A Belle Époque humanist serif in two styles: crisp, high-contrast Haut-Monde and soft, low-contrast Demimonde… When you design a lot of display pieces, you’re often in need of tall, slim type. Liaisons provides that, in a distinct fin-de-siècle style inspired by the great posters of the Gilded Age from Sweden, Denmark, France, and Scotland. (The ampersand alone is a bit of a love letter to Charles Rennie Mackintosh!) Both styles use the same slim skeleton, and are named after the stratum of society where one might find… a “dancing partner.” HAUT-MONDE is a high contrast face of the sort that says “High Society.” Elegant and sleek, it speaks to the refinement of the moneyed classes of a bygone era. Great for high-end products, too! DEMIMONDE is soft and low-contrast — more reminiscent of hand-lettering on Art Nouveau/Jugendstil/Wiener Werkstätte advertisements and posters. A comfortably chic display face all around! Both typefaces feature full Western and Eastern Latin character sets, as well as full Cyrillic/Slavic ones. And, perhaps best of all, both typefaces feature capitals with high, middle, and low waists, so you can change up the look as you see fit! Part of The Ampersand Forest's Sondheim Series

The reason for Nicolien van der Keur to design the Rougon font was the translation of twenty novels written by Emile Zola, a French writer, and translated by Martine Delfos. It follows the lives of the members of the two titular branches of a fictional family living during the Second French Empire (1852–1870) and is one of the most prominent works of the French naturalism literary movement. This series deserved a font with French roots and corresponded to the period in which Zola’s books were written and published, the period between 1870 and 1893, the end of the nineteenth century. Extensive research into French historical typefaces has led to a type specimen from the French type foundry Deberny et Cie in Paris around 1907. It turned out to be good and helpful source as it contained a sample of a typeface that reflected the content and style of the novels, but also represented the period in which the books were written in France. A large part of the novels are about the generations of Rougon, so it seemed a natural choice to give the font that name. It is available in one weight and contains stylized portraits of Emile Zola and the French Marianne. This font also contains various ornaments.

Bex Script is a riff on traditional French script forms: the Bâtarde, the Ronde, and the Coulée. It has two versions: First, there’s La Belle, a straightforward, lovely interpretation of the script form, suitable for things like invitations, poetry and branding. La Belle’s evil twin is La Bête, a more whimsical (and considerably more hairy) version, great for anything that requires an elegant-but-beastly feel. Bex is surprisingly versatile! With three optional capital forms (Swash, Caps, and Small Caps) all taller than the x-height, Bex has a variety of voices. A full small cap set and a full set of Swash Caps, plus a large complement of alternates, initial forms, terminal forms, and ligatures makes it customizable and… well, FANCY! Additionally, both versions of Bex Script have a set of ten ornament glyphs. La Belle has a combination of fleurons on a culinary theme and symbols of France. La Bête has ten pseudoheraldic beasts that would feel at home at the top center of any whimsical letterhead. NOTE: A few years ago in Paris, I was lucky enough to stop at the Librairie Paul Jammes in St Germain-des-Prés, where I bought a turn-of-the-19th-century signature from a Type Specimen of the printer Joseph Gaspard Gillé. The irregularity of his script types — particularly the ones at smaller sizes, like the Cicéro — was very intriguing. They seemed to blend the Ronde with some elements of the Bâtarde and Coulée. And they, along with the work of French master penman Louis Rossignol, gave Bex Script its initial form.

Brasserie, the font, is a tribute to all brasseries since they are wonderful places to relax and enjoy food, wine and friends. It is also a salute to Parisian neon sign makers who continue in their difficult quest to adapt type, including script, into fragile, gas-filled, electric glass tubes. I tried to capture the spirit of these neon signs and combined it with the loosely styled handwritten menus written on blackboards that are usually placed outside Brasseries. You will find Brasserie to be very useful in many situations where you need clarity with style in a reasonably compact width. It is also creates an unusually even texture in sentences. Brasserie is a fairly upright script with a large x-height, which helps to save on overall width. Like a brasserie, the font is a relaxed and informal script, useful for logo, packaging, menus, editorial, advertising, invitations, etc and is available for Mac and PC in Opentype, Truetype and Postscript versions. In France, a brasserie is a café doubling as a restaurant with a relaxed setting, which serves single dishes and other meals. It can be expected to have professional service and printed menus (unlike a bistro which may have neither), but has more informal eating hours than a full-fledged restaurant. Typically, a brasserie is open every day of the week and the same menu is served all day. The word 'brasserie' is also French for brewery and, by extension, "the brewing business".

In order to give new imput to the art of typeface design in Italy, Nebiolo Company held, in March 1910, an artistic competition for a new alphabet conception, so the best-ranked design would be transformed into a real new typeface. 42 competitors participated and, although the first prize was not technically awarded, "Ancora" resulted as the best typeface, created by the designer-typographer Natale Varetti of Turin. Nonetheless, the new alphabet was transformed into a full-fledged metal typeface in 1924, renamed "Tanagra" in honor of the Greek city in the center of Boeotia. The new font, although not significantly detached from the classical Roman form, introduced decorative elements that allowed its use in both rational and artistic compositions. This font appears very clear and easy to read, with very high ascenders and some decorations that make it distinctly retrò. Finally, after almost 100 years, this peculiar character has been digitized taking it as a model the shapes of the 16 points size (other dimensions have significantly different contrasts and proportions). To adapt it to modern use, some glyphs have been modified, but all the originals are available as Stylistic Alternate OTF, as well as all the swashed variants while the missing ones were added.

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.

