few along an axis with a thousand articulations, stabilizing this delicate balance with a single number that represents a specific form between the two masters, a form specifically targeted towards the end user. Practically, a user in some cases may wish to use more conservative slab form of Varidox for a more conservative clientele. Alternatively, the same user may then choose an intermediate instance much closer to the other extreme in order to make a more emphatic statement with a non-traditional form. Parametric type offers a new options for both designers and the end users of type. In the future, type will be able to morph to target the reader, based on factors including demographics, mood or cultural influences. In the future, the ability to adjust parameters will be common. With Varidox, the level of experimentality can be gauged and then entered into the typeface. In the future, machine learning, for example, could determine the mood of an individual, their level of experimentality or their interest and then adjust the typeface to meet these calculated parameters. This ability to customize and tailor the experience exists for both for the designer and the reader. With the advent of new marketing technologies, typefaces could adjust themselves on web pages to target consumers and their desires. A large conglomerate brand could shift and adapt to appeal to a specific target customer. A typeface facing a consumer would be more friendly and approachable, whereas a typeface facing a business to business (B2B) customer would be more businesslike in its appearance. Through both experience, however, the type would still be recognizable as belonging to the conglomerate brand. The font industry has only begun to realize such potential of variable fonts beyond simple visual appearance. As variable font continues to target the user, the technology will continue to reveal new capabilities, which allow identities and layouts to adjust to the ultimate user of type: the reader.

Zebramatic - A Lettering Safari Zebramatic is a font for editorial design use, to create headlines and titles in eye-catching stripes. Constructed to offer flexible and a variety of graphical possibilities, Zebramatic type is easy to use. The font is offered in three styles: POW, SLAM and WHAM. These styles work both as ready-made fonts and as patterns to create unique, individualized type. The font design’s full potential is unleashed by layering glyphs from two or all three styles in different colors or shades. Working with the different styles I was reminded of the late Jackson Pollock poured paintings—in particular the documentation of his painting process by Hanz Namuth and Paul Falkernburg in the film Jackson Pollock 51. In Pollock’s pictures the complex allure arises from how he layered the poured and dripped paint onto the canvas. Similar joyful experience and exciting results emerge by layering the different styles of Zebramatic type. Texture In the heart of the Design is Zebramatics unique texture. It is based on an analog distorted stripe pattern. The distortion is applied to a grade that makes the pattern complex but still consistent and legible. You can view some of the initial stripe patterns in the background of examples in the Gallery. Zebramatic POW, SLAM and WHAM each offer a distinct pallet of stripes—a unique zebra hide. POW and WHAM use different distortions of the same line width. SLAM is cut from a wider pattern with thicker stripes. The letter cut and kerning is consistent throughout styles. Design Concept Attention-grabbing textured or weathered fonts are ideal for headlines, ads, magazines and posters. In these situations rugged individuality, letter flow, and outline features are magnified and exposed. Textured fonts also immediately raise the design questions of how to create alignment across a word and deal with repeated letters. Zebramatic was conceived as an especially flexible font, one that could be used conveniently in a single style or by superimposing, interchanging and layering styles to create a unique type. The different styles are completely interchangeable (identical metrics and kerning). This architecture gives the typographer the freedom to decide which form or forms fit best to the specific project. Alignment and repetition were special concerns in the design process. The striped patterns in Zebramatic are carefully conceived to align horizontally but not to match. Matching patterns would create strong letter-pairs that would “stick out” of the word. For example, take the problematic word “stuff”. If Zebramatic aligned alphabetically, the texture of S T and U would align perfectly. The repeated F is also a problem. Imagine a headline that says »LOOK HERE«. If the letters OO and EE have copied »unique« glyphs - the headline suggests mass production, perhaps even that the designer does not care. Some OpenType features can work automatically around such disenchanting situations by accessing different glyphs from the extended glyph-table. However these automations are also repeated; the generated solutions become patterns themselves. Flip and stack To master the situation described above, Zebramatic offers a different programmatic practice. To eliminate alphabetic alignment, the letters in Zebramatic are developed individually. To avoid repetition, the designer can flip between the three styles (POW, SLAM, WHAM) providing three choices per glyph. Stacking layers in different sequences provides theoretical 27 (3*3*3) unique letterforms. A last variable to play with is color (i.e. red, blue, black). Images illustrating the layering potential of Zebramatic are provided in the Gallery. The design is robust and convenient. The font is easily operated through the main font panel (vs. the hidden sub-sub-menu for OpenType related features). The process of accessing different glyphs is also applicable in programs that do not support OpenType extensively (i.e. Word or older Versions of Illustrator). International Specs Zebramatic is ready for your international typographic safari. The font contains an international character set and additional symbols – useful in editorial and graphic design. The font comes in OpenType PostScript flavored and TrueType Format.

