Lincoln Electric started its life as an in-house experimental film type Thomas Lincoln drew shortly after concluding his work as part of Herb Lubalin’s famed crew in the late 1960s,. The master alphabet was drawn on illustration boards using pen and ink and press-type lines. The typeface was initially made for use in the branding and promotional material of Lincoln’s new design outfit. This alphabet’s forms are a spin on Bifur, the all-cap deco face designed by Adolphe Mouron (known as Cassandre) in 1929, and published by the Deberny & Peignot foundry in France. Lincoln Electric evolves Cassandre’s idea further by constructing new shapes more in line with minimalist principles rather than art deco geometry — something clearly evident in Lincoln’s minuscules, which exhibit a clear connection to Bauhaus ideas More than 50 years after the typeface’s design, Thomas Lincoln found the original film alphabet tucked away in his archives and brought it over to Canada Type for digital retooling. The result is a modern and thoroughly elaborate set of fonts that belonging prominently in a 21st century designer’s toolbox. The following features are included in Lincoln Electric: • Three fonts for chromatic layering. • More than 1900 glyphs in each font. • Expanded Latin and Cyrillic character sets. • Small caps and Caps-to-small-caps. • Six different sets of stylistic alternates. • Ordinals and case-sensitive forms. For a showing of the stylistic set variations and a sample of demonstration of chromatic layering, please consult this PDF.

Edison, is it Victorian or is it Art Nouveau? While this typeface may be found in Petzendorfer’s Treasury of Art Nouveau Alphabets, I believe the decorative spirals are more Victorian than “New Art.” To me, they looked tacked on, rather than organic -- with the industrial mechanics of a coiled spring, rather than the tendrils of a growing plant as the philosophical wellspring. Originally released by ATF in 1894 as Houghton, this typeface was re-released shortly thereafter by Bauer and Berthold in Germany as EDISON. Please do not make the mistake of thinking the font we offer here is no better than freeware fonts in cheap rip-off collections. This font has a set 218 characters and represents many hours manipulating the bezier curves to produce acceptable results. Available freeware fonts are often little more than raw scans with little accuracy of letterform. The muddy line intersections are a dead give-away. Frequently all you get is the alphabet itself. No numbers, no punctuation and don't even think about diacriticals. The font we offer represents a tremendous value. Considering the hours of work involved, I have no business charging so little. I could make better money cooking hamburgers or bagging groceries. But we want very much to encourage you to purchase and enjoy these fascinating historical typefaces and are making it as easy as possible for you to do so. So please encourage us and order Edison today.

Our eye is able to join missing parts of worn letters back into undisturbed shapes. We tend to see things better than they really are. Thanks to this ability we ignore faults of those close to us as we can’t accept the fact that every once in a while we convene with an impaired entity. Typography is merely a man’s invention, hence imperfection and transience, albeit overlooked, are its key features. This typeface is based on worn-out letterings on tombstones in the St. Croce basilica in Florence. For hundreds of years, microscopic particles of marble are being taken away on the soles of visitors: the embossed figures become fossilised white clouds, fragments of inscriptions are nearing the limits of legibility. First missing are thin joins and serifs, then the main strokes finally slowly diminish into nothingness over time. Unlike an archaeologist, for whom even completely featureless stele is valuable, the typographer must capture the proper moment of wear, when the type is not too “new” but also not too much decimated. Such typeface is usable for catalogue jackets, invitations and posters. Calligraphy is a natural human trait. To write is to create characters of reasonable beauty and content, according to the nature of the writer. A natural characteristic of architecture is to create an aesthetic message very similar to the alphabet. A doric column, the gabled roof, the circle of the well plan: these are the basic shapes from which all text typeface is derived.

