It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

One day, when I was walking with my daughter Greta, I stopped in front of the windowshop of a bookshop, that caught my attention, but Greta was pretty irritated, as always when it comes to books: she is dyslexic. All things written are basically a nightmare for her!So one thing came to my mind: if the great Louis Braille, with visual impairment, invented an instrument that allowed blind people to read, write and play,there had to be a tool that made it easier for dyslexics to do the same things. So, I proposed to Greta to create together a font to help her and other dyslexics. We worked on it, becoming a bit of graphic designers, inventors and guinea pigs at the same time.We brought some initial changes to the mirror letters "pq bd", based on some examples already available on the market, that improved reading times, strenghtening our willing to go ahead. That's how "GretaDS" is born, a completely new font, from the "handwritten" family, which marks a difference on the mirror letters, making them easily recognizable, as well as the lowercase couple rn (RN) which can be confused with the letter "m", not to mention the capital "I" (vowel i) indistinguishable from the lowercase "l" (L)We hope, that other graphic designers will follow its flow, modify and improve the path, and make the most of its energy, to offer dyslexics a tool that make reading as easy as drinking a glass of water.

Say g'day to Ainslie Sans, insigne Design’s new typeface. Like its big brother, the new face incorporates a mix of influences from Oz, although Sans is pared down from the original semi-serif. The original Ainslie was inspired by Mt. Ainslie and the city of Canberra’s inner suburb of the same name. Canberra is Australia’s capital--a planned city designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffin. Griffin’s style and geometric design for the city, which include Mt. Ainslie, are now also the same structure that make up the foundation of Ainslie Sans. Unlike the original Ainslie family member, though, Ainslie Sans does away with much of the aboriginal-inspired touches by eliminating the semi-serifs, forcing the font to borrow more heavily than its predecessor from Canberra’s distinct, geometric design and style. The result’s a spiffy Australian font that’s usable within a wide array of applications. The trendy typeface incorporates a multitude of alternates. You can access these in any OpenType-enabled application. Alternates, swashes and alternate titling caps allow you to customize the look and feel. Also incorporated are capital swash alternates, old style figures, and compact caps. Check out the PDF brochure to view these options in action. OpenType enabled applications can take complete benefit of your automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This font also presents the glyphs to help a wide array of languages. Try it for copy. Try it for a headline. Try it alongside the original Ainslie. Whichever way suits you best, give it a burl. You won't be sad you did.

Banished was inspired by posters for the 1968 Cult Cinema Classic, “Astro Zombies”, but it exudes the rough and tumble, chewed up and spit out Old West era. Banished dives head first into all of the nostalgic clichés of the old west, as well as the cult classic that inspired it. Here's what's included with Banished: 388 glyphs - including Capitals, Lowercase (Alt. Capitals), Numerals, Alt. Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 6th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Contextual Alternates that auto-switches between Capitals & Lowercase (Alt Capitals) glyphs, as well as Numerals and Alt Numerals for visual randomness. To access the Contextual Alternates feature, you will need to be using software with Opentype compatibility otherwise you can access the alternate glyphs via a Glyphs panel. Stylistic Alternates feature that swaps all default Numerals with their Alternates Numerals Font is provided in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here's why Banished is for you: You're in need of a good rustic slab serif typestyle with a narrow width and gritty feel You're planning a Western themed party and need a unique western typeface You're a fan of the 1968 Cult Classic "Astro Zombies" as just have to have the font to match You've got one of those Old West photography studios and need a great Wanted poster font You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

Almoneda: Sale at public auction of movable goods, generally used. And also: private and voluntary sale of jewelry and junk that is made without the intervention of justice. Formerly, it was nothing more than the market or sale of things and spoils won from the enemy in war. Nowadays, the almoneda is practically associated with spaces where the sale of "old things" takes place and, in Madrid, they are usually concentrated in the area of El Rastro, an open-air market that is set up on Sundays and some holidays in the center of Madrid. There, you can find everything and, if you walk around a lot and look hard enough, great typographic finds. It is there where I find a large number of elements (usually from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) such as boxes, posters, books, etc.. in which appear uppercase letters with a variety of shapes, letters embedded, rare ligatures ... In addition, many elements extracted from street signs, tiles from bars and commemorative elements of Madrid have been used to complete this font design made with care and patience. Thus was born Almoneda, a modern typeface with a marked axis and great contrast, and an uppercase with several sets of characters to play with and enjoy. It also includes a large number of ligatures and discretionary ligatures. A Variable font is included with the full package license. Almoneda, a typeface that will not leave you indifferent. They take it out of my hands, hey!