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005

Geometric font inspired by shop signs in 4 styles Anisette has sprouted as a way to test some ideas of designs. It has started with a simple line construction (not outlines as usual) that can be easily expanded and condensed in its width in Illustrator. Subsequently, this principle of multiple widths and extreme weights permitted to Jean François Porchez to have a better understanding with the limitations associated with the use of MultipleMaster to create intermediate font weights. Anisette built around the idea of two widths capitals can be described as a geometric sanserif typeface influenced by the 30s and the Art Deco movement. Its design relies on multiple sources, from Banjo through Cassandre posters, but especially lettering of Paul Iribe. In France, at that time, the Art Deco spirit is mainly capitals. Gérard Blanchard has pointed to Jean Francois that Art Nouveau typefaces designed by Bellery-Desfontaines was featured before the Banjo with this principle of two widths capitals. The complementarity between the two typefaces are these wide capitals mixed with narrow capitals for the Anisette while the Anisette Petite – in its latest version proposes capitals on a square proportions, intermediate between the two others sets. Of course, the Anisette Petite fonts also includes lowercases too. Anisette Petite, a geometric font inspired by shop signs in 4 styles So, when Jean François Porchez has decided to create lowercases the story became more complicated. His stylistic references couldn’t be restricted anymore to the French Art-déco period but to the shop signs present in our cities throughout the twentieth century. These signs, lettering pieces aren’t the typical foundry typefaces. Simply because the influences of these painted letters are different, not directly connected to foundry roots which generally follow typography history. The outcome is a palette of slightly strange shapes, without strictly not following geometrical, mechanical and historical principles such as those that typically appear in typefaces marketed by foundries. As an example, the Anisette Petite r starts with a small and visible sort of apex that no other similar glyphs such as n or m feature, but present at the end of the l and y. The famous g loop is actually inspired by Chancery scripts, which has nothing to do with the lettering. The goal is of course to mix forms without direct reports, in order to properly celebrate this lettering spirit. This is why the e almost finishes horizontally as the Rotis – and the top a which must logically follow this principle and is drawn more round-curly. This weird choice seemed so odd to its designer that he shared his doubts and asked for advise to Jeremy Tankard who immediately was reassuring: “Oddly, your new top a is fine, it brings roundness to the typeface, when the previous pushes towards Anisette Petite to unwanted austerity.” The Anisette Petite, since its early days, is a mixture of non-consistent but charming shapes. Anisette, an Art Déco typeface Anisette Petite Club des directeurs artistiques, 46e palmarès Bukva:raz 2001

INTRODUCTION When I started the first Selfie back in 2014 I was aware that I was designing something innovative at some point, because at that time there were not too many, (if any) fonts which rescued so many calligraphy features being at the same time a monolinear sans. I took inspiration from the galerías’ neon signs of my home city, Buenos Aires, and incorporated the logic and ductus of the spencerian style. The result was a very versatile font with many ligatures, swashes and a friendly look. But… I wasn’t cognizant of how successful the font would become! Selfie is maybe the font of my library that I see the most when I finally go out, (type-designers tend to be their entire lives glued to a screen), when I travel, and also the font that I mostly get emails about, asking for little tweaks, new capitals, new swashes. Selfie was used by several renowned clients, became part of many ‘top fonts of the year’ lists and was published in many magazines and books about type-design. These recognitions were, at the same time, cuddles for me and my Selfie and functioned as a driving force in 2020 to start this project which I called Selfie Neue. THE FONT "Selfie for everything" Selfie Neue, because it’s totally new: All its glyphs were re-drawn, all the proportions changed for better, and the old and somehow naive forms of the first Selfie were redesigned. Selfie Neue is now a family of many members (you can choose between a Rounded or a Sharp look), from Thin to Black, and from Short to Tall (because I noticed the feel of the font changed notoriously when altering its proportions). It also includes swashy Caps, which will serve as a perfect match for the lowercase and some incredibly cute icons/dingbats (designed by the talented Melissa Cronenbold) which, as you see in the posters, make the font even more attractive and easy to use. You'll find tons of alternates per glyph. It's impossible to get tired with Selfie! Like it happened with the old Selfie, Selfie Neue Rounded was thought for a really wide range of uses. Magazines, Book-covers, digital media, restaurants, logos, clothing, etc. Hey! The font is also a VF (Variable Font)! So you can have fun with its two axes: x-height and weight, in applications that support them. Let me take a New Selfie! TECHNICAL If you plan to print Selfie Neue VF (Rounded or Sharp), please remember to convert it to outlines first. The majority of the posters above have the "contextual" alternates activated, and this makes the capitals a little smaller. I'd recommend deactivating it if you plan to use Selfie for just one word. Use the font always with the "fi" feature activated so everything ligatures properly. The slant of the font is 24,7 degrees, so if you plan to have its stems vertical, you may use Selfie with that rotation in mind. THANKS FOR READING

