So many designers hate Comic Sans. They think people who don't know design are overusing this funny little friendly font, which is nearly every time out of place. Some years ago, type designer Hannes von Döhren created a free alternative to Comic Sans. The difference: It has serifs and a much cooler look. The big success of the HVD Comic Serif pushed Von Döhren to create a Pro Version with an eastern, central and Western European language support. “The HVD Comic Serif should spread all over and make the world a little bit better.” says Hannes.

While helping produce a trade magazine years ago, I admired the hand-lettering of the art director -- a woman named Marydale -- and suggested she let me model a font after her penmanship. She agreed and drew out the alphabet, and I launched an old copy of Fontographer and (to shorten a long story) ended up developing my very first digital typeface. Which has since, astonishingly, become famous worldwide. So now the real Marydale gets the mixed blessing of seeing her handwriting (and name) plastered all over the planet. Full release has regular, bold, and black weights.

Endgame font was made using a very, VERY bad brush and Chinese ink. I had bought a bunch of brushes some time ago and I discovered that the hairs had been treated with some goo to keep them from sticking out. The goo didn’t really come off, so when I started to draw the glyphs for this font, the brush strokes were kind of wild. In the end, I really liked it (even though I will never again buy that particular brand of brushes). Endgame is a wild brush font. Comes with the works: diacritics, ligatures and alternates.

Morning News is the sister font of Evening News which I designed some years ago for use with my local newspaper Abendzeitung. Morning News is an adaption, a little bit rounder, which gives the font a much softer touch. The general design dates back to the pre-Hitler era, the time when Germany had already lost the first World War and was taking a short deadly breath to start the second big war. Lets hope there will be a day when there will never be another war in Europe (or elsewhere!). Another new peaceful font by your pacifistic designer, Gert Wiescher.

Handwriting of a strong Carelian personality revived: It’s autumn time once again, harvesting season, mushroom & berry time – the favourite season of my Karelian aunt Katri. A postcard she sent me more than twenty years ago had inspired me to SyysScript, “Script of Autumn” in Finnish. Katri had a very kind but also energetic personality, and I always thought her handwriting was a mirror of it. By making SyysScript I felt I could revive some of her unforgettable character. My Finnish autumn font has by now become a favourite for many and is branding fine food in both the Eastern and the Western hemisphere – even far beyond the arctic circle. “SyysScript“ is actually a growing family. For enhanced functionality in small sizes I added “SyysScript Eco” a year ago, a style with shortened extensions and simplified letterforms especially suited for packaging. And this autumn, a special one for Finland which is celebrating its 99th birthday, SyysScript grew again: Two long awaited newcomers, “SyysScript FeltTip” and “SyysScript FeltTip Eco” joined the family. They are bolder and softer than the previous styles but keep their positive, lighthearted feel. Use them to make a powerful individual mark on any background. – They are equally well suited for paper, packaging, a screen or even a concrete wall! Language support: Western and Central European, Extended Cyrillic.

It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting. Conveniently, my mother then still volunteered at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. She made copies of the letters of a few famous Texans -- Houston, Austin, Travis, Burnet, Rusk. Thomas J. Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. I hadn't realized at the time what a challenge it'd be to render a realistic-looking script face, but the result has, in fact, filled a niche.

Neo Afrique sans a neo-futuristic typeface with a modern decorative twist. This typeface design came out of further development and refinement on an original typeface that i created some time ago, Durango Sans. True in nature to it's predecessor, Neo Afrique was also born out of this desire to fuse two different aesthetics, the geometric Neo-Futuristic aesthetic, fused with flourishing decorative forms from Art Nouveau and the later Lubalinesque aesthetics. This typeface will form part of a larger body of work that is meant to be an exploration of Afrikan neo-futurism, using the immense power of visual-linguistic narratives to catalyse new cultural movement and perception.

