Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is also ideal for any application that requires quick and easy assimilation of text. According to Nicholas, “The idea for the design started when I was asked to develop a custom version of Century Schoolbook. I wanted to give the design a more contemporary feel, although the client ultimately decided to keep their typeface closer to the original. The project nevertheless gave me ideas for a new design. Since designing Nimrod, some 30 years ago, I had wanted to make a more modern typeface family for newspapers and magazines – this seemed the ideal candidate.” Ysobel (pronounced “Isabel”) has the soft, inviting letter shapes of Century Schoolbook but contrasts these with more incised serifs and terminals. Its capitals are also narrower than those of Century Schoolbook, and care was taken to ensure that they harmonize perfectly with the lowercase. Ysobel’s x-height is full-bodied without disrupting lowercase proportions. In addition, curved terminals, such as those in the “C,” “c” and “e,” were drawn more open as an aid to legibility and readability in text copy. Weight stress is near vertical, and hairlines are robust to ensure character fidelity in small point sizes. Development began with the text version of the family, which has four weights, each with an italic companion. All weights feature lining and old style numerals, fractions, superiors and extended Latin language coverage. Small caps are also available in the Roman Regular design. Ysobel Display is a completely redrawn version of the typeface; it is narrower, and has a slightly smaller x-height, thinner hairlines and subtle design changes to improve its appearance when set at large sizes. The Display Italic received particular attention to make it ideal for setting headlines, subheads and short blocks of copy. Changes include a slightly greater italic angle and more cursive treatment of some letter shapes. Alternative styles of capital “J” and “Q,” to provide variation, are available in all weights.

A Venetian serif in 6 styles The Apolline typeface family was created by Jean François Porchez as a means to study the transition from Renaissance writing into the first printing types. Rather than sticking to the method commonly used these days for the creation of revivals of Jenson or Bembo types, it seemed more interesting to try and get in the same mindset as those exceptional designers during this pivotal period in the history of typography. Thus Apolline is an exploration of the design methods used by people like Nicolas Jenson and his contemporaries for adapting handwriting with its multiple occurrences (a, a, a, b, b, b…) into single, unique signs (a, b…). Initially Jean François made drawings modelled after his own calligraphy. They were done at a very small size on tracing paper (2 cm high for the capitals) to preserve the irregularity of human handwriting. Besides emphasising the horizontal parts of the letter forms, the serifs were designed asymmetrically to reinforce the rhythm of the writing. The final drawings were produced at a large size (10 cm high for the capitals) to allow for subtle optimisation of specific details. The very narrow and fluid Apolline italic Influenced by various concepts for an ideal italic by Van Krimpen, Gill, etc. Apolline italic was designed at 8° degrees. Although the structure of the letterforms were informed by chancery scripts, the italic has full serifs like the roman. Very narrow and fluid, its unique design creates a good contrast when used in combination with its upright counterparts. Thanks to the presence of the serifs similar to roman typefaces it sets very neatly in large sizes. The next step was digitising the drawings with Ikarus (the pre-Bézier-curves era) to create the final roman and italic fonts. Two years later, when the family was expanded to six series the same method was used, this time with Fontographer. This was necessary for correcting a few problems caused by the conversion to Bézier outlines, and to add intermediate weights. Before the advent of feature-rich OpenType, quality type families consisted of several separate fonts for each weight to provide users with various sets of numerals, an extended ligature set and alternates, ornaments, and so on. Introducing Apolline Morisawa Awards 1993

ATTENTION COSTUMERS! A new version of this font was released in 2019. Take a look: Breathe Neue Reaching a total of more than 1000 glyphs, Breathe Pro is Maximiliano R. Sproviero’s gift of the year. The aim of the designer was once more to give the user the chance to play and travel from very formal and conservative letterforms to the amazing world of swashes and flourishes. Possibilities of alternating and ligating characters in this font are absolutely fantastic. After his last creation, Parfait Script, Lián wanted to make a more universal font. Delighted by typographic works of Didot and his followers of the beginnings of 1800, Maximiliano R. Sproviero started what became another obsessive project, which is now named Breathe, “cuando las letras respiran...” what could be translated as “when letters breathe”, due to the feeling that you are reading letters that are alive. Breathe comes in two styles which have a significant difference as regards to the quantity of glyphs available inside. If you want to get the most complete style, with over 1000 glyphs, (including contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, swashes, terminal forms, titling alternates, historical forms, stylistic sets, standard ligatures, stylistic ligatures, decorative ligatures and frames) then your choice should be Breathe Pro. On the other hand, if you are interested in having a less decorative font with the nice touch of Lián’s style, then your choice should be Breathe Standard, a more limited version of Breathe, including terminal forms (leaves) and frames. With Breathe Pro you will surely have fun at the same time you are designing and that is not an unimportant thing. The world of type-designers is growing each year, and the features of Open-Type are letting them think their creations as if they were truly pieces of art. At least, Breathe Pro is inspired in the Art of our predecessors, those who with a pen loaded of ink would decorate each letter, each page in such a lovely way. Yes, -lovely- is the word. We would not have the amazing lettering artists, calligraphers, typographers of nowadays if that -love for letters- had not traveled from generation to generation. Breathe Pro is an example of this love. An example of what Maximiliano R. Sproviero feels about typography and letters. Pssst... Look for more images and the User’s Guide at the gallery section to see it in use! http://origin.myfonts.com/s/aw/original/89/0/46067.pdf

