The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.

Fioritura is a floral display typeface inspired by Sandro Botticelli's "Primavera" ("Spring") and Guiseppe Arcimboldo's "The Four Seasons" paintings. Fioritura means flowering in Italian, and the character composition consists of stems, leaves, flowers, and flying pollen. Scripts: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. Language count: 480+. Glyph count: 1103. Kerning: 936 class pairs. Hinting: Not applied. Contextual Alternates: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG LL MM NN OO PP RR SS TT ZZ aa bb cc dd ee ff gg ll mm nn oo pp rr ss tt zz. To keep the writing natural, every second of two frequently repeated letters is automatically replaced by its alternative version. Turned on by default. Contextual Alternates: ΆΈΉΊΌΎΏ. Greek uppercase accented characters lose their tonos accent and retain only dieresis in All Caps mode. Turned on by default. If you need tonos accents in All Caps then turn off Contextual Alternates (calt) feature. Stylistic Alternates: ABCDEFGLMNOPRSTZ abcdefglmnoprstz. Supported languages: Abenaki, Abron, Acheron, Achinese, Achuar-Shiwiar, Adamawa Fulfulde, Adangme, Afar, Afrikaans (Latin), Aghem, Aguaruna, Aja, Akan, Albanian, Alsatian, Amahuaca, Amarakaeri, Amis, Andaandi (Dongolawi), Anuta, Ao Naga, Apinayé, Arabela, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asháninka, Asturian, Asu, Atayal, Awa-Cuaiquer, Awetí, Aymara, Azerbaijani (Latin, Cyrillic), Baatonum, Bafia, Bagirmi Fulfulde, Balinese, Balkan Romani, Bambara (Latin), Baoulé, Bari, Basaa, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Batak (Latin), Belarusian (Latin, Cyrillic), Bemba, Bena, Biali, Bikol, Bini, Bislama, Boko, Bora, Borgu Fulfulde, Bouna Kulango, Bosnian, Breton, Buginese (Latin), Bulgarian, Buryat, Bushi, Candoshi-Shapra, Cape Verdean Creole, Caquinte, Caribbean Hindustani, Cashibo-Cacataibo, Cashinahua, Catalan, Cebuano, Chachi, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chayahuita, Chechen, Chewa (Latin), Chickasaw, Chiga, Chiltepec Chinantec, Chokwe, Chuukese, Cimbrian, Cofán, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Creek (Muscogee), Croatian, Czech, Dagaare, Dagbani, Danish, Dawan, Dehu, Delaware, Dendi, Dholuo, Dimli, Dinka, Ditammari, Drehu, Duala, Dutch, Dungan, Dyula, Embu, English, Erzya, Ese Ejja, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Ewondo, Falam Chin, Fanti, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, Fon, French, Friulian, Frisian, Fula, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ga’anda, Garifuna, Gen, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gilbertese, Gonja, Gooniyandi, Greek, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Guarani, Gusii (Latin), Gwich’in, Haitian, Hakha Chin (Latin), Hän, Hani, Hausa (Latin), Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Huastec, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo (Latin), Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Ixcatlán Mazatec, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Jola, Kabuverdianu, Kabiyè, Kabuverdianu, Kabyle (Latin), Kaingang, Kako, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kalmyk (Cyrillic), Kamba, Kanuri, Kaonde, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karachay (Cyrillic), Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh, Kekchí, Kenzi, Khalkha (Cyrillic), Khasi, Khoekhoe, K’iche’, Kikuyu, Kimbundu, Kinyarwanda (Ruanda), Kiribati, Kirmanjki, Kirundi (Rundi), Kissi, Kituba, Klingon, Kölsch, Kongo, Konzo, Koyra