Selected as one of “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2013” by Typographica.org, Dark Angel is the first completely new take in decades on the traditional “blackletter” font style. It began its journey towards the light years ago when this style was born as a sketch for a new logo for the California Angels baseball team (renamed shortly thereafter the Anaheim Angels). The Angels logo never happened, but that sketch has risen from the dead and become the basis for this brand new font design—and was also the source for the name. It’s kind of blackletter in feel, but as a display font it’s so much more. It is far more legible than most “Old English” or “Gothic Script” styles, and incorporates many features never before seen in them, such as swashes, tails and a plethora of ligatures. Dark Angel can be purchased in its regular solid form, or as Dark Angel Underlight—a handtooled font. If these two fonts are purchased together, the Family package will contain a third font—Dark Angel Highlight. With this font layered over the basic font, you can achieve two–color typesetting when the highlight and the base font are assigned two different colors. Dark Angel has enough language support to make the builders of Babel envious—its 1,163 glyphs can be used to set copy in 59 different languages. From A to Z: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bemba, Bosnian, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Ganda, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kalaallisut, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Lithuanian, Luo, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romansh, Sango, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Turkish, Welsh, and last (but not least) Zulu. PLEASE NOTE: Dark Angel is a cross-platform font which depends to some extent on certain advanced OpenType features, therefore it can be used to its full potential only with programs that support those features. ADDITIONALLY: When setting Dark Angel one should ALWAYS select the “Standard Ligatures" and “Contextual Alternates” buttons in your OpenType palette. Please see the “Read–Me–First!” file in the Gallery section.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™, and Soho®.

New York vibes FS Irwin was born in New York while Senior Designer, Fernando Mello, was studying an intensive 5 week typeface design course at the Cooper Union. His brief was to design a perfectly clear typeface that could communicate well, without loud or overtly mannered design features. Fernando was influenced by the subway font in New York: ‘It is very in your face and clear, always in bold. It doesn’t shout much but at the same time is very present and unique. The design is completely different but it was this spirit I wanted to capture for FS Irwin.’ And the vibe of the city: ‘In a similar way to London, New York is so mixed and so cosmopolitan. I was amazed by the different styles and identities I saw there, and tried to encapsulate this essence to create something new, relevant and very now.’ Incisive quality Rather than focusing on quirks or distinctive characteristics, the key to FS Irwin is the quality of its design and spirit of simplicity. The design, proportions and details are usable and authentic and it is suitable for countless situations, without running the risk of being instantaneously noticeable. Families like this can be used on nearly anything, from more playful designs to serious corporate IDs. ‘Extensively tested and precisely drawn text-oriented typefaces are what I enjoy designing the most. There is a beauty and a different approach, a different way of making them interesting, sellable and usable rather than adding flicks or unexpected details.’ Inscriptions and calligraphy FS Irwin’s origin lies in Fernando’s studies in inscriptional lettering and writing-calligraphic exercises at the Cooper Union. Mello started the process by digitising his explorations and adapting them into a more workable sans serif structure. The traditional forms of writing which gave the basis to Latin type as we know it today were the perfect place to start. This influence can be seen in the proportion of the capitals and in slight writing-calligraphic details in the lowercase, such as the slightly angled, chiselled spurs and their open terminals.

Razumec is a carefully crafted display serif typeface with a highly unique personality. Its epic yet warm sentiment is established by a skillful blend of slab and wedge serifs, tapered stems, curves with raised center, and creative weight distribution. Proper pronunciation of these style elements influenced wide proportions and medium-to-high contrast. Besides its main typology, it incorporates subtle allusions to a spectrum of typographic and visual traditions, from calligraphy, ordinary handwriting, blackletter, and medieval uncial script to the neoclassical Didone and industrial typefaces. All of these flavors are combined tastefully and consistently throughout the whole set. With its rich visual identity, Razumec is primarily intended for display usage, as shown in the promo images. It's perfect for branding and packaging. Fantastic for projects focusing on storytelling like fairy tales, epic fantasy books, board and video games with historic or adventurous themes. Superb for theme magazines, quotes, headlines, museum and concert brochures. On the other side, its authentic historical voice works great as a strong counterpart point in ultra-modern contemporary designs for print and screen. Web design, motion graphics, conceptual art, posters, and social media material are just the first few ideas. The laborious production process focused on achieving a high level of classical typographic virtues rather than having an extensive character set. Beautiful stylistically consistent characters with balanced weight and width, high-quality curves, meticulous spacing and kerning, well-articulated diacritics, and punctuation were priorities. Special attention is given to solving problematic letter pairs through contextual alternates, which enable better spacing and smooth joints (hence the recommendation to always keep the Contextual alternates feature on for this font. Learn more about it HERE). Razumec is a small but well-executed and thoroughly tested font. Font family comprises nine weights plus variable font.* * Variable font lets you access all the weights through the single font file. In apps that support it, you will find a slider where you can pick any number from 100 to 900 corresponding to 800 possible font weights. Learn more about variable fonts and their support on the following two links: VF ABOUT and VF SUPPORT.