Garalde: the word itself sounds antique and arcane to anyone who isn’t fresh out of design school, but the sort of typeface it describes is actually quite familiar to all of us. Despite its age—born fairly early in printing’s history—the style has fared well; Garaldes are still the typefaces of choice for books and other long reading. And so we continue to see text set in old favorites—Garamond, Sabon®, and their Venetian predecessor, Bembo®. Yet many new books don’t feel as handsome and readable as older books printed in the original, metal type. The problem is that digital type revivals are typically facsimiles of their metal predecessors, merely duplicating the letterforms rather than capturing the impression—both physical and emotional—that the typefaces once left on the page. MVB Verdigris is a Garalde text face for the digital age. Inspired by the work of 16th-century punchcutters Robert Granjon (roman) and Pierre Haultin (italic), Verdigris celebrates tradition but is not beholden to it. Created specifically to deliver good typographic color as text, Mark van Bronkhorst’s design meets the needs of today’s designer using today’s paper and press. And now, as a full-featured OpenType release, it’s optimized for the latest typesetting technologies too. With MVB Verdigris Pro Text, Van Bronkhorst has revisited the family, adding small caps to all weights and styles, extensive language support, and other typographic refinements. Among the features: • Support for most Latin-based languages, including those of Central and Eastern Europe. • Precision spacing and kerning by type editor Linnea Lundquist. The fonts practically set beautiful text by themselves. • Proportional and tabular figure sets, each with oldstyle and lining forms with currency symbols to match. • Ligatures to maintain even spacing while accommodating Verdigris’ elegant, sweeping glyphs. • Numerators and denominators for automatic fractions of any denomination. • Useful, straightforward dingbats including arrows, checkboxes, and square and round bullets in three sizes. • Alternative ‘zero’ and ‘one’ oldstyle figures for those who prefer more contemporary versions over the traditional forms. • An alternative uppercase Q with a more reserved tail. • An optional, roman “Caps” font providing mid-caps, useful for titling settings, and for those situations when caps seem too big and small caps seem too small. __________ Sabon is a trademark of Linotype Corp. Bembo is a trademark of the Monotype Corporation.

The Adelle Sans font family by José Scaglione and Veronika Burian provides a more clean and spirited take on the traditional grotesque sans. As is typical with TypeTogether typefaces, the most demanding editorial design problems were taken into consideration during its creation. The combination of lively character and unobtrusive appearance inherent to grotesque sans serifs make it an utterly versatile tool for every imaginable situation. Whether for global branding, screens, signage and advertising, or UI, the keyword behind Adelle Sans’s use is flexibility. To save space and keep legibility high, Adelle Sans is available in eight weights with matching italics and includes a condensed width of seven weights with their matching italics. Each of these 30 styles hits the perfect tone as a headline punch or subdued background hum, and the condensed widths are adept at setting short texts while retaining the expected personality. Rooted in the belief that broad language support is crucial to modern global type design, the Latin-matching variants are yet another push in TypeTogether’s ongoing multilingual efforts. The Latin script may have been first, but Adelle Sans has thus far been expanded into an exhaustive nine script family with extensive language support. Careful research and close collaboration with type experts yielded typographic consistency, legibility, and cultural awareness among all scripts, as well as filling the need for quality editorial typefaces in Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Latin Extended, Greek, and Thai, with more planned for the future. In addition to the 30 Latin styles, all other scripts have between seven and fourteen styles, each of which has been engineered to optically match the proportions of its counterparts. And each script comes bundled with the Latin script to ensure an harmonious fit amongst any two or more Adelle Sans families in the same block of text. The full Adelle Sans family delivers consistent, flexible, and personable results in multilingual documents, in apps, and multicultural branding worldwide. Its wide character set includes typographic niceties, small caps, several sets of figures, icons, and support for over 245 Latin-based languages. Be sure to check out the companions for Adelle Sans: Adelle, for a versatile and authoritative slab serif with no shortage of personality; and Adelle Mono, a two-width family flexible enough for developers and graphic designers alike.