Resist Sans is a free-spirited neo-grotesque that embodies both the innate desire for revolt and a tendency towards uniformity. While Resist Sans preserves the neat, minimalist look which is associated with neo-grotesques, it also accentuates the tentativeness of each letter form. The name, too, hints at the rebellious character of the typeface. Resist Sans comes in 28 styles (14 uprights and matching obliques). Text vs Display Resist Sans comes in two versions: Display and Text, which serve different purposes but remain interchangeable and even complementary in some cases. Resist Text is equipped with deep ink traps and optical compensators, which really come into play at smaller sizes. The Display version is smoother and more consistent, so better for use in larger sizes and headlines. Styles/Weights Each of the two versions of Resist Sans comes in 7 weights (Thin to Black) and is equipped with matching Obliques, which brings the total number of styles to 28. Two trial styles (Text Light and Display Medium Oblique) can be downloaded free of charge. Each style contains 900+ glyphs, awesome OpenType features, and around 1500 kerning pairs. Language Support Resist Sans is truly multilingual. It supports most European and Latin-languages and features Extended Cyrillic, which gives access to such languages as Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Russian, Macedonian and many more. Free Styles Two styles of Resist Sans can be downloaded for free on MyFonts. Type Specimen Resist Sans PDF Type Specimen can be downloaded here: Resist Sans PDF Type Specimen

The Neuliner Family is sleek, condensed, extremely legible & flexible available in 7 styles. The inspiration stems from the classic, slender Art Deco era. Designed with a repeated vertical theme Neuliner is consistent from style to style with variations in weight and character. With over 350 glyphs and applying in over 80 languages with Numerals, Dingbats & Euro accents this family is complete. At the time of its first release Neuliner is available in Medium, Bold, Italic, Outline, Drop, Rough, & Rounded. Other styles are in the works. As displayed in the posters, Neuliner works well, in any style, for headlines, by-lines, logos, titles, posters, signage, billboards, ads, main & end titles, monograms, numbering systems, wedding invites and stationary, etc. The Bold style works congruously with the Outline & Drop styles, for either 'trapped' or 'offset' effects. This family also has its roots and influence in Mid Century influenced architecture and design yet lends its style to contemporary and modern design in the 2020s. The Drop & Rough versions are unique styles that render well in Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop for use in a myriad of colors and effects. The rough-edged style resembles a stitched and weathered effect, while the drop version plays prominently as headlines in either bright or muted color combinations. The versatile, ever-classic outline style gives any image or photographs an impression of elegance and transparency without sacrificing legibility. Neuliner Rounded embosses and engraves either blindly or foil added with a lasting impression. Neuliner Family from Cozyfonts Foundry.

Wonder Brush is a display typographer's guilty pleasure. It's one of very few fonts ever made that can take intense abuse and still look natural. Partly based on a 1969 Friedrich Poppl design called Poppl Stretto, but considerably fused with ideas found in interwar magazine ad lettering and signage, Wonder Brush caters to the idea that most graphic designers would rather use design elements they can enjoy. When you spend your days being "challenged" and "creatively tested" and "communicating the message," you can definitely use a little bit of playtime. And this font gives you just that, playtime on the job. Wonder Brush appears to be a straightforward narrow upright brush script. But it really is made of malleable rubber. Take it into a program like Adobe Illustrator, set something, stretch or squeeze, shear or warp, slant or transform… just play with it like they used to do in the 70s and 80s. You will soon discover that this font really is a big old top hat, and it's up to you and your mischief to pull rabbits or geese out of it. A single font that allows you to emphasize content or manage space mechanically without affecting the integrity of the type setting. And if your playtime includes fiddling with OpenType features, you're in for a bonus treat: Wonder Brush comes with over 800 characters, including a lot of alternates and extended language support. So tweak away until your eyes cry with joy. The only rules are the ones you set, and even those are meant to be broken.

