JT Symington was inspired by the classic serif typefaces of the 20th century. Its well defined serifs make it well suited to headlines as well as large chunks of body copy.

We usually describe Mayayo as no good for condolence letters, nor for carving inscriptions, etc. Indeed, as we have seen, the designers who choose Mayayo used it in funny different ways.

Arco Perpetuo Pro is a sans serif typeface with subtle rounded corners for the display stability on screen. Arco Perpetuo Pro may be used as small text or as big headlines.

Since its initial release in 1989, Trajan has risen to international popularity as a distinctive and versatile display typeface. First released as a Roman, and later a contemporary and stylish sans.

The complete family contains 18 weights. Kole family is ideally suited for signage, packaging, brand identity, software, editorial design, as well as web and screen design. Perfectly for headlines and logotypes.

The design of Silverspoon reproduces classic antiqua with rounded contours, and is ideal for many uses including headlines, neon signage, and stencil. Silverspoon supports Extended Latin as well as Extended Cyrillic.

Revers is a rough, grunge slab serif based on newspaper headlines from the 1950s. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic and Turkish languages.

Capital aphabet simulating blind embossing, to create distinctive stationery. Includes six border styles for monograms, each accessed by a single keystroke, as well as decorative rule characters to generate business letterheads.

Sheppaloe is a fresh handwritten font with an elegant and vintage feeling. Sheppaloe includes a full set capital and lowercase letters, as well as multi-lingual support, currency figures, numerals, & punctuation.

Tygodnik is a font inspired by the logo of the Polish magazine Tygodnik Powszechny. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic and Turkish languages.

A piece of 1940s sheet music for the song "Blue Orchids" was the inspiration for both the type design (based on the hand lettered title) as well as the font's name.

Marlita is a carefully made script, great for quotes, branding, packaging, wedding card, advertising, and more. It comes with 10 variations of ampersands as well as various titling and ending swashes.

Rubbish JNL from Jeff Levine is simply letters scribbled from an old stencil as if made by a child... But the look takes on a form of "stencil grunge" as well!

The font design is inspired by the long autumn evenings in London. Those "fast brown foxes" ran along the streets. Camden smelled delicious. And she was as beautiful as a queen.

Antidotum is a hand-made letterpress font with two different sets of capital letters. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic and Turkish languages.

German type designer Siegfried Rückel created this display and sans FontFont in 2002. The family has 6 weights, ranging from Light to Bold (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, logo, branding and creative industries, poster and billboards as well as sports. FF Alega provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Greek writing system. This FontFont is a member of the FF Alega super family, which also includes FF Alega Serif.

Accia Forte is a strong serif typeface with high contrast, large x-height and prominent serifs. Its loud contemporary feel will be ideal for titles as well as posters and web appearance. The font family contains 8 weights from Thin to Extra Bold, with matching true italics. It supports extensive language support including Cyrillic, as well as numerous OpenType features such as small caps, ligatures, several sets of figures, case-sensitive punctuation, ordinals. Accia Forte is a member of Accia Type System. It encompasses five typefaces ranging from sans-serif to expressive serif, giving you the possibility to create sophisticated cohesive designs. Accia Type system consists of Accia Sans, Accia Flare, Accia Piano, Accia Moderato, and Accia Forte.

Kaleko 105 is inspired by the classic, geometric sans-serifs such as Gill Sans, but has shallower ascenders and descenders for a more compact look. It’s a well-balanced, 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 Kaleko 105 family comprises of six weights, and is closely related to Kaleko 205. The most notable differences between the two variations, are the single-storey lower case a and g in Kaleko 105, where they are two-storey in Kaleko 205.

German type designer Yanone created this sans FontFont in 2010. The family has 14 weights, ranging from Thin to Black (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, logo, branding and creative industries as well as poster and billboards. FF Amman Sans provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Arabic writing system. This FontFont is a member of the FF Amman super family, which also includes FF Amman Serif.

Kaleko 205 is inspired by the classic, geometric sans-serifs such as Gill Sans, but has shallower ascenders and descenders for a more compact look. It’s a well-balanced, 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 Kaleko 205 family comprises of six weights, and is closely related to Kaleko 105. The most notable differences between the two variations, are the two-storey lower case a and g in Kaleko 205, where they are single-storey in Kaleko 105.

Lithuanian type designer Mindaugas Strockis created this slab FontFont between 1998 and 2002. The family contains 4 weights: Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, small text as well as software and gaming. FF Elementa provides advanced typographical support with features such as small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, super- and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional oldstyle, tabular lining, and tabular oldstyle figures. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems. This FontFont is a member of the FF Elementa super family, which also includes FF Elementa Rough.