Chiini, Koyraboro Senni, Kpelle, Krio, Kuanyama, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kven Finnish, Kwasio, Kyrgyz (Cyrillic), Ladin, Ladino, Lakota, Lamnso’, Langi, Latgalian, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Ligurian, Limba, Lingala, Lithuanian, Lobi, Lojban, Lombard, Low German, Lozi, Luba-Katanga, Luba-Lulua, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Maasai, Maasina Fulfulde, Macedonian, Machame, Madurese (Latin), Makhuwa, Makonde, Makwe, Malagasy (Latin), Malaysian Malay (Latin), Maltese, Mam, Maninkakan, Manx, Maore Comorian, Māori, Mapudungun, Marquesan, Marshallese, Masai, Matsés, Mauritian Creole, Mbelime, Megleno-Romanian, Mende, Meriam Mir, Meru, Meta’ (Latin), Metlatónoc Mixtec, Mezquital Otomi, Mi’kmaq, Minangkabau, Mirandese, Mískito, Miyobe, Mizo, Mohawk, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Montagnais, Montenegrin (Latin, Cyrillic), Mossi, Mundang, Munsee, Murrinh-Patha, Murui Huitoto, Mwani, Naga Pidgin, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Nama, Nateni, Navajo, Ndebele, Ndonga, Neapolitan, Ngazidja Comorian, Ngiemboon, Ngiyambaa, Ngomba, Nigerian Fulfulde, Niuean, Nobiin, Nomatsiguenga, Noongar, Norwegian (Bokmål, Nynorsk), Novial, Nuer, Nyamwezi, Nyanja, Nyankole, Nyemba, Nzima, Occidental (Interlingue), Occitan, Ojitlán Chinantec, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Onĕipŏt, Oromo, Oroqen, Oshiwambo (Ovambo), Ossetian (Latin, Cyrillic), Otuho, Páez, Palauan, Paluan, Pampanga, Papantla Totonac, Papiamentu, Pedi, Picard, Pichis Ashéninka, Piedmontese, Pijin, Pintupi-Luritja, Pipil, Pohnpeian, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Prussian, Pulaar, Pular, Purepecha, Qiandong Miao, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romani, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rotokas, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Sakha, Samburu, Sami (Inari, Lule, Northern, Southern, Pite, Skolt, Ume), Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Secoya, Sena, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Sharanahua, Shawnee, Shilluk, Shipibo-Conibo, Shona, Shuar, Sicilian, Silesian, Siona, Slovak, Slovene (Slovenian), Slovio (Latin), Soga, Somali, Soninke, Sorbian (Lower, Upper), Sotho (Nothern, Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sukuma, Sundanese (Latin), Susu, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tachelhit (Latin), Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tajik (Cyrillic), Talysh, Tasawaq, Tatar (Cyrillic, Latin), Tedim Chin, Teso, Tetum, Ticuna, Timne, Tiv, Toba, Tojolabal, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tonga, Tongan, Tosk, Totontepec Mixe, Tsafiki, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin, Cyrillic), Tuvaluan, Tuvan, Twi, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Uab Meto, Ukrainian, Ulithian, Umbundu, Urarina, Uyghur (Cyrillic), Uzbek (Latin, Cyrillic), Vai, Venda, Venetian, Veps, Vietnamese, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Waama, Waci Gbe, Wallisian, Walloon, Walser, Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa, Waorani, Waray, Warlpiri, Wasa, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof (Latin), Xavante, Xhosa, Xwela Gbe, Yagua, Yanesha’, Yangben, Yanomamö, Yao, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Yoruba (Latin), Yucateco, Záparo, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni. The promo images used photos of Cottonbro, Maria Lindsey from Pexels, and Andreea Popa, Wyron A from Unsplash.

