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

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

The Joanna® Nova design, by Monotype Studio designer Ben Jones, is an extensive update to Eric Gill’s original Joanna typefaces and brings this much admired – but underused – slab serif typeface into the 21st century. Joanna Nova features 18 fonts – more than twice as many as the original Joanna – with a wide range of weights including thin and ultra black, which were not available in the original design. Every glyph has been redrawn using a variety of reference sources, including Gill’s original sketches and the copper patterns used in Joanna’s initial production. When Jones set out to design Joanna Nova, he saw that the ‘real Joanna’ was not immediately evident. “Some of Gill’s original drawings have a sloped ‘M’; there is also a ‘K’ and ‘R’ with a curled leg and a letter ‘d’ without the flat bottom,” he explained. “Is this Joanna? Or is it the version used to print Gill’s Essay on Typography? Or is it the digital version with which most people are surely more familiar than any other version? Ultimately, I think, none of these and all of these were ‘Joanna’ because, as with any typeface, it is more the idea or concept behind the typeface that makes it what it is. My approach was to create a version of Joanna that appears in your mind when you think of Joanna.” Jones noted that one of the most distinguishing aspects of Joanna is the italics; and that, for reasons unknown, many of the characters in the current versions are much more condensed than those in the hand-set fonts of metal type., The newer designs being almost unusable at small sizes. The italics in Joanna Nova have been reworked to be more legible and closer to their original widths. Joanna Nova expands the original Joanna in several ways that open up new typographic possibilities, These additions include several new weights, support for Greek and Cyrillic scripts, small caps for all scripts in both upright and italic styles, several numeral options and a host of context-sensitive ligatures. The Joanna Nova typeface family is part of the new Eric Gill Series, drawing on Monotype's heritage to remaster and expand and revitalize Eric Gill’s body of work, with more weights, more characters and more languages to meet a wide range of design requirements. The series also brings to life new elements inspired by some of Gill’s unreleased work, discovered in Monotype’s archive of original typeface drawings and materials of the last century.

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

Probably as a reaction to the pragmatism of modernist design, the seventies saw an explosion of buoyant, vivacious typography. Psychedelia fueled a return to the melting, lush shapes of Art Nouveau while Pop culture embraced the usage of funky, joyful lettering for advertising, product design and tv titling. New low-cost technologies like photo-lettering and rub-on transfer required new fonts to be expressive rather than legible, pushing designers to produce, bubbly, high-spirited masterpieces, where geometric excess and calligraphic inventions melted joyfully. Freitag is Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini's homage to this era and its typography. His starting point was the design of a heavy sans serif with humanist condensed proportions, flared stems and reverse contrast, that generated both the main family, and a variant display subfamily. The main typeface family slowly builds the tension and design exuberance along the weight axis - a bit like our desire for the weekend increases during the week. In Light and Medium weights the font shows a more controlled, medium-contrast design, tightly spaced for maximum display effect. The Book weight follows the same design but uses a more relaxed letter spacing to allow usage in smaller sizes and short body copy. As weight increases in the Bold weight the style becomes more expressive, with a visible reverse contrast building up and culminating in the Heavy weight with his clearly visible "bell bottoms" feel. In the display sub-family the design is pushed further by introducing variant letterforms that have a stronger connection to calligraphy and lettering. Also, the weight range becomes a optical one, with weights marked as Medium, Large, XLarge, as bringing the contrast and the boldness to the extreme creates smaller counterspaces that require bigger usage sizes. Another important addition of the display sub-family is the connected italics that sport swash capitals and cursive letterforms, developed with logo design and ultra-expressive editorial design in mind. To balance the extreme contrast in the XL weight, contrast of punctuation is reduced, creating a rich, highly-dynamic texture wherever diacritics and marks are used in the text. The full family includes 16 styles + 4 variable fonts, allowing full control of the design over its tree-hugging design space. All 20 fonts share an extended latin charset with open type features including case sensitive forms, single and double story variants and alternate glyphs. According to its creator, "Freitag is the typeface that sounds like an imaginary Woodstock where on the stage with Jimi Hendrix with Novarese, Motter, Excoffon and Benguiat playing onstage with Jimi Hendrix". Jeepers creepers!