Accia Piano is a quiet, friendly serif typeface. Its relatively short serifs, low contrast and large x-height will make a perfect appearance in newspapers as well as branding projects. The font family contains 8 weights from Thin to Extra Bold, with matching true italics. It supports extensive language support including Cyrillic, as well as numerous OpenType features such as small caps, ligatures, several sets of figures, case-sensitive punctuation, ordinals. Accia Piano is a member of Accia Type System. It encompasses five typefaces ranging from sans-serif to expressive serif, giving you the possibility to create sophisticated cohesive designs. Accia Type system consists of Accia Sans, Accia Flare, Accia Piano, Accia Moderato, and Accia Forte.

German type designer Jörg Hemker created this sans FontFont in 2011. The family has 16 weights, ranging from Extra Thin to Black (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, editorial and publishing, logo, branding, wayfinding and signage as well as web and screen design. FF Sero provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems. In 2011, FF Sero received the CommArts award.

Canadian type designer Nick Shinn created this display, serif, and script FontFont between 1994 and 2010. The family has 16 weights, ranging from Light to Extra Bold (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text as well as festive occasions. FF Fontesque provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Cyrillic writing system. This FontFont is a member of the FF Fontesque super family, which also includes FF Fontesque Sans.

This font was created to look as close to a natural handwritten script as possible by including some alternates lowercase, ligature and underlines. Perfect for any awesome projects that need hand writing taste. Comes with regular and italic. Built in Opentype features, this script comes to life as if you were writing it yourself. Also support multilingual. It's highly recommended to use it in opentype capable software - there are plenty out there nowadays as technology catches up with design ... Other than Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, many standard simple programs now come with Opentype capabilities - even the most basic ones such as Apple's Text Edit, Pages, Keynote, iBooks Author, etc. Even Word has found ways to incorporate it.

This font was created to look as close to a natural handwritten script as possible by including lowercase swash, ligature and underlines. Perfect for any awesome projects that need hand writing taste. Comes with regular and italic. Built in Opentype features, this script comes to life as if you were writing it yourself. Also support multilingual. It's highly recommended to use it in opentype capable software - there are plenty out there nowadays as technology catches up with design ... Other than Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, many standard simple programs now come with Opentype capabilities - even the most basic ones such as Apple's Text Edit, Pages, Keynote, iBooks Author, etc. Even Word has found ways to incorporate it.

Dirty Sundae is a casual hand drawn typeface with interlocking ligatures. Dirty Sundae comes in four styles: Regular and Condensed plus Regular and Bold version of them both. Dirty Sundae suits great into a film title, as a logotype for a cartoon or an animation film or for a new superhero, as well as in a jazz gig poster, magazine, packaging and branding. It can be easily fit into a vintage or modern context as long as it’s on the cheerful side. Dirty Sundae is equipped with 128 interlocking ligatures that you can access by turning on Discretionary Ligatures in any OpenType savvy program or by fetching them manually from the character window.

Polish type designer Lukasz Dziedzic created this serif FontFont in 2010. The family has 30 weights, ranging from Light to Black in Condensed, Normal and Wide (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries as well as small text. FF More provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Cyrillic writing system. In 2011, FF More received the CommArts award.

Accia Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface with character. Its strong features make an outstanding performance in branding applications, as well as in editorial designs. The font family contains 8 weights from Thin to Extra Bold, with matching true italics. It supports extensive language support including Cyrillic, as well as numerous OpenType features such as small caps, ligatures, several sets of figures, case-sensitive punctuation, ordinals. Accia Sans is a member of Accia Type System. It encompasses five typefaces ranging from sans-serif to expressive serif, giving you the possibility to create sophisticated cohesive designs. Accia Type system consists of Accia Sans, Accia Flare, Accia Piano, Accia Moderato, and Accia Forte.

German type designer Yanone created this serif FontFont in 2010. The family has 8 weights, ranging from Regular to Extra Bold (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, editorial and publishing as well as logo, branding and creative industries. FF Amman Serif provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Arabic writing system. This FontFont is a member of the FF Amman super family, which also includes FF Amman Sans.