Inversion is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

Blacketor came about from hand lettering I had done for my own personal use several years ago. It remained unfinished until now. I was going for a more traditional serif font but in the process of play various versions came about while playing with the serifs, in an attempt to be slightly different. Many versions fell to the wayside as I learned more about what didn’t work than what did. What came about was a clean font with large open counters and short ascenders for an easy read. All caps works well for a bold but not shouty statement. A good font for Headlines and callouts as well as logotypes.

Project D is the fourth typeface released by DM Founts. It was inspired by the infamous graffiti atop the former Heygate Estate in South London, which I had passed by numerous times on the overground train years ago. Heygate Estate has since been replaced by soulless luxury flats, as per the gentrification agenda. The letters don't entirely match the graffiti as they were created from memory, but I thought such a profound statement should be honoured. Project D is best used for impact at large sizes, although it should scale well. Use it for computer interfaces, retro headings and anything involving defiance, espionage, infiltration and spy games.

We use an old hand juicer at home: a cheap plastic one that we bought a long time ago at a Swedish home appliances and furniture giant. We haven never considered upgrading to an electronic one, as it still works, it doesn’t use electricity and we don’t really use it that often. This font is called Juicer. It was not named after our manual juicer, or any juicer in particular. It was just a word that seemed to fit the font nicely. Juicer font is a handwritten, script-ish kinda font that comes in two great styles and contains a set of double letter ligatures.

Grafika is a completely original design, done in an “Art Deco” spirit reminiscent of the 1920s and ‘30s. I designed Grafika many years ago to be typeset for title cards, and both opening and end credits for the Merchant/Ivory feature film “Savages”. After the film, the design languished in my archives until I rediscovered it. I have digitally redrawn Grafika, completing it with all the alternates, ligatures, math, foreign accented characters and punctuation that weren’t required of the original design for film. Grafika is strongest when set in upper and lowercase—its unique caps extending below the baseline—although all caps settings are encouraged as well.

Legestue is danish and means playroom. But perhaps that translation is too direct. Legestue is a place where you can come with your kids and play with other kids. Kinda like a kindergarten, but in much smaller scale. I attended a Legestue when my kids were like 2 years old. But that's a looong time ago! I like the idea of just dropping by and see who's playing and who's around. And the same goes for this font - each letter is off and different, and quite playful. Also, the letters has a crunchy outline, which made me think of some of the cookies I ate at the Legestue :)

The Raphael of Flowers is what they called Pierre-Joseph Redouté a couple hundred years ago. The Belgian native became famous in France, where he painted floral watercolors for both Marie Antoinnette and Empress Josephine. But what cemented his legacy was his perfection of a stipple engraving technique that brought his art to the masses. Botanical Scribe is modeled after the neat, cursive hand-inscribed legends on these antique prints. Because it simulates handlettering, the font retains a warm, organic quality not seen in fancy modern scripts while remaining both elegant and legible. (Its many ligatures lends to this authenticity.) Good for formal invitations or historical simulations.

A really, really long time ago, I watched a movie called ‘The China Syndrome’ (starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemon and Michael Douglas). It was one of those disaster movies that were quite popular at the time (I also recall airports, alien viruses and skyscraper fires). Anyway, when I finished this font, I suddenly (and quite inexplicably) remembered that movie, so I named this font after it. China Syndrome is a legible brush font - ideal for your product packaging and halloween posters. Maybe use it for a metal album cover, a book about nuclear disasters or, dunno, the logo of your really strong coffee brand. Whatever. Just enjoy!

Eccles is another of our 'Early Victorian' typefaces, a series we started with the Wolverhampton family a little while ago. It might be described as 'extreme-Tuscan' in style but has a delicacy that many other Tuscan faces seem to lack. It's ideal for giving design projects a clear period feel, particularly in design and advertising work. We also see it having considerable application in preparing invitations to a certain type of happy event. At the other extreme, some of our younger associates have described it as 'your latest Steampunk font'. So perhaps we'll just have to settle on it having a split personality...