A type designed in a grid, like on display panels Type is not only printed. There were always and still are a number of forms of type versions which function completely differently. Even very early in the history of script there were attempts to combine a few single elements into the diverse forms of individual characters and also efforts to construct the forms of letters within a geometric grid system. The “instructions” of Albrecht Dürer are probably most well-known. But although designers of past centuries assumed the ideal to basically be an artist’s handwritten script, the idea which developed in the course of mechanization was to “build” characters in a building block system only by stringing together one basic element — the so-called grid type was discovered, represented most commonly today by »pixel types.« But even before computers, there were display systems which presented types with the help of a mechanical grid display, like the display panels in public transportation (bus, train) or at airports and train stations. In a streetcar, I met up with a modern variation of this display which reveals the name of each tram stop as it is approached. This system was based on a customary coarse square grid, but the individual squares were also divided again diagonally in four triangles. In this way it is possible to display slants and to simulate round forms more accurately as with only squares. The displayed characters still aren’t comparable to a decent typeface — on the contrary, the lower case letters are surprisingly ugly — but they form a much more legible type than that of ordinary [quadrate] grid types. DeDisplay from ingoFonts is this kind of type, constructed from tiny triangles which are in turn grouped in small squares. The stem widths are formed by two squares; the height of upper case characters is 10, the x-height 7 squares. DeDisplay is available in three versions: DeDisplay 1 is the complex original with spaces between the triangles, DeDisplay 2 forgoes dividing the triangles and thus appears somewhat darker or “bold,” and DeDisplay 3 is to some extent the “black” and doesn’t even include spaces between the individual squares.

C.P. Company is a group of types including 4 different forms and it is a complementary sign of communication for the C.P. Company clothes maker. C.P. Company communication makes use of media such as the press and the web and that’s the reason why we have always felt the need for a font that would not show incongruities through the monitor. Therefore we have decided to change the structure of glyphs like a, e, g, s… in the most contrasted versions to prevent the serifs from touching the internal parts of the letters and in this manner we have made a really unusual stylistic choice for a group of types. The difference between the height of caps and smalls is very low (about 20%) so that the smalls are easy to read even when their dimensions are on a very small scale. Moreover this stylistic solution gives the possibility to avoid using the small capitals in case of charts and catalogue codes (i.e. Tricot M5) and provides more vertical compactness between the lines. Even a sentence written in capital letters next to another one written in smalls does not look so much contrasted from a typographical point of view and then it is not unpleasant. The limits due to different constructive principles have been overcome by means of a grid based on the automatic division of EM square of 9-point type and in this manner the letters have a wider face. The font is even more unusual owing to the style chosen that belongs to the classical tradition of hair-lined types for glyphs like e and also thanks to ligatures like ? in the characters set. CP Company is a geometrical font whose alphabet makes use of the style of types that preceded the Helvetica, matched with more experimental and updated solutions. Numbering is monospaced. The bending of number 2, the slight raising of the oblique serif of number 4 and the presence of a hair-line in number 7 are the solutions adopted to make the types match in a more balanced manner.

Rev up your design game with Dealerplate, the typeface that brings the license plate style to your work. This typeface features 17 embossed designs from states and provinces across the United States and Canada, ensuring your work is always on point with the latest in license plate style. To truly capture the essence of the license plate look, be sure to turn off kerning in your design application. This will create a more authentic appearance, bringing the road to your design work. Not only does Dealerplate capture the essence of license plates, but it also includes OpenType fractions, numeric ordinals, mathematical symbols, and monetary symbols, making it a versatile and powerful addition to any design project. Don’t just settle for any license plate typeface, upgrade your design game with the stylish Dealerplate typeface today. The Dealerplate family includes plates from: California Florida Illinois Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Missouri North Carolina/Utah/Alaska New Jersey New York Ohio Ontario Pennsylvania Quebec Virginia Washington Wisconsin Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.