Introducing Goxac is a boldly shaped font that gives any project a cutting-edge, futuristic feel. Goxac’s slick lines and distinctive letterforms give your text a contemporary appearance, making it ideal for designs with a science fiction or technological theme. Goxac is the perfect tool for designing eye-catching headlines, posters, and social media graphics because of its bold aesthetic and futuristic theme. They are ideal for branding projects, packaging designs, book covers, and more due to their distinctive letter shapes. With a complete set of punctuation and numbers, Goxac is available in both upper- and lowercase letters. This multipurpose font is ideal for designers, marketers, and anyone looking to add a touch of futurism to their work because it has four different variants. With the Goxac font, rest assured that your designs will look unique, stylish, and futuristic. This font is perfect for those who want to stand out in the modern era, and for those who want to give their designs a touch of innovation. Goxac is a must-have for anyone looking to create a plan that really stands out. So don’t wait, make Goxac your font of choice today, and take your design to the next level! What’s Included : - File font - All glyphs Iso Latin 1 - Alternate, Ligature - Simple installations - We highly recommend using a program that supports OpenType features and Glyphs panels like many Adobe apps and Corel Draw so that you can see and access all Glyph variations. - PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. - Fonts include Multilingual support

Description Chordette for Guitar Chord Fonts are tuned EADGBE. Create a guitar chord chart or chord sheets quickly and easily. Guitar Chord Fonts Chordette contains high quality guitar chord fonts. Each guitar chord is mapped to a specific key on the keyboard, so you can type out chords. It’s a lot easier than dealing with images to create a guitar chord chart or song sheet. It’s a favorite tool for teachers, music therapists, and musicians. What instruments are supported? Chordette for Guitar is tuned EADGBE and supports Guitar. Chordette is available in multiple tunings for most stringed instruments. Most versions of Chordette support multiple instruments. App / Instruments Supported / Tuning Chordette for Guitalele / Guitalele, Baritone Guitar / ADGCEA Chordette for Ukulele / Concert Ukulele, Banjolele / GCEA Chordette for Soprano Uke Soprano Ukulele ADF#B Chordette for Baritone Uke / Baritone Ukulele / DGBE Chordette for Mandolin / Mandolin, Irish Tenor Banjo, Irish Bouzouki / GDAE Chordette for Banjo / Banjo /gDGBD Chordette for Tenor Banjo / Tenor Banjo, Tenor Guitar, Mandola / CGDA Chordette for Guitar / Guitar / EADGBE Each version of the Chordette font uses the same chord sets and keyboard mappings. If you play multiple instruments, you can create a chord sheet for one, then use another Chordette font to transpose the song to another. For example, you can create a song for Mandolin, then instantly transpose it for Guitar and Ukulele - just by changing fonts! Chordette for Guitar is priced at $10, which includes the guitar chord font sets for both Mac and Windows. For help and support, please visit http://ukefarm.com/chordette/help.html

Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) Was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics. The most vigorous and versatile vernacular writer of the 16th century He was a very versatile writer, famous for his Lascivious Sonnets – which caused great scandal at the time – but also for his satirical verses, addressed to all the powerful people in Italy, without forgetting the many plays that he wrote for the theatre. Part of the charm of his letters is that through them you may know the whole of Venetian society from the top to the bottom. The little-known church of San Luca in Venice (in St Mark's district) has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries for people who are decidedly not devout: journalists, writers, free thinkers. In 1556 Pietro Aretino, a unique character of the Italian and Venetian Renaissance period was buried there. Such strong of personality, has contributed to generate the powerful wind of change that emerged from the italian renaissance. We have inspired on that talent searching for a new sight the famous Venetian typefaces. Probably looking for more vigour and contemporary digital style. This typeface is slightly condensed, lighter and has more contrast between the thick and thin letter-strokes, it has concave bracketed serif. Their ascender and descenders strokes are very shorts. Aretino family is completed by four weigh: Regular, SemiBold, Bold and ExtraBold, while Italics has three weighs. These fonts came with a full OpenType features and CE languages.