My brother is an architect, and I have always loved his lettering, you know, the style of writing that can be found on architectural drawings. There is a common thread to it, yet each architect or engineer brings their own personality to it. I have seen a similar style being used by some hand-letterers for invitations, place cards and signage. Inspired, I set out to create my own, and the result is my new typeface, Robard! I wanted something compact, somewhat modular, done quickly but with control, and sourced from hand-lettering. Starting out with a handful of pigment ink pens, I settled on a 0.1mm Copic Multi-Liner, and using a light table with a grid underneath the paper, I cranked out grouping after grouping, letter after letter, numbers, punctuation, accents, just trying to zero in on the feeling and the look I was after. There were some ideas that didn't work, like unicase (there would be no regular lowercase), or swash alternates. Ultimately, I ended up with a decent array of glyphs to choose from, and alternates like oldstyle numbers, and an alternate set of caps for the lowercase slots, and even alternative figures so doubles like 88 would be different. In the font, the OpenType ligature code automatically alternates the cap and lowercase (alternate cap) letters, and numbers as you type, lending Robard that hand-lettered look in a digital typeface that I was hoping for. There are also oldstyle figures, and unlimited fractions, ordinals, and a few alternate letters. I hope you like Robard!

Ghost Sign JNL is a spurred serif type design based on the faded lettering of an antique brick wall sign for Homer Hardware [located in Homer, NY] and is available in both regular and oblique versions. From Wikipedia: “A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. Ghost signs are found across the world with the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Canada having many surviving examples. Ghost signs are also called fading ads or brickads. In many cases these are advertisements painted on brick that remained over time. Old painted advertisements are occasionally discovered upon demolition of later-built adjoining structures. Throughout rural areas, old barn advertisements continue to promote defunct brands and quaint roadside attractions. Many ghost signs from the 1890s to 1960s are still visible. Such signs were most commonly used in the decades before the Great Depression. Ghost signs were originally painted with oil-based house paints. The paint that has survived the test of time most likely contains lead, which keeps it strongly adhered to the masonry surface. Ghost signs were often preserved through repainting the entire sign since the colors often fade over time. When ownership changed, a new sign would be painted over the old one.”

Cloister Open Face was designed in 1929 by Morris Fuller Benton as one weight of the Cloister Old Style family. Cloister itself appeared from 1897 with American Type Founders, and later for the typesetting machines of the Linotype, Intertype and Monotype companies. At that time, it was the truest modern industrial revival of the Jensonian Roman. Benton stayed close to the style of his model in both design and spacing. Cloister Open Face has an old-world elegance, and it works well for titling in books and magazines. In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e.""

Franz Kafka’s manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration for designer Julia Sysmäläinen. At first she was just interested in literary aspects but later she noticed that content and visual form can not be separated in the work of this ingenious writer. Analyzing Kafka’s handwriting at the Berlin National Library, Julia was inspired to design the typeface FF Mister – by now a well known classic. Over the years, FF Mister K became a handsome typeface family and even produced offspring: the Josef K Patterns. Some of Kafka’s most expressive letterforms were the starting point for these decorative ornaments. How do the Patterns work? Outlines and fillings correspond to the uppercase and the lowercase letters on your keyboard. You can use them separately or layer them on top of each other. If you write a line of “pattern-text” in lowercase and repeat it underneath in uppercase you get a row of fillings followed by a row of outlines. Now you can color them and then set line space = 0 to get a single line of layered colored ornaments. Alternatively, activating OpenType / stylistic set / stylistic alternates will also unite the two lines to a single layered line. Further magic can be done with OpenType / contextual alternates turned on. On the gallery page of this font family is a downloadable Josef K Patterns.pdf with an alphabetical overview of forms. Hundreds of patterns are possible … we’d love to see some of yours and present them here on the website!

Fantastic ML is an exuberant Art Nouveau font. It was originally released as “Modern Style” by Fonderie G. Peignot & Fils, Paris, France sometime before 1903. Since “Le style moderne” was the generic French name for Art Nouveau, it is possible that someone decided a less generic name was needed. The typeface became known as Fantastic. Compared to conventional text letters, it is just that. Fantastic has a whimsical, architectural feel. The typeface reminds me of a cross between Hoffmann’s Palais Stoclet in Brussels and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. The letterforms themselves are similar to those by Ludwig von Zumbusch on the cover of “Jugend” in March, 1896, but with the addition of serifs. Fantastic ML is a decorative, all-cap font intended for display use and functions best at 18 points or larger. There are a total of 306 glyphs. In addition to the standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page with character slots up to decimal position 255, there are glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. However, some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (1252). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS format and a TTF version which is in Open TT format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

It's been said that creativity requires ten parts to perspiration to one part inspiration. But not always. According to its creator, Mira Vucko, ITC Needlescript was designed in one breath." An accomplished lettering artist, Vucko was sketching letters one afternoon. "I was using a calligraphy nib and was drawing the alphabet without much thought," she recalls. "When I allowed the down strokes of a couple of letters to fall below the baseline, I realized that I had created the impression of movement. I kept drawing letters in this fashion and did the same with horizontal lines. I added a firm ending to the descenders. Instead of dots above the 'i' and 'j,' I placed strokes in the opposite direction." In this way, the first characters that were to become ITC Needlescript emerged. The finished design is a lively, distinctive alphabet that produces a striking texture on the page. Letters intertwine and overlap to create a sense of movement and graphic intensity, especially when reversed out of a dark background. Vucko lives, works and was educated in Zagreb, Croatia. She lived in France and Sweden while in her twenties, but then returned to Croatia to work as a graphic designer for the country's largest newspaper. It was here that her passion for type and typography was born. Vucko has since gone on to become one of Croatia's leading graphic designers, and has won many awards for her advertising and packaging design. Vucko recommends that ITC Needlescript be used for "titling, lively but 'thorny' content, and anywhere that a little typographic drama is called for.""

