Finding out an attractive font regarding your project design can be such hard work as you take risks of either losing your clients or killing your good reputations once you pick the wrong font. However, Molly Hugs is the right solution for you. It is a rounded display font to add warm, fun character touches on every design. Its shapes and geometry are simple and without too many detailed points for a legibility reason. Additionally, Molly Hugs, completed with a clipart as a bonus, is perfectly applied for big text sizes to be legible and you can make use of some available features here. Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Molly Hugs fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, headings, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Say it softer with Solitas Serif. Perfect for the designer needing a serif without the stiffness, Solitas Serif will turn your reader’s eye with its slight serifs and rounded corners. This softer version of the curves found in Solitas and Solitas Slab gives your work a subtle yet noticeable charm. Solitas Serif’s 42 rich fonts live comfortably in print and on packaging as well as online. With its soft, pleasant appeal, your reader can move over the typeface with ease. Intermediate weights are available for long amounts of text, and the bold version makes a strong but gentle stance in headlines and subheadings. Altogether, Solitas Serif remains an unimposing and graceful font, despite its large selection of seven weights, three widths, and italic sets. Solitas Serif’s OpenType options include capitals, ligatures, ordinal numbers, fractions, denominators, superscripts and subscripts. Serif also supports Western European, Central European and Eastern European languages. For a sweet approach, charm your reader with simple and soft. Charm them with the subtle Solitas Serif.

Proudly present Warna - Bohemian Font, created by ikiiko. With a design that is both fun and retro-inspired, Warna perfectly embodies that character. The font in question moves to the beat of your imagination. Each figure has a distinctive, hand-crafted quality, as though they were lovingly and enthusiastically created on a worn-out journal from the 1960s. "Warna" is more than simply a typeface; it's a lively storyteller who tells old tales with a contemporary twist. Its vibrant and youthful appeal makes it ideal for branding with a bohemian or retro aesthetic. The letters serve as your artistic friends, encouraging you to express your ideas with bold strokes that evoke the liberation of a joyful party. This font is very suitable for making a bohomian stuff, vintage boho brand, poster, magazine layout, fashion design, quotes, or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image. What's Included? Uppercase & Lowercase Numbers & Punctuation Multilingual Support Works on PC & Mac

Hello Font Lovers... Mention is another lovely modern signature font, which is combining the style of classic calligraphy with an modern style. combines from copperplate to contemporary typeface with a dancing baseline, modern and elegant touch. Including alternates, and ligatures. Languages supported: Breton, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Estonian,French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Romanian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovak, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, English, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh. Basically, all European languages that are based on latin alphabet. Can be used for various purposes such as headings, logos, wedding invitation, t-shirt, letterhead, labels, news, posters, badges etc. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS/CC, Adobe Indesign CS/CC, Adobe Photoshop CS/CC, CorelDraw X6-X7 & Microsoft Office. Mention, a font having characters move up and down like a dancer. This freestyle has a very unique style of signature and is very suitable for modern design. THANK YOU SO MUCH

Gandur is a display textura in three weights, split into two families: Alte — the German word for old — and New. Gandur was inspired by other geometric texturas, specially Max Bittrof’s Element (1933). The design began by adhering to a strict hexagonal grid, but during its development, slowly moved from a purely geometric to a more pen-based design (this is especially true in the heaviest weights). The differences between Alte and New are essentially morphological, with reflections in the character set and OpenType features. Gandur New has a more humanistic, contemporary structure and is more ‘romanized’ then Alte. Gandur New also features small capitals. Gandur Alte, on the other hand, remains truer to historical forms, most notably: S s X x Z z. Gandur Alte also features the long-s, which can be accessed via a Stylistic Set or the glyph palette. (As is historically accurate, a short-s will be used at the end of words automatically when the historical Stylistic Set has been activated).

Welcome aboard the Hyperspace Race Capsule! Let the weight of gravity slip away as our interplanetary transport system takes you around the solar system in unparallelled style and comfort. Our reclaimed UFO has been remodeled with soft, luxurious curves on the interior and the latest cutting edge flight technology under the hood, to meet all your typographic travel desires. Each weight and package includes these luxurious five-star amenities: Kick your Capsule into TURBO mode to access eleven sleek, fast-moving alternate letter shapes. Hit WARP SPEED to cross time and space with hundreds of auto-connecting letter pairs. Chat with passengers from all over Earth, as Hyperspace Race Capsule effortlessly presents speech in 224 languages. Use the versatile Variable font to access 20 preset weights plus over 100,000 options between. Hyperspace Race Capsule is a versatile, full-featured font that's perfect for galaxy-wide branding projects, now and into the future.

CA Normal Serif is the perfect companion to its grotesque brother CA Normal. But it is not just a serifed equivalent. It has a character of its own while preserving the principal proportions and the idea of quirkiness. It was not the aim to build a typeface that can immediately be identified as a relative of CA Normal. The intention was to create a matching typeface in aspects of aesthetic and concept. Whereas commonly serif-companions to grotesques are old-style or slab-serif, CA Normal Serif is situated between modern and slab-serif typefaces. CA Normal Serif is a little bit of an uncomfortable typeface. Nothing is smooth and cozy. It picks up elements of classic newspaper type as brought to us by Chauncey H. Griffith's legibility group, sharing the flavor of abrasive details and "slabbish" serifs. But the proportions are more condensed than the ones of its predecessors giving it a bit more elegance, which moves it closer to the aesthetic of "Scotch Romans".

Maily is a display serif font to provide efficient quality, consistency and performance. It shows light, expressive, moving nuances in balanced function and creativity. The font’s main character is the hooks on each letters’ edges like other serif fonts. In addition, it is truly legible because of the wide spaces of the letters with which you may freely apply for any text sizes. You can also enjoy the available features in this font. Features: Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Maily fits best for various design projects, such as posters, banners, logos, magazine covers, quotes, headings, printed products, invitations, name cards, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Introducing Rondey – Display Font A Bold Serif with a Twist Rondey is a captivating Display Font that combines bold serifs with a unique twist, making it ideal for display purposes. Display Elegance Rondey’s design exudes an elegant charm that’s perfect for grabbing attention in various display contexts. Versatility for Diverse Projects Moving beyond its captivating elegance, Rondey’s versatility shines through, allowing it to seamlessly complement a wide range of creative projects. Captivating and Memorable Rondey ensures that your content is not only captivating but also memorable. It leaves a lasting and distinctive impression that sets it apart. In Conclusion In summary, Rondey – Display Font is a font designed to captivate in the world of display typography. Its unique twist on bold serifs adds an elegant touch to your projects. Whether it’s for branding, posters, or a myriad of creative endeavors, Rondey’s versatile and captivating design caters to a broad readership, ensuring your content leaves a memorable and distinctive mark.

Bourdos is an energetic script typeface. Its vivid letter forms move quickly over the paper, with active calligraphic movements and a joyful humour. A beautiful handwriting font, Bourdos should be used for a modern logotype, an enthusiastic headline, or any graphic that needs that extra spark of life. The Bourdos family consists of four styles. The weights Bold and Regular, as well as Italic and Bold Italic. Use underscore _ to make a swash. Example: Amaz_ing Use multiple underscores to make different swashes. Example: Price__less (Download required.) The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

For 138 years, the Milton Bradley Company (of Springfield, Massachusetts) has been the leading producer of board games, toys and educational/instructional materials. The company was acquired by Hasbro in 1984. It was merged with the also-acquired Parker Brothers in 1991 and became Hasbro Games until both brand ID's were dropped in 2009. “The Moving Picture Game” was a 1920s-era board game created by Howard R. Garis (credited as ‘the author of the Uncle Wiggily game’) and capitalized on the still-new motion picture industry. On top of the storage box is the game’s name – hand lettered in a free-flowing Art Nouveau sans serif that more closely resembles the titles found within animated cartoons or in the ‘bubble letters’ a school child doodles on notebook paper. Recreated as a digital typeface, Pratfall JNL (named after the slips, trips and falls taken by silent era film comedians) is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Scorpio is a font based on lettering Michael Harvey drew for the card “The Sign of The Nudge” which was designed in collaboration with the concrete poet, Ian Hamilton Finlay. The purpose of the card was to prompt those owing monies to IHF, into paying promptly. Michael also used it on some of the many book jackets he designed. As such, it is a condensed design necessary to enable a lot of text to be fitted with a restricted space. Scorpio has both style and verve. It was designed to attract the attention of potential purchasers browsing the shelfs in bookshops. In fulfilling this rôle, it succeeded admirably. In all these respects, it is unquestionably a unique Michael Harvey design. When Michael died in 2013, this font existed as a drawing of the basic upper and lower case letterforms plus numerals. Andy Benedek’s contribution to Scorpio was to digitise the existing letterforms and then create the remaining characters necessary for a modern font.

Canadian designer Patrick Griffin made P22 Counter as an exercise in exploring the limits of counter-space and interchangeability between extremely geometric and standard calligraphic forms. Within a field of solid stems and horizontal strokes, parallel lines and curves play the role of counterparts to define square and round shapes, making what’s revealed just as interesting as what’s withheld. Each of the three basic Counter fonts stakes its own aesthetic territory, from clean basic minimalism, through the nostalgia of exuberantly pixel-based design, and on to calligraphic-cum-typographic, all within clear and precise geometric parameters. Counter Pro comes with that entire range included in a single font, giving its user the ability to move freely in a visual space and counter-space that can be defined by more than 1450 glyphs. While all the fonts come with extended Latin language support, P22 Counter Pro includes all three fonts in one font, many alternates, swashes and ending forms that are not available in the basic fonts.

Gandur is a display textura in three weights, split into two families: Alte — the German word for old — and New . Gandur was inspired by other geometric texturas, specially Max Bittrof’s Element (1933). The design began by adhering to a strict hexagonal grid, but during its development, slowly moved from a purely geometric to a more pen-based design (this is especially true in the heaviest weights). The differences between Alte and New are essentially morphological, with reflections in the character set and OpenType features. Gandur New has a more humanistic, contemporary structure and is more ‘romanized’ then Alte. Gandur New also features small capitals. Gandur Alte, on the other hand, remains truer to historical forms, most notably: S s X x Z z. Gandur Alte also features the long-s, which can be accessed via a Stylistic Set or the glyph palette. (As is historically accurate, a short-s will be used at the end of words automatically when the historical Stylistic Set has been activated).

Valiety is a serif font family to better charm your designing experiences. It consists of eight different levels to add elegant, modern touches to your designs. Valiety has a continuity aspect produced from each small stroke in order to help the eyes smoothly move from one letter to another. Besides, the thickness differences are unnoticeable so that it leaves stable, legible impressions. With such flexibility, you can use it in either bigger- or smaller-sized texts. Include 8 different weight fonts : Valiety Hairline Valiety Thin Valiety Extra Light Valiety Light Valiety Regular Valiety Medium Valiety Semi Bold Valiety Bold Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuation Valiety is best for any design projects, such as posters, banners, logos, book covers, invitations, quotes, headings, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thank you for purchasing our font and happy designing.

This type crept up the sense that it was made in Eastern Europe by poorly trained urbanites from a crippled nation, or that it is the remains of a contemporary gothic (like Eckmann) stencil. The choice of what this type signifies is up to the public. Lately I like the idea of 'putting on' (in McLuhan's sense) a genre of idea that is somewhat different from my tradition's beliefs, and fitting a core category of that toward a teleological/eschatological advantage. Therefore postmodernist/apocalyptic carelessness (which I may 'put on' by using this type) is how I abstain from the cravings of immortality, or more so that wanting it is pointless. It’s stands as memento morí; that I will have to die someday. I have to become less, He must become more. Of course, Interzone may signify a classic Joy Division track from Unknown Pleasures as well as the Cold Warish ongoings of conflicted eastern European life. I considered naming this Lunik 9.

Noobia is a casual, energetic handwritten font, with plenty of movement. Its moving baseline creates a funky, busy, dramatic impression. With its informal, immediate style, Noobia is like a swift swash of text handwritten with a slightly overfilled ink pen. This impression is exaggerated by blobs at the beginning and end of pen strokes. Noobia makes a simple, direct statement, bypassing complexity and superficiality. It's just an in-your-face, immediate font. It 's the font you'd use for a quick, hand drawn note or notice. Noobia comes in three great styles: Noobia Smooth - use it for ad media for anything from sports equipment to slinky lingerie, wine labels to washing powder packaging. Noobia Black - use it anywhere to emphasise Noobia Smooth, and on posters and children's book covers. Noobia Rough - use it for graffiti, music videos, funky clothing hang tags and event posters. Noobia has all the features usually included in a fully professional font. Language support includes all European character sets.

Inspired by a few letters in a hand-drawn logotype, Swashington is a serif font with both an early 20th Century feel and yet is evocative of the swash fonts of the 1970s as well. The real meat of this typeface comes with using all the swash and ligature variants allowing for an enormous amount of typographic flair. Starting with the original logo, Jason Walcott was moved to develop these interesting letterforms into a full typeface with all the swashy might he could muster. In addition to a comprehensive set of Swash and Alternate letters, there are also over 270 Discretionary Ligatures that can be used to create different possibilities by mixing and matching. Included with the downloaded fonts are two .pdf files showing all the swashes and ligatures, that can be printed and used for easy reference. All of the alternates are available via the Glyph Palette or with OpenType features. The font includes support for all Latin based and Eastern European languages.

Spillsbury was inspired by some examples of 1920s signwriting (principally seen on the side of some vintage vans-good thing they were in a photograph and not on the move!). Spillsbury draws inspiration from these sources to provide a unique combination of legibility and flair, which echoes the charm of advertising and publicity material from the halcyon days of the 1920s. A basic range of four display faces os offered - Regular, Plain (not all that plain really!), Shaded and Shadowed. In a new departure for Greater Albion, three pairs of 'Duo' faces are also offered. These are designed to be used in pairs-and only sold on that basis for little more than the cost of a single face-to provide for two-coloured typographic design, enabling the recreation of those evokative two coloured blocked lettering styles that were used to such good effect in the past. Take a trip back to more colourful times today with Spillsbury!

Cumbre is a slanted display type with unorthodox anatomy, a dynamic rhythmic structure, movement expression, and intense visual language. An eccentric rebel with ribbon-like moves, a balanced extrovert that makes meticulous use of ink traps. Both the name and design got inspiration from mountain peaks. "Cumbre" in Spanish means summit, and that's the motive for the spiked design and the angular serrated structure. Cumbre is built by balancing sharp angles and venturous curves. The stems are spiky, and they vary in width. Cumbre is slanted and unicase. It has condensed proportions, moderate weight contrast, spacious counters, pointy terminals, and square ink traps. Cumbre is meant for large display settings to make the most out of the precise outlines and the clean intersections. The font styles: 'Sharp' has straight paths and precise intersections. 'Round' has the same outlines but with round corners. 'Stamp' has irregular wavy contours and heavy swelling at intersections.

Amarone is a spiky calligraphic display typeface with some old fashioned flavour. It was designed by Carl Crossgrove, and includes an extensive set of swash caps which allow for extra drama where needed. Crossgrove wrote each of Amarone's letters by hand using pen and rough paper, and has retained some of this visual texture in the final digital design. The typeface works well at small sizes, but when used at larger sizes this texture comes to the fore. Amarone's elegant, formal character can be modified with its swash caps, which allow the typeface to move from prim and ordered to wildly expressive. Amarone lends itself well to packaging, posters and editorial usage – or in any environment where designers need to evoke times gone by. The Amarone font features an extensive character set with support for over 130 languages, and a range of OpenType typographic features including ligatures, initial and terminal forms, figures, fractions and swashes.

Carpathian Basin Rovas The Carpathian Basin Rovas script, or Kárpát-medencei rovás in Hungarian, was used in the Carpathian Basin between about the 7th and 11th centuries. Most of the inscriptions are in Hungarian, but some were in Onogur, As-Alan, Slavic or Eurasian Avar. Carpathian Basin Rovas is thought to be a descendent of the Proto-Rovas script, which was used to the east of the Aral Sea between about the 1st century AD and 567, when the tribes who were using it, the Avars and Ogurs, started to move into the Carpathian Basin. That process took until about 670 AD, after which the Proto-Rovas script became the Carpathian Basin Rovas and the Khazarian Rovas scripts. The Proto-Rovas script was perhaps a descendent of the Aramaic script. Since 2009 efforts have been made to revive the use of this alphabet. Some letters were added to it to represent sounds in modern Hungarian that weren't used historically.

Hey! See Reina Neue in action here! INTRODUCTION When I designed the first Reina¹ circa 2010, I was at the dawn of my career as a type designer. The S{o}TA, short for the Society of Typographic Aficionados, described it as complex display typeface incorporating hairline flourishes to a nicely heavy romantic letterform². And it was like that; that’s what I was pursuing at that time since I was very passionate about ornaments and accolades of Calligraphy. Why? I felt that Typography, in general, needed more of them. These subtle flourishes could breathe life into letters. Maybe, I thought it was the only way I could propose something new into the field of type. However, after some years, I came across a very interesting quote: –Beautiful things don’t ask for attention– Wow! What did this mean? How could something be attractive if it’s not actually showing it. Could this be applied to my work? Sure. I think every type-designer goes through this process (aka crisis) regarding his or her career. At the beginning we love everything. We are kind of blind, we only see the big picture of a project. And that’s not because we are lazy. We actually can’t see the small mistakes nor the subtleties that make something simpler beautiful. We are not able. But, the small subtleties… They are actually everything: With experience, one puts more attention into the details and learns that every single decision in type has to be first meticulously planned. Here I am now, introducing a new Reina, because I felt there was a lot of it that could be improved, also the novelty of Variable Fonts caught my attention and I had to take that to my type library. THE FONT A thing of beauty is a joy forever Now, a decade later, I’m presenting Reina Neue. This font is not just an update of its predecessor: –A thing of beauty is a joy forever– is the first line of the poem ‘Endymion’ by John Keats, and despite the meaning of “beauty” may vary from person to person, and even from time to time (as read in the last paragraph), with Reina I always wanted to bring joy to the eye. In 2010, and now, in 2020. I believe the font is today much better in every aspect. It was entirely re-designed: Its shapes and morphology in general are much more clean and pure. The range of uses for it is now wider: While the old Reina consisted in just one weight, Reina Neue was converted into a big family of many weights, even with italics, smallcaps and layered styles. The idea behind the font, this kind of enveloping atmosphere made out of flourishes, is still here in the new Reina. This time easier to get amazing results due to the big amount of available alternates per glyph and also more loyal from a systemic point of view. However, and as read in the introduction -Beautiful things don’t ask for attention-, if none of the flourishes are activated the font will look very attractive anyway. Reina Neue is ready to be used in book covers, magazines, wedding cards, dazzling posters, storefronts, clothing, perfumes, wine labels and logos of all kind. Like it happened with the previous Reina, I hope this new font satisfies every design project around the world if used, and can be a joy forever. SOME INSTRUCTIONS Before choosing the right style for your project, hear my advice: -Reina Neue Display was meant to be used at big sizes. If you plan to print the font smaller than 72pt, I suggest using Reina Neue, not Display. Otherwise, if the font will be BIG or used on a digital platform, Reina Neue Display should be your choice. For even smaller sizes, use Reina Neue Small. This style was tested and printed in 12pt with nice results. (Note for variable fonts: Print them in outlines) -Reina Italic is not a slanted version of the roman, and this means some flourishes are different between each other. The Italic version has other kind of swirls. More conservative, in general. -All the styles of Reina Capitals have Small Capitals inside. -Reina Capitals Shine should be used/paired ONLY with Reina Capitals Black. The engraved feeling can be achieved if Reina Capitals Black and Reina Capitals Shine are used as layers, with the same word. Variable fonts instructions: -For more playful versions, choose Reina Neue VF, Reina Neue Italic VF or Reina Neue Capitals VF: With them you can adjust between 3 axes: Weight (will change the weight of the font) – Optic Size (will thicken/lighten the thin strokes and open/close the tracking) – Accolades (will modify the weight of the active flourishes). SOME VIDEOS OF REINA NEUE VF https://youtu.be/8cImmT5bpQM https://youtu.be/1icWfPmKAkg https://youtu.be/YC9GkJDL1a8 NOTES 1. The original Reina, from a decade ago: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/argentina-lian-types/reina/ 2. In 2011, Reina received an honourable mention by S{o}TA. “Great skill is shown in the detailing, and an excellent feel for the correct flow of curves and displacement of stroke weight.” https://www.typesociety.org/catalyst/2011/ Reina was featured in the “Most Popular Fonts of the year” in MyFonts in 2011 https://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/sp/201201.html In 2012, the font was also selected in Tipos Latinos, the most prestigious competition of type in Latinoamerica. https://www.tiposlatinos.com/bienales/quinta-bienal-tl2012/resultados Also, chose as a “Favorite font of the year” in Typographica. https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/reina/

Here is a "Decorative Braille font". The initial design was indeed drawn on a K.I.S.S digital sketchpad, the Windows default drawing tool (Microsoft Paint, classic version). A. Glyph Concept The Braille 2x3 dot matrix is weaved around a diamond-shape. a.1. Each "dot" is represented by a "right-angle isocel triangle". a.2. Braille dots in Diamond Braille a.2.I. "Dots" are outside the diamond for first Braille row (Braille dots 1, 4) and third Braille row (Braille dots 3, 6). a.2.II. "Dots" are inside the diamond for second Braillle row (Braille dots 2, 5). a.3. Diamond lattice Glyphs are connected horizontally (to/bottom diamond's corners) and vertically (left/right corners) to each other (see poster 5). a.4. Special Glyphs - Space: its is either empty ("Empty cell") or a "non Braille shape" { _, ° } depending on your display needs (as explained in b.3.II) - 6 dots: { £, =, û } - 6 empty dots: { ç, ¥ } B. Font user guide b.1. Lowercase glyphs { A..Z } In these glyphs the "dots" are represented as a white right-angle isocel triangle filled with a smaller black triangle. b.2. Uppercase glyphs { a..z } In these glyphs, the "dots" are represented as an empty triangle (this is an "empty dot"). b.3. 'Space' vs 'Empty Cell' b.3.I. 'Space' - 'Space' glyph is an empty shape - '¶' glyph (at the end of each line in Microsoft Word) is also an empty shape b.3.II. 'Empty cell' glyphs: _ (underscore), ° (degree). In these glyphs there are 2 "empty dots" at top and bottom corners of the diamond, which differentiates them from regular Braille glyphs (which dont have a "dot in the middle"). b.4. Diamond Lattice To display text as a 'diamond lattice', replace each 'Space' by an 'Empty cell' (as explained in b.3.II, see poster 5) b.5. Connectors The connector glyphs allow the creation of "circuit like" designs (see poster 1). Here are the connector glyphs: { µ, à, â, ä, ã, è, é, ê, ë, î, ï } b.6. Domino feature Some Glyphs represent numbers 1..6 in a way which is similar than on dominos (see poster 6) C. Posters Poster 1: the "Font Logo", it displays "Diamond Braille" text together with the Connectors feature. Poster 2: a pangram which is published on pangra.me ( "Adept quick jog over frozen blue whisky mix" ). Poster 3: an illustration of the Domino feature. Poster 4: a DiamondBraille version of the Periodic table. Poster 5: illustration of the Diamond lattice using only 6 dots ( û ) and 6 empty dots ( ç ) glyphs.

Alt-Gotisch Verzierte is a typeface of decorative initials that is Victorian in style and bears a close family resemblance to the many ornamental tuscans cut throughout the nineteenth century by British foundries. Instead of the bifurcated terminals of the archetypical tuscan (see Figgins Tuscan by HiH or Stereopticon by Dan X. Solo), these letters display what Nicolete Gray might call a “wedge and bite” design -- as if they started with the wedge serif of a latin form and someone came along and took a perfectly round bite out of the wedge. We need not dwell on the lack of teeth marks. The calligraphic curls and flourishes are often graceful, sometimes a bit contrived, but always complex. There is a busyness that marks the style of the period. If you ever see an old photograph of a well-appointed Victorian parlor, you will recognize that same quality of busyness. Overdone is a word that frequently comes to mind. Alt-Gotisch Verzierte means “adorned or decorated old gothic.” The typeface is attributed by Alexander Nesbitt to an unidentified German foundry of the nineteenth century (Decorative Alphabets and Initials, Dover, New York 1987, plate 92). The designer is unknown. Our font is supplied with a lower case that is similar to the upper case, but is 15% shorter and is simplified by the omission of the decorative vines. For the lower case, alternate letters A, E, & T; and ligatures LE, OT & LY have been supplied. In addition, a few small decorative vines were planted here and there for optional use. An accented upper case is not part of the original design and is not here supplied. This design is also seen under the name “Sentinel” -- as always, it is worthwhile to compare the completeness of the character set and the faithfulness of the rendering. We believe you will agree that we provide a balance of quality and value that is unmatched in the contemporary marketplace. Alt-Gotisch Einfach is a simplified version of Alt-Gotisch Verzierte. The vine-less lower case of the Verzierte font is the upper case in Einfach. For a lower case for Einfach, the letters were further simplified by stripping away the three-dimensional outline, down to the bare bones and bites, as it were. Einfach, in fact, means “simple” or “plain.” It is interesting to note that this bare bones & bite lower case bears (I have a special license to use two homonyms in the same sentence) a striking resemblance to the 15th & 16th century ornamental letters from Westminster Abbey shown in Plate 47 of Alexander Nesbitt’s Decorative Alphabets and Initials (Dover, New York 1987).

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Zuzana Licko's goal for Fairplex was to create a text face which would achieve legibility by avoiding contrast, especially in the Book weight. As a result of its low contrast, the Fairplex Book weight is somewhat reminiscent of a sans serif, yet the slight serifs preserve the recognition of serif letterforms. When creating the accompanying weights, the challenge was to balance the contrast and stem weight with the serifs. To provide a comprehensive family, Licko wanted the boldest weight to be quite heavy. This meant that the "Black" weight would need more contrast than the Book weight in order to avoid clogging up. But harmonizing the serifs proved difficult. The initial serif treatments she tried didn't stand up to the robust character of the Black weight. Several months passed without much progress, and then one evening she attended a talk by Alastair Johnston on his book "Alphabets to Order," a survey of nineteenth century type specimens. Johnston pointed out that slab serifs (also known as "Egyptians") are really more of a variation on sans serifs than on serif designs. In other words, slab serif type is more akin to sans-serif type with serifs added on than it is to a version of serif type. This sparked the idea that the solution to her serif problem for Fairplex Black might be a slab serif treatment. After all, the Book weight already shared features of sans-serif types. Shortly after this came the idea to angle the serifs. This was suggested by her husband, and was probably conjured up from his years of subconscious assimilation of the S. F. Giants logo while watching baseball, and reinforced by a similar serif treatment in John Downer's recent Council typeface design. The angled serifs added visual interest to the otherwise austere slab serifs. The intermediate weights were then derived by interpolating the Book and Black, with the exception of several characters, such as the "n," which required specially designed features to avoid collisions of serifs, and to yield a pleasing weight balance. A range of weights was interpolated before deciding on the Medium and Bold weights.

Looking back on my production to date, neither so little nor so large, it does not come as a surprise to find myself now introducing Lady René. A brief review of my career would read as follows: graphic designer graduated from Buenos Aires University, a 10-year professorship in Typography in the same institution, an illustrator in the making. For almost 15 years now my work has focused on the design of editorial pieces, predominantly books and CD sleeves. Typography proper has always been central to my research projects. All my obsessions eventually embodied as much the search for a perfect, spotless text as for a daring and provoking one. In my view, "how-to-say-something" ranks highest amongst a graphic designer’s responsibilities. It was in this vein that I called in the written word to illustrate, to draw, to narrate. Why not reverse the saying and proclaim that “a word is worth a thousand images”? If so, one single word could trigger endless meanings, associations, ideas, and memories in every reader’s mind. Language, we know, has a strong power and is a living expression of a culture. In my illustrations, letters and drawings reunite in one synergy said and unsaid, the finiteness of the message and the freedom of the free reading. And this is how and when, Lady René, my first born type font sees the light of day conceived out of a love of illustration and a reverence for the written word, recalling the whimsicality of the handmade drawing and reflecting its sensitive, warmth and spontaneity. Enabled by the characteristics of Open Type and the hard, outstanding work of designer Ale Paul, Lady René succeeds in composing texts in a simple, organic way by means of its contextual and stylistic alternates, swash characters, ligatures and connecting words. A bundle of decorative miscellanea completes the set of signs, enabling the user considerable freedom to create new typographic landscapes. Lady René is then prepared, very much like a character in a short story, to come to life in the reader’s mind. I expect you will enjoy her as much as I did creating her. Laura Varsky

Step into the beauty of Belda’s elegant form and discover the richness flowing from both its historic influence and its strong elements. At its heart, Belda's graceful style embodies the classical calligraphy of the Roman capital, best known from such Roman monuments as Trajan's Column. To lessen the possibility for error, the builders of these defining structures brushed their templates onto the marble before taking their first cuts from the expensive stone. These simple strokes now mark a simple but wonderful path full of life and mystery. Beyond a copy of the past, Belda has grown from its roots to offer a brave, new world of potential through its still-simple structure. The new design strongly contrasts thickness and stroke. Its delicate shape, curves and sharp serifs provide a unique style of harmony and beauty. The resulting balance? The lighter weight design remains subtle and elegant, while the combination in its bolder counterparts provides an intense luster and sparkle, pulling the reader’s eye to the font’s captivating features. A quick look beyond its surface of standard forms also reveals Belda has more layers to discover with OpenType small capitals, titling capitals and more. With a wealth of weights and many widths beside, the font is capable of serving as both text and titling. While especially strong as a movie title or poster font, it’s also great for book jackets, advertising, and packaging. So start your journey with Belda. The possibilities to explore on this path are practically endless. Production assistance from Lucas Azevedo and ikern.