Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

One menorah that I have long found particularly appealing was named The Tree of Life Menorah, a replica of which I gave as a gift one holiday to a kindly old couple who were neighbors and became friends. It had a simple, organic elegance that I see in the best of Art Nouveau sculpture. To me personally, Judeism is a celebration of life, like the triumph of the flower that blossoms in the crack of the city sidewalk. Just as Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple and the miracle of the oil, it celebrates the victorious quest for freedom of the Hebrew people led by Judah Maccabee. Hanukkah represents determination and courage and faith — and it represents the presence of God in the lives of His people. It is interesting to note that the founding of the Albanian nation in the early twentieth century grew out of the resistance of the Albanian people to the imposition of Greek language and culture in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The typeface, HADASSAH, designed by Henri Friedlander (1904-1996), is my favorite Hebrew typeface. Thirty years in the crafting, I believe it is unsurpassed for its shear beauty, combining a subtle modulation of stroke with a simplicity and clarity of form. No doubt, that is why it has become so popular. For me, the Sîyn/Shîyn characters are especially satisfying. For a Hanukkah message in Hebrew, I would choose HADASSAH LIGHT for a headline and print it as large as I could. If, however, you are looking for a friendly, warm face for a seasonal message in a roman-letter based language, may I suggest BETHLEHEM EPHRATH. It will be as comfortable as a bulky, hand-knit sweater on a frosty afternoon and reflects the solid, encompassing, family orientation of this holiday. It was on the way to Ephrath that Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel gave birth to Benjamin and then died from her labor. It was to Ephrath that Naomi and Ruth returned and in Ephrath that we have the wonderful, heart-warming story of the marriage between Ruth and her Redeemer-Kinsman, Boaz. And it was to Ephrath that prophet, Samuel, went to find a new king and there in Ephrath that the prophet annointed a small shepherd boy named David. The Proverbs tell us to seek wisdom. Never underestimate the impact you have on others. Words of kindness can change people’s lives. The Talmud says that the highest form of wisdom is kindness. Be wise this holiday season. The font BETHLEHEM EPHRATH is based on the typeface Accent with the permission of URW++ of Hamburg, Germany. Like most display fonts, it is most effective at 18 points and larger. Like most script fonts, it is most effective when set with both upper and lower case. Although this font is readable in all caps (many scripts are not), that does not make it a good idea. Do so only with caution.

After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul

Geometric sans fonts in the Bauhaus tradition were the inspiration for the design of FF Mark®, for example the Universal font by Herbert Bayer, Erbar® Grotesk, Kabel®, Neuzeit Grotesk and of course Paul Renner's Futura®. From an aesthetic point of view, FF Mark is a descendant of these classics of German typeface design that intends to meet the needs of modern communication. Hannes von Döhren and Christoph Koeberlin had the support of the entire FontFont Type Department in the design of FF Mark, including Erik Spiekermann, who took over the artistic direction of the project. The teamwork resulted in carefully planned, balanced forms, which are responsible for the harmonious overall impression of the font. The capitals are not based on Roman square capitals; rather, they have a uniformly wide letter form in a comfortable ratio to the x-height. Thanks to the x-height, which is significantly larger compared to the historical models, FF Mark is also very legible in small sizes. This makes it a very flexible font in terms of its range of applications. A contrast in the stroke width is barely noticeable. At the same time, light modulation supports readability, especially in the bold styles in small sizes. The uniform line ends are obvious for a contemporary sans family nowadays (unlike some of the historical precedents, which evolved over years). Other details from the predecessors are consciously maintained and provide for added individuality in FF Mark. For example, the limbs in the uppercase "K" and "R" are offset slightly from the stem. Alternative characters with crossbars are available for the numbers "0", "1", "7" and the uppercase "Z" and the lowercase "a" also has an alternative with an open form. German typesetters have the option of uppercase umlauts with points that are set lower, as well as a long "s" from the Fraktur. And last but not least, FF Mark has the very characteristic ft-ligature of Futura. FF Mark is available in ten finely tuned weights ranging from Hairline to Black. A Book style for text setting further emphasizes the well-rounded features of this contemporary typeface. When the font was published, it also included ten carefully designed cursives for all weights. Users also have the option of various numeral sets with old-style and uppercase numbers as well as small capitals. FF Mark also has some geometric shapes and arrows based on the features of Futura. FF Mark is a modern, full-featured, geometric sans serif that you can use without hesitation for large projects in headlines as well as in texts. FF Mark's design is a nod to the historical models and transports their charm, elegance and in some cases unusual design applications into a modern font family equipped with the most current typographical features. NEW: the new FF Mark W1G versions features a pan-European character set for international communications. The W1G character set supports almost all the popular languages/writing systems in western, eastern, and central Europe based on the Latin alphabet and also several based on Cyrillic and Greek alphabets.

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.