In March 2011, the Society of Typographic Aficionados began organizing a collaborative project that would unite the typographic and design communities. The goal of Font Aid V: Made for Japan was to raise funds to expedite relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Nearly 300 contributors from 45 countries sent in over 500 glyphs in a single week. Behind the scenes, volunteers Neil Summerour, Silas Dilworth, Delve Withrington, and Grant Hutchinson were up to their elbows in Adobe Illustrator and Fontlab assembling the typeface. The sheer number of submissions coupled with the complexity of some of the designs caused unforeseen delays in completing the typeface. The team not only managed the immense influx of submissions, it also had several technical hurdles and multiple content reviews to mitigate before the final font could be produced. Several months after the project was initiated, Font Aid V: Made for Japan was finally ready for distribution. With the help of Sogo Japan, all proceeds from sales of this typeface will be delivered directly to organizations in Japan, such as Second Hand and AMDA International (Association of Medical Doctors of Asia). Sogo Japan strives to help circumvent regular international charity channels and the inefficiencies associated with them. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped us spread the word about the Font Aid V: Made for Japan project. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the following individuals and groups for their participation and involvement: Jonathan Abbott, Rui Abreu, Frank Adebiaye, Tim Ahrens, Anonymous, Eero Antturi, Leonardo Aranda, Hector Carrillo Aspano, Danielle Atnip, Alejandro Cabrera Avila, Christophe Badani, Joanne Gyo Young Bae, Ben Balvanz, Cynthia Bataille, Priyanka Batra, Donald Beekman, Hannes Beer, David Berlow, Kevin Beronilla, Fabian Bertschinger, Nicole Bittner, Bart Blubaugh, Dathan Boardman, Andrew Boardman, Joel Vilas Boas, Konstantin Boldovskiy, Scott Boms, Michael Browers, Vickie Burns, Matt Burvill, Daniele Capo, Seymour Caprice, Mauro Caramella, Matevž Čas, Eli Castellanos, Sarah Castillo, Tom Censani, Pinar Ceyhan, Ivette Chacon, Hin-Ching Chan, Sarah Charalambides, Karen Charatan, Sinde Cheung, Todd Childers, Justin Chodzko, Felipe Coca, Antonio Coelho, Jefferson Cortinove, Alan Lima Coutinho, Nick Cox, Nick Curtis, Girish Dalvi, Christopher DeCaro, Thomas C Dempsey, Matt Desmond, Chank Diesel, Anum Durvesh, Suzie Eland, Engy Elboreini, Craig Eliason, Emi Eliason, James Elliott, Grace Engels, Exljbris, Hillary Fayle, Carol Fillip, Jeff Fisher, Scott Fisk, John Foley, Stuart Ford, Mathias Forslund, Brock French, Anina Frischknecht, Eric Frisino, Chiyo Fujimori, Kaela Gallo, Ayesha Garrett, Harald Geisler, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Adriana Esteve González, Richard Gregory, James Grieshaber, Grupoingenio, Kemie Guaida, Carlos Fabián Camargo Guerrero, Rachel Han, Erin Harris, Stefan Hattenbach, Magnus Hearn, Marissa Heiken, Georg Herold-Wildfellner, Jamie Homer, Ed Hoskin, Dav[id Hubner], Jonathan Hughes, Rian Hughes, Grant Hutchinson, Xerxes Irani, Masayuki Izumi, Jan Janeček, Hyun Kyung Jang, Julien Janiszewski, Dušan Jelesijevic, Cal Jepps, Meghan Jossick, Evamaria Judkins, July Twenty Fourth, Erica Jung, William K, Claes Källarsson, Kapitza, Asutosh Kar, Arno Kathollnig, Sami Kaunisvirta, Hajime Kawakami, Scott Kaye, Richard Kegler, Anna Keroullé, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Lara Assouad Khoury, Ilona Kincses, Becky King, Sean King, Megan Kirby, Max Kisman, Keith Kitz, Romy Klessen, Akira Kobayashi, Kokin, Kozyndan & Silas Dilworth, Atushi Kunimune, Andreas Kuschner, John Langdon, Ray Larabie, Jess Latham, Kelly D Lawrence, Matic Leban, Chien-Hao Lee, Bryan Levay, Enrico Limcaco, Andreas Lindholm, Andrew Loschiavo, Chris Lozos, Ian Lynam, John Lyttle, Gustavo Machado, Jonathan Mak, Ricardo Marcin, Jeannie Mecorney, Steve Mehallo, Cristina Melo, Martin Mendelsberg, The Midnight Umbrella Studio, Goro Mihok, Ojasvi Mohanty, Ahmed Mohtadi, Alixe Monteil, Veronica Monterosso, Dani Montesinos, Masanobu Moriyama, Misa Moriyama, Pedro Moura, John Moy Jr, Marc Marius Mueller, Shoko Mugikura, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Diane Myers, John Nahmias, Yoshihisa Nakai, Hiroshi Nakayama, Reiko Nara, Nathoo, Titus Nemeth, Nathanael Ng, Ngoc Ngo, Antoninus Niemiec, James Ockelford, Kunihiko Okano, Naotatsu Okuda, Toshi Omagari, Onikeiji, Ozlem Ozkal, Jason Pagura, Hrant Papazian, Brian Jongseong Park, John Passafiume, Patrick Griffin, Alejandro Paul, Vian Peanu, Dylan Pech, Rebecca Penmore, Peter Brugger, Jean François Porchez, Carolyn Porter, Andrew Pothecary, James Puckett, Rachel Hernández Pumarejo, James Random, Liam Roberts, Tom Rogers, David Jonathan Ross, Sumio Sakai, Sana, Stuart Sandler, Rafael Saraiva, Riccardo Sartori, Ai Sasaki, Yee Wen Sat, Agnes Schlenke, Giovanna Scolaro, Roland Scriver, Alessandro Segalini, Shawn Semmes, Jane Sheppard, Josh Sherwood, Paulo Silva, Mark Simonson, Luis Siquot, Greg Smith, Owen Song, James L. Stirling, Nina Stössinger, Tanya Turipamwe Stroh, Kevin Strzelczyk, Neil Summerour, Superfried, Shiho Takahashi, Shuji Takahashi, Yusuke Takeda, Naoyuki Takeshita, Bruno Tenan, Chung-Deh Tien, Tom, Ryoichi Tsunekawa, Alex Tye, Matthew Tyndall, TypoVar, Virginia Valdez, Beatriz Valerio, Tom Varisco, Brayden Varr, Catarina Vaz, Andy Veale, Yvette Claudia Velez, Marie-Anne Verougstraete, Abbie Vickress, Ray Villarreal, Pat Vining, Courtney Waite, Hoyle Wang, Viola Wang, Jim Ward, Grace Watling, Terrance Weinzierl, Robert Weiss, Stuart Weston, Kevin Wijaya, Dave Williams, Beau Williamson, Delve Withrington, Katherine Wood, Neil Woodyatt, Jesvin Yeo, Yokokaku, Kazuhi Yoshikawa, YouWorkForThem, Matt Yow, Charlton Yu, Yuriko, Ron Za, Jayson Zaleski, Víctor Zúñiga