The bâtarde flamande is a style of writing used predominantly in France and present-day Belgium in the 15th century. The style shares an ancestry with other writing styles traditionally grouped as blackletter— fraktur, textura, rotunda, and schwabacher. It had evolved, however, into an æsthetic far removed from its relatives. While high-contrast in nature, the bâtarde flamande is more delicate and dynamic than the austere and condensed fraktur and textura. Quick curves lack the rigidity of the schwabacher and rotunda. Flair through swashes is thematic, as are the variations in letterforms. The flowing rhythm, achieved through a letterform axis that is overall slightly rightward, is most noticable in the hallmark f and long s. Round forms are fused together for economy of space. It is a writing hand that, with its syncopation and fluidity, produces a vibrance uncharacteristic of other blackletters. Givry has been created in the spirit of the bâtarde flamande. It melds the particular traits compiled from the works of the style’s prominent scribes—Jean Fouquet, Loyset Liédet, and Jean Bourdichon. While suitable as an elegant and energetic display face, Givry was conceived for setting continuous text. The result of many refinements and adjustments is the preservation of the style’s irregular nature, as well as a consistency that continuous-text typography requires. Carefully researched and developed in OpenType format for a wealth of typographic features and support for more than forty languages, Givry is neither derivative nor experimental, but historically accurate. Of the many blackletter digital typefaces available, fraktur and all its connotations have become representative. In contrast, the bâtarde flamande is essentially non-existent in digital form, and has until now been overlooked. Givry provides designers and anyone searching for typographic expression a lively, delicate, and striking side to blackletter.

Conspired Lovers is based on five years of love-letter writing. A font to capture the intentions of love letters more than any other font. How did the Project start? In the last five years I wrote love letters with two persons. I became used to the joy of handwriting with ink and nib on fine paper. Through practice a experimentation my style continuously refined. As life moves on, suddenly I found myself with no one to write love letters to. It's a luxury to have someone to write letters to. Missing the joy of writing and listening to Gregory Porter’s “Be Good”, the decision was made to take this 5 years of writing and make this dance on paper a font. A handwritten typeface for everyone to use. This font was created in July, 2012 and named Conspired Lovers. A font to capture and convey your message in a special way to the beloved one close to your heart. With a long practice of writing crafted into the unique design I hope that you and the recipient of your writing will soon enjoy this design. The Open-type version features 350+ glyphs including alternates and ligatures. All lowercase and most uppercase letters are connected, to create a realistic hand-writing-calligraphy on your creations. Conspired Lovers is international and supports a wide range of eastern european languages with accented letters to reach everyone in Sweden, France, Hungary and almost everywhere around the globe. A trailer for Conspired Lovers can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/haraldgeisler/conspired-lovers If you're looking for more heart related fonts also check out my other fonts.

Floro is a typographic family with 3 members designed by Carlos Fabian Camargo. Its idea combines medieval ideas, grotesque, stencil and grunge for T-shirts, stickers, advertising material design. More specifically the concept of Floro join several DNAís coordinating X height, ascendant, descendant and wide, in which proportions and adaptive optics were determined to inject great visual impact when composing titles. Its forms and counter forms have imperfections controlled with vitality and consistency. Floro is useful for ranking words and phrases with corroded edges and creases between the lines of his letters. In that vein, Floro refers to improvised design, deletion and copying. For that reason, its determinants seem stencil patterns that attract the attention of the reader. Its inaccurate decisions were planned that way, in which the type of contrast seems made with a flat tip and the amount of contrast between thick and thin is medium. Its sizes, regular and italic shine by their systematic wear and terminations sometimes in pointed forms resembling medieval darkness. In short, we can say that Floro comes from the miscegenation of Gothic calligraphy texture, foundational calligraphy and some refinements of gothic writings with italic sans-serif ideas of late 19th century. Even with the blur appearance, floro has ideal proportions to pile for horizontal and vertical areas when composing titles with striking looks and robust. And finally, floro dingbats are related shields and stamps, to accompany the written resulting useful at the level of visual support and hierarchical.

The Jantze font is a project undertaken by Dan Bailey of Fontosaurus and Michael Jantze, creator of the nationally-syndicated comic strip, The Norm. All their royalties from the font will go to The Lance Armstrong Foundation. For those that have been living under a rock for the last five years, Lance is a professional bike racer that overcame advanced testicular cancer to not only come back to his sport, but to dominate its premiere event, the Tour de France. In climbing to the top of his sport, he has become a legend among cyclists and a beacon of hope for those battling cancer and their families. His foundation provides financial grants to researchers working to improve our odds against the disease, individuals stricken with cancer, and survivors of the disease that are advocates for survivorship issues in their communities. Michael Jantze and Dan Bailey would like you to consider the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that brought us to this project: "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. We hope that you will help us help Lance Armstrong's legacy be more than that of just sports legend. We hope that you will help those that may someday help you as much as we hope that you will never have to suffer the ravages of cancer. We hope.

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

Albertina was a typeface ahead of its time. It was in the early 1960s when designer Chris Brand, an accomplished calligrapher, aspired to draw a typeface based on the principles of calligraphy. Unfortunately, typesetting machines of that era put many restrictions on designers. Characters had to be drawn within a very coarse grid, which also defined their spacing. Technological limitations meant that italic designs often had to share the same character widths as the romans. Designers were forced to draw italic faces much wider and with more open spacing than what would be typical in calligraphic lettering or hand-set type. Not surprisingly, production of the first Albertina fonts went very slowly. Brand would submit his character drawings, and the Monotype Drawing Office would modify them to be compatible with the company's typesetting equipment. The new drawings would then be sent back to Brand for approval or rework. Most were reworked. The process took so long, in fact, that by the time the face was completed it was once again out of phase with the times: instead of being released as metal type for the Monotype composing machines it had been tailored for, Albertina debuted as phototype fonts for the Monophoto typesetter. The design's first use was for a catalog of the work of Stanley Morison, exhibited at the Albertina Library in Brussels in 1966. Sales of the design were not remarkable. With the advent of digital type technology, Albertina's story took a far happier turn. Frank E. Blokland, of the Dutch Type Library, used Brand's original, uncompromised drawings as the foundation of a digital revival. The Monophoto version had taken a considerable battering from the limitations of Monotype's unit system," recalls Blokland, "but there was no need for me to incorporate these restrictions in the digital version." With the full backing of Monotype and original designer Brand looking over Blokland's shoulder, a new design for Albertina emerged, displaying all the grace and verve of Brand's original drawings. The basic family drawn by Brand also grew into three weights, each with an italic complement and a suite of small caps and old style figures."