Kaytek™ Slab is a fresh take on the correspondence typefaces of the 90s - which were originally designed for the demands of office environments. Just like its predecessors, this text typeface is robust and hard-working - meaning it works well in challenging design or printing environments - but it’s not without personality. Look closer at the lowercase g and a, especially in the italic, and you can see some unexpected elements of subversiveness within the design. This blend of sturdiness and quirkiness means it’s just as relevant for information-heavy projects, such as annual reports, as it is in more expressive environments. Although first and foremost designed for text, Kaytek Slab’s details shine through in its heavier weights and larger sizes, meaning it also has display potential. Every style of the typeface takes up exactly the same amount of space, thanks to the way Radek Łukasiewicz created the design. He based the entire typeface on a single, master set of proportions. This means designers can switch between styles without the text being reflowed, making it particularly useful in magazines, where space might be limited, and also on the internet, where hover links appear in a different style. As well as its roots in the office, Kaytek Slab draws on a little bit more 90s nostalgia. It’s named for the first and only Polish walkman, and embodies the same solid, no-nonsense shapes that made the analogue technology of the era so charming. Kaytek Slab is robust and solid. Kaytek Slab comes in 12 weights, from Thin to Black Italic, and offers multi-language support. Kaytek Sans, Kaytek Headline and Kaytek Rounded, are also available.

Maged, a traditional-style Arabic text face, enjoyed widespread popularity as a dry-transfer typeface prior to being licensed by Letera Arabica to Linotype-Hell for font production. In consultation with the Linotype Design Studio (U.K.), the artwork was redrawn by Adrian Williams to render the typeface into a complete, unitized Arabic font with a full complement of traditional-style ligatures suitable for digitization. Maged, which has two weights, first appeared as a 202 font in 1987 before its eventual conversion to OpenType in 2005. Thus Linotype’s Maged font can be described as a trend-setting modern Naskh design that retains a sense of the fluidity of Naskh calligraphy: the letters, when composed, appear as freshly-written text characterized by rich, inky horizontals, tapering swash strokes and contrasting delicate ascenders. The Bold exploits these features of the Regular without excess, tempered by the need for clarity at smaller sizes. Maged Regular and Bold are eminently suited to text and titling in broader column work (brochures, magazines, advertising, coffee-table books etc.) and are thus able to extend the range of the Linotype Arabic library in areas of work where the more compact text and titling fonts would create a too concentrated effect. Both of the Maged fonts include Latin glyphs (from Palatino Medium and Palatino Black) inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. Maged incorporates the Basic Latin character set and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

At VetteLetters we like food but we also appreciate our drinks. Yes, of the non-alcoholic kind as well. Like milk. Contrary to what Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, Milk is not just for babies. It contains a whole lot of stuff that is genuinely good for you. Like proteins, carbohydrates, minerals (calcium a.o.) and many vitamins. One time visiting The Hague, Donald DBXL spotted a tile tableau on a brick wall, advertising a dairy factory called ‘De Sierkan’. Yellow sans serif letters on a bright blue background, dating back to the late 19th century, immediately grabbed DBXL’s attention. Especially because the tableau showed both regular and bold letters with some lovely peculiarities here and there. De Sierkan appeared to have been a milk factory solely operating in The Hague from 1879 until 1961. A number of these wall adverts are still to be seen in The Hague streets today. Photos were taken for later reference. Later is now, the lettering has been digitized, missing characters added, and VLNL Melk sees the light of day. VLNL Melk is an all-caps geometric display sans serif family of three weights, Regular, Bold and Black. The basic shape of the letters is a rectangle with rounded corners, leaving a sturdy no-nonsense look and feel. It has a distinct historic aura, but with both feet in this digital day and age. It can equally well be used for the logo of a hipster coffee place, as the cover of a historic novel. Actually, VLNL Melk kan be applied in a wide range of designs like logos, posters, flyers, book covers and magazine headlines.