Cruller is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

Flyoika is a slab serif family with a fairly low x-height, long ascenders, and considerable contrast. The family has five weights, each with an italics and it can be used for either display or text. Flyoika was not designed to meet a particular need but rather out of curiosity. Years ago I had designed two slab serif families, FlyHigh and Euroika, that I recently noticed had a lot of similarities and I wondered what a blend of the two would look like. Several corresponding characters in the two families are considerably different and in cleaning up the results, I usually opted for simplicity. The name "Flyoika" reflects these origins.

Saugatuck is a cap-height only display typeface inspired by nature. With it’s roots based on a few hand-drawn characters from nearly a century ago by the pen artist W.E. Dennis, Saugatuck now exists as a two-variant typeface. It contains all of the usual characters and accents, most of the math, plus some of the more esoteric characters. Each letter A-Z has a alternate in it’s associated lowercase character to allow you to have even more varied, natural-looking text. Works great for display purposes, seasonal designs, and times when you need to invoke a little bit of a less-structured, environmental feeling.

The origin of AM Floriana is already several decades ago. At a time when there was no photo set and the choice of metal type fonts was still very manageable, Alois Menacher received an order to design a custom business logo from a flower shop. He then created a hand-drawn lettering based on the form of leaves and plants. Now Alois Menacher professionally designed and developed AM Floriana on the basis of this lettering. AM Floriana is ideally suited for packaging design, as well as for display design and logo design. AM Floriana is available as a Bold version and will soon be complemented by further cuts.

This font was originally designed side by side with my first attempt at a semi serif typeface in 1997. The design made it through to full development only a couple years ago when our studio decided to complete the regular weight for a local project here in Bangkok. The face is a traditional serif with narrow stem (somewhat like sans serif) and industrial stroke. A good mix of Bangkok character where you can find Wat (old buddhist temple) next to futuristic high rise. This font was shown in Klingspor-Museum Offenbach, Germany, at a Typographic & Type Design exhibition Schrift in Form 3-26 September 2008.

Font Makenn01 is inspired by Asen Petrov’s Perfograma font , based on in the IBM Harvard Mark 1 machines the first electromagnetic computer presented by Howard Aiken this november 84 years ago ,in fact this basic technology received its instructions and data trough punched tapes . It is therefore an interpretation in wich circumferences have been used instead of circles linked with a line , and the name used also refers to Mark 1 calling it Makenn 01 , giving a touch of identity since this name resembles , Carmen my name , the 01, is like a restart of 0 , with the 1 of the Mark 1. It has Greek and Cyrillic characters.

Ralph M. Unger, (Arno Drescher), 2006, (1936) Originally, Arabella Pro was designed by Arnold Drescher around 1936/1939. Drescher created this wonderful script for former Germany type foundry Joh. Wagner. The typeface has been redesigned, digitized, completed and expanded as OpenType Pro in the profonts studio.Arabella Pro comes in two versions, light and medium, each with a large selection of manually designed ligatures and alternates, i.e. swashed upper case to make this naturally flowing script design a perfect font for OTF-savvy applications like e.g. InDesign or Quark Xpress 7.Arabella Pro light and medium are perfect partners for any sans serif, especially for Futura. It is perfectly suited for anything in the area of headlines, posters, invitations etc. However, since it is very well legible, it can also be used individually for small text blocks.

Two years ago I went on a camping holiday in England with my wife and (then two) small children. The first stop was a nature campsite near the village of Bodiam in East Sussex. My son wanted to see a real castle, so I figured Bodiam Castle was the 'realest' of them all! He loved it, as the castle had a moat, crenellated walls, a bunch of towers and a guy dressed up as a knight. Bodiam font is a rough didone-ish affair. It is all caps, but you can freely mix upper and lower case. It would be ideal for book covers, posters and maybe even for castles. Comes with a treasure chest of diacritics.

(pronounced hor-hay) Some years ago my wife and I had our evening meal in a restaurant on what is called the northshore of Massachusetts. Of course, if you check a globe or map you'll see that the pilgrims needed a compass, it should have been called the eastshore as it's on the east end of the rectangle/hook we call the Commonwealth of Mass. In any event, the menu our waitress gave us was hand-lettered with shapes that I used to develop the 4 fonts called Jorge. When I brought the preliminary drawings into the office Steve Zafarana, a designer and cartoonist referred to them as Jorge's new design, the name stuck.