Located in the Valencian Community, Spain, Manises is very famous for its pottery. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Manises was the most important production center for Spanish-Moresca ceramics, which was exported throughout Europe. At the beginning of the 16th century, Manises tiles were very commercially successful, especially of the heraldic type. Much appreciated by the Aragonese crown, Manises ceramics was also exported to France, Italy, and especially to Naples. As a big fan of Paterna and Manises ceramics, Naples influenced other Italian courts. Calixto III and Alejandro VI continuously commissioned Valencian pieces and tiles for the halls of the Vatican. The export also extended to Sicily, Venice, Turkey, Cyprus and even Flanders and the Baltic countries. The palaces of all the courts of Europe were enriched with this art. Many painters reproduced it in his paintings. It can be seen in the work of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, and in the central panel of a triptych by Hugo Van der Goes (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). In this city there are also some frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio in which the Arabic-Valencian earthenware appears. Manises font is inspired by a text written on a 16th century tile, but adapting it to our times and giving it a very modern air. It is characterised by being able to combine uppercase and lowercase letters in a conventional manner, or use only capitals, or only lowercase letters, or, a random combination of both. It comes with an extra of many ligatures, stylistic alternates, and a set of very useful catchwords, to give more modernity to your text. This OpenType features may only be accessible via OpenType-aware applications, or the Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favourite text editor/app. Manises looks lovely on wedding invitations, greeting cards, logos, posters, labels, t-shirt design, logos, children's material, in ink or water-colour based designs, fashion, magazines, food packaging and menus, book covers and whatever your imagination holds!

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. The Bauer Bodoni was done by Heinrich Jost for Bauer Typefoundry in 1927. This version has finer details of the original Bodoni types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising.

In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e." In the 1990s, Robert Slimbach designed his contemporary interpretation, Adobe Jenson™. It was first released by Adobe in 1996, and re-released in 2000 as a full-featured OpenType font with extended language support and many typographic refinements. A remarkable tour de force, Adobe Jenson provides flexibility for a complete range of text and display composition; it has huge character sets in specially designed optical sizes for captions, text, subheads, and display. The weight range includes light, regular, semibold, and bold. Jenson did not design an italic type to accompany his roman, so Slimbach used the italic types cut by Ludovico degli Arrighi in 1524-27 as his models for the italics in Adobe Jenson. Use this family for book and magazine composition, or for display work when the design calls for a sense of graciousness and dignity.

Franca is a neo-grotesk family in nine weights plus matching italics. The inspiration for the design came through the constant interest in new interpretations of the classic grotesk model and a study of "neutral“ typefaces like Helvetica, Univers or Normal Grotesk. During the studies, additional attention was given to the American representatives of the genre, resulting in the initial impetus for a reinterpretation, combining both paths into one contemporary design. This is reflected in the name, blending together the names of the most popular typefaces of each genres, (Fran)klin and Helveti(ca). Due to its large x-height and plain design, the family is perfectly suited for all kinds of text. Its mid-weights are optimized for usage in long paragraphs, while the bolder weights, due to a short descender and ascender, create a compact and confident look in headlines or short copy. In order to create strong and dynamic italics, the oblique glyph shapes come with a faint calligraphic hint, defined by a higher stroke contrast and a steeper connection between stems and arcs in, for example, h n m and u. This is followed by different standard shapes for a and y, supporting the dynamic movement of the lowercase in general. A wide range of OpenType features such as ligatures, old style figures, fractions, case-sensitive shapes and many more, are available for professional and contemporary typesetting. This is completed with eleven alternative glyph sets, enabling a quick customization of the typeface. The family supports up to 92 languages and comes with 500+ glyphs per font.

