Adelphi is a geometric sans, redefined for the northern side of the English Channel. Typographic modernism was a late arrival in Britain — due partly to the Second World War and to the strong local type tradition. This delay provided for fruitful divergence, thus modernism was not adored in quite the same way as it had been in Germany and central Europe. It was instead rethought and repurposed against the backdrop of the bleak British weather and postwar social reform – a continental fashion statement reshaped into a more humanist variant. Likewise, when crafting Adelphi, Nick Job reimagined the constraints that defined the geometric sans as a genre. Whereas other typefaces seem overly bound by the rules, Adelphi feels relaxed and approachable. Elementary square and circular shapes are merely implied. A keen observer may notice that the uncomplicated letterforms occasionally reveal a subtle naïveté associated with early Grotesques. Brunel’s bridges and Harry Beck’s tube map spring to mind alongside the Bauhaus and Futura. But Adelphi is by no means nostalgic! It is a contemporary, comprehensive, and durable system with a pragmatic set of features. These include a wide array of weights, ‘uniwidth italics’, and variable extenders that go from tall and flat in Adelphi Text to short and sharp in Adelphi Display, with default Adelphi standing midway between these two extremes. You can set the extenders to your preference in the all-inclusive variable font or use one of the three static fonts that come packed together, priced as a single font. The pan-European support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts already makes for a vast character set, but Adelphi takes things a step further by including alternate glyphs to satisfy the DIN1450 legibility norm, a range of ordinals that can be used to create specialist compositions in all three scripts and two kinds of fractions and arrows. Play with the alternates or use it as-is. Either way, this understated beauty will carry you through.

Minuet, an informal script with crossover deco elements giving it an unmistakable 1940s flavor, is a revival and expansion of the Rondo family, the last typeface drawn by Stefan Schlesinger before his death. This family was initially supposed to be a typeface based on the strong, flowing script Schlesinger liked to use in the ads he designed, particularly the ones he did for Van Houten’s cocoa products. But for technical reasons the Lettergieterij Amsterdam mandated the face to be made from unattached letters, rather than the original connected script. Schlesinger and Dooijes finished the lowercase and the first drawings of the uppercase just before Schlesinger was sent to a prison camp in 1942. Dooijes completed the design on his own, and drew the bold according to Schlesigner’s instructions. The typeface family was finished in February of 1944, and Schlesinger was killed in October of that same year. Though he did see and approve the final proofs, he never actually saw his letters in use. It took almost four more years for the Lettergieterij Amsterdam to produce the fonts. The typeface was officially announced in November of 1948, and immediately became a bestseller. By 1966, according to a memo from the foundry, the typeface had become “almost too popular”. This digital version of Schlesigner’s and Dooijes’s work greatly expands on the metal fonts. Both weights include a complete set of lowercase alternates — based on Schlesinger’s own drawings, as well as alternative variations for some of the capitals, a few ligatures, and extended language support covering Western, Eastern and Central European languages, plus Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese and Turkish. Minuet is available in all popular formats. The OpenType version, Minuet Pro, takes advantage of internal font programming to combine the main and alternate fonts into a single file per weight, making all alternates and ligatures automatically available at the push of a button in OpenType supporting programs.