The Handel Gothic? typeface has been a mainstay of graphic communication for over 40 years - all the while looking as current as tomorrow. Designed by Don Handel in the mid-1960s, and used in the 1973 United Airlines logo developed by Saul Bass, Handel Gothic was an instant success when released to the graphic design community. Its generous lowercase x-height, full-bodied counters and square proportions make the design highly readable at a wide range of sizes. Handel Gothic's slightly idiosyncratic character shapes gave the face a futuristic look 40 years ago that retains its power today. In addition, its Uncial-like lowercase is instantly identifiable - and unique among sans serif typestyles.

Apnea is a layerable type family consisting of fifty weights. It is an all caps font with a few lowercase alternatives (a, e, i, m, n, t, w, and y) thrown in for a more casual feel. The base letterforms are inspired by a painted sign I found in the garage of an old house I moved into years ago. All the hand-drawn elements were done directly in FontLab to keep them loose and playful without getting distorted or grungy. At its core Apnea consists of eight base weights (Base, Drop Shadow, Halftone, Inline Fill, Outline, Outline 3D, Shading and Shadow) that when combined, can make up the rest of the family. Have fun, experiment and play!

A couple of years ago, I walked the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail in Japan. At the start of the walk, I stayed in a nice guesthouse in Tanabe city, which lies in Wakayama prefecture. I wouldn’t mention all of this, if it didn’t have something to do with the font name: Wakayama prefecture is THE mandarin orange (Mikan) growing area of Japan and the owner of the guesthouse had just picked a bagful of mikan, which he shared with me. So, I had to think of that when I made this font. Mikan is a nice, rounded family of fonts. Both styles come with alternative a’s (and accented a’s), which some people prefer for Children’s books.

The idea for Terra Ignota came to me years ago as I was admiring a reproduction of "Amerique Septentrionale," a 1650 map by French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, given to me by my parents. The handlettering has a sort of rakish character, evocative of pirates or adventurers at a time of unbridled world exploration. I ended up putting the project aside, but the idea to create this font tugged gently at my mind until I simply couldn't ignore it any longer. The resulting typeface has an italic slant and a deliberate feel, in keeping with its historical roots. Useful for simulating old hand-lettered documents. Has a full character set (and then some).

A few nights ago, I was dreaming about making a cute font that the children in the city would love. I only remember some characters of the font but I thought that it was a sign to make a new font. So, here it is, Birly. A new font and I think its cute yet playful for your fun projects. Birly was made with all my heart, I love it, and I hope you like it too. Birly has 2 styles, the regular and solid. You can choose, these all in the package! Please take a look and enjoy the preview pictures of Birly. I made it seriously, so you can see how is Birly looks on some projects.

A long time ago, I lived and worked in the English Lake District. When I first arrived there, I camped out not far from a neolithic monument called Castlerigg Stone Circle. Castlerigg Stone Circle is one of the most beautiful stone circles in the whole of Britain; the views are great and it makes for a nice walk from Keswick. This rather grungy font was made with a Sharpie pen I initially wanted to throw away, because it was dry, but then decided I could at least get one more font out of it. The result is Castlerigg - a rather neolithic looking all caps font. Castlerigg comes with double letter ligatures for the lower case.

Stencil Patterns JNL collects into one digital file a number of decorative stencil patterns from decades past. These charming illustrations were re-drawn by Jeff Levine using images of vintage oilboard stencils made over fifty years ago. While these are useful as stand-alone embellishments for any print projects, they can also be scaled and printed out onto card or acetate stock for hand-cutting as new stencil templates. A special note of thanks goes to fellow type designer and author, Leslie Cabarga. He supplied the bulk of the images used in designing this font file. There are left and right pointing hands on the parenthesis keys, and a decorative ampersand on its respective key.