Tavern is a super font family based on our Algerian Mesa design, with Tavern we've greatly expanded the usability by creating light and bold weights plus all new for 2020 with the introduction of extra bold and black weights Tavern is now a five weight family. The addition of the bold weight made it possible to go further with the design by adding open faced shadowed, outline and fill versions. Please note, the fill fonts are aligned to go with the open faced versions, they may work with the outline versions, however you will have to apply them one letter at a time. The Tavern Fill fonts may also be used a stand alone font, however, the spacing is much wider than the regular solid black weights of Tavern. In the old days of printing, fill fonts rarely lined up perfect with the open or outline font, this created a misprinted look that's much in style today. To create that misprinted look using two different colors, try layering the outline fonts offset over the top of the solid black versions. Next we come to the small caps and X versions, for a font that's mostly seen used in all caps we felt a small caps would come in handy. The X in Tavern X stands for higher X-height, we've taken our standard lowercase and raised it for greater visibility in small text and for signage where you want the look of a lowercase but it needs to be readable from the street. In August of 2016 I started the project of expanding this font into more weights after seeing the font in use where someone tried creating a bold version by adding a stroke fill around the letters. The result didn't look very good, the stroke fill also caused the shadow line to merge with the serifs on some letters. This lead me to experiment to see if a new bold weight was possible for this font and I'm pleased to say that it was. After the bold weight was finished I decided to type the regular and bold weights together in a first word thin second word bold combination, however the weight difference between the two wasn't enough contrast. This lead me to wonder if a lighter weight was possible for this font, as you can see yes it was, so now for the first time in the history of this old 1908 type design you can type a first word thin second word bold combination. So why the name change from Algerian to Tavern? Since the original font was designed in England by the Stephenson Blake type foundry I decided to give this font a name that reminded you of the country it came from, however, there were other more technical reasons. During the creation of the bold weight the engraved shadow line was sticking out too far horizontally on the bottom right of the serifs dramatically throwing the whole font off balance. The original font encountered this problem on the uppercase E, L and Z, their solution was a diagonal cut corner which was now needed across any glyph in the new bold weight with a serif on the bottom right side. In order to make the light and regular weights blend well with the bold weight diagonal cut offs were needed and added as well. This changed the look of the font from the original and why I decided to change the name, additional concerns were, if you're designing a period piece where the font needs to be authentic then this font would be too new. Regular vs. Alt version? The alternate version came about after seeing the regular version used as a logo and secondary text on a major product label. I felt that some of the features of the regular version didn't look good as smaller secondary text, this gave me the idea to create an alternate version that would work well for secondary text in an advertising layout. But don't stop there, the alternate version can be used as a logo too and feel free to exchange letters between both regular and alternate versions. Where are the original alternates from Algerian? Original alternates from Algerian are built into the regular versions of Tavern plus new alternates have been created. We're excited to introduce, for the first time, all new swash capitals for this classic font, you're going to love the way they look in your ad layout, sign or logo. The best way to access alternate letters in Tavern is with the glyph map in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign products, from Adobe Illustrator you can copy and paste into Photoshop as a smart object and take advantage of all the text layer style features Photoshop has to offer. There may be third party character maps available for accessing alternate glyphs but we can't advise you in that area. I know what you're thinking, will there be a Tavern Condensed? It takes a lot of hours to produce a large font family such as this, a future condensed version will depend on how popular this standard version is. If you love Tavern we're happy to introduce the first weathered edge version of this font called Bay Tavern available in February 2020.