Coming Together contains over 400 glyphs and is supplied as a single, cross-platform OpenType font. All glyphs are accessible using OpenType-savvy applications, Unicode-savvy utilities, the Character Map utility on Windows, and FontBook on Mac OS X. Nearly 400 designers contributed to “Coming Together”: Adam Humphries, Aditi Dilip, Adrien Midzic, Afraa Gutub, Al Insan Lashley, Alan Lima Coutinho, Alaric Garnier, Alejandro Cabrera Avila, Alejandro Lo Celso, Alejandro Paul, Alessandro Segalini, Alex Cameron, Alex Coblentz, Alexander Trubin, Alexandre Freitas, Alexey Murashko, Alicia Jabin, Aline Horta, Allison Dominguez, Amanda Postle, Amy Brown, Amy Papaelias, Anderson Maschio, Andrea Emery, Andres Perez, Andrew Boardman, Andrew Jesernig, Andrey Furlan, Andrij Shevchenko, Ann Tripepi, Antonio Gutierrez, Antony Kitson, Anushree Kapoor, Anya Cam, AP303 Estudio Design, Becky Krohe, Beejay, Ben Mitchell, Benjamin K. Shown, Benjamin Varin, Brad McNally, Brad Nelson, Bradley Trinnaman, Brady Baltezore, Brandon Horne, Breck Campbell, Brian J. Bonislawsky, Brian Jaramillo, Brian Jongseong Park, Brian Mueller, Brock French, Bruce Rodgers, Bruno Pugens, Bryan Angelo Lim, Buro Reng, Caitlin Martin-Frost, Calou, Carlos Fabián Camargo Guerrero, Carlos Vidal, Cayo Navarro, Cesar Puertas, Chank Diesel, Charles Williams, Chris Lozos, Chris Trude, Christophe Badani, Christy Lai, Claes Källarsson, Claire Coullon, Claudio Piccinini, Colby Cook, Craig Eliason, Cristina Pegnataro, Curve Doctor, Dan DiSorbo, Dan Liggins, Dan Rubin, Daniel Justi, Daniele Capo, Dav(id Hubner), Dave Bailey, Dave Cohen, David Jonathan Ross, David Sudweeks, David Thometz, Dawn Mercurio, Delve Withrington, Diana van de Blaak, Didier Mazellier, Diederik Corvers, Dino Santos, Dmytro Pobiedash, Donald Beekman, Dries Wiewauters, Duncan Bancroft, Ed Hoskin, Eddy Ymeri, Edineide Oliveira, Eduardo Manso, Eduardo Rodríguez Tunni, Eero Antturi, Eli Castellanos, Elias Bitencourt, Elias Stenalt Werner, Elman Padilla, Emery Miller, Emily Leong, Emily Maher, Enrico Limcaco, Eric Frisino, Eric Stine, Erik Brandt, Espen, Evan Moss, Evangeline Rupert, Fabiane Lima, Fabio Foncati, Fabrizio Schiavi, Farbod Kokabi, Felipe Lekich, Francisco Martin, Frank Riccio, Frans van Bellen, Gary Holmes, Gautam Rao, Gayle Hendricks, Gene Buban, Georg Herold-Wildfellner, George Aytoun, Gerd Wiescher, Giles Edwards, Gist Studio, Glen Barry, Glenn Parsons, Goro Mihok, Grace Engels, Grant Alexander, Grant Hutchinson, Greg Smith, Gunnar Swanson, Gustavo Machado, Hans Nieuwstraten, Harold Lohner, Hilary Salmon, Hillary Fayle, Hrant H Papazian, Hugo Gallipoli, Ian Drolet, Ian Lynam, Ilona Kincses, Isac Corrêa Rodrigues, Ivette Chacon, Ivo Federspiel, Jacques Le Bailly, Jae-hyoung Choi, Jaime Vasquez, James Edmondson, James Grieshaber, James L. Stirling, James Lukens-Gable, James Martin, James Ockelford, James Puckett, Jarbas Gomes, Jarett Knuth, Jason Adam, Jason Robinson, Javier Suzuki, Jay Chu, Jayson Zaleski, Jean Francois Porchez, Jeff Fisher, Jeff Jarvis, Jeffrey Vanlerberghe, Jelmar Geertsma, Jennifer Clarke, Jennifer Rutherford, Jens Kutilek, Jerry Allen Rose, Jess Latham, Jesse Ragan, Jessica Page, Jesvin Yeo Puay Hwa, Jim Ford, Jim Lyles, Jim Rimmer, Jin Ping, Jo De Baerdemaeker, Joachim Muller-Lance, Joanna Abbott Moss, Joe Francis, Joe VanDerBos, Joel Vilas Boas (J85), John Downer, John Flanagan, John Foley, John Langdon, John Lopez, John Lyttle, John Skelton, Johnny Dib, Jonathan Hughes, Jonathan Pierini, Jos Buivenga, Jose Luis Coyotl Mixcoatl, Juan Acosta, Judd Crush, Judith Lee, Julie Johnson, Julie Oakley, Julie Thomas, Juliet Shen, Jumin Lee, Jurgen Weltin, Justin Callahan, Justin Chodzko, Karel Piska, Karen MacKay, Karin Eberhardt, Karin van Soest, Karla Perez, Katie Parry, Katie Snape, Katri Haycock, Katy Brooks, Kelley Garrard, Kelly Redling, Kent Lew, Kevin D’Souza, Kevin J. Boynton, Kevin McDermott, Kim Arispe, Kokin, Kristen Caston, Kristen Hartman, Kristian Möller, Kristians Šics, Kyle Jones, L Bollinger, Lan Huang, Larry Van Dyke, Laura Ricker, Laura Worthington, Laurel Wilson, LeAndrea James, Lijklema Design, Linda McNeil, Lise Barreto, Louie Crumbley, Louis Duchesne, Luke Dorny, Luke Stouffer, Madison Cramer, Måns Björkman, Marc Salinas Claret, Marcus Leis Allion, Marcus Parker, Marcus Sterz, Marie-Anne Verougstraete, Mark Simonson, Martin Majoor, Matheus Barbosa, Mathias Forslund, Matt Desmond, Matt McInerney, Matt Millette, Matthew Jerauld, Max Kisman, Michael Browers, Michael Bundscherer, Michael Cina, Michael Doret, Michael G. Adkins, Michael Hernan, Michael Paul Young, Michael Wallner, Miguel Catopodis, Mikael Engblom, Mike Jarboe, Mike Petschek, Miriam Martincic, Moira Sheehan, Monica Pedrique, Nacho Gallego, Naomi Atkinson, Natanael Gama, Nathanael Ng, Neil Fox, Neil Patel, Neil Summerour, Neil Woodyatt, Ngoc Ngo, Nguyen Pham, Nicholas Curtis, Nicole Hudson, Nicole Sowinski, Nicolien van der Keur, Nina Stössinger, Noah Scalin, Ojasvi Mohanty, Oleg Macujev, Olivia Choi, Ong Fang Zheng, Pata Macedo, Patrick Gallagher, Patrycja Zywert, Paul Hunt, Paul Langman, Pedro Moura, Pedro Paz, Per Ohlsson, PJ Onori, Premm Design Ltd, Rae Kaiser, Rafael Carozzi, Rafael Cordeiro, Rafael Neder, Randy Jones, Ray Larabie, Raymond Forbes, Ressa McCray, Ricardo Esteves, Ricardo Martins, Riccardo Sartori, Richard Kegler, Richard Miller, Rob Keller, Roballo, Rose Coplon, Roy Rub, Rudo van der Velden, Russell McGorman, Ryan Rushing, Ryan Thorpe, Sander Neijnens, Sara Cross, Scott Boms, Scott Fisk, Sergio Jimenez, Shi-Min Chin, Sílvio Gabriel Spannenberg, Soohyen Park, Sorin Bechira, Stanley Friesesk, Stefan Hattenbach, Stefan Kjartansson, Stephen Lay, Steve Harrison, Steve Marsh, Steve Matteson, Steve Mehallo, Steve Zelle, Steven Bonner, Steven Wulf, Stuart Brown, Stuart Ford, Stuart Sandler, Sue Zafarana, Sulekha Rajkumar, Susan Surface, Tanya T Stroh, Taylor Loman, Ted Ullrich, Teja Ideja, Tena Letica, Terrance Weinzierl, Theo França, Thiago Martins, Tiffany Wardle, Tim Whalen, Titus Nemeth, Tom Plate, Tom Rickner, Tomato Košir, Tomi Haaparanta, Travis Kochel, Troy Leinster, Tyler Heron, Type Mafia, Vanessa Robertson, Veronika Burian, Victor Esteves, Victor Zuniga, Viktor Nübel, Viviana G, Wellinton Reis, Wilson Thomas, Wolfgang Homola, Xavier Dupre, Xerxes Irani, Zvika Rosenberg These designers represented the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Croatia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, England, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Siberia, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Ukraine, United States, Venezuela, Vietnam