Isidora Sans is a new version of the bestselling font Isidora (released a year ago). The absence of terminals gives this new typeface a cleaner and more geometric look, keeping the essence and structure of the classic sans fonts of the early 20th Century yet with a fresh, clean and contemporary appearance. Isidora Sans consists of two subfamilies of 7 weights, ranging from Thin to Black, with matching italics, giving a total of 28 fonts. Isidora Sans is the perfect font for publishing, titles, books, magazines and corporate design. Its Alt version is ideal for logotypes, branding, packaging, and use on web and Tv. The family contains a set of 416 characters supporting 207 different languages.

The Handel Gothic™ typeface has been a mainstay of graphic communication for over 40 years - all the while looking as current as tomorrow. Designed by Don Handel in the mid-1960s, and used in the 1973 United Airlines logo developed by Saul Bass, Handel Gothic was an instant success when released to the graphic design community. Its generous lowercase x-height, full-bodied counters and square proportions make the design highly readable at a wide range of sizes. Handel Gothic's slightly idiosyncratic character shapes gave the face a futuristic look 40 years ago that retains its power today. In addition, its Uncial-like lowercase is instantly identifiable - and unique among sans serif typestyles.

Waters Titling is the work of lettering artist Julian Waters, a multiple master typeface of classical calligraphic roman capitals. This broad-tipped pen design is related to other historically-based titling alphabets but offers a wider range of weights and widths, making it extremely versatile for movie titles, book jackets, posters, banners, calendars, etc. Waters Titling is based on the timeless Roman monumental inscription forms of almost 2000 years ago, but also has a touch of contemporary vigor and flair. The design displays a strong calligraphic thick/thin stroke weight contrast and flowing, subtly bracketed serifs. In lighter weights, Waters Titling is elegant and delicate, while the bolder weights offer a more substantial sparkle.

SPIDER-MAN! THE HULK! THE FANTASTIC FOUR! BATMAN! SUPERMAN! Superstar artist Mike Wieringo has worked with the most well-known characters in comic books, and just a few short years ago Comicraft teamed up with Mike and writer Todd DeZago in the pages of their creator-owned comic book fantasy adventure series, TELLOS! At Mike's request, we created a special Wieringo font which incorporated Mike's distinctive, slick-and-easy, backward-sloping letters, as well as a slightly heavier font -- carrying just a little more ink -- for the Shadow Jumper characters featured in the first TELLOS story arc. Now the Mike Wieringo font can be yours as it joins our ever growing library of Masters of Comic Book Art fonts.

Rotulo is a contrasted sans family which combines the Thick & Thin signpainter's style and some 70s feeling in a huge font family with 90 styles. A visit to an exhibition of Spanish movie posters by Jano was the beginning of Rótulo (Spanish for Sign) project. Classic thick & thin signpainter style was featured in many letterings of those posters, as it was a very common style in 60s and 70s Spanish design. Unfortunately, today very few Contrasted Sans are seen, something that was quite common years ago has fallen into disuse in favor of Helvetic monotony. Rótulo recapture all that personality, with an extense range of weights and widths to be used in striking headlines and short texts.

When I created Face Your Fears some years ago, it was an instant hit. I have seen it on Gangsta Rap albums, metal albums, books and on movie posters. It has been used for T-shirts, websites and, believe it or not, for a beer label as well. I have always toyed with the idea of redoing the original font, as some of the glyphs were a bit off. Face Your Fears II is similar in nature to the original font, but comes with a lot of improvements, has slightly altered glyphs and (probably) better kerning. But maybe, just maybe, it isn't your cup o' tea. In that case, you can always just go for the original!

I have always had a keen interest in forging; I used to be a silversmith, and I love working with metal. Some time ago I forged my first axe (a skeggøx or bearded axe), sharpened it and fitted it with a handmade ash handle. It isn’t perfect, but it is my first ever forged axe and I’m pretty proud of it. All of this went through my head when I started drawing the glyphs for this font. And to be honest, I couldn’t find a more suitable name for it! Bladesmith is a handmade font, forged in fire (haha). It was actually made with an old sharpie. It is a rough and ready font, quite suited for headlines, book covers and posters.