La vie est une fleur dont l'amour est le miel Fleur is the French for flower and I've chosen this language for a good reason. Over the past 5 years, I've had the opportunity to travel a lot to Paris and I've always tried to catch every moment and detail of this delightful city through the eyes of the designer inside me. Paris is full of surprises, mainly for us, artists. In fact, I believe the city is a museum itself. Every corner of any street has something inspiring. But, there’s something I particularly love and I want to address here: The Palais Garnier. Built between 1861 and 1875, this opera house is a dream made true for many of us, who love somptuosité. Garnier, the architect of this magnificent building, said that the style he proposed was not Grecian nor Roman/baroque, he created something new and called it Napoleonic: Luxurious at its best. Fleur is inspired in this palace which, in fact, has some similar letters inside. Garnier put his name at the ceiling of the Rotonde des Abonnés: Letters are interlacing each other with nicely done art nouveau curves. I thought I could take this idea and achieve something very delicate and imposing at the same time if the font consisted entirely of caps with the logic of a didone and a bit of art-nouveau. This mix of elegance and flamboyance gave birth to Fleur which has a wide range of uses but was mainly intended for perfumes, fashion magazines, storefronts, book covers or logos. Not only you'll find many decorative glyphs, but also a vast amount of unique ligatures will make you really adore this font. Get Fleur and profite de la vie TECHNICAL As suggested above, the font has many open-type coded alternates and a vast amount of unique ligatures. Install the font in applications that support them, like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Made in Germany, Referenz Grotesk is a typeface full of references referring to the type design history of Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. Its typographic history holds a broad spectrum of shapes and characters, including F.H. Ernst Schneidler (1882–1956), Imre Reiner (1900–1987), Walter Brudi (1907–1987), Kurt Weidemann (1922–2011) and Frank Heine (1964–2003). During extensive research phases for Referenz Grotesk included collection and analysis. This led to further research in the Academy’s collection and archive where the majority of Weidemann’s estate is housed next to works of other designers and professors like F.H. Ernst Schneidler and Walter Brudi. Another place of research was the typesetting workshop where Schneidler had previously taught and worked. Some of his freshly cast fonts were tested and used there for the first time and are still stored in several of the type cases. Regarding the more recent history, for instance about the Emigre designer Frank Heine, former colleagues and professors have been consulted. These studies resulted in the new font Referenz Grotesk that includes traces of Kurt Weidemann’s Corporate as well as calligraphic hints that link to Schneidler’s Stuttgarter Schule (Stuttgart School) where writing played an important role during the form finding process. For the regular text fonts these features are integrated in a subtle manner whereas several alternative glyphs pick up more expressive forms. The final sans serif type family has a clarity and contemporary straightness that becomes more characteristic in its heavier weights. Additionally more than 60 alternative glyphs per weight allow for individual combinations that can be tailored specifically for each application and context. They open up a broad range of visual expressions, from subtle to playful and eccentric characteristics. Referenz Grotesk is available in six weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extra Bold and Black, plus italics. In addition, the family includes multiple OpenType functions such as Stylistic Sets, Tabular Figures and Case Sensitive forms. Variable version of the font is included when you license the full pack.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Bound to rules, unbound in the usage. Hyper geometric, and minimal contrast. Circulo V1 is based on a font project I originally started because of a client I had. I wanted to create a display and text font for their product design brand, which is all about reducing the amount of necessary materials and production steps. Before I started the course at tipo-g it was called -“REDUCE“ and was more or less finished. The concept was based on the name. How far can letter shapes be reduced to their core geometric concepts and still be identified as letters? But in a way, it lacked a unique approach and was just a generic geometric Sans Serif with a lack of finesse. There was already a glimpse of characteristics visible which would later define Circulo V1. ‍ The high focus on geometric shapes was not of the same severity, and the angle on the stems was less intense. Those, as I call them, fake serifs turned out to be a significant factor in legibility and the characteristic of the font. Besides those changes and improvements, I decided to implicate a new feature to the concept, a condensed style. I quickly realised that it is impossible to keep my perfect circles and half-circles in this style without breaking my rules for the font. This „problem“ turned out to be the most crucial feature of the condensed set. Circular-based Letters will ignore the rules and boundaries of the condensed style and stay as they are. This feature allows the user to create a unique rhythm in their texts, and if you use the variable font, you can decide how intense this rhythm will be. In this situation, the user can choose which letters are allowed to keep their shapes and which will be put in their condensed corset. All, some or none of them, you decide.