Blackletter typefaces follow certain fixed rules, both in respect to their forms and to the orthography. Possibly, they were a reaction to the half-developed Carolingian minuscule which was soon to end in the Latin script. Narrow, ordered script was to replace the round, hesitant and shattered shapes of letters in order to simplify writing, to unify the meaning of individual letters, and to save some parchment, too. Opposed to the practice common in monasterial scriptoriums where Uncial, Irish and Carolingian inspiration flew freely and as a result, the styles of writing differed in each monastery, the blackletter type was to define one, common standard. It was to express spiritual verticality, in perfect tune with the architecture of the Gothic era. Typography became an integral part of the overall style of the period. The pointed arch and the blackletter type were the vanguard of the spectacular transformation from the Middle Ages towards the modern era, they were a celebration of a time when works of art were not signed by their makers yet. Some unfortunate souls keep linking blackletter solely with Germany and the Third Reich, while the truth is that its direct predecessor, the Gothic minuscule, evolved mostly in France. Even Hitler himself indicated blackletter type obsolete in the age of steel, iron and concrete – thus making a significant contribution to the spreading of the Latin script in Germany. Once we leave our prejudice aside, we find that the shapes of blackletter type have exceptional potential, unheard of in sans-serif letterforms. The lower case letters fit into an imaginary rectangle which is easily extended both upwards and sideways. In its scope and in the name itself, the Moyenage type family project is to celebrate the diversity of the Middle Ages. I begun realizing the urge to design my own blackletter when visiting the beer gardens of Munich and while walking through the villages of rural Austria. The letters from the notice boards of inns are scented with spring air, with the flowers of cudweed, with white sausage and weissbier. The crooked calligraphic hooks and beaks seem to imitate the hearty yodeling of local drinkers and the rustle of the giant skirts of girls who distribute the giant wreaths of beer jugs. Moyenage is, however, a modern replica of blackletter, so it contains some otherwise unacceptable Latin script elements in upper case. I chose these keeping the modern reader in mind, striving for better legibility. The font is drawn as if written with a flat pen or brush, and with the ambition to, perhaps, serve as a calligraphic model. In medium width, the face is surprisingly well legible; it is perfect for menus as well as posters and CD covers for some of the heavier kinds of music. It has five types of numerals and also a set of Cyrillic script, symbolising the lovelorn union of Germans and Russians in the 20th century. Thus, it is well suited for the setting of bilingual texts of the German classic literature, which, according to the ancient rules, must not be set in Latin script.

INTRODUCTION When I started the first Selfie back in 2014 I was aware that I was designing something innovative at some point, because at that time there were not too many, (if any) fonts which rescued so many calligraphy features being at the same time a monolinear sans. I took inspiration from the galerías’ neon signs of my home city, Buenos Aires, and incorporated the logic and ductus of the spencerian style. The result was a very versatile font with many ligatures, swashes and a friendly look. But… I wasn’t cognizant of how successful the font would become! Selfie is maybe the font of my library that I see the most when I finally go out, (type-designers tend to be their entire lives glued to a screen), when I travel, and also the font that I mostly get emails about, asking for little tweaks, new capitals, new swashes. Selfie was used by several renowned clients, became part of many ‘top fonts of the year’ lists and was published in many magazines and books about type-design. These recognitions were, at the same time, cuddles for me and my Selfie and functioned as a driving force in 2020 to start this project which I called Selfie Neue. THE FONT "Selfie for everything" Selfie Neue, because it’s totally new: All its glyphs were re-drawn, all the proportions changed for better, and the old and somehow naive forms of the first Selfie were redesigned. Selfie Neue is now a family of many members (you can choose between a Rounded or a Sharp look), from Thin to Black, and from Short to Tall (because I noticed the feel of the font changed notoriously when altering its proportions). It also includes swashy Caps, which will serve as a perfect match for the lowercase and some incredibly cute icons/dingbats (designed by the talented Melissa Cronenbold, see also Selfie Neue Rounded for more!) which, as you see in the posters, make the font even more attractive and easy to use. You'll find tons of alternates per glyph. It's impossible to get tired with Selfie! Like it happened with the old Selfie, Selfie Neue Sharp was thought for a really wide range of uses. Magazines, Book-covers, digital media, restaurants, logos, clothing, etc. Hey! The font is also a VF (Variable Font)! So you can have fun with its two axes: x-height and weight, in applications that support them. Let me take a New Sharp Selfie! TECHNICAL If you plan to print Selfie Neue VF (Rounded or Sharp), please remember to convert it to outlines first. The majority of the posters above have the "contextual" alternates activated, and this makes the capitals a little smaller. I'd recommend deactivating it if you plan to use Selfie for just one word. Use the font always with the "fi" feature activated so everything ligatures properly. The slant of the font is 24,7 degrees, so if you plan to have its stems vertical, you may use Selfie with that rotation in mind. THANKS FOR READING

