The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same. The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes; in the 10th century, it was further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes. The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age. Their use declined after the Christianization of Scandinavia; most writing in Scandinavia from the 12th century was in the Latin alphabet, but the runic scripts survived in marginal use in the form of the medieval runes (in use ca. 1100–1500) and the Latinised Dalecarlian runes (ca. 1500–1910)

In the history of 20th century graphic arts, the evolution of the informal sans serif has been a uniquely American phenomenon. The ongoing saga of this (still as popular as ever) sub-genre dates back to the maturity of the Industrial Age and early Hollywood film titling, runs through the prosperous times of interwar print publications, sees mass flourishing during the various media propagations of the film type era, and solidifies itself as arguably the most common design element in the latter years of the century. Fun, bouncy, playful, and highly exciting, the casual sans serif is now all over game packaging, film and animation titles, book covers, food boxes, concert posters, and pretty much everywhere design aims to induce excitement about a product or an event. The casual sans is the natural high pill of typesetting. We figured it was high time for the casual sans to adapt to 21st century technology, gain more versatility, and become as much fun to use as the emotions it triggers. So we’re quite excited to issue Bananas, a fun sans serif family in 6 weights and 3 widths that can be used anywhere your designer’s imagination can take you. Rather than being based on a single design, Bananas was sourced from multiple American film era faces, all from 1950s and 1960s, when the casual sans genre was at its popular peak. Headliners’ Catalina and its very similar cousin, Letter Graphics’ Carmel, served as initial study points. Then a few Dave West designs informed the design development and weighting process, before narrow and wide takes were sketched out and included in the family. The entire development process happened in a highly precise interpolative environment. All Bananas fonts come with a full glyph complement supporting the majority of Latin languages, as well as five sets of figures, automatic fractions, quite a few ligatures, biform/unicase shapes and other stylistic alternates.