Turia is a casual script font with a lot of OpenType features, which let you create your own design logo or lettering artwork.  This font contain 768 glyphs: discretional and standard ligatures, stylistic and contextual alternates, small caps, titling, swashes, old style figures, ornaments and support CE languages. The Turia font has been thought especially for an expressive and dynamic design. Its glyphs are carefully drawn without loosing readability for use in a large text.  This font could be used in a advertising, booklets, children books, labels, packaging, logotypes, cards or whatever your imagination wants to fly.

Maat is a modular geometric stencil display font that includes a number of modular pattern characters, and can be used to create designs that echo early Modernism by merely applying letters, patterns and color. Maat is a loose interpretation of a hand lettered alphabet by the late Dutch designer Jurrian Schrofer called Sans Serious which was included in Wim Crouwel's publication Letters of Maat. It is inflected with a bit of influence from British designer Ken Garland's similar lettering form the cover of his textbook, The Graphics Handbook. Maat derives its name from the title of Couwel's booklet.

Amongst a batch of antique sheet musical instruction booklets offered for sale online was a piece with Art Nouveau hand lettering on the cover entitled “Seven Musical Travelogues for Piano”. This design served as the inspiration and model for Ragtime Gal JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The font’s name comes from the line ‘Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…’ from the 1899 song “Hello Ma Baby”; a tune that found a new burst of popularity in an odd way within a 1955 Warner Brother’s cartoon [“One Froggy Evening”].

The name Type Warmers JNL traces its lineage to small catalog booklets issued by Indianapolis' Cobb Shinn for his line of letterpress cuts; of which a few can be found included within this typeface. Presumably type could "warm up to" these stock illustrations and work hand-in-hand to deliver the message, hence the "Type Warmers" sobriquet. Originally known for illustrating many attractive and comical postcards of the early 1900s, Shinn moved into the field of purchasing stock art and redistributing them as electrotypes or "cuts", the predecessor to today's digital clip art. A number of the cartoons he sold can be found in the Shinn Kickers JNL font.

When master letterer Hugh Gordon and his student, Ross F. George developed a set of lettering pens between June 16, 1913 and Sept. 1, 1914, they had no idea that their invention (which they named Speed-Ball®) would still be in use nearly a hundred years later. The C. Howard Hunt pen company [originally of Camden, New Jersey] became the original (and sole) distributor of these pens. By 1915 an instructional booklet entitled "Modern Pen Lettering" was produced, and it was copiously illustrated with examples of layouts, lettering techniques and an assortment of alphabets for the user to learn. Nouveau Poster JNL is Jeff Levine's interpretation of a sanserif design found within the pages of this vintage publication.

CA Postal is a cute and clever little stamp-font. It was originally intended for a record-cover only, but when the artist wanted all lyrics printed in the booklet, it was time for a font. The initial inspiration was a moveable-stamp printing-set, which had a nice Futura-like style, being very pleasant to read, especially in small sizes. But of course it’s the loose and irregular outlines that give the font its special charms. CA Postal features two sets of characters and the "Contextual Alternates" feature will make sure that never two identical characters will stand next to each other, so that the stamp-look becomes even more authentic.

Mellnik is a sans serif of humanist style (in a way) that was developed by Oleg Karpinsky and released by ParaType in 2006. The type family contains 9 styles with a number of alternate characters in each ones. For use as a text font in long text passages of advertising booklets, catalogues or magazines, as well as for accident setting. Mellnik may be also applied as a corporate typeface. Giant ink traps (or something like that) produce an original image of the family. Five condensed styles were added in 2007 by the same designer. Mellnik Text in 12 styles (added in 2008) has more narrow proportions and it is rather appropriate for text setting.

