William Morris (1834-1896) was probably the most influential figure in the decorative arts and private press movements of the late 19th and early 20th century. In reaction to the increasing lack of quality that the industrial revolution brought on, Morris sought a return to the ideals of the medieval craftsman. Dissatisfied with the commercially available typefaces of the day, he undertook the design of the fonts for his books himself. The P22 Morris font set features new versions of Morris's famous type designs for his Kelmscott Press. The two main fonts include full international character sets for Western European languages. P22 created MORRIS GOLDEN with a rough edge to simulate the look of printing on handmade paper. There is a more "refined" recent version of Golden, but its sterile digitization does not approach the effect that Morris achieved in his Kelmscott books. You'll notice the handmade effect less in the smaller sizes but will find it quite decorative in the larger sizes. (Morris cut his Golden type in only one size for the Kelmscott Press, approximately equal to 14 points.) P22's version of MORRIS TROY is more smooth than Morris Golden and is true to the original Morris design. It is based on the Kelmscott Troy type (an 18 point font) and its smaller counterpart, the Chaucer type (a 12 point font). American Type Founders made an unauthorized version of Troy, "Satanick," 189?, contrary to Morris's wish that it not be made available commercially.(Legend has it that the naming of Satanick comes from William Morris telling the agent inquiring about making copies of his fonts available to go to hell) Several digital versions of Troy (and Satanick) have appeared over the years. The P22 version offers a much more accurate rendering than any previous version. Morris designed the original Troy font to be spaced very tightly; our version reflects and honors his intention. The MORRIS ORNAMENTS are based on those Morris designed and used in his Kelmscott Press books. Characters in the positions of the letters A to Z are decorative drop cap initials. Characters in the number key positions reproduce other Morris embellishments. (See the accompanying key chart.) As with all headline fonts and complex dingbats characters, this font is best used at larger point sizes (e.g., 48, 72, 120). Use in body text or at small point sizes on-screen may not achieve desired results. P22 is grateful to William S. Peterson, Steven O. Saxe and the Lightsey-Offutt Library who gave invaluable research assistance to this project.

The great value of something crafted thoroughly by hand has been observed for years by Guille Vizzari throughout a wide spectrum of clients and projects developed at «Yani & Guille» —the studio he runs cheek by jowl with Yani Arabena—, and they both noticed that recently it has been taking on a new meaning. From barbers at their shops, to a barista that passionately prepares coffee every morning, or a bartender that deeply enjoys diving towards unknown ingredients, and even Guille’s admiration for sign painters worldwide that keep spreading their passion for the perfectly constructed letter. This wide trades universe, where craftsmanship represents a huge difference, is where «Proprietor» lives, and it’s the reason why it exists. «Proprietor» was born in a Moleskine notebook —just pencil, paper and ink— as a tribute to those crafts, and to regain the art behind Type Design that involves the fusion between tools, materials and the action of the hand. Fed by these principles, every single glyph within the whole «Proprietor» Family has been fully designed and illustrated by hand by its author (including all the ornaments, frames and crafts icons that can be seen along this specimen), showcasing Vizzari’s solid formation in the drawing field. Proprietor can be described as a compact type family system illustrated by hand, intended and designed to be able to create solid —but beautifully ornamented— paragraphs, and elaborate compositions. For this purpose, Proprietor Roman and Open displays a notorious x-height which goes perfectly with plenty of ornaments that unfold along the ascenders and descenders, but always containing its swashes inside the text line. The icing on the cake, Proprietor Script, a copperplate-based font unbelievably flooded with ornamented capitals, flourishes and endings to break through the coarse feeling of the Proprietor non-script sets, with a huge load of delicate and warm letterforms. Proprietor Wide and Wide Open hand a complete font set to complement the family for composing extended words in uppercase, matching in style and adding a striking personality. And as being part of Sudtipos’ catalogue «Proprietor» comes packed with full Open Type support —thanks to Ale Paul, fearless to tame this hand–drawn beast, supported by his vast knowledge in programming and optimization—. 7 imperfectly elegant and completely handmade fonts join the «Proprietor» system, bringing life to designs that are meant to represent the spirit of the genuine and skilled craftsmen, showing respect for their trade, and at the same time being part of it.

My first font for 2009 was Aerle. It is a new dark sans serif font in my continuing objective of designing book fonts that I can really use. It made a little ripple in the industry, but more than that I found that I loved it with Aramus and Artimas — my latest book font family with the same proportions. In many ways, Aerle is a very different direction for me built on what I have learned on Aramus and other recent developments in my style. The concept came to me while using Bitstream's Mister Earl on a site online—though there is no direct reference. I wanted a more playful heavy sans with a much smaller x-height than I have been using lately, plus taller ascenders. As I was using Aerle, I constantly needed a light and bold version. The new direction I am taking is a result of a decision that my fonts, though I loved the character shapes, produced an even type color that is too dark or a little dense. Aerle was an attempt to get away from that look even though the letterspacing is quite tight. For Aerle Thin I pushed a little further in that direction and increased the letterspacing. The hand-drawn shapes vary a lot, many pushing the boundaries of the normal character. This gives a little looseness and helps the lightness in feel I am looking for. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. Most new type around the world is far too perfect for my taste. While the shapes are exquisite, the feel is not human but digital mechanical. I find myself wanting to draw fonts that feel human — as if a person crafted them. In most ways this is a normal font for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. These small caps were very small (x-height as is proper). So Aerle's small caps are a little oversize because they plugged up too bad at x-height size. The bold is halfway between. These size variations seem important and work well in the text. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg sh sp st ch ck ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, & small caps; proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures; plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