Whomp takes its inspiration from the work of an American master in sign painting and alphabet manipulation: Alf Becker . In 1932, Becker began designing a series of alphabets to be published in Signs of the Times magazine at the rate of one alphabet per month. Nine years later, 100 of those alphabets were compiled in one book that became an enormous success among sign painters. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Alf Becker alphabets were digitized with blurbs that falsely credit an “Alf Becker typeface”. Alf Becker was not really a typeface kind of guy. He was more of a calligrapher and sign painter. His alphabets were either incomplete or full of variations on different letters, and didn't become typefaces until the digital era. This particular Becker alphabet was quite incomplete. In fact, it wasn't a showing of an alphabet, but words on a poster. Alejandro Paul took the challenge of drawing, digitizing, restructuring, and finally building a complete usable typeface from that partial alphabet. He then extended his pleasure by once again playing with the wonderful possibilities of OpenType. Whomp comes with more than 100 alternates, tons of swashy endings and ligatures, all built into the font and accessible through OpenType palettes in programs that support such features. This is the in-your-face kind of font that stands among other Becker-based alphabets as paying most homage to the vision of this great American artist who saw letters as live ever-changing beings. Whomp is right at home when used on packaging, signage, posters, and entertainment related products.

Michael Hoffmann manufactures digital fonts for 30 years. At URW++ he contributed to the technological progress. Over the years, he also specialized in the ideal representation of fonts on screen and the complex assembly of international fonts with scripts of all countries. In his latest project he put the emphasis on developing a highly readable typeface. Less interested in the design as in the functionality of this typeface, he designed Arsapia which he has now installed as a system font on all his computers. Michael Hoffmann studied Japanology at the University of Hamburg and traveled in the early years of his professional activity frequently to Japan, there to train the IKARUS font production tools to Japanese customers. In his spare time he plays guitar or golf depending on the weather. The typeface Arsapia has been designed in such a way that all three font styles Light, Regular and Bold have the same width. When a user therefore opts for the use of Arsapia Light, even though he has already written his text in Regular, nothing changes with respect to the letter tracking. When choosing the Bold for emphasis: Nothing changes except the blackness of the letters. A font change does not engender unwanted line and page breaks of itself. All letters can be clearly distinguished from each other. 1 l I O 0 are all different. For programmers and lovers of monospaced fonts Michael Hoffmann has developed a fourth typeface: Arsapia Mono. This is the perfect terminal font.

The Handel Gothic? typeface has been a mainstay of graphic communication for over 40 years - all the while looking as current as tomorrow. Designed by Don Handel in the mid-1960s, and used in the 1973 United Airlines logo developed by Saul Bass, Handel Gothic was an instant success when released to the graphic design community. Its generous lowercase x-height, full-bodied counters and square proportions make the design highly readable at a wide range of sizes. Handel Gothic's slightly idiosyncratic character shapes gave the face a futuristic look 40 years ago that retains its power today. In addition, its Uncial-like lowercase is instantly identifiable - and unique among sans serif typestyles. Award-winning type designer Rod McDonald was attracted to the simple, decisive forms of the original, but he felt the design needed to be refined and updated. ?One of my goals was to bring a modern typographic discipline to what was really an old phototypesetting font.? To achieve his goal, McDonald re-proportioned every character and balanced the delicate relationship between the curves and the straight strokes. He also added a number of alternate characters to extend the range of the design. ?I wanted to give designers a large enough character set so they wouldn't feel constrained in what they could do. I want them to be able to play with the fonts, not just set words.? McDonald enlarged the family from the single-weight original to five weights, each with a full suite of alternate characters.In 2015 Nadine Chahine designed matching arabic weights to this family.

Caslon Antique is a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall. It was originally called "Fifteenth Century", but was renamed "Caslon Antique" by Nadall's foundry, Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, in the mid-1920s. The design of the typeface is meant to evoke the Colonial era. Early printers would reuse metal type over and over again, and the faces would become chipped and damaged from use. Caslon Antique emulates this look. Despite the name, it is not a member of the Caslon family of typefaces. The renaming is believed to have been a marketing maneuver to boost the popularity of a previously unpopular typeface by associating it with the highly popular Caslon types. Caslon Antique is popular today when a "old-fashioned" or "gothic" look is desired. It is used by the musical group The Sisters of Mercy on their albums, for the logo of the musical Les Misérables, and for the covers of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is also frequently used on historical displays. It was used for the previous edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. Most recently, it has been used on promotional material for the smash musical Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway, the West End, and its tour of the United States. British 80's band The The also used the font in several of their music videos, usually displaying several lyrics from the song in the opening scenes. It used on the cover of Regina Spektor's album, Begin to Hope. This description was sourced (in part) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original