Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™, and Soho®.

DIN Stencil Pro on Behance. DIN Stencil Pro: Specimen Manual PDF. Despite the fact that over the years several designers have manually created stencil lettering based on DIN for various projects, there had never been a professional digital stencil version of a DIN-based typeface until 2010 when the original DIN Stencil was first released. The Pro version was released in 2014 and adds multiscript support for Cyrillic and Greek. DIN Stencil Pro was based on its original counterpart DIN Text Pro and was particularly designed to address contemporary projects, by incorporating elements and weights which are akin to industries such as fashion, music, video, architecture, sports and communications. Traditionally, stencils have been used extensively for military equipment, goods packaging, transportation, shop signs, seed sacks and prison uniforms. In the old days, stencilled markings of ownership were printed on personal possessions, while stencilled signatures on shirts were typical of 19th century stencilling. Two companies dominated the market in the mid-twentieth century: the Marsh Stencil Machine Company in the United States and the Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik in Germany. Ever since the late 1930s, it was the German Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik which used heavily the new DIN 1451 standard font (introduced in 1936), attempting to overthrow the reign of the Didot-style modern roman which was at the time the most common stencil letter in Germany. These letters were manufactured mainly as individual zinc stencils which could be ordered in sizes between 10 and 100mm. The DIN Stencil family manages to preserve several traditional stencil features, but introduces additional modernities which enhance its pleasing characteristics which make it an ideal choice for a large number of contemporary projects. Furthermore, the spacing attributes of the glyphs were redefined and legibility was improved by revising the shape of the letterforms. The DIN Stencil Pro family is an enhanced version of the popular DIN Stencil. It consists of 8 diverse weights from the elegant Hairline to the muscular Black and supports Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Eastern European, Turkish and Baltic. The new version 3.0 includes several additions such the recently unicode encoded character of the German uppercase Eszett (ẞ), the Russian currency symbol for Rouble (₽), Ukrainian Hryvnia (₴), Azeri and Kazakh letterforms.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.

IT’S MAILBAG TIME! Dear Jolly JG Roshell and Rascally Richard Starkings, Comicraft Fonts are a thing of Beauty and a Joy Forever! You guys must be a Wild Bunch, and I roar with delight whenever a new comicbookfonts release appears in my emailbox. But I have to level with you daredevils...what about us Letterhacks? We need representation too! We haven’t spent years hammering away on our typewriters to be ignored! BRING BACK THE LETTER HACK! In fearless font form. You know it makes sense! Truly Yours, Forbush, Irving, senior.

The roots of this font go back to 1967. A book title in trendy letters was created in a completely ingenuous way as a film prop for a Super 8 fun film. I drew the letters with felt-tip pen and poster paint without thinking too much about it. It wasn't until a good 50 years later that I realized, this was a first awkward typeface draft. The flower power vibe was captured here subconsciously. In 2019 I completed the few glyphs and created variants that I would not have thought of at the time.

F.W. Woolworth was once one of the giants of the variety store chains, along with the likes of Kress, S.S. Kresge, McCrory’s, Neisner Brothers, Ben Franklin and others. In 1960, the company brought out a new corporate logo with a type design harking back to the Art Deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. A photo of one of their old store fronts (despite having only eight letters to work with) inspired the digital interpretation of the signage as Bargain Shopping JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

I was listening to the radio and a song caught my attention. It was ‘Demagogue’ by a band called the Urban Dance Squad. That song brought back memories from when I was a student, so I decided to name this font after it. Demagogue was made using a Sharpie pen and a piece of expensive paper. The result is a very legible, very neat and very bold font. Demagogue is ideal for when you want to get your message across, but hopefully not in a demagogue-ish way! ;-)

The inspiration for this font (as well as the name!) comes from a London cafe I visited years ago. I was fascinated with the handwritten menu - irregular and awkward, yet refreshingly charming. I did my best to recall that particular look by adding 4 slightly different versions of each lowercase letter. The name of the font comes from the speed of the waiter...or the lack of it! But luckily he took his time, otherwise I wouldn't have had the time to really look at the handwritten menu! :)

Space Mode is a multi-weighted typeface, sent back in time from the distant future. Forward-looking typeface designers often predict a reductive future where Latin letterforms have become increasingly modularized and simplified, or random bits have mysteriously gone missing. Thankfully, this is not the case, and typography has instead flourished and evolved. New forms have appeared, and some revived from historical references. A more complex drawing model has arisen that seems to add new curves in a effort to tame the strange diagonals that appear in the final quarter of the alphabet.

AggressIan is the release of the first font I ever drew. It was done by hand with triangle and parallel rule back in the mid-1980s. I originally called it Aggressor, but I never liked it. My local type designer friend, Ian Roberts, really likes this type of drawing and told me I had to release it. So I named it after him. The small caps should work well if you need a bolder version. It has oldstyle and lining figures, plus the small cap figures. I hope you like it.

Another font for the BAQ family, BAQ metal brings back the classically solid, sturdy form of its predecessors with a rough and ready finish. The roundness of this font doesn’t take away from its impact, but does keep it from being too harsh, while the texture creates extra legibility at smaller sizes. Really though, BAQ metal works better when it’s bigger, standing out with its coarse appearance and rotund fullness. Use it to create outstanding headlines and catch people’s attention without being aggressive, even in a variety of different languages.

Backwash AOE is a typeface I drew up back in 2000 inspired by various graffiti artists. Coming across all of my sketches recently and seeing a trend lately in graffiti inspired styles, I finally came around to finishing it up digitally for release. I love the break the rules, wildchild aspect, of graffiti lettering. And while this typeface is nothing like the wilder inspirations that I spawned this typeface from, it has a more legible direction to it, retaining just the flavor of the originals. I hope you enjoy it.