It started with an italic, or to be more precise, half an italic. The slanted styles of Urge Text exhibit a certain bipolarity, the tops of glyphs having a standard italic form, the bottoms of glyphs being more Roman in their construction. This sturdy footing really locks the italics to the baseline, making them very legible while still being distinct from the uprights. The same bipolar approach didn't work very well in upright styles, so the Romans are more toned down. Ranging from the almost monoline, Egyptian style light weights to higher contrast ‘Modern’ bolds, there is much potential for use in typographically demanding scenarios. The family consists of six weights, normal and condensed widths, all with italics, making a total of 24 fonts; it’s a highly usable text typeface with an array of OpenType features. All styles include small caps, multiple figure styles (proportional- and tabular-, oldstyle and lining, small cap proportional figures, numerators, denominators, superscript and subscript), standard ligatures, alternate forms (stylistic sets), automatic fractions, case sensitive forms, and a handy (perhaps!) ‘percent off’ ligature in the discretionary ligatures feature.

This typeface appears to be straight out of a science fiction movie thriller. Mingo is a slightly condensed, somewhat vain gothic with thick vertical strokes proudly tapering downward. Capitals which are normally completely round are now square inside with curving outside corners. Lowercase letters carry the same design traits. And, in the capital A and H, crossbars extend on both sides helping give the face a pronounced retro look. Mingo Gothic is a close cousin to Raleigh Gothic and is an excellent choice for book covers and large display settings. Small caps, fractions, and alternate characters have also been developed for greater layout versatility. Mingo Gothic Bold is now available in the OpenType format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version as stylistic alternates, historical forms, small caps, oldstyle figures, ornaments, and f-ligatures. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.