Some time ago I stumbled upon a little book called 'De Sprookjeshoorn' ('Horn of Fairy Tales') by Anton Eijkens (1920 - 2012). It was published in 1946 and contains several authentic and unique fairy tales - unfortunately unreadable to modern children, as the language used is out of date. What caught my eye was the handwritten font on the cover of the booklet. Closet Skeleton is a fairytale font inspired by the one I found on the cover of De Sprookjeshoorn. It comes with several curly alternates and some end-ligatures as well. I added an 'old fashioned' ampersand and a modern one, so you can choose which one to use. Apart from that, Closet Skeleton comes with a closet choc-a-block full of diacritics.

Compact sans, ideal for setting long texts in small or very small type sizes: for packaging, instruction booklets, drug information leaflets and anything else that has to be legible at very small sizes. Lean and rhythmical, designed ideally to be used at less than 8 points (Brevier was the old typefounders’ name for 8-point type), Brevier holds up well even under adverse printing conditions. The apparently geometric letterforms hide Renaissance characteristics, the x-height and openings are very generous and the strokes slightly modulated. In order to offset ink spread – which is inevitable when printing very small sizes of type – Brevier has large white spaces between the letters. All internal angles have deep ink traps and many connections have been left open.

Auntie Pat is a new script font in my continuing objective of designing scripts that I can really use. Of course, I am looking for readability in booklets. In many ways, Auntie Pat is a very unusual script in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. This is font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. I didn't bother with the CE accents (though I can add them upon request). There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg 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!

The Metalista font was created as a sign of undying admiration for the persistence of heavy metal culture. The angled font of almost fixed width proportions combines capitals with small letters for more variety and better definition of individual letters. Stressing the horizontal strokes subdued the historical Gothic character and emphasized a more modern signature, which is far different from the majority of current attempts at a modern adaptation of Fraktur fonts. We offer Metalista in three styles, or rather widths to be exact: Speed is inspired by the whiplash pace of 70s and 80s speed metal, and can tell and perform a lot even in a very small space; uncompromising Death balances on the fine line between expression and readability; and Metalista Black is the universal go-to, whether as megalomaniacal titles sprawled across the entire LP cover or as tiny texts for glam rock CD booklets.

Morro is based on simple geometric shapes – circles, triangles and rectangles. Imagine cutting circles, triangels and rectangles from paper and arranging them into letters where the outer edges form a filled figure. Arranging figures like this to form letters is nothing unique. You can find several beautiful examples of alphabets that inspired the creation of Morro. Everywhere from a 1936 booklet by Draughtsman called ”Modern lettering for all branches of commercial arts” to obvious examples is from the paragon of the design industry - Milton Glaser - with his typeface Baby Teeth. What sets Morro apart from other digitized versions of Glasers' ”Baby teeth”, or other similar designed fonts, is that Morro is expanded into lower case and also supports Basic latin, Western European, Central European, south Eastern European and Pinyin. There are also stylistic alternatives to some of the glyphs. Morro Regular works like a stencil and is accompanied by a block shadow style and an outline. The Morro family of fonts are layered and can be superimposed on each other to create several types of text effects.

User is a monospaced type family with 30 styles, from Hairline to Bold, divided in Regular, Upright and Stencil, with five weights (Hairline, ExtraLight, Light, Medium and Bold) all with Cameo versions. Complexity and versatility are the keywords for this type family. Despite being a monospaced font, which means there's no kerning, all the glyphs were designed in order to sit comfortably in the 600 points width, a hard task because some glyphs are too narrow ('i' and 'l'), while others are too wide ('m' and 'w'), but they must fit the same width. The desire for keeping a comfortable readability in User was one of the key elements, therefore we designed several ligatures that fit both single and double space width, allowing to maintain a certain idea of proportional design. In this digital booklet you will find a detailed vision of the anatomy of the typefaces, the amount of characters available, the styles and weights, along with a series of features, specially designed to make User a very versatile and usable type system.

User is a monospaced type family with 30 styles, from Hairline to Bold, divided in Regular, Upright and Stencil, with five weights (Hairline, ExtraLight, Light, Medium and Bold) all with Cameo versions. Complexity and versatility are the keywords for this type family. Despite being a monospaced font, which means there's no kerning, all the glyphs were designed in order to sit comfortably in the 600 points width, a hard task because some glyphs are too narrow ('i' and 'l'), while others are too wide ('m' and 'w'), but they must fit the same width. The desire for keeping a comfortable readability in User was one of the key elements, therefore we designed several ligatures that fit both single and double space width, allowing to maintain a certain idea of proportional design. In this digital booklet you will find a detailed vision of the anatomy of the typefaces, the amount of characters available, the styles and weights, along with a series of features, specially designed to make User a very versatile and usable type system.

User is a monospaced type family with 30 styles, from Hairline to Bold, divided in Regular, Upright and Stencil, with five weights (Hairline, ExtraLight, Light, Medium and Bold) all with Cameo versions. Complexity and versatility are the keywords for this type family. Despite being a monospaced font, which means there's no kerning, all the glyphs were designed in order to sit comfortably in the 600 points width, a hard task because some glyphs are too narrow ('i' and 'l'), while others are too wide ('m' and 'w'), but they must fit the same width. The desire for keeping a comfortable readability in User was one of the key elements, therefore we designed several ligatures that fit both single and double space width, allowing to maintain a certain idea of proportional design. In this digital booklet you will find a detailed vision of the anatomy of the typefaces, the amount of characters available, the styles and weights, along with a series of features, specially designed to make User a very versatile and usable type system.

Chalky Spritely and full of personality, FS Sammy is a hand-drawn font with a chalky texture, available in one weight only. Give Sammy a run in branding, packaging or billboard advertising for a fresh, informal, honest personality. Calligraphic Too many script fonts have a rushed and thrown-together feel about them. It’s a deceptively complex feat to achieve forms that hold together neatly in text yet still have the breezy, natural air of real handwriting. That’s FS Sammy: considered and crafted. Pencil FS Sammy was originally drawn for a drinks manufacturer by Fontsmith’s calligrapher, Sehmi Satwinder, who made handwritten impressions with a large soft pencil on textured watercolour paper. The digital interpretation of Sehmi’s letters was pushed to its limits and, after a lot of experimentation, a balanced alphabet was achieved. Texture and spirit FS Sammy’s success and uniqueness within the script font category is down to its versatility. In the large text of billboard advertising or headlines, all of its texture comes to life, and small, on menus or booklets, it conveys all of the spirit and personality of a considered piece of handwriting.

Amitale (A-mi-tah'-lay) is the union of Amitale Book and Amitale Wide into a new 8-font book family in my continuing objective of designing a better font family for readability in booklets. My goal here is for a full range of styles from light, regular, bold, and black without the plugged counters and clunky feel of most bold fonts. In my use, personally. I do not use Amitale Book Bold. I use Wide for the bold and Wide-Bold for the black style. In many ways, Amitale is Brinar with bracketed serifs. Many people find Brinar to be an exceptionally readable and beautiful humanist sans. This new serif font family has many of the same characteristics. This is also the debut of my new OpenType features set for 2009. There are more and more ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg 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.

As a late work the “Meier Kapitalis” forms an arch within the typographic creations of the Swiss type designer Hans Meier who died in 2014. The first sketches of this typeface can be found in the teaching manual “The Development of Script and Type” (German: “Die Schriftentwicklung”; French “Le développement des caractères”) which was published in 1994, however, under the title “Roman Lapidary, 1st Century”. The booklet was first published by the Syntax Press, Cham, Switzerland and contains an introduction by Max Caflisch in which he writes: „The present work, „The Development of Script and Type“ is a concise, authoritative textbook, concentrating on the essentials in a wide survey from ancient Greek inscriptions to the printer’s typefaces of the present day. His (Meier’s) 72 varieties of letterforms enable the student or general reader to understand the history of script and type, while more than 60 of his own calligraphic specimens provide excellent models for all who practice this art.“ Unfortunately, the “Meier Kapitalis” is one of the few typeface families in this publication which has been digitized. It was to be the last type project fully realized by Meier. In cooperation with Elsner+Flake, the typeface family was developed and expanded and now contains the four cuts: Roman, Medium, Demi Bold and Bold with either a complement of characters for 78 Latin-based languages (EL=EuropaPlus) or in West-Layout.

