“Hey, look at me!” cried the new advertising typefaces. With the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution came an esthetic revolution in type design. Brash, loud, fat display faces elbowed their way into the crowd of book faces, demanding attention. Those who admired traditional book types harumphed and complained. Robert Thorne had fired the opening round with his Fatface. With the cutting of Figgins Antique, the battle was well and truly joined. Job printing came into its own and it seemed like everything changed. The world of printing had been turned upside down and the gentile book-type aficionados recoiled in horror much as the rural landed gentry recoiled at the upstart middle class shopkeepers and manufacturers. William Savage, approvingly quoted by Daniel Berkeley Updike over a hundred years later, described the new display faces as “a barbarous extreme.” These were exciting times. According to Geoffrey Dowding in his An Introduction To The History Of Printing Types, “The types which we know by the name of Egyptian were first shown by Vincent Figgins in his specimen book of 1815, under the name Antique.” Of course, dating the design is not quite as simple as that. Nicolete Gray points out that Figgins used the same “1815” title page on his specimen books from 1815 to 1821, adding pages as needed without regard to archival issues. As a result, there are different versions of the 1815 specimen book. In those copies that include the new Antique, that specific specimen is printed on paper with an 1817 watermark. The design is dated by the 1817 watermark rather than the 1815 title page. Figgins Antique ML is an all-cap font. This typeface is for bold statements. Don't waste it on wimpy whispers of hesitant whimsies. And please don't use it for extended text -- it will only give someone a headache. Think boldly. Use it boldly. Set it tight. Go ahead and run the serifs together. Solid and stolid, this face is very, very English. FIGGINS ANTIQIE ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 331 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: liga and pnum. 3. Added 86 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Redesigned mathamatical operators. 6. Included of both tabular (standard) & proportional numbers (optional). 7. Refined various glyph outlines.

The original Gelato Script has been updated and improved, not once, but twice. This version is kept here for legacy and compatibility issues, but I would encourage new users to check out Gelato Luxe or Gelato Fresco instead. Gelato Script is a smooth-flowing typeface with an air of familiarity. Influenced by both formal scripts and mid-Twentieth Century hand lettering. The power of OpenType is used with precision in the Contextual Alternate feature to make sure letters connect seamlessly, t’s cross where they can and swashes don't crash into neighboring glyphs. 781 glyphs make up this font, which is capable of speaking in many different languages. Alternate forms are grouped into stylistic sets to make it easy to change the mood of the text. For example, ss01 makes droopable letters drop below the baseline to break it up a little if required. I recommend using it sparingly, one glyph at a time, but if you do enable it for a whole chunk of text, the clever OpenType programming ensures that it doesn't go overboard. Sets 2, 3 and 4 bring about alternate forms of S, s, B and Q. Set 5 changes AE and OE to some perhaps controversial Upper/lowercase ligatures. Engage ss06 for the underline feature. After a word, simply type two or more underscores and a line extends backwards under the word you just typed. Don't worry if you have to break for a descender, the OpenType programming will take care of making sure it connects properly to the preceding character. Sets 7 and 8 are for alternate ampersands, and ss09 swaps the script r for a regular shaped r. There are swash capitals available for most uppercase letters, and the OpenType programming makes sure there is room for them under or over the following letters. There’s also a good amount of ligatures thrown in. The localised forms feature can be set for Polish, where acutes get steeper and lslash takes on its script form; Dutch, where IJ and ij digraphs become cool ligatured combinations; and Romanian and Moldovan, where cedillas are subsituted for comma accents. The stylistic alternates feature groups together a few of the stylistic sets for users that can't get to them directly. Gelato Script is a highly usable, powerful typeface. Perfect for everything from food packaging to wedding invitations, sports team logos to magazine headings. Use it however you see fit. Just one thing - it’s not designed for all-caps settings, so avoid that at all costs!