Adi Stern’s Noam Text shows that typographic progress is often in the small things — in the perfecting of familiar traditions and in staying loyal to the spirit of what came before. It can’t really be called progress unless it honours its history. In this way, TypeTogether is happy to introduce Noam Text: A Hebrew and Latin serif font that builds on its heritage with the twin tools of honour and progress. Since 1908, the Frank-Rühl fonts have dominated the Hebrew book and newspaper market. Noam Text’s design goal was to create a coherent family with both Latin and Hebrew serif text typefaces, each authentic to its own script, and which would serve as an alternative to last century’s predecessor. In short order, users will recognise Noam Text as a source of progress in its bilingual abilities. Hebrew and Latin have opposite reading directions, creating many issues: opposing directionality of the open counters; vertical stress in Latin, but horizontal in Hebrew; fewer extenders in Hebrew; and no Hebrew capital letters. All these have been taken into account in Noam Text’s modern design. Of unique importance — all punctuation marks have a Hebrew version, which makes each script complete and uncompromising. Among other technologically advanced details, Noam Text was programmed for all expected scenarios of mixing Hebrew, Latin, figures, and punctuation. Noam Text is intended mostly for setting long texts, so it strives to achieve maximum legibility in minimum space with its large x-height, short and fairly condensed Latin capitals, large and open counters, and low contrast. Originally derived from the Hebrew, the shallow horizontal curves and strong baseline serifs provide dynamism and enhance the reading flow. Noam Text Latin’s italic is rounded and reading friendly, is condensed to generate a lighter texture than the roman, and has a flowing stance. These virtues help it endure harsh printing conditions and subpar inks and paper. Noam Text’s three total weights provide a proper solution for integrating texts in both scripts, as well as a contemporary alternative for use in books, newspapers, and magazine design. Aligned with TypeTogether’s commitment to produce high-quality type for the global market, the complete Noam Text family displays an impressive amount of discretion, applying to wide use-cases by not edging too close to religious motifs or imbibing in secular indulgence. This means Noam Text can be the go-to family across the board and capitalise on the desire for clear typographic progress in this modern age.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. This version of Bodoni was done by Morris Fuller Benton for American Typefounders between 1907 and 1911. Although some of the finer details of the original Bodoni types are missing, this family has the high contrast and vertical stress typical of modern types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising, and text."

I wanted to create a "handwriting" font which could be used professionally. I have often needed such a font with a variety of weights and styles for a particular project and have had to resort to mixing fonts, creating a rather messy, amateur job. Camy is named for a little village in South West France where I did much of the initial work on this font. Camy is ideal for contemporary display work, comes in ten styles, and has a contemporary appeal with its casual, easy to read letters. Camy was designed as a total professional package for designers looking for a handwritten font suitable for all kinds of contemporary display work: the idea being that once you have the Camy Professional Pack you don't have to waste time searching for other handwritten fonts. The Family: LIGHT -- NARROW - light weight, condensed width, delicate line -- MEDIUM - light weight, delicate line -- WIDE - light weight, expanded width, delicate line NORMAL WEIGHT -- NARROW - of medium weight and condensed width - perfect for limited space -- MEDIUM - of medium weight -- WIDE - of medium weight and expanded width BLACK - for best readability -- NARROW - condensed width for bolder statements in small areas without losing legibility -- MEDIUM - for bolder statements -- WIDE - expanded width for bolder statements FAT -- WIDE - for maximum impact Use a combination of styles for product branding, book covers, invitations, greeting cards. The Camy combination works well for both headings and body text. Camy contains over 250 characters - (upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals, symbols and accented characters are present). It has all the accented characters used in the major European languages.

A geometric Art Déco multi-widths type family 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 is 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 Déco spirit is mainly capitals. Gérard Blanchard has pointed to Jean François that Art Nouveau typefaces designed by Bellery-Desfontaines was featured before the Banjo with this principle of two widths capitals. A simple sentence will be as diverse in its representations, as the number of Anisette variables available to the user. With Anisette, typography becomes a game, as to design any title page as flamboyant as if it has been specially drawn for it. Two typefaces, many possibilities 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. Anisette Petite proposes capitals in a square proportion, intermediate between the two other sets, all of which are interchangeable. In addition, Anisette Petite also includes a set of lowercase letters. Its style references shop signs present in our cities throughout the twentieth century. Anisette, an Art Déco typeface Anisette: Reveal your typographic expertise Club des directeurs artistiques, 46e palmarès Bukva:raz 2001 Slanted: Contemporary Typefaces #24

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. Parma was designed by the monotype Design Team after studying Bodoni's steel punches at the Museo Bodoniana in Parma, Italy. They also referred to specimens from the "Manuale Tipografico," a monumental collection of Bodoni's work published by his widow in 1818.

