Hispania Script is a distinctive and distinctly nineteenth century script. It was released by Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig, Germany around 1890. Particularly noteworthy are the sharply-pointed legs of the upper case ‘K’ & ‘R’ that seem to be characteristic of the period. Similar strokes, often with a slight curve, may be seen in typefaces like Alt-Romanish and Tinteretto by Schelter & Giesecke, Artistic and Lateinsch by Bauer and Berthold and the poster lettering of Edward Penfield. The angle of this script (approximately 24 degrees) and the sharp delicate points must have made the manufacture of this face in metal type a challenge. The resulting type was probably quite fragile and subject to accidental damage. Additionally, the sharp points would be subject to wear. With digital type, these concerns are eliminated. As far as I know, no one has ever dropped a digital letter on the floor. Nonetheless, creating a digital outline for a typeface like Hispania Script, with many crossing strokes, can be quite time-consuming. Even with an accurate scan of a good quality original, it is usually necessary to construct each crossing stroke separately and then remove the overlap in order to obtain a sharp and convincing intersection. Steep internal angles are often defined with two points, rather than one, to minimize ink or toner fill that can muddy the rendering in smaller sizes. Like all formal scripts, Hispania Script is always useful for announcements and invitations. However, the distinctiveness of of this design strongly suggests that there are other applications that may benefit from its use. Step outside the box and try it in some unexpected places. It is the unexpected that often draws a person’s eye.

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mariachiara Fantini with the help of Solenn Bordeau, Erotique is an evolution of the original design by Zetafonts for Lovelace, that challenges its romantic curves with the glitchy and fluid aesthetic of trans-modern neo-brutalist typography. The seductive "evil serif" look of the Pheimester-like Oldstyle letter shapes is made edgier by the quirky connections and unexpected calligraphic twirls that marry digital distortions to traditional penmanship. Sensuous but sharp, Erotique speaks the language of teasing, and unrequited love, over-the-top and restrained like a show of Japanese Kinbaku, and beautifully heartbreaking like a friendzone valentine. Designed for display use, this high-contrast serif typeface is ready to take center stage in projects where a subtle elegance and an edgy, aggressive touch are required. For branding use it is paired by a Erotique Ornaments, a set of interlocking patterns based on the font letter-shapes, allowing for striking packaging, digital and ambient design. For editorial use it can add a sharp sensuality to logos and titles thanks to an impressive array of alternate glyphs, subtle ligatures and a set of whiplike fleurons, collected in the Erotique Flourishes pack. The typeface has been developed in the regular, medium and bold weight plus a monoline version, all of which have been paired with an Alternate version to give immediate access the more exotic alternate letterforms. With a character set of over five hundred glyphs, all the the weights of Erotique cover almost 200 languages using extended latin, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Swash and Case Sensitive Forms. If you are a typeface lover, be warned: Erotique could be your fatal attraction!

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?

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.