Plantin is a family of text typefaces created by Monotype in 1913. Their namesake, Christophe Plantin (Christoffel Plantijn in Dutch), was born in France during the year 1520. In 1549, he moved to Antwerp, located in present-day Belgium. There he began printing in 1555. For a brief time, he also worked at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Typefaces used in Christophe Plantin's books inspired future typographic developments. In 1913, the English Monotype Corporation's manager Frank Hinman Pierpont directed the Plantin revival. Based on 16th century specimens from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, specifically a type cut by Robert Granjon and a separate cursive Italic, the Plantin" typeface was conceived. Plantin was drawn for use in mechanical typesetting on the international publishing markets. Plantin, and the historical models that inspired it, are old-style typefaces in the French manner, but with x-height that are larger than those found in Claude Garamond's work. Plantin would go on to influence another Monotype design, Times New Roman. Stanley Morison and Victor Larent used Plantin as a reference during that typeface's cutting. Like Garamond, Plantin is exceptionally legible and makes a classic, elegant impression. Plantin is indeed a remarkably accommodating type face. The firm modelling of the strokes and the serifs in the letters make the mass appearance stronger than usual; the absence of thin elements ensures a good result on coated papers; and the compact structure of the letters, without loss of size makes Plantin one of the economical faces in use. In short, it is essentially an all-purpose face, excellent for periodical or jobbing work, and very effective in many sorts of book and magazine publishing. Plantin's Bold weight was especially optimized to provide ample contrast: bulkiness was avoided by introducing a slight sharpening to the serifs' forms."

Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

The hand-brushed Fave™ Set has ten informal scripts and other handwritten fonts made up of two subfamilies: Fave and the even-more informal Fave Casual, each have a primary script with a bold version and three other handwritten faces for a total of ten typefaces spanning the casual spectrum. All are optimized for large type use too so they look as good up close as they do set at smaller sizes. OpenType features The Fave family has a few features that happen largely in the background. All of the fonts use the OpenType Standard Ligature feature to automatically differentiate consecutive lowercase letters and numbers (using separate glyphs) and like our previous release Turbinado, they also automatically differentiate like characters that are separated by another letter. Alternate characters The script fonts have alternate uppercase and lowercase characters including multiple t (and double t) crossbar alternates that can be selected from the OpenType glyph table. Enable Contextual Alternates feature to automatically insert a bigger crossbar as the surrounding letters allow throughout a text box or document. You can also make your own custom lowercase t and crossbar to fit any situation–all of the lowercase t ascenders and crossbars are available separately in the OpenType glyph table, and can be combined and moved around manually. Stylistic sets and other goodies Fave Script and its bold counterpart have two Stylistic Sets. When enabled, one automatically substitutes non-connecting alternate characters at the ends of words, the other substitutes even bigger t crossbars than the Standard Ligature feature does. Smart apostrophes and ligatures Other subtle but hopefully helpful features include smart apostrophes, which insert themselves between two script characters in common situations without breaking their connection, and a few ligatures that also make character connections more seamless.