In 1955 the Czech State Department of Culture, which was then in charge of all the publishing houses, organised a competition amongst printing houses and generally all book businesses for the design of a newspaper typeface. The motivation for this contest was obvious: the situation in the printing presses was appalling, with very little quality fonts existing and financial resources being too scarce to permit the purchase of type abroad. The conditions to be met by the typeface were strictly defined, and far more constrained than the ones applied to regular typefaces designed for books. A number of parameters needed to be considered, including the pressure of the printing presses and the quality of the thin newspaper ink that would have smothered any delicate strokes. Rough drafts of type designs for the competition were submitted by Vratislav Hejzl, Stanislav Marso, Frantisek Novak, Frantisek Panek, Jiri Petr, Jindrich Posekany, and the team of Stanislav Duda, Karel Misek and Josef Tyfa. The committee published its comments and corrections of the designs, and asked the designers to draw the final drafts. The winner was unambiguous — the members of the committee unanimously agreed to award Stanislav Marso’s design the first prize. His typeface was cast by Grafotechna (a state-owned enterprise) for setting with line-composing machines and also in larger sizes for hand-setting. Regular, bold, and bold condensed cuts were produced, and the face was named Public. In 2003 we decided to digitise the typeface. Drawings of the regular and italic cuts at the size of approximatively 3,5 cicero (43 pt) were used as templates for scanning. Those originals covered the complete set of caps except for the U, the lowercase, numerals, and sloped ampersand. The bold and condensed bold cuts were found in an original specimen book of the Rude Pravo newspaper printing press. These specimens included a dot, acute, colon, semicolon, hyphens, exclamation and question marks, asterisk, parentheses, square brackets, cross, section sign, and ampersand. After the regular cut was drafted, we began to modify it. All the uppercase letters were fine-tuned, the crossbar of the A was raised, E, F, and H were narrowed, L and R were significantly broadened, and the angle of the leg and arm of the K were adjusted. The vertex of the M now rests on the baseline, making the glyph broader. The apex of the N is narrower, resulting in a more regular glyph. The tail of Q was made more decorative; the uppercase S lost its implied serifs. The lowercase ascenders and descenders were slightly extended. Corrections on the lower case a were more significant, its waist being lowered in order to improve its colour and light. The top of the f was redrawn, the loop of lowercase g now has a squarer character. The diagonals of the lowercase k were harmonised with the uppercase K. The t has a more open and longer terminal, and the tail of the y matches its overall construction. Numerals are generally better proportioned. Italics have been thoroughly redrawn, and in general their slope is lessened by approximatively 2–3 degrees. The italic upper case is more consistent with the regular cut. Unlike the original, the tail of the K is not curved, and the Z is not calligraphic. The italic lower case is even further removed from the original. This concerns specifically the bottom finials of the c and e, the top of the f, the descender of the j, the serif of the k, a heavier ear on the r, a more open t, a broader v and w, a different x, and, again, a non-calligraphic z. Originally the bold cut conformed even more to the superellipse shape than the regular one, since all the glyphs had to be fitted to the same width. We have redrawn the bold cut to provide a better match with the regular. This means its shapes have become generally broader, also noticeably darker. Medium and Semibold weights were also interpolated, with a colour similar to the original bold cut. The condensed variants’ width is 85 percent of the original. The design of the Bold Condensed weights was optimised for the setting of headlines, while the lighter ones are suited for normal condensed settings. All the OpenType fonts include small caps, numerals, fractions, ligatures, and expert glyphs, conforming to the Suitcase Standard set. Over half a century of consistent quality ensures perfect legibility even in adverse printing conditions and on poor quality paper. RePublic is an exquisite newspaper and magazine type, which is equally well suited as a contemporary book face.