Range Serif is a sharp, contemporary, wedge serif typeface with just a hint of fraktur influence. There are five weights from light to black, each with corresponding italics. This is a typeface designed for demanding typographic work; it’s legible at small sizes, but unique at display sizes. There is an abundance of OpenType features in each font, including: Ligatures - all fonts contain standard f-ligatures. Contextual Alternates - Range Serif has been carefully designed to not ‘need’ ligatures. If you choose to deactivate them, the contextual alternates feature will make sure an alternative f is used before certain letters to avoid clashing. Fractions - When activated, numbers separated by a slash will automagically turn into fractions. Numerals - There are many different figure sets. These are Proportional Lining, Tabular Lining, Proportional Oldstyle, Tabular Oldstyle, Superiors and Scientific Inferiors. A slashed zero feature is also included. Small Caps - All styles include small caps, for both small caps and capitals to small caps functions. Ornaments - For convenience, the arrows are grouped in the ornaments feature. Case Sensitive Forms - There are different punctuation and bracket glyphs for all caps usage. Stylistic Alternates / SS01 - The italic fonts contain alternates for the letters A, K, R, U and X. Range Serif is a versatile and fully-featured typeface, ideal for corporate identities, contemporary art catalogs, even t-shirt slogans. The language coverage is impressive (Latin Extended A is fully covered) so Range Serif should prove a useful text and display workhorse for speakers of many different tongues. The typeface includes an array of currency symbols, including the new symbols for Indian Rupee and Turkish Lira. Also check out the accompanying sans serif version, Range Sans.

Tavern is a super font family based on our Algerian Mesa design, with Tavern we've greatly expanded the usability by creating light and bold weights plus all new for 2020 with the introduction of extra bold and black weights Tavern is now a five weight family. The addition of the bold weight made it possible to go further with the design by adding open faced shadowed, outline and fill versions. Please note, the fill fonts are aligned to go with the open faced versions, they may work with the outline versions, however you will have to apply them one letter at a time. The Tavern Fill fonts may also be used a stand alone font, however, the spacing is much wider than the regular solid black weights of Tavern. In the old days of printing, fill fonts rarely lined up perfect with the open or outline font, this created a misprinted look that's much in style today. To create that misprinted look using two different colors, try layering the outline fonts offset over the top of the solid black versions. Next we come to the small caps and X versions, for a font that's mostly seen used in all caps we felt a small caps would come in handy. The X in Tavern X stands for higher X-height, we've taken our standard lowercase and raised it for greater visibility in small text and for signage where you want the look of a lowercase but it needs to be readable from the street. In August of 2016 I started the project of expanding this font into more weights after seeing the font in use where someone tried creating a bold version by adding a stroke fill around the letters. The result didn't look very good, the stroke fill also caused the shadow line to merge with the serifs on some letters. This lead me to experiment to see if a new bold weight was possible for this font and I'm pleased to say that it was. After the bold weight was finished I decided to type the regular and bold weights together in a first word thin second word bold combination, however the weight difference between the two wasn't enough contrast. This lead me to wonder if a lighter weight was possible for this font, as you can see yes it was, so now for the first time in the history of this old 1908 type design you can type a first word thin second word bold combination. So why the name change from Algerian to Tavern? Since the original font was designed in England by the Stephenson Blake type foundry I decided to give this font a name that reminded you of the country it came from, however, there were other more technical reasons. During the creation of the bold weight the engraved shadow line was sticking out too far horizontally on the bottom right of the serifs dramatically throwing the whole font off balance. The original font encountered this problem on the uppercase E, L and Z, their solution was a diagonal cut corner which was now needed across any glyph in the new bold weight with a serif on the bottom right side. In order to make the light and regular weights blend well with the bold weight diagonal cut offs were needed and added as well. This changed the look of the font from the original and why I decided to change the name, additional concerns were, if you're designing a period piece where the font needs to be authentic then this font would be too new. Regular vs. Alt version? The alternate version came about after seeing the regular version used as a logo and secondary text on a major product label. I felt that some of the features of the regular version didn't look good as smaller secondary text, this gave me the idea to create an alternate version that would work well for secondary text in an advertising layout. But don't stop there, the alternate version can be used as a logo too and feel free to exchange letters between both regular and alternate versions. Where are the original alternates from Algerian? Original alternates from Algerian are built into the regular versions of Tavern plus new alternates have been created. We're excited to introduce, for the first time, all new swash capitals for this classic font, you're going to love the way they look in your ad layout, sign or logo. The best way to access alternate letters in Tavern is with the glyph map in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign products, from Adobe Illustrator you can copy and paste into Photoshop as a smart object and take advantage of all the text layer style features Photoshop has to offer. There may be third party character maps available for accessing alternate glyphs but we can't advise you in that area. I know what you're thinking, will there be a Tavern Condensed? It takes a lot of hours to produce a large font family such as this, a future condensed version will depend on how popular this standard version is. If you love Tavern we're happy to introduce the first weathered edge version of this font called Bay Tavern available in February 2020.