Inspired by the type elements of 17th century Dutch mapmaking, Boncaire Titling provides you with a historic yet adventurous look for your library. This addition from insigne found its muse in a map of Curacao by Dutch cartographer Gerard Van Keulen, a member of the prosperous Van Keulen family from Amsterdam, who were engaged in the manufacture of maps for seafaring. Much thanks on this project goes to The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, housed at the Boston Public Library. Through the centers kindness, I was able to view a number of period maps in person and to meet with curators, who explained more about the Van Keulen family and the way maps of the period were created. While I studied the maps, I narrowed in on some of the original types unique idiosyncrasies. For instance, the long, exaggerated serifs, which give the forms a sense of stability, aid in the faces legibility--largely a byproduct of the engraving method that was used to create the metal plates for manufacturing these maps. In creating Boncaire Titling, I decided to capture these unique idiosyncrasies, embracing the character of the engravings rather than removing them entirely through over-refining the forms. The result is an elegant family with far more than seafaring potential. This font has a full range of six weights, from thin to black. It also includes a wide variety of OpenType alternates. All insigne fonts are fully loaded with OpenType features. Boncaire Titling is also equipped for complex professional typography, including alternates, smaller titling caps and plenty of alts, including normalized capitals and lowercase letters. There are over 30 autoreplacing ligatures, and the face includes a number of numeral sets, including fractions, old-style and lining figures with superiors and inferiors. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. You can find these features demonstrated in the .pdf brochure. Boncaire Titling also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages, including Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Boncaire Titling supports over 40 languages that use the extended Latin script, making the new addition a great choice for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Maps are fascinating; they come with the promise of treasure to be uncovered. Examining the map itself, too, you can find great wealth in the details so artfully condensed to that single piece of paper--details carried over into this new insigne font. For your next project, explore the imagination potential in Boncaire Titling.

Update November 2022: ULGA Grid now features an oblique variant. It’s also been expanded into a family of different but related designs with the addition of ULGA Grid Solid and ULGA Grid Rounded typeface families. All variants and new designs are monospaced, sharing the same width as the original ULGA Grid font and matching character sets. The character set has also been enlarged and now supports Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian. ULGA Grid is a modular, monospaced typeface reminiscent of the old Letraset LCD & Quartz typefaces from the 1970/80s with lots of alternative characters and ornaments to bring a fresh twist to the genre. The idea’s seed germinated while I was going through a phase of binge watching my favourite 1980/90s sci-fi movies (classics such as Terminator, Total Recall and RoboCop). However, perception and reality don’t always align. Thirty years later, when compared to today’s technology, some visual elements look kind of outdated, almost Retro Futuristic. The initial design process started out in Adobe Illustrator when I constructed letters from a few geometric shapes within a square block. Just playing around with different shapes was so engrossing that it wasn’t long before there were enough characters for a basic typeface. The project grew again as I experimented with designs within the shapes and set paragraphs of text in patterns, resulting in over a hundred alternative characters and ornaments, some of which double up as border designs. This typeface may be square but it’s anything but boring. What it lacks in legibility ULGA Grid makes up for in style and the end result is a surprisingly versatile typeface that you'll have fun using for a wide range of display purposes including CD covers, posters, packaging, advertising, brochures and film titles. Ironically, the fixed grid structure frees the characters to create patterns of text not possible with variable widths.

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Malabar is a type family for extensive text. Its design was developed with a nod toward newspapers. Malabar's characters are seriffed and of the Old Style genre. A strong diagonal axis is apparent within the curves. Sturdy serifs help strengthen the line of text in small point sizes, as well as define the overall feeling of the face. Malabar's x-height is very high, a deliberate choice that makes the most important parts of lowercase letters visibly larger in tiny settings. The height of the capital letters is also rather diminutive, allowing for better character fit, as well as eliminating a bit of clumsiness in German, which often includes quite a few uppercase letters. Diacritical marks and additional alphabetic forms required by many Western, Central, and Eastern European languages are naturally a part of the character set, including those needed in the Baltic states, for Romanian, and for Turkish. Malabar's accents are bold and direct, sitting well with their base glyphs. The family includes three weights, each with a companion Italic. Malabar Regular is equipped with small caps, and both it and Malabar Italic include oldstyle figures. All members of the family have both proportional and tabular-width lining figures, as well as special variants of certain punctuation marks vertically adjusted for all-caps text setting. Malabar is informed both by contemporary ideas of typeface design (sheared terminals, the wider-drawn s) as well as by 16th-century masters. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are very loud; their blackness almost shouts out from the page. The Regular's wedge serifs become more slab-ish in nature as the letters' weight increases. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are best relegated to headline use only. Malabar Bold and Bold Italic may be used for text emphasis, a job for which the Heavy is to dark. Malabar received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the Type Directors Club of New York TDC2 competition in 2009.

Are you tired of playing it safe with your typography? Want to stand out from the crowd and make a bold statement? Look no further than Desperate, the punk rock font that will bring a rebellious edge to your designs. With interlocking shapes that give it a new wave feel, Desperate is a font that refuses to play by the rules. And with OpenType technology, it generates wild ligatures for over 200 letter combinations, adding to its unpredictable, untamed vibe. But Desperate isn’t just about making a scene. It delivers your message with an aggressive, hard-hitting style that commands attention. Whether you’re designing a gig poster, album cover, or anything in between, this font will give your work the punk rock attitude it deserves. So why settle for boring fonts when you can embrace your inner rebel with Desperate? It’s time to make your mark and let your designs scream out loud. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.