The ITC Nova Lineta™ design is the first commercial typeface from Slobodan Jelesijevic. As with many typeface designs, it began as simple sketches. “I was working on a packaging design project,” recalls Jelesijevic, “and wanted an informal, slightly cursive design for the type. I could not find anything that matched my need, so I began sketching.” The preliminary design had an elegant yet fresh quality that, once developed, turned out to be perfect for Jelesijevic’s project. After its first use, however, Nova Lineta lay dormant for over a year. Other projects came and went, and new typeface ideas filled Jelesijevic’s notebook. Although Nova Lineta continued to tickle the creative crevices of his mind, no more work was done on the face. Then, in a period between projects, Jelesijevic began to polish the design – and, in the process, created extended and condensed versions to complement the normally-proportioned original. Born in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia in 1951, Jelesijevic graduated with a degree in graphic communication and lettering from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. These days, Jelesijevic is sought out not only as a typeface designer, but also as a graphic designer and illustrator. When not working on design projects, he teaches graphic communication at the Faculty of Art in Niš, Serbia. Although it is a casual and inviting design, Nova Lineta has been carefully constructed and refined. As a result, it performs exceptionally well within a wide range of sizes and in a wealth of applications. An ample x-height, open counters and distinctive character shapes also ensure a high level of legibility. And, although at first glance Nova Lineta may appear to be a sans serif design, subtle serifs make their presence known at large sizes. Nova Lineta emanates warmth when used for extensive text, and it has a fresh quality at display sizes. The small family’s range of proportions also provides added flexibility. The result is a friendly yet powerful communication tool in a remarkably modestly-sized package.

Sublime45-Regular Sublime Revised for 2021. One font in Opentype format as Sublime45. Families and all TT Truetype versions eliminated in this wonderful stand alone. The Spring 1997 original release of Sublime —borne an organic creature of black water soluble ink & digitized by Coniglio Type. Sublime is a fun font to use in commercial layouts. It is soft and fluid as ink. Like the wrinkles of time, it is imperfect. That in itself makes it incredibly attractive, warm and “human factor”. Sublime offers legibility so sorely missed in the current recreational font market. Sublime was inspired by World War II US fighter pilot Donald Alling. He flew missions over Nazi Germany. His squadron also dropped food, medicine and relief supplies over the Netherlands. Known as “the Colonel” to his friends. Don as a civic engineer ruled literally miles of ink letter callout’s with a template device called a LeRoy in peacetime on vellum and mylar across his career as a technical illustrator. You didn't want to screw up inking into a template with wet black permanent ink. You really had to have a steady hand and it was all done by hand. You can say Don worked “unplugged”. And that is cool! He was part of the broad stroke of postwar industrial expansion that helped keep America strong, rendering exploded views on top secret projects. Many of us were not even born yet when all this was going on. Today at over 80 years young Don is like a national treasure, savvy and bright—and the ladies love him! The Colonel remains a dedicated master airbrush man, stand–up man, caricature artist and letterman all without use of a computer! He was lucky enough to retire before a desktop cathode tube was put in his face. Today the Colonel enjoys restoring VW’s, flying and freelance consulting when not being called to supper by his lovely wife Rea.

Handy Andy Andy Lethbridge had only just completed his graphic design BA at the University of Portsmouth when he was spotted by Jason, who’d seen Andy’s exquisite hand lettering at his degree show and on Instagram. Keen to push the handwritten theme further, having recently launched a digitally-created, chalky script font (FS Sammy), Jason offered Andy a job and the chance to develop a suite of more stylised, truly hand-drawn fonts. Andy duly got out his pads, pencils and pens, and started experimenting with styles and textures. Magic followed. Imperfection perfected Most ‘handwritten’ typefaces are created entirely digitally. Not FS Shepton. From the start, the intention was to create a collection of alphabets of similar character but different texture and style – 100% hand-drawn and purposely imperfect, with the kind of inconsistent, organic shapes and textures of market stall signs, dashed off in chalk or paint. FS Shepton Regular, drawn with a wet brush pen, is solid with a rough outer edge and a casual but controlled feel. The dry brush used to create FS Shepton Light gives it more inner texture and a more formal, slanted, calligraphic style. FS Shepton Bold, drawn using a wider, looser dry brush pen, has a woody grain in the middle of its broad strokes and greater solidity where the brush moves more slowly. Fresh as a daisy Think of FS Shepton not as a family of three weights of the same font so much as a collection of three fonts penned by the same author. All of them – the light, regular and bold – were created independently as display fonts that offer something different to labelling, packaging, point-of-sale and advertising. Lovingly crafted by hand, they’re a good match for products and settings that share the same artisinal qualities: organic foods, drinks and healthcare products, as well as premium chocolate, coffee and condiments.