Embark on a journey of refined typography with the Elio & Oliver Font Family v2, an exquisite upgrade that seamlessly integrates italics into its nine meticulously crafted weights, so you will get 18 fonts, 9 weights - from Thin to Black, and an italics version for each of them. Inspired by the timeless elegance and undeniable allure of Italy, this sans serif typeface captures the essence of sophistication and refinement, now enhanced with a touch of expressive flair. Italic Magnificence - A Symphony of Style The new italics bring a captivating dimension to the Elio & Oliver family, adding a graceful fluidity and dynamic rhythm to your designs. Each italic weight complements its corresponding roman counterpart, creating a cohesive and harmonious visual aesthetic. Unveiling the Full Spectrum of Elegance From the delicate Ultra Light to the bold intensity of Black, Elio & Oliver v2 offers an expansive range of weights, allowing you to tailor your designs to any project or mood. Whether you're crafting elegant editorial layouts, crafting impactful branding materials, or crafting sophisticated digital interfaces, this font family seamlessly adapts to your creative vision. Language Versatility for Global Impact Recognizing the power of language diversity, Elio & Oliver v2 boasts full language support, enabling you to communicate your message effectively to a global audience. With seamless compatibility across English, Italian, French, Spanish, and beyond, this font embraces the richness and cultural nuances of diverse languages. Captivate Attention, Leave a Lasting Impression Elio & Oliver v2 elevates your creative projects to new heights of sophistication, infusing them with an aura of refined elegance. Its graceful curves, captivating italics, and versatile weights will effortlessly capture attention and leave a lasting impression on viewers. Step into the Realm of Timeless Design Immerse yourself in the world of Elio & Oliver v2, where every letter narrates a story and every curve embodies the essence of impeccable design. Let the spirit of Italian chicness and timeless elegance guide your creative endeavors. Unleash the Power of Elio & Oliver v2 and Elevate Your Designs Discover Elio & Oliver v2 and transform your creative projects into masterpieces of timeless elegance. Join the ranks of designers who elevate their work with this exquisite typeface and unleash the power of sophisticated typography. Happy creating everyone!

Get your Aussie on! The new typeface, Ainslie, with its mix of influences from Oz, makes its mark as the first semi-serif from insigne Design. Ainslie, named for Mt. Ainslie and Canberra’s inner suburb of the same name, was originally developed for the Canberra Australia Centennial Typeface Competition. Canberra is Australia’s capital, and it’s a planned city designed by American Walter Burley Griffin, a contemporary and one-time associate of Frank Lloyd Wright. Griffin’s plan involved a distinctly geometric design with several focal points--one of which was Mt. Ainslie. This same purely geometric scheme is now the basis for insigne’s new release. Similar to the Chatype project in its scope, its challenge, and the way its concept was developed, Ainslie incorporates influences from Canberra and surrounding areas to form a font that is uniquely Australian. In comparison, Chatype was developed for the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee by insigne in conjunction with designer Robbie de Villiers. Chatype took elements from Chattanooga’s industrial character and Cherokee past and merged them with the area’s technological influences. Likewise, Ainslie takes Canberra’s distinct, geometric design and blends it with the organic, flowing effect of aboriginal art. Add in touches from the smooth, aerodynamic design of the boomerang and Ainslie gives you a look uniquely Australian yet usable in a wide range of applications. The fashionable typeface includes a multitude of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType-enabled application. These stylish alternates along with a number of swashes as well as meticulously refined details with ball terminals and alternate titling caps keep the font well accessorized. Also included are capital swash alternates, old style figures, and small caps. Peruse the PDF brochure to see these features in action. OpenType enabled applications such as the Adobe suite or Quark can take full advantage of the automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also offers the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. While Ainslie wasn't selected as the final font in the Canberra competition, the outcome allowed for additional adjustments to the typeface. Several approaches were attempted for the final product including a technological hexagonal concept, which may still be developed to another form later. Some of the organic forms were removed and substituted with more abrupt endings, leaving the face looking pretty spiffy and a fair bit more legible. In the end, Ainslie was pulled back to the basic forms from which it was started. Give it a go for your next project. It’s guaranteed to be anything but a barbeque stopper.

Gaslon is a slight reinterpretation and major expansion of a 1973 film type called Corvina Black, originally designed for VGC by A. Bihari. While the original typeface was popular in its own right, there were some things in it that were too quirky to work in the display applications it was intended for. Some of the letter combinations just didn't work to their visual optimum. For example the a and o were too similar, ditto the C and G, the E, F and J were too overwhelming to be set properly within certain display uses. Gaslon eliminates these problems by the inclusion of plenty of alternates for the vast majority of the original letters. In fact, the original a is itself now an alternate to a gorgeous new one. The Gaslon Alt font includes tremendous possibilities for both unicase use, and proper use in conjunction with the main font. This is our true homage to a typeface that had great potential more than three decades ago, but was overlooked by digitizers because of a few quirks it had in film type contexts. Full of curves and invitation, Gaslon ranks very high among the friendliest poster faces ever made. It is ideal for friendly store signs, children book covers, and plenty of other applications. In fact, if you're planning on contributing to a few protests around your neighborhood or city, you would probably be better off using Gaslon to help your sign/placard carry words and slogans that are big but friendly. Nothing beats "DOWN WITH GAS PRICES" set in a nice imaginative mix of the many Gaslon letters. The OpenType version of Gaslon is a single font that contains all the alternates and niceties programmed within features accessible by OT-friendly programs.

Minimal, modular, modern—at first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of the »future«. Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the egdes – like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »egdy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentation all on information in a nonconfomist way. Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-set-principle. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects or highlighting within the letters. For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch – Lithos, designed by Koma Amok, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability. Garamond Pemiere Pro was designed by Robert Slimbach, and released in 2005."