Father's Day, or June 17 of this year, is in the middle of Argentinian winter. And like people do on wintery Sunday mornings, I was bundled up in bed with too many covers, pillows and comforters. Feeling good and not thinking about anything in particular, Father's Day was nowhere in the vicinity of my mind. My eleven year old son, Matías, came into the room with a handmade present for me. Up to this point, my Father's Day gift history was nothing unusual. Books, socks, hand-painted wooden spoons, the kind of thing any father would expect from his pre-teen son. So you can understand when I say I was bracing myself to fake excitement at my son's present. But this Father's Day was special. I didn't have to fake excitement. I was in fact excited beyond my own belief. Matí's handmade present was a complete alphabet drawn on an A4 paper. Grungy, childish, and sweeter than a ton of honey. He'd spent days making it, three-dimensioning the letters, wiggle-shadowing them. Incredible. A common annoyance for graphic designers is explaining to people, even those close to them, what they do for a living. You have to somehow make it understandable that you are a visual communicator, not an artist. Part of the problem is the fact that "graphic designer" and "visual communicator" are just not in the dictionary of standard professions out there. If you're a plumber, you can wrap all the duties of your job with 3.5 words: I'm a plumber. If you're a graphic designer, no wrapper, 3.5 or 300 words, will ever cover it. I've spent many hours throughout the years explaining to my own family and friends what I do for a living, but most of them still come back and ask what it is exactly that I do for dough. When you're a type designer, that problem magnifies itself considerably. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you start looking for the nearest exit, but none of the ones you can find is any good. All the one-line descriptions are vague, and every single one of them queues a long, one-sided conversation that usually ends with someone getting too drunk listening, or too tired of talking. Now imagine being a type designer, with a curious eleven year old son. The kid is curious as to why daddy keeps writing huge letters on the computer screen. Let's go play some ball, dad. As soon as I finish working, son. He looks over my shoulder and sees a big twirly H on the screen. To him it looks like a game, like I'm not working. And I have to explain it to him again. This Father's Day, my son gave me the one present that tells me he finally understands what I do for a living. Perhaps he is even comfortable with it, or curious enough about that he wants to try it out himself. Either way, it was the happiest Father's Day I've ever had, and I'm prouder of my son than of everything else I've done in my life. This is Matí's font. I hope you find it useful.

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.

If you want to write something sincere and genuine but not too formal then this is the font for you. It is based on real handwriting, not some artificial calligraphy made to be either too haphazard or spiky or have loads of elegant flourishes but an ordinary person's writing, and designed to look as natural and as close to the original lettering as possible. Like any person's writing it is individual and distinctive, but so easy going on the eye those differences sit comfortably with you. It is friendly and open with easy to read glyphs both as lowercase and uppercase. The letters are relatively wide with clearly shaped distinct outlines. This font may be ideal for projects where you expect a wide readership with different reading abilities from young to old. When you are using this font a slightly bigger point size usually gives a better result so for a standard letter or similar you should size up to 15 points or more. Maree has been individually crafted to the smallest detail. To create a realistic handwriting font that looks relatively simple but works in a wide variety of languages requires a complexity and attention to detail most fonts will never require. This font in any ordinary business environment would never have been made, the effort required to make it too great, the length of time too long. There have been no shortcuts in this font, no automatic scanning or tracing, no automatic generation, no class kerning. Not only is each glyph individual but the width of letters, the height, the accents and the positions of the accents are all different. Even the line weight of the letters is designed to have natural variation but yet similar enough that the font appears as though it were written effortlessly in the same pen. And in order to keep the spacing consistent even though the letters have different widths, heights, lengths of descenders and so on, there are a vast number of kerning pairs, letter to letter, number to number, letter to number... All kerning has been individually assessed with an eye to proportionality taking in character shape, size and weight. For instance if you write a telephone number the numbers all sit close together but if you write a number before a letter such as in a UK post code or before a unit of measurement an extra little bit of space has been added which makes the number more distinct and therefore readable. That space is so natural to the eye that you don’t even know it is there. However even in the spacing allowance has been made for the fact it can’t be too perfect because when you write by hand the spacing is inconsistent. There have to be some letters which are too close or far apart otherwise the font would look artificial. For similar reasons if you are going to print out this font for a letter, etc, check the print version before you make any letter spacing changes because with the zoom functions in modern applications that uneven spacing and lettering can seem more pronounced than it actually is. When this font is printed out you will find it is surprisingly neat. This font is what it is, simple clear handwriting. You will not go wow. But if you want something unique and different and looks good on the page you won’t be disappointed. This font is not a work of art but it is a work of love. This font has a soul. How many fonts can you say that about?