Originally designed in 1996, Mrs Eaves was Zuzana Licko’s first attempt at the design of a traditional typeface. It was styled after Baskerville, the famous transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Mrs Eaves was named after Baskerville’s live in housekeeper, Sarah Eaves, whom he later married. One of Baskerville’s intents was to develop typefaces that pushed the contrast between thick and thin strokes, partially to show off the new printing and paper making techniques of his time. As a result his types were often criticized for being too perfect, stark, and difficult to read. Licko noticed that subsequent interpretations and revivals of Baskerville had continued along the same path of perfection, using as a model the qualities of the lead type itself, not the printed specimens. Upon studying books printed by Baskerville at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, Licko decided to base her design on the printed samples which were heavier and had more character due to the imprint of lead type into paper and the resulting ink spread. She reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She then reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. There is something unique about Mrs Eaves and it’s difficult to define. Its individual characters are at times awkward looking—the W being narrow, the L uncommonly wide, the flare of the strokes leading into the serifs unusually pronounced. Taken individually, at first sight some of the characters don’t seem to fit together. The spacing is generally too loose for large bodies of text, it sort of rambles along. Yet when used in the right circumstance it imparts a very particular feel that sets it clearly apart from many likeminded types. It has an undefined quality that resonates with people. This paradox (imperfect yet pleasing) is perhaps best illustrated by design critic and historian Robin Kinross who has pointed out the limitation of the “loose” spacing that Licko employed, among other things, yet simultaneously designated the Mrs Eaves type specimen with an honorable mention in the 1999 American Center for Design competition. Proof, perhaps, that type is best judged in the context of its usage. Even with all its shortcomings, Mrs Eaves has outsold all Emigre fonts by twofold. On MyFonts, one of the largest on-line type sellers, Mrs Eaves has been among the 20 best selling types for years, listed among such classics as Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni and Franklin Gothic. Due to its commercial and popular success it has come to define the Emigre type foundry. While Licko initially set out to design a traditional text face, we never specified how Mrs Eaves could be best used. Typefaces will find their own way. But if there’s one particular common usage that stands out, it must be literary—Mrs Eaves loves to adorn book covers and relishes short blurbs on the flaps and backs of dust covers. Trips to bookstores are always a treat for us as we find our Mrs Eaves staring out at us from dozens of book covers in the most elegant compositions, each time surprising us with her many talents. And Mrs Eaves feels just as comfortable in a wide variety of other locales such as CD covers (Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief being our favorite), restaurant menus, logos, and poetry books, where it gives elegant presence to short texts. One area where Mrs Eaves seems less comfortable is in the setting of long texts, particularly in environments such as the interiors of books, magazines, and newspapers. It seems to handle long texts well only if there is ample space. A good example is the book /CD/DVD release The Band: A Musical History published by Capitol Records. Here, Mrs Eaves was given appropriate set width and generous line spacing. In such cases its wide proportions provide a luxurious feel which invites reading. Economy of space was not one of the goals behind the original Mrs Eaves design. With the introduction of Mrs Eaves XL, Licko addresses this issue. Since Mrs Eaves is one of our most popular typefaces, it’s not surprising that over the years we've received many suggestions for additions to the family. The predominant top three wishes are: greater space economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to pair it with a sans design. The XL series answers these requests with a comprehensive set of new fonts including a narrow, and a companion series of Mrs Eaves Sans styles to be released soon. The main distinguishing features of Mrs Eaves XL are its larger x-height with shorter ascenders and descenders and overall tighter spacing. These additional fonts expand the Mrs Eaves family for a larger variety of uses, specifically those requiring space economy. The larger x-height also allows a smaller point size to be used while maintaining readability. Mrs Eaves XL also has a narrow counterpart to the regular, with a set width of about 92 percent which fulfills even more compact uses. At first, this may not seem particularly narrow, but the goal was to provide an alternative to the regular that would work well as a compact text face while maintaining the full characteristics of the regular, rather than an extreme narrow which would be more suitable for headline use. Four years in the making, we're excited to finally let Mrs Eaves XL find its way into the world and see where and how it will pop up next.