The typeface Yusyad is designed mainly for a very sentimental and emotional reason. Metaphorically, it is a modest artistic gift offered virtually from the designer to one of his beloved and cherished persons in this life, namely, his loyal and devoting wife. She represents one of the most essential motives for many artistic and non-artistic works that the designer achieved during his life. This was done through her tranquil personality, infinite patience, sincere support, and endless encouragement. The designer's partner (i.e., the significant other) lives with him along with their three children looking both always for a life full of peace, achievements, philanthropy, and of course love. The typeface's name Yusyad is a portmanteau word consists of two morphemes. It is a simple name-meshing for two different names. Those names represent the name of the designer's wife (Yusra) and the name of the designer (Eyad). Yusyad is like an epithet that ties the two partners' honest and eternal relationship until the last day of their lives. Technically, Yusyad is a sans-serif condensed and display typeface. It comprises seven fonts with dual styles and multiple weights. Specifically, it has two main styles, namely, the normal and the inline design. The normal style comes in five weights (i.e., thin, light, regular, bold, and black) whereas the inline style has two weights (i.e., regular and bold). The typeface is designed with more than 700 glyphs or characters. Its character set supports nearly most of the Central, Eastern, and Western European languages using Latin scripts including the Irish and the Vietnamese languages. The typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in the web, print, and other media. It is also absolutely preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publication, press, services, and production industries. It can create a very impressive impact when used in movies' or TV-series titles, posters, products’ surfaces, logos, signage, novels, books, and magazines covers, medical packages, as well as the product and corporate branding. It has also both of lining and old-style numerals which makes it more suitable for any printing or designing purposes. To end, Yusyad's condensed appearance—especially the inline style—makes it very memorable, eye-catching, and striking for advertising, marketing, and promotional purposes.

In comparison to the powerful and commanding original, Sancoale Gothic is a more sober version of Sancoale. The medium contrast between thick and thin strokes makes for a typeface that stands out with striking clarity in longer texts, yet is very readable. This new addition to the Sancoale family is a perfect alternative if you want to use a different style than the original family. Using the utmost care and restraint, the designer strove to avoid overbearing futurism in favor of a typeface with clean lines and clear forms. Show your customers the world with Sancoale Gothic, a versatile sans with a wide range of styles, from delicate thins to bold, hefty weights that dominate the page and screen with confidence and futuristic flair. A fresh, friendly voice for all kinds of uses, from corporate statements to fashion, Sancoale Gothic is a versatile sans with a wide range of styles, from delicate thins to bold, hefty weights that dominate the page and screen with confidence and futuristic flair. Sancoale Gothic has a distinct personality, which allows you to create a wide range of projects, including posters and websites. The Sancoale Gothic fonts come in many varieties, so you can go with a light or thick weight, depending on what fits your project best. With their sweeping curves, the heavy fonts are meant for huge headings on posters and websites. The Sancoale Gothic family is made up of 48 distinct styles, with 660 glyphs and supports 70 languages, allowing you to communicate with your customers all over the world. Small Capitals and other OpenType features abound! The design is sleek with no stems or spurs in the default character set, but OpenType alternates have alternates with stems. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. The superfamily offers an array of optical sizes, contrasting weights, and contrasting optical sizes to discover the right balance, contrast, and optical size for your design. Prepare to be blown away by Sancoale Gothic’s smooth curves and captivating allure. Sancoale Gothic is perfect for both a contemporary and forward looking style. Sancoale Gothic is both practical and unique, in a standalone capacity or with the companion Sancoale fonts. Use it to make an impact today.