Some words from the designer, Frantisek Storm... Designed by Josef Tyfa in 1959, digitalized by F. Storm in 1996. This Roman and Italic are well-known perhaps to all Czech graphic artists and typographers ever since their release. Although this type face in some details is under the sway of the period of its rise, its importance is timeless, in contradistinction to other famous types dating from the turn of the sixties which were found, after some time, to be trite. The italics live their own life, only their upper-case letters have the same expression as the basic design. Thin and fragile, they work excellently, emphasizing certain parts in the text by their perfect contrast of expression. When seen from a distance they are a little bit darker than the Roman face. Tyfa Roman was released in 1960 by Grafotechna in Prague for hot setting. Later on, Berthold produced letter matrices - "rulers" for Staromat devices, used for manual photosetting of display alphabets. In the eighties it was available on dry transfers of Transotype and today it is offered also by ITC. The meticulously executed designs of the individual letters in the 288 point size are arranged into a set of signs on a cardboard of about B2 in size. The yellowed paper reveals retouches by white paint on the ink. Blue lines mark the baseline, the capital line, the ascender and descender lines and the central verticals of the letters. With regard to the format of the flat scanner, the designs had to be reduced, with the use of a camera, to the format A4, i.e. to the upper-case letter height of about 30 mm. These were then scanned in 600 dpi resolution and read as a bitmap template to the FontStudio programme. The newly created bold type faces derive from Tyfa's designs of the letters "a", "n", "p", the darkness of which was increased further, approximately by 3%, to enhance their emphasizing function. The text designs have hairstrokes thickened by one third; the contrast between thin and thick strokes has been modified, in order to improve legibility, in sizes under 12 points. We have used electronic interpolation to produce the semi-bold designs. Josef Tyfa himself recommends to choose a somewhat darker design than the basic one for printing of books.

Aire is what Sproviero would call a < big display family >. We recommend seeing its user’s guide. After his success with Reina, Sproviero comes out with this big family of 7 members: Each of them loaded with lots of sophisticated ligatures, alternates and the entire cyrillic alphabet. The overall impression that the font gives is lightness and delicateness; that’s the reason the designer chose to call it Aire, or Air, in English. "Aire was somehow having a rest from my fat face Reina [...] It started as a really thin style of Reina, but it rapidly migrated from it and grew up alone. And how it grew..." The inspiration came from his own past creations: “The heavy strokes of Reina were shouting for a more delicate thing. Something more feminine. More fragile. Something which had a lot of elegance and fresh air inside”. Aire responds to this: Sproviero found that many of the typefaces of nowadays which are used for headlines (best known as display fonts) have almost always just one, maybe two weight styles. This was his opportunity to try something new. Aire makes it easier for the user to generate different levels/layers of communication thanks to its variety of styles. With this font you can solve entire decorative pieces of design with just one font, and that was the aim of it. Aire was designed to be playful yet formal: While none of its alternates are activated it can be useful for short to medium length texts; and when the user chooses to make use of its open-type decorative glyphs, it can be useful for headlines with dazzling results. On March of 2012, Aire was chosen to be part of the most important exhibition of typography in Latinoamerica: Tipos Latinos 2012. TECHNICAL Aire is a family with many members. In total, the user can choose between almost 6,000 (!) glyphs (1,000 per style). Each member has variants inside, which are open-type programmed: The user decides which glyph to alternate, equalizing the amount of decoration wanted. Every decorative glyph has its weight adjusted to the style it belongs to. Exclusively for decoration, Aire Fleurons Pro is an open-type programmed set of ornaments. And last but not least, remember Aire is delicate. What’s my point? It is not recommended to activate all the alternates at the same time. It is typo-scientifically proved: A maximum of 3 or 4 alternates per word would be more than enough.

