I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

Rolphie can be your go-to sans-serif, with 16 easy-to-read weights and 10 versions for each weight, and the subtlety of choice that represents. The versions contained in each weight are: Regular; Condensed; Half-Condensed; Expanded; Small Capitals: and their italic counterparts. (At heavier weights particularly it seemed to be justified to have two Condensed versions). Plus there's 20 funky versions with the letters all shook up (that would make a good title for a song), or jumbled around, plus some Shadow, Doubled-Up, College, and other FX versions. In total there's 180 variations, giving a comprehensive selection of both standard and funky fonts, and that subtle degree of choice of weight. To make things easier, the weights are put in ascending numerical order from 01 to 16, and the FX versions have been stuck in the 80s and 90s, (like two musicians I know). There are grouped packages available for certain weights (which have 10 fonts in them) and the complete family package (180 fonts) which represent better value than the individual fonts, and there's a basic package containing the Normal and Italic versions of all 16 weights (32 fonts). A limit of 5 sub-family packages has been imposed, unfortunately, which precludes a more comprehensive selection. To let you know what's in the font that you might otherwise never know about . . . With Discretionary Ligatures on, you get special characters if you type Mc St. Rd. Bd. Ave. c/o No. (p) (P) - include the full-stop/period. With Stylistic Alternates switched on, you get plenty of extra characters - including a WiFi symbol (type Wifi or WiFi) / bullet numbers instead of ordinary numbers / that different U-dieresis / special characters for c/o No. Mc / an upside down ~ / a huge bullet, and different forms for cent, dollar, percent, per-thousand. As you'd expect, there's all the accented characters for all Western European scripts using Latin letters, and standard ligatures, plus other Open Type features including Class Kerning, Slashed-Zero, Historical Forms, Sub- and Superscript numbers, fractions for halves, thirds and quarters, Ornamental forms giving bullet numbers, etc. There's also the main mathematical operators, symbols like card-suits and male/female signs and so on, and some more obscure stuff like schwa and O-horn, U-horn - and there's lots more if you can Access All Alternates. Much will depend on what your software recognises. The Small Caps versions have (intentionally) lost the ligatures for lower case ff, fi, fj, fl, fr, fu, ffi, ffj, ffl, ffr, ffu. The names for the weights are not absolute - we had to make up some names to make them stretch out to sixteen - so rather - see them as relative to each other, being in ascending numerical order by weight.

The Eskapade font family is the result of Alisa Nowak’s research into Roman and German blackletter forms, mainly Fraktur letters. The idea was to adapt these broken forms into a contemporary family instead of creating a faithful revival of a historical typeface. On one hand, the ten normal Eskapade styles are conceived for continuous text in books and magazines with good legibility in smaller sizes. On the other hand, the six angled Eskapade Fraktur styles capture the reader’s attention in headlines with its mixture of round and straight forms as seen in ‘e’, ‘g’, and ‘o’. Eskapade works exceptionally well for branding, logotypes, and visual identities, for editorials like magazines, fanzines, or posters, and for packaging. Eskapade roman adopts a humanist structure, but is more condensed than other oldstyle serifs. The reason behind this stems from the goal of closely resembling the Fraktur style to create harmony in mixed text settings. Legibility is enhanced by its low contrast between thick and thin strokes and its tall x-height. Eskapade offers an airy and light typographic colour with its smooth design. Eskapade italic is based on the Cancellaresca script and shows some particularities in its condensed and round forms. This structure also provided the base for Eskapade Fraktur italic. Eskapade Fraktur is more contrasted and slightly bolder than the usual darkness of a regular weight. The innovative Eskapade Fraktur italic, equally based on the Cancellaresca script previously mentioned, is secondarily influenced by the Sütterlin forms — an unique script practiced in Germany in the vanishingly short period between 1915 and 1941. The new ornaments are also hybrid Sütterlin forms to fit with the smooth roman styles. Although there are many Fraktur-style typefaces available today, they usually lack italics, and their italics are usually slanted uprights rather than proper italics. This motivated extensive experimentation with the italic Fraktur shapes and resulted in Eskapade Fraktur’s unusual and interesting solutions. In addition to standard capitals, it offers a second set of more decorative capitals with double-stroke lines to intensify creative application and encourage experimental use. The Thin and Black Fraktur styles are meant for display sizes (headlines, posters, branding, and signage). A typeface with this much tension needs to keep a good harmony between strokes and counters, so Eskapade Black has amplified inktraps and a more dynamic structure seen in the contrast between straight and round forms. These qualities make the family bolder and more enticing, especially with the included uppercase alternates. The Fraktur’s black weights are strident, refusing to let the white of the paper win the tug-of-war. It also won’t give away its secrets: Is it modern or historic, edgy or amicable, beguiling ornamentation or brutish presentation? That all depends on how the radically expanded Eskapade family is used, but its 16 fonts certainly aren’t tame.

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."

During planning for the new Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s, it was determined that the airport's signage system had to include the clearest and most legible lettering possible. The development of all signage was put into the hands of Adrian Frutiger and his studio. The team carried out their task so effectively that a huge demand for their typeface soon arose from customers who wanted to employ it in other signage systems, and in printed materials as well. The Frutiger® typeface not only established new standards for signage, but also for a range of other areas in which a clear and legible design would be required, especially for small point sizes and bread-and-butter type. The typeface family that which emerged as a result of this demand was added into the Linotype library as "Frutiger" in 1977. Frutiger Next, created in 1999, is a further development of Frutiger, not necessarily a rethinking of the design itself. It was based on a new concept, the most obvious visual characteristics of which is the larger x-height, as well as a more pronounced ascender height and descender depth for lower case letters in relation to capitals. This new design created a balanced image and included considerably narrower letterspacing. Frutiger Next meets the demand for a space-saving, modern humanist sans. 2009's Neue Frutiger is a rethink of the 1977 Frutiger family, now revised and improved by Akira Kobayashi in close collaboration with Adrian Frutiger. Despite the various changes, this "New Frutiger" still fits perfectly with the original Frutiger family, and serves to harmoniously enhance the weights and styles already in existence. The perfect mix, guaranteed Neue Frutiger has the same character height as Frutiger. As a result of this, already existing Frutiger styles can be mixed with Neue Frutiger where necessary. Likewise, Neue Frutiger is perfect for use alongside Frutiger Serif. Newly added are the "Neue Frutiger 1450" weights. Especially for the requirements of the newly released German DIN 1450 norm we have built together with Adrian Frutiger specific weights of the Neue Frutiger. The lowercase l" is curved at the baseline to better differentiate between the cap "I", additionally the number "0" has a dot inside to better differentiate between the cap "O", and the number "1" is now a serifed 1. The font contains additionally the origin letterforms from the regular Neue Frutiger font which can be accessed through an Opentype feature."