I am thrilled to unveil my latest creation, the Elio & Oliver font family. Inspired by the timeless elegance and undeniable allure of Italy, this sans serif typeface captures the essence of sophistication and refinement. Named after the main protagonists of the beloved novel "Call Me by Your Name," Elio & Oliver is a testament to the power of passion, beauty, and the transcendent experiences that shape our lives. Just like their story, this font aims to evoke emotions and create a lasting impression. With nine meticulously crafted weights ranging from the delicate Ultra Light to the bold intensity of Black, Elio & Oliver offers a spectrum of possibilities. Each weight is thoughtfully designed to ensure versatility and harmonious visual aesthetics across various design projects. Intricate and purposeful, the font pack boasts over 30 ligatures that seamlessly combine letters, elevating the fluidity and legibility of your typography. These ligatures add an extra touch of sophistication to your designs, making them truly stand out. Recognizing the importance of language diversity, Elio & Oliver is equipped with full language support, enabling you to effortlessly communicate your message to a global audience. From English to Italian, French to Spanish, and beyond, this font embraces the richness and cultural nuances of different languages. Whether you're working on editorial layouts, branding projects, or digital interfaces, Elio & Oliver will infuse your designs with an air of refined elegance. It is the embodiment of style and grace, effortlessly capturing attention and leaving a lasting impression on viewers. Step into the world of Elio & Oliver, where every letter tells a story and every curve is a testament to the power of design. It's time to elevate your creative projects and evoke the spirit of Italian chicness with this exquisite typeface. Discover Elio & Oliver and let your designs speak the language of timeless elegance. If you end up publishing your designs on Instagram, tag me - @silverstagco and I will make sure to showcase your design and work to my audience as well! Elio & Oliver - Elegant Sans Serif Includes: Elio & Oliver Font Family - 9 Font Weights - From Ultra Light to Black Elio & Oliver Variable Font Over 30 ligatures and alternate letters Numerals & Punctuation Language Support Web Font Kit is included as well Detailed instructions on how to use alternates in most of the apps on your computer as well for Canva Happy creating everyone!

Introducing Fragilità, a captivating serif font that embodies the delicate balance of classic elegance and modern innovation. With its exquisitely crafted characters, high contrast, and subtle ligatures, Fragilità seamlessly blends the charm of yesterday with the spirit of today. Fragilità's unique design harmoniously blends elements of both retro and modern aesthetics. Its condensed letterforms evoke a touch of nostalgia, reminiscent of classic serif fonts from the past. Yet, the font's modern sensibilities shine through in its circular O, Q, and C characters, which retain their full circularity, adding a touch of contemporary sophistication. Fragilità's high contrast between the thick and thin strokes of its characters ensures exceptional readability across various mediums. Whether gracing the pages of a book, adorning a website, or captivating viewers on a digital screen, Fragilità remains effortlessly legible. Fragilità's extensive library of ligatures adds a touch of refinement and sophistication to your text. These intricate pairings of letters flow seamlessly together, creating a sense of continuity and elegance that elevates your written expression. Fragilità's comprehensive support for over 92 languages makes it an invaluable tool for anyone seeking a versatile font that can transcend cultural boundaries. With its adaptability to a wide range of languages, Fragilità ensures that your message resonates with audiences worldwide. We understand that quality fonts shouldn't be a luxury reserved for a select few. That's why Fragilità is available for an incredibly affordable price of just $24, making it accessible to designers and creative professionals of all levels. With its exquisite design, exceptional readability, and ligature-rich character, Fragilità is a font that will elevate your creative projects to new heights. Whether you're crafting elegant body text, designing eye-catching headlines, or creating captivating marketing materials, Fragilità will add a touch of timeless elegance and modern sophistication to your work. Embrace the delicate balance of classic charm and modern innovation with Fragilità, your new go-to serif font for all your creative endeavors. Would you like to get 5 completely free fonts worth over $75? No tricks, no hidden words, terms or anything. Just subscribe to my newsletter, make sure to check your email to approve the subscription, add me to your contacts so that the emails don't end up in spam folder and you will get 5 fonts for free. The fonts are packed with alternates, ligatures and some even come with extra goodies. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63594052b967a943dd6cc528 Happy creating everyone!

Here is another design by jewelry designer Max Joseph Gradl. Zier is a verb, meaning to decorate, adorn or ornament; zierlich means decorative, elegant, fine, neat. Schrift means type. Zierschrift, therefore, means decorative type. Gradl Zierschriften is a decorative type in the Art Nouveau style, rather than the more ornate Victorian style. Very modern, very young, with an elegant simplicity of form. Maria Makela, in her book The Munich Secession (Princeton 1990) suggests that the frequent use of simple, flowing, organic forms that was so characteristic of Art Nouveau was a reaction against the growing complexity and rapid urbanization that resulted from 19th century industrialization. In keeping with that reaction is the hand-drawn quality that intentionally rejects a mechanistic mathematic precision of line rendering. Gradl Zierschriften preserves that hand-drawn quality. Designed with upper case only, this face was obviously intended for short headlines only and is best set at 18 points or larger. However, I don't think you really get to experience the grace of this design until you get