Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

The hand-brushed Fave™ Set has ten informal scripts and other handwritten fonts made up of two subfamilies: Fave and the even-more informal Fave Casual, each have a primary script with a bold version and three other handwritten faces for a total of ten typefaces spanning the casual spectrum. All are optimized for large type use too so they look as good up close as they do set at smaller sizes. OpenType features The Fave family has a few features that happen largely in the background. All of the fonts use the OpenType Standard Ligature feature to automatically differentiate consecutive lowercase letters and numbers (using separate glyphs) and like our previous release Turbinado, they also automatically differentiate like characters that are separated by another letter. Alternate characters The script fonts have alternate uppercase and lowercase characters including multiple t (and double t) crossbar alternates that can be selected from the OpenType glyph table. Enable Contextual Alternates feature to automatically insert a bigger crossbar as the surrounding letters allow throughout a text box or document. You can also make your own custom lowercase t and crossbar to fit any situation–all of the lowercase t ascenders and crossbars are available separately in the OpenType glyph table, and can be combined and moved around manually. Stylistic sets and other goodies Fave Script and its bold counterpart have two Stylistic Sets. When enabled, one automatically substitutes non-connecting alternate characters at the ends of words, the other substitutes even bigger t crossbars than the Standard Ligature feature does. Smart apostrophes and ligatures Other subtle but hopefully helpful features include smart apostrophes, which insert themselves between two script characters in common situations without breaking their connection, and a few ligatures that also make character connections more seamless.

Hispania Script is a distinctive and distinctly nineteenth century script. It was released by Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig, Germany around 1890. Particularly noteworthy are the sharply-pointed legs of the upper case ‘K’ & ‘R’ that seem to be characteristic of the period. Similar strokes, often with a slight curve, may be seen in typefaces like Alt-Romanish and Tinteretto by Schelter & Giesecke, Artistic and Lateinsch by Bauer and Berthold and the poster lettering of Edward Penfield. The angle of this script (approximately 24 degrees) and the sharp delicate points must have made the manufacture of this face in metal type a challenge. The resulting type was probably quite fragile and subject to accidental damage. Additionally, the sharp points would be subject to wear. With digital type, these concerns are eliminated. As far as I know, no one has ever dropped a digital letter on the floor. Nonetheless, creating a digital outline for a typeface like Hispania Script, with many crossing strokes, can be quite time-consuming. Even with an accurate scan of a good quality original, it is usually necessary to construct each crossing stroke separately and then remove the overlap in order to obtain a sharp and convincing intersection. Steep internal angles are often defined with two points, rather than one, to minimize ink or toner fill that can muddy the rendering in smaller sizes. Like all formal scripts, Hispania Script is always useful for announcements and invitations. However, the distinctiveness of of this design strongly suggests that there are other applications that may benefit from its use. Step outside the box and try it in some unexpected places. It is the unexpected that often draws a person’s eye.

The ten font Turbinado™ Set was designed to be clear and easy to read with a friendly personality, ideal for advertising and packaging in both text and display settings. Included are three weights of brushed casual script, each with a dry version, two condensed all caps faces, another hand printed caps face and an Elements package with 100 brushed elements that include swashes, botanicals, shells, arrows, repeatable patterns and a few other doodads that play well with the fonts. Like our most recent release Fave, all of the fonts use the OpenType standard ligature feature to automatically differentiate consecutive lowercase letters and numbers, using separate glyphs rather than a single ligature so they can be set on a curve or colored separately, etc. They also automatically differentiate like characters that are separated by another letter when standard ligatures is enabled. The script fonts have alternate characters like swash glyphs for ends of words and a few ligatures too; single crossbar to unite the At and Att letter combinations etc. The two condensed faces also have a third set of less uniform glyphs that can be used to create a more quirky, fun and bouncy effect (see the ‘she sells seashells’ graphic above) when the discretionary ligature feature is on. The script fonts have 10+ lowercase t (and double t) crossbar alternates that can be selected from the OpenType glyph table manually, or you can enable the contextual alternates feature to automatically insert a bigger crossbar as the surrounding letters allow throughout a text box or document. Hello? Are you still there? :) And for those intrepid typographers who would rather fashion their own lowercase t to custom fit a specific design, all of the lowercase t ascenders and crossbars are also available separately in the glyph table, and can be combined manually.