Why do we need another typeface? This is a prickly question often asked of typeface designers. Depending on who you ask, the answer in simplified form is usually one of two: 1. As the basis of written communication, type design carries social responsibility, so we must continue to improve legibility. 2. Type design is a form of artistic expression. Without art, life is not worth living. The best work, of course, accomplishes both. Xavier Dupré, the designer of the Malaga typeface family, has at least one leg securely planted in the latter notion. He believes, like others, that within typeface design most legibility needs have been worked out and that today we are satisfying aesthetic desires. We design typefaces to differentiate our communications. Type design is primarily a formal exercise reflecting our personal quirks, technological obsessions, and cultural heritage. In case of Dupré’s work, issues of cultural heritage and personal quirks are of particular consequence. An incessant traveler, he visited the following countries during the development of the Malaga type family: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, France, Belgium, and finally, Spain, where his choice for the name Malaga originates (Malaga is a port city in southern Spain). Dupré’s home is where his laptop is. He travels with a 12- or 15 inch PowerBook, without a printer, and with sporadic access to his reference books and other historical documents. All he needs is a table and chair. He even learned to design without a mouse since hotel and cafe tables are often too small to also fit a mousepad. Dupré is the new global designer who can take disparate influences and fluidly process the information into a coherent whole. Malaga is a case in point. It is inspired by ideas ranging from blackletter to Latin fonts, and from the Quattrocento’s first Venetian antiquas to brush stroke types. This makes Malaga a richly animated font saturated with unorthodox detail. Its black and bold weights are particularly suited for headlines and short texts, while the subtle modulation and moderate contrast in the regular and medium weights makes it perfectly readable in extended text settings. While Malaga doesn’t claim to resolve any particular legibility issues, it is nonetheless perfectly readable and will impart any design with a healthy dose of visual character.

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.

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.

Futura is the fully developed prototype of the twentieth century Geometric Sanserif. The form is ancient, Greek capitals being inscribed by the Cretans twenty-five hundred years ago at the time of Pythagoras in the Gortyn Code, by the Imperial Romans, notably in the tomb of the Scipios, by classical revival architects in eighteenth century London, which formed the basis for Caslon’s first sanserif typeface in 1817. Some aspects of the Geometric sanserif survived in the flood of Gothics that followed, particularly in the work of Vincent Figgins. In 1927, stimulated by the Bauhaus experiments in geometric form and the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Erbar, Paul Renner sketched a set of Bauhaus forms; working from these, the professional letter design office at Bauer reinvented the sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles and brought the Universal Alphabet and Erbar to their definitive typographic form. Futura became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century. Ironically, given its generic past, Futura is the only typeface to have been granted registration under copyright as an original work of art, and, further irony, given the key part played by the Bauer letter design office, the full copyright belongs to Renner and his heirs. This decision in a Frankfurt court implies that a further small group of older typefaces may also be covered by copyright in Germany, particularly those designed for Stempel by Hermann Zapf. This situation appears to be limited to this small group of faces in this one country, although protection of designers’ rights in newer typefaces is now possible in France and Germany through legislation deriving from the 1973 Vienna Treaty for the protection of typefaces. Mergenthaler’s Spartan is a close copy of Futura; Ludlow’s Tempo is less close. Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, German yet anti-Nazi... with hindsight the choice of Futura as Volkswagen’s ad font since the 1960s looks inevitable.

American graphic designer William Addison Dwiggins' (W.A.D. for short) first typefaces were the Metro family, designed from 1927 onward. The project grew out of Dwiggins' dissatisfaction with the new European sans serif typefaces of the day, such as Futura, Erbar, and Kabel, a feeling he expressed in his seminal book Layout in Advertising. Urged by Mergenthaler Linotype to create a solution for the problem, Dwiggins began a professional relationship that would span over the next few decades. The first Metro family typeface to be released was Metroblack, brought to market by Linotype in 1929 (Metroblack #2™ the only one of the two versions that Mergenthaler Linotype eventually put into production which is available in digital form). With more of a humanist quality than the geometric styles popular in Europe at the time, Dwiggins drew what he believed to be the ideal sans serif for headlines and advertising copy. Metroblack has a warmer character than the Modernists' achievements, and the type is full of mannered curves and angled terminals (Metroblack also has an astoundingly beautiful Q). The other weights of the Metro family, Metromedium #2™ and Metrolite #2™, were designed by Mergenthaler Linotype's design office under Dwiggins' supervision. Despite having been created more than three-quarters of a century ago, the Metro family types have aged well, and remain a popular sans serif family. Although spec'd less often than other bestsellers, like Futura, Metro continues to find many diverse uses. The typeface has appeared throughout Europe and the North America for decades in newspapers and magazines, and can even help create a great brand image when used in logos and corporate identity. Dwiggins ranks among the most influential graphic designers and typeface designers of the 20th Century. He has several other quality fonts in the Linotype Originals, including the serif text faces Electra™ and New Caledonia™, as well as Caravan™, a font of typographic ornaments."

ITC Legacy¿ was designed by American Ronald Arnholm, who was first inspired to develop the typeface when he was a graduate student at Yale. In a type history class, he studied the 1470 book by Eusebius that was printed in the roman type of Nicolas Jenson. Arnholm worked for years to create his own interpretation of the Jenson roman, and he succeeded in capturing much of its beauty and character. As Jenson did not include a companion italic, Arnholm turned to the sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond for inspiration for the italics of ITC Legacy. Arnholm was so taken by the strength and integrity of these oldstyle seriffed forms that he used their essential skeletal structures to develop a full set of sans serif faces. ITC Legacy includes a complete family of weights from book to ultra, with Old style Figures and small caps, making this a good choice for detailed book typography or multi-faceted graphic design projects. In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e."" ITC Legacy® Sans font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.