Cabo Soft is the 2.0 version of our original Cabo Rounded Typeface, created back in 2015. With this new version, Cabo Soft, we have brought multiple upgrades and updates compared with the original version. Some of those consist in the addition of more glyphs and accents, alternate designs for many of the glyphs (including an alternate for @, #, some of the numbers and more), and most importantly, we have done a slight update in the design of the letters, which we'll give more details in the following paragraphs. The main style and thought behind our Cabo fonts has always been the rounded corners and the soft and welcoming vibe that it gives. It's friendly and familiar, but also modern and slightly elegant, especially the Thin and Light styles. With Cabo Soft we have worked on adding an extra touch to the design of the letters by working on the termination edges of each letter. If Cabo Rounded had an exact round termination for each letter, with Cabo Soft we have developed a unique non-equally rounded shape that is applied to all types of terminations for each letter. This new design approach makes it have a more clean style, a more modern and unique look, but it also gives stylish, exclusivist and elegant vibes, while still being friendly and familiar. Thanks to it's variety in weights and styles, you can use Cabo Soft in almost any design project. It works well with headlines and paragraphs, it's a perfect match for logo design and branding, but can also do wonders in videos, signage and many other elements. The typeface covers most likely the entire Latin Alphabet, it comes with multiple design alternates for many of the letters, glyphs and numbers, with accents applied for all of the available alternates. As a finishing note, with the help of our Cabo Soft typeface you can create an friendly and welcoming designs, as well as stylish, elegant and exclusivist. It has all the necessary glyphs and accents for any Latin Alphabet projects, and you can play around with all of the alternates to create unique designs right from the start.

Looking back on my production to date, neither so little nor so large, it does not come as a surprise to find myself now introducing Lady René. A brief review of my career would read as follows: graphic designer graduated from Buenos Aires University, a 10-year professorship in Typography in the same institution, an illustrator in the making. For almost 15 years now my work has focused on the design of editorial pieces, predominantly books and CD sleeves. Typography proper has always been central to my research projects. All my obsessions eventually embodied as much the search for a perfect, spotless text as for a daring and provoking one. In my view, "how-to-say-something" ranks highest amongst a graphic designer’s responsibilities. It was in this vein that I called in the written word to illustrate, to draw, to narrate. Why not reverse the saying and proclaim that “a word is worth a thousand images”? If so, one single word could trigger endless meanings, associations, ideas, and memories in every reader’s mind. Language, we know, has a strong power and is a living expression of a culture. In my illustrations, letters and drawings reunite in one synergy said and unsaid, the finiteness of the message and the freedom of the free reading. And this is how and when, Lady René, my first born type font sees the light of day conceived out of a love of illustration and a reverence for the written word, recalling the whimsicality of the handmade drawing and reflecting its sensitive, warmth and spontaneity. Enabled by the characteristics of Open Type and the hard, outstanding work of designer Ale Paul, Lady René succeeds in composing texts in a simple, organic way by means of its contextual and stylistic alternates, swash characters, ligatures and connecting words. A bundle of decorative miscellanea completes the set of signs, enabling the user considerable freedom to create new typographic landscapes. Lady René is then prepared, very much like a character in a short story, to come to life in the reader’s mind. I expect you will enjoy her as much as I did creating her. Laura Varsky

For everyone wishing for a modern serif that’s as clear and readable as a sans in restrictive digital environments, meet Portada by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione. Sans serifs are commonly used on small screens to save space and carry a modern tone. Serifs may appear fickle and unsteady, pixel grids change from one product to another, and space is at a premium. Portada now provides a serif option for these restrictive digital environments, putting that old trope to rest. The screen has met its serif match. Portada was created from and for the digital world — from e-ink or harsh grids to Retina capability — making it one of the few serifs of its kind. Portada’s text and titling styles were engineered for superlative performance, making great use of sturdy serifs, wide proportions, ample x-height, clear interior negative space, and its subservient personality. After all, words always take priority in text. It’s not all business, though. Portada’s italics contain an artefact of calligraphy in which the directionality of the instrokes and the returning curves of the outstrokes give the family a little unexpected brio. Yet even the terminals are stopped short of flourished self-absorption to retain their digital clarity. When printed these details are downright comforting. Portada’s titling styles enact slight changes while reducing the individual width of each character and keeping the internal space clear. Titling italics have increased expressiveness across a few characters rather than maxing out the personality in each individual glyph. Digital magazines, newspapers, your favourite novel, and all forms of continuous screen reading benefit from Portada’s features. This family can also cover many of the needs developers have: user interface, showing data intensive apps on screen, even one-word directives and dialogs. And, as a free download, an exhaustive set of dark and light icons is included to maintain Portada’s consistent presence, whether as a word or an image. The complete Portada family (eight text styles, ten titling styles, and one icon set) is designed for extensive, clear screen use — a rare serif on equal footing with a sans.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.