A font perfect for not just one, but many projects! Introducing Oceanwide Pro, a sans that loves to be used in just about any situation! Designed with ultra clean lines and versatility in mind, Oceanwide wants to be your new favorite sans! Oceanwide’s ultra clean letters work anywhere you want to communicate orderliness and competence, and designed to build trust and rapport with your audience. Its wide proportions make it ideal for display and logo use. Oceanwide especially shines for white/bright letters on black/dark backgrounds! That’s because the inside shapes are nearly perfect circles in many weights. Here's a quick video tour of Oceanwide Pro by Dave Lawrence, including all the great things Oceanwide can be used for! We've tested Oceanwide for these industries, with stunning results!: Tech Arts Fashion & Style Business & Branding Corporations Logistics Architecture Food and many more... Oceanwide can be used for: Headers Subheadlines Logos Even body text, if tracked. Print & Screen The styles it can take are also many. It's great for: Modern/minimalist design Flat design Cut out design User Interface (UI) Technical designs In combination with text effects, even for grunge and other situations. And many others... DESIGN FEATURES Simplicity Tall x-height Hand-sloped obliques (italics) Narrow spacing Semi-wide proportions Expert kerning Well proportioned, usable lights & extra lights Large caps Great ALL CAPS MODE Uppercase punctuation Uppercase spacing with California Type Foundry’s Smart Tracking™ Advanced fraction support Proportional lining figures Thick joins Smooth curves Sturdy—great for textures and effects Variable font available Latin Pro character set for Central European languages. That's the writing for over 782 languages and transliterations worldwide! DESIGN STORY—THE FORGOTTEN SANS by Dave Lawrence, Lead Designer, California Type Foundry Adrian Frutiger was the 20th century master of sans, but I didn't realize he had made—not one—but TWO geometric sans! It wasn't until I had purchased the book “Adrian Frutiger: Typefaces”. I had hoped to someday meet Adrian Frutiger, but he passed away that very same year. Here is the story of Frutiger's forgotten sans. Back in 1968, Frutiger was approached by Pentagram to make a design for British Petroleum. They wanted a "new version of Futura". However, they wanted him to make a couple adjustments. First, they felt that Futura was "too fiddly." By this, they meant that it narrowed too much at the joins. (Joins are for example where the round and straight parts of the 'd' meet.) This is something that is necessary for small print text (to prevent ink clogging), but is not necessary at large sizes. Second, they wanted it to be entirely geometric, using the circular shape with minimal optical corrections. Unfortunately this font was not even used very consistently in the BP brand. A haphazard mix of Futura and Frutiger's BP font ensued. It was then replaced by another font design very soon after. My design is different in several ways. First, the commas and quotes are a more modern style. I tried his original commas, but these just didn’t work to 21st century eyes. Second, in his drawings, Frutiger went for a more standard u with a downstroke on the right. However, Oceanwide has a simpler u. Third, I made more optical adjustments. At the direction of his employer, Frutiger reluctantly put no font optical corrections into the letters. So I think my optical adjustments are similar to what Frutiger would have wanted. Fourth, I extended the weight into the light and extra light ranges. Fifth, the rest of the font I created according to the principles of Adrian Frutiger, but with no sources for inspiration. Here is Frutiger’s design philosophy, in his own words: “If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.” The words about the spoon were the ones I kept in my mind as I tried to make the curves ultra smooth, and the shapes ultra simple. Hopefully this font is a worthy successor to the font that inspired it. Released on the 93rd birthday of Adrian Frutiger, to celebrate the life and achievements of this amazing designer. ——————— Simplicity. Versatility. Oceanwide.