TT Fors useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Fors is a modern geometric sans serif with characters and shapes contrasting in width, as close as possible to the basic geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle). TT Fors is a great addition to TypeType's line of functional sans serifs, which already includes such fonts as TT Norms Pro, TT Commons, TT Hoves and TT Interphases. The main inspiration for the creation of TT Fors was the study of geometric grotesques of the early to mid-20th century (Futura, Neuzeit Grotesk, Twentieth Century, Avantgarde Gothic, etc.), and the analysis of the contribution they made to the visual environment of that time. We gave ourselves the task to create the most versatile functional typeface that draws inspiration from the visual environment of the early to mid-20th century, but at the same time is aimed at uninterrupted use in all modern media, from branding and packaging design to work in interfaces and applications. This versatility is reflected in the title TT Fors (for), a typeface for a wide range of uses. The rounded characters in the font family tend to be shaped as the correct circle as much as possible, while the rest of the characters have narrower proportions. For more functionality, the typeface has rather high lowercase characters. Thanks to the correct and precisely selected geometric shapes and uniform construction rules, TT Fors works great both in the format of large headings and in very small text sizes used in book printing and in web design. In addition, the TT Fors family has a display subfamily TT Fors Display, which is a trendy pair for the text fonts. The main feature of the display subfamily is high contrast in horizontal or vertical strokes. When choosing a contrasting stroke, we paid attention that the shape of the letter would not go into reverse contrast and become a stressed sans serif. The subtle strokes in TT Fors Display have added sufficient display vibe to give the font a vibrant character, while remaining intelligent and serious. In total, TT Fors family includes 34 fonts: 9 weights and 9 italic styles in the text subfamily, 6 weights and 6 italic styles in the display subfamily, 2 outline styles and 2 variable fonts for both subfamilies. TT Fors has stylistic alternatives, ligatures, small caps (text family only), numbers in circles, arrows and a set of alternative round full stops and punctuation marks (text family only), slashed zero, and other useful features. More details about all OpenType features can be found in the font specimen. And, by good tradition, TT Fors has two variable fonts, for each of the subfamilies. Each variable font supports two axes of variability—thickness and slant. An important clarification—not all programs support variable technologies yet, you can check the support status here: https://v-fonts.com/support/. To use the variable font with two variable axes on Mac you will need MacOS 10.14 or higher. TT Fors supports more than 180+ languages, such as: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian+, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian+, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani+, Banjar, Basque+, Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama+, Boholano+, Bosnian (lat), Breton+, Catalan+, Cebuano+, Chamorro+, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian+, Cornish, Corsican+, Cree, Croatian, Czech+, Danish, Dutch+, Embu, English+, Esperanto, Estonian+, Faroese+, Fijian, Filipino+, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian+, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician+, Ganda, German+, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian+, Icelandic+, Ilocano, Indonesian+, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian+, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Leonese, Lithuanian, Livvi-Karelian, Luba-Kasai, Ludic, Luganda+, Luo, Luxembourgish+, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay+, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau+, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish+, Portuguese+, Quechua+, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian +, Romansh+, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (lat)+, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak+, Slovenian+, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho+, Spanish+, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish+, Swiss German+, Tagalog+, Tahitian, Taita, Talysh (lat), Tatar+, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan+, Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Tsonga, Tswana+, Turkish+, Turkmen (lat), Uyghur, Valencian+, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Welsh+, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu+, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (not localization), Erzya, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Macedonian, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Nogai, Russian+, Rusyn, Serbian (cyr)+, Ukrainian

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

An American Scotch remixed in 27 fonts Mencken has twenty seven styles, divided into three widths, three optical sizes, romans and italics. Generally, optical size typeface families belong to a same common construction. It falls into the same category of type classification, while presenting different x-heights or contrasts. Mencken is unique because it is designed according to different axis and optical sizes. Firstly, Mencken Text is a low-contrast transitional typeface, designed on an oblique axis, asserting horizontal with featuring open counters. Its capitals follow Didots to better harmonize the rest of the family. On the other side of the spectrum, Mencken Head (and narrow variations) is designed on a vertical axis, high contrast, in a contemporary Didot style. The Mencken is therefore a typeface answering to different sorts of uses, whose design is different according to its uses: from oblique axis in small size to vertical axis in large sizes. Vertical proportions (x-height, capitals height, etc.) were calibrated to be compatible with many Typofonderie typeface families. Lucie Lacava and I followed the idea launched by Matthew Carter few years ago for some of his typefaces intended for publications. From Baltimore Sun’s project to Typofonderie’s Mencken It is a bespoke typeface for American newspaper The Baltimore Sun started at the end of 2004 which marks the beginning of this project. The story started with a simple email exchange with Lucie Lacava then in charge of redesigning the American East Coast newspaper. As usual, she was looking for new typeface options in order to distinguish the redesign that she had started. At the time of its implementation, a survey of the newspaper’s readers has revealed that its previous typeface, drawn in the mid-1990s, was unsatisfactory. The Mencken was well received, some reader responses was particularly enjoyable: “It’s easier to read with the new type even though the type is designed by a French.” Why it is called Mencken? The name Mencken is a tribute to H. L. Mencken’s journalistic contributions to The Sun. According to the London Daily Mail, Mencken ventured beyond the typewriter into the world of typography. Because he felt Americans did not recognize irony when they read it, he proposed the creation of a special typeface to be called Ironics, with the text slanting in the opposite direction from italic types, to indicate the author’s humour. Affirming his irreverence, the Mencken typeface does not offer these typographic gadgets. Henry Louis Mencken (1880 — 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore”, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. Creative Review Type Annual 2006 Tokyo TDC 2018

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Reserv was inspired by a logo, which I crated for the company, EVROTERM. Once I saw this logo I asked myself: "Why not font based on this? In two or three weight?" For use in advertising and display typography.

Riana is handwritten, scanned and then carefully worked over to keep the rough touch and the typical "fountainpen" look. The result is a very lively, expressive font. To me it has an Existentialist touch, but don't ask me why.