In 1968, Adrian Frutiger was commissioned to develop a sign and directional system for the new Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Though everyone thought he would want to use his successful Univers font family, Frutiger decided instead to make a new sans serif typeface that would be suitable for the specific legibility requirements of airport signage: easy recognition from the distances and angles of driving and walking. The resulting font was in accord with the modern architecture of the airport. In 1976, he expanded and completed the family for D. Stempel AG in conjunction with Linotype, and it was named Frutiger. The Frutiger™ family is neither strictly geometric nor humanistic in construction; its forms are designed so that each individual character is quickly and easily recognized. Such distinctness makes it good for signage and display work. Although it was originally intended for the large scale of an airport, the full family has a warmth and subtlety that have, in recent years, made it popular for the smaller scale of body text in magazines and booklets. The family has 14 weights and 14 companion fonts with Central European characters and accents. Another 14 Cyrillic companion fonts are available as well. See also the new revised version Frutiger Next from the Linotype Platinum Collection. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

P22 Brass Script is a new font from an old source. This script font was discovered in a booklet from Dornemann & Co. of Magdeburg Germany, circa 1910. The book was titled Messingschriften fur Handvergoldung, which roughly translates to “Brass types for hand foil stamping.” The mini catalog called this type simply “Script.” It has not been previously digitized or seen in standard metal type form. The antique specimen book featured most of the characters needed for a full alphabet, but a number of letters were not shown. Since no other examples of this style could be found, P22 enlisted the assistance of master calligrapher Michael Clark to draw the missing characters in the same style as the original. The style is very loosely based on the secretarial hands and reminiscent of “French Hand” with a very early 20th century, pre-modern feel. It has an unusual flow that is neither too casual nor too formal. The font would be useful for wedding invitations or packaging and advertising. P22 Brass Script Pro features include: automatic ligatures for common pairs such as ll, tt, qu and a variety of f ligatures, full CE language support including Turkish and Romanian and a variety of swash underscores for different length words that can be added manually in OpenType ready applications with the glyph palette or with the contextual alternates. The length of the word will automatically select the best length of swash for the work.

This all started with a love for Minister. This is a font designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt in 1929. In the specimen booklet there’s a scan from Linotype’s page many years ago. They no longer carry the font. I’ve gone quite a ways from the original. It was dark and a bit heavy. But I loved the look and the readability. This came to a head when I started my first book on all-digital printing written from 1994-1995, and published early in 1996. I needed fonts to show the typography I was talking about. At that point oldstyle figures, true small caps, and discretionary ligatures were rare. More than that text fonts for book design had lining OR oldstyle figures, lowercase OR small caps—never both. So, I designed the Diaconia family using the Greek word for minister. It was fairly rough. I knew very little. I later redesigned and updated Diaconia into Bergsland Pro—released in 2004. It was still rough (though I impressed myself). Now, with 4-font Biblia Serif family 13 years later, I’ve cleaned up, made the fonts more consistent internally, added more functional OpenType features, and brought the fonts into the 21st century. I used the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads. Finally, in 2021, I went over the fonts entirely and remade them in Glyphs.

Antypica is a soft and friendly slab-serif font that draws inspiration from typewriter styles. This font is designed to be easily legible in both small and large sizes, making it a great option for various applications. Its simple yet timeless design with a modern twist makes it perfect for use in a wide range of design projects. This includes package design, ad campaigns, brand identities, movie titles, poster art, booklets, and even classified documents. With an impressive 790 glyph count, Antypica supports Basic Latin and Latin Extended-A. OpenType features further enhance typography by providing Small Caps and Small Numbers, Lining Figures, Oldstyle Figures, Superscripts, and Subscripts, Fractions, Tabular Lining Figures, Tabular Oldstyle Figures, Ligatures, and Contextual Alternates to prevent some unwanted letter pair collisions. Additionally, Stylistic Sets offer Stylistic Alternate Lowercase a, Alternate Cap T, Alternate Dollar Sign, and Slanted Hyphen to add calligraphic quality to text blocks, while the Special Set offers unique glyphs like Bitcoin and Interrobang. Antypica is highly versatile and can be used in many design applications. Small Caps and Small Numbers can be used creatively to create more visually engaging typography, and the optimized underline effect can be used to enhance the design. To access the Special Set in OpenType features, select it from the OpenType menu. To add special additional marks, type following in your text field. • For the Exclam-Comma mark, type ” ,! ” (comma+exclam) • For the Question-Comma mark, type ” ,? ” (comma+question) • For the Bitcoin mark, simply type " bitcoin " (not case sensitive). • For the alternate (Cap Height) Registered mark, type " registered " (not case sensitive). • For the Published mark, type " published " (not case sensitive). The font also has a small caps version of the Published Mark. • For the Numero mark, type " N° " (N + degree) (case sensitive). • For the Interrobang, type " bang " (not case sensitive). • For Price marking, type ” ,– ” (comma + one of these: hyphen, en dash, em dash). • For Dot(s) Pattern glyph, type " dots " (not case sensitive). • For Line(s) Pattern glyph, type " lines " (not case sensitive).

This all started with a love for Minister. This is a font designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt in 1929. In the specimen booklet there’s a scan from Linotype’s page many years ago. They no longer carry the font. I’ve gone quite a ways from the original. It was dark and a bit heavy. But I loved the look and the readability. This came to a head when I started my first book on all-digital printing written from 1994-1995, and published early in 1996. I needed fonts to show the typography I was talking about. At that point oldstyle figures, true small caps, and discretionary ligatures were rare. More than that text fonts for book design had lining OR oldstyle figures, lowercase OR small caps—never both. So, I designed the Diaconia family (using the Greek word for minister). It was fairly rough. I knew very little. I later redesigned and updated Diaconia into Bergsland Pro —released in 2004. It was still rough (though I impressed myself). In 2006, I found myself needing a readable sans serif. So I went to Bergsland Pro, and eliminated the serifs. I named the font Brinar. I kept a flare in place for the serifs and cupped the ends. I was stunned. People loved it. It’s remained my bestseller until very recently. So, at the end of 2016 I decided that Brinar really needed some help. The flares were basically random. The stem width and modulation variances all needed to be fixed. My old OpenType feature code was quite limited and clumsy. So, I created the 6-font Biblia family. I cleaned up or redesigned all the glyphs. I updated the fonts to the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads.

Irrlicht is based on C. H. Kleukens’ 1923 typeface Judith Type . Whilst Dunkle Irrlicht is a fairly faithful rendition and extension of Kleukens’ typeface, the Licht style was initially added as a stand-alone stencil version; yet, the two styles work perfectly together – for different nuances, for emphasis or simply stacked/layered. Irrlicht is equipped with upper- and lowercase ligatures, contextual and stylistic alternates, fractions, superior and inferior figures, extended language support and a few extra goodies. Additional information – How Irrlicht came to life Christian Heinrich Kleukens cut his Judith Type in 1923, at the peak of German expressionism, exclusively for publications with the Ernst-Ludwig-Press, such as a limited series of biblical prints – the first being the Book of Judith , hence the original’s name. I stumbled upon this typeface a couple of years ago in a nice little 1930 booklet of the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and was struck by its forceful darkness on paper and its seemingly simple, crude letterforms. The lack of a long-ſ in the final version of Judith Type – quite unusual for a German typeface of that time – adds to this feel of crudeness and spontaneity*. Judith Type seemed to me like a semi-blackletter cousin of Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland (cast in the same year). Besides its apparent affinity with expressionism, it reflects a lot of that deeply spiritual craftsmanship of the era – much like Neuland. A few months later, when I was working on a stencil project and looking for a typeface that could be cut into thin wooden plates easily, I remembered those dark, sharp letters that seemed to be lacking any curves at all. After enlarging a few letters and tracing them by hand, the whole set was redrawn digitally, using only straight lines. As for spacing, the goal was to keep the letters tight but to avoid touching characters – without ironing out all the original’s tension and rhythm. Deliberate kerning, subtle contextual alternates and ligatures help to deal with critical glyph combinations. Two additional versions were developed: a stencil version with open counters and, in reference to a popular style of the 1920s and inspired by dry, cracked wood, an inline version. These two additional styles were later merged into one font – Lichte** Irrlicht was born. — AARHAUS * Consequently, the original typeface’s German eszett is simply a ligature of the “round s” and standard z . In some of his publications, Kleukens dispenses with using eszett altogether and sets double s instead. Irrlicht , however, does feature a more common eszett (ß); the original, among other more faithful letter forms, can be accessed via the stylistic sets feature ** licht – literally bright – being the German term for inline typefaces – not to be confused with leicht ( light )

Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world. Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning. And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights. Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while. To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted. That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great. Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience. Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel. Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair. The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

Typographer and graphic designer Pavel Teimer (1935-1970) designed a modern serif roman with italics in 1967. For the drawing of Teimer he found inspiration in the types of Walbaum and Didot, rather than Bodoni. He re-evaluated these archetypes in an individual way, adjusting both height and width proportions and modifying details in the strokes, thus effectively breaking away from the historical models he used as a starting point. Teimer's antiqua has less contrast; the overall construction of the characters is softer and more lively. The proportions of the italics are rather wide, making them stand out by their calm and measured rhythm. This was defined by the purpose of the typeface, as it was to be utilised for two-character matrices. The long serifs are a typical feature noticeable throughout the complete family of fonts. In 1967, a full set of basic glyphs, numerals and diacritics of Teimer's antiqua was submitted to the Czechoslovak Grafotechna type foundry. However, the face was never cast. At the beginning of 2005 we decided to rehabilitate this hidden gem of Czech typography. We used the booklet "Teimer's antiqua - a design of modern type roman and italics", written by Jan Solpera and Kl‡ra Kv’zov‡ in 1992, as a template for digitisation. The specimen contains an elementary set of roman and italics, including numerals and ampersands. After studying the specimen, we decided to make certain adjustments to the construction of the character shapes. We slightly corrected the proportions of the typeface, cut and broadened the serifs, and slightly strengthened the hair strokes. In the upper case we made some significant changes in the end serifs of round strokes in C, G and S, and the J was redrawn from the scratch. The top diagonal arm of the K was made to connect with the vertical stem, while the tail of Q has received a more expressive tail. The stronger hairlines are yet more apparent in the lower case, which is why we needed to further intervene in the construction of the actual character shapes. The drawing of the f is new, with more tension at the top of the character, and the overall shape of the g is better balanced. We also added an ear to the j, and curves in the r have become more fluent. To emphasise the compact character of the family, the lining numerals were thoroughly redrawn, with the finials being replaced by vertical serifs. The original character of the numerals was preserved in the new set of old-style figures. To make the uppercase italics as compact as possible, they were based on the roman cut rather than on the original design. The slope of lowercase italics needed to be harmonised. The actual letter forms are still broader than the characters in the original design, and the changes in construction are more noticeable. The lower case b gained a bottom serif, the f has a more traditional shape as it is no longer constricted by the demands of two-matrice casting, the g was redrawn and is a single storey design now. The serifs on one side of the descenders of the p and q were removed, the r is broader and more open. The construction of s, v, w, x, y, and z is now more compact and better balanced. Because Teimer was designed to make optimal use of the OpenType format, it was deemed necessary to add a significant amount of new glyphs. The present character set of one font comprisess over 780 glyphs, including accented characters for typesetting of common Latin script languages, small caps and a set of ligatures, tabular, proportional, old style and lining, superscript and fraction numerals. It also contains a number of special characters, such as arrows, circles, squares, boxed numerals, and ornaments. Because of its fine and light construction, the original digitised design remained the lightest of the family. Several heavier weights were added, with the family now comprising Light, Light Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” and here, that’s more than true. Take a look at Erotica’s Booklet; Erotica’s Poster Design and Erotica’s User’s Guide before reading below. THE STYLES The difference between Pro and Std styles is the quantity of glyphs. Therefore, Pro styles include all the decorative alternates and ligatures while Std styles are a reduced version of Pro ones. Big and Small styles were thought for better printing results. While Big is recommended to be printed in big sizes, Small may be printed in tiny sizes and will still show its hairlines well. INTRODUCTION I have always wondered if the circle could ever be considered as an imperfect shape. Thousands of years have passed and we still consider circles as synonyms of infinite beauty. Some believe that there is something intrinsically “divine” that could be found in them. Sensuality is many times related to perfectly shaped strong curves, exuberant forms and a big contrasts. Erotica is a font created with this in mind. THE PROCESS This story begins one fine day of March in 2012. I was looking for something new. Something which would express the deep love I feel regarding calligraphy in a new way. At that time, I was practicing a lot of roundhand, testing and feeling different kinds of nibs; hearing the sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, sound of them sliding on the paper. This kind of calligraphy has some really strict rules: An even pattern of repetition is required, so you have to be absolutely aware of the pressure of the flexible pen; and of the distance between characters. Also, learning copperplate can be really useful to understand about proportion in letters and how a minimum change of it can drastically affect the look of the word and text. Many times I would forget about type-design and I would let myself go(1): Nothing like making the pen dance when adding some accolades above and below the written word. Once something is mastered, you are able to break some rules. At least, that’s my philosophy. (2) After some research, I found that the world was in need of a really sexy yet formal copperplate. (3) I started Erotica with the idea of taking some rules of this style to the extreme. Some characters were drawn with a pencil first because what I had in mind was impossible to be made with a pen. (4) Finding a graceful way to combine really thick thicks with really thin hairlines with satisfactory results demanded months of tough work: The embryo of Erotica was a lot more bolder than now and had a shorter x-height. Changing proportions of Erotica was crucial for its final look. The taller it became the sexier it looked. Like women again? The result is a font filled with tons of alternates which can make the user think he/she is the actual designer of the word/phrase due to the huge amount of possibilities when choosing glyphs. To make Erotica work well in small sizes too, I designed Erotica Small which can be printed in tiny sizes without any problems. For a more elegant purpose, I designed Erotica Inline, with exactly the same features you can find in the other styles. After finishing these styles, I needed a partner for Erotica. Inspired again in some old calligraphic books I found that Bickham used to accompany his wonderful scripts with some ornated roman caps. Erotica Capitals follows the essentials of those capitals and can be used with or without its alternates to accompany Erotica. In 2013, Erotica received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in the 59th TDC Type Directors Club Typeface Design Competition. Meet Erotica, beauty and elegance guaranteed. Notes (1) It is supossed that I'm a typographer rather than a calligrapher, but the truth is that I'm in the middle. Being a graphic designer makes me a little stubborn sometimes. But, I found that the more you don't think of type rules, the more graceful and lively pieces of calligraphy can be done. (2) “Know the forms well before you attempt to make them” used to say E. A. Lupfer, a master of this kind of script a century ago. And I would add “And once you know them, it’s time to fly...” (3) Some script fonts by my compatriots Sabrina Lopez, Ramiro Espinoza and Alejandro Paul deserve a mention here because of their undeniable beauty. The fact that many great copperplate fonts come from Argentina makes me feel really proud. Take a look at: Parfumerie, Medusa, Burgues, Poem and Bellisima. (4) Some calligraphers, graphic and type designer experimented in this field in the mid-to-late 20th century and made a really playful style out of it: Letters show a lot of personality and sometimes they seem drawn rather than written. I want to express my sincere admiration to the fantastic Herb Lubalin, and his friends Tony DiSpigna, Tom Carnase, and of course my fellow countryman Ricardo Rousselot. All of them, amazing.