Dom Loves Mary has a baby brother! Check out Fratello Nick here: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/correspondence-ink/fratello-nick/ The DomLovesMary font family has all you need to create unique, custom stationery products. THE INSPIRATION BEHIND THE DOMLOVESMARY FONT FAMILY: DomLovesMary is named in memory of Dominic and Mary Sementelli, Debi’s in-laws. Dom and Mary were opposites who were truly “made for each other”. A snazzy dresser, Mary was feisty, loved to dance, sing, and be the life of the party. Dom was cool, calm and collected and was happy to shine the spotlight on the love of his life. They balanced each other out in a really great way. Going through some of her in-laws old photos, Debi found their wedding album. She was struck by the beautiful look on their faces as they got ready to start their life together. She saw the excitement, joy and anticipation of them envisioning “Una Bella Vita!” (A beautiful life!) She decided to create a hand-lettered font with them in mind represented by two totally different lettering styles that were, like Dom and Mary, “made for each other”. It’s her way of honoring them and sharing their beautiful life with all of the couples just starting theirs together. They truly had “Una Bella Vita” and we hope you do too. WHAT'S UNIQUE ABOUT THE DOMLOVESMARY FONT FAMILY: The SCRIPT & TEXT FONTS are lettering styles that were made to compliment each other. With a vintage, classic feel, they will add elegance to your design, while the TEXT serves to offer support with easy to read simplicity. In addition to the standard character set, each of the uniquely styled script fonts includes a collection of flourished ornaments. Use them to create corners, headers or other embellishments to complete the look. And if you really want to fancy things up, we offer two sets of 72 additional flourishes that were specifically made to add to upper and lower case letters for easy customization. Dress them up with one, two or more. It’s like choosing simple pearls or piling on the glitz! Or combine several to create unique flourished ornaments of your own. To add even more panache, we're pleased to present our ready made set of most frequently used ADD-ON WORDS. Created with the wedding client in mind, this set of 66 includes envelope friendly titles: Mr and Mrs, Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Doctor, the Doctors, as well as words to fill out your invitation suite: RSVP, Respond, Save the Date, Accommodations, Directions and more! Easily create Bride and Groom signs or Thank You cards or tags with the click of a key. Or use angled words like “and, at, to, on, for, from and of” to add a special touch to your large groups of copy. PACKAGES: We are pleased to have a variety of customers. From professional invitation designers to DIY brides, publishing companies and website / blog designers among others. So we've created packages to help fit their diverse needs. Purchase just one of our beautiful DomLovesMary SCRIPT fonts, each with its collection of included flourishes or the PRO VERSION complete with ALL THREE script fonts and a combined total of over 100 flourished ornaments. Add our TEXT font, a set of FLOURISHES or ADD-ON WORDS. Love the idea of customizing your letters with all the possible combinations? We offer a special price when you purchase both sets of flourishes. Or choose our Accoutrements Package containing both sets of FLOURISHES for letter customization as well as our ADD-ON WORDS. Want to have it all? The “DomLovesMary Total Design” package is for you. Each of these packages are offered at a 25% savings. WHAT PROGRAM WILL YOU USE?: All of the font options come in both Pro and Standard format fonts. For those with programs that can take advantage of OpenType features (click on the link to see if the program your using is one of them) the Pro fonts are for you. http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/opentype_feature_support/ For others without the ability to use Open Type features, we provide all of the script fonts that comprise the Pro Version as separate versions (Regular, Contextual and Stylistic). If you are using a program like Microsoft Word, and want all three script fonts, you can still purchase the Pro Version (a $50.00 savings), and install the individual fonts bundled in the Standard Fonts folder. We have set it up so they will appear separately as DomLovesMary, DomLovesMary Contextual and DomLovesMary Stylistic in your fonts list. Exciting news! In an effort to help our customers access all the goodies that are normally only available in Open Type Capable programs (like the flourished ornaments that come with our script fonts), we have found a simple application that allows you to do just that. For this reason, we've made sure to unicode all of our characters and glyphs so that they will work in this type of program. There may be others, but we checked this one out and found that it works. Check out PopChar

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.