Chianti was designed at Bitstream by senior designer Dennis Pasternak in 1991 and initially released in 1995. The intent behind the design was to provide a humanist sanserif of high readability at a wide range of sizes and weights. Humanist sanserifs (others that fall into this category are Linotype’s Frutiger and Optima, and Monotype’s Gill Sans) are an attempt to improve the readability of sanserifs by applying classical roman structure to the letterforms. To enhance its versatility, Mr. Pasternak designed a wide variety of alternate characters, rare ligatures, ornaments and swashes. Chianti is a friendly sanserif useful for a broad range of typographic needs.

Mark van Bronkhorst designed MVB Celestia Antiqua at a time when font choice was limited. Design was characterized by overuse of the few fonts that came with laser printers. A rustic typeface, recalling the roughness and irregularity of pre-digital printing, was a response to the cold crispness of DTP. MVB Celestia Antiqua holds its own among a large group of other “weathered” serif fonts, in part due to the size of the family: three weights, small caps, italics, and two titling styles. But it's also successful because it's simply drawn well, the contours only as rough as they need to be, enabling text at any size, large or small.

Prototype is a typeface with a very contemporary identity crisis—is it old or new? uppercase or lowercase? serif or sans-serif? Prototype tries to be all things to all people. There have been many attempts at creating a universal typeface, one that rationalises the alphabet and removes the inconsistencies of upper and lower case, applying an unreasonable logic to something that has grown organically ...and is already perfectly usable! Prototype was the same experiment carried out at a time when design was experiencing an identity crisis of its own—letterforms that try to be all things to all people but end up being something else entirely.

Marista is a bit of an unusual design, a cursive monospaced font inspired by the classic cursive typewriter fonts used in the 1960s-70s. It is designed to feel 'real', and captures some of the light irregularities in line weight which characterise real typewritten text rather than their computer equivalents. Marista is distinctive but easily readable, even in block text where some monospaced fonts suffer. Marista is best used at small to medium sizes, and at a uniform size throughout a document or design to capture the typewritten feel. The italic is more similar to authentic typewriter cursive fonts. Try it for your next letter or invitation!

Vintage sheet music was initially a partial inspiration for what started out as a simple retro typeface, but the basic hand-lettered design from the Art Deco era lent itself to some further experimentation. Geometric shapes were added to the original monoline letters and numerals and the end result was a marvelous display face called Cafe Society JNL. During the 1930s, "Cafe Society" was popular slang for the financially privileged during the Great Depression who dined at fine cafes while others who were able to eat out did so at diners and cafeterias. Available along with Cafe Society JNL is the original version, Cafe Society Monoline JNL.

Kigara was Elena’s first attempt at designing a text typeface. The result is not exactly a conventional book face. Strongly influenced by handwriting, Kigara is best suited for short texts set at medium to large sizes. However, its open letter shapes and subtle serifs make it a very readable face in smaller sizes as well. Kigara will also make headlines as a modest, light-hearted display typeface. Kigara is named after an African mushroom - hence the mushroom vignettes and African ornaments in the OpenType version and the ‘B’ set. Both the sets also include small caps, alternate figures, special ligatures and other expert glyphs.

NewYorkerType was one of the first typefaces I tried my hand at in 1985. I meant it as a revival of the typeface used by the New Yorker magazine. I did not scan it in, I just looked at the type and redrew it completely by hand. So it is not just a copy, but rather a redesign. Only much later did I come to know, that there is a bundle of similar typefaces of that period. Rea Irvin's design for New-Yorker magazine was just one of them, but the best. Yours, sincerely honoring Rea Irvin a great type- and magazine-designer Gert Wiescher

When teaching font-making at the Art Institute of Tucson, I give my students plenty of lab time to come up with design ideas. I designed Pucky while one class created their fonts. It came about through an idea for a capital A: sort of a triangle with two round sides and a crossbar formed by a circle falling out. (You can see it here.) In drawing that, I hit upon the idea of making the tops of the alphabet sharp and square and the bottoms rounded. (See the whole alphabet here.) Pucky suggests both circus and psychedelia. Hmmmm, does anybody have an “in” at Cirque du Soleil?

Portoluce is a Roman typeface. This fonts are delicate and highly readable at very small sizes but reveals all its strength and personality when used at big sizes. The contrast of the sharped serifs provides a fresh and very contemporary look. The family has 3 weights with italics, ranging from Regular to Black ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text, editorial and publishing, logo and branding, small text as well as web and epub. Portoluce provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, old style figures and small capitals. As well as Latin-based, the typeface family also supports Central European languages.

Delikaat is made up of thin & thick strokes - a version of Cubo Font's former Delicate. Most cursive fonts intend to create the look and feel of real handwriting: many letters have a specific drawing, following other letters that come before and after, or its position at the beginning or at the end of the word. “Delicate” resolved that problem thanks to the OpenType technology, and offers many discretionary ligatures (group of pre-drawn letters), adapted to numerous combinations. Therefore, it’s not only a decorative and calligraphic writing, but also a fluent and energetically one. In order to make the most of it, please activate your software’s OpenType features.

Kessel 105 Text is the text specific variation of stablemate, Kessel 105 . With a narrower x-height and longer ascenders and descenders, its more traditional proportions make it more economical with space and better suited to continuous text. It's a versatile, modern sans, highly legible as a text font and with a clean, elegant look as a display font at larger sizes. It has an art deco flavour with sharp points at the apex of many characters. The Kessel 105 Text family comprises of four weights and includes old style non-aligning (lower case) numbers, both proportional and tabular as well as accented characters for Central European languages.

Kessel 105 is inspired by the classic, geometric sans-serifs such as Futura, but has shallower ascenders and descenders for a more compact look, and features an art deco influence with sharp points at the apex of many characters. It's a versatile, modern sans, highly legible as a text font and with a clean, elegant look as a display font at larger sizes. It includes old style non-aligning (lower case) numbers, both proportional and tabular as well as accented characters for Central European languages. The Kessel 105 family comprises of six weights and is closely related to Kessel 205, it’s more intensely Deco flavoured cousin.

This font takes its name and the overall shape from modern bentwood furniture, namely Scandinavian designs since the 1940s. The curved corners of the letterforms are practically hyperbolic, to convey the tension and strength of the bent plywood. These curves are meant to appear more dynamic than circular or elliptical segments of traditional sans serif fonts. The letterforms are simplified, without extra corners, stems, connections or hooks, yet remain legible at any size. Now at version 2, Bentwood contains Central/Eastern European, Baltic and Turkish character sets and more ligatures with Open Type functionality. Some minor corrections were made to letter shapes and positions, as well as to kerning and spacing.

During a ‘type walk’ at the 2007 AtypI conference in Brighton, typographer Phil Baines pointed out what he considered to be a particularly egregious example of over-decorative art nouveau lettering on a war memorial. This made me determined to use it as the basis for a font. Released in Opentype, it now features ligatures, swashes and alternates. It’s not certain if the curved top bars on the E and F are a feature of the original design or due to climbers using them as footholds, but I incorporated them anyway. It has recently been used for invitations and supporting print material for formal charity dinners at the House of Lords.

Veotec is a classic humanist sans that skilfully works for both screen and print due to its steep and precise angles enabling more negative space. Not only does this methodical approach improve legibility and readability at small sizes, it allows the bolder weights to feel harmonised and consistent without the compromise of this legibility. Angles are refined and considered with a balance between sharp and round curves adding a unique feature to this font. This also gives a modern and appealing feel at large sizes. Details include 6 well constructed weights, manually edited kerning, which is more open for on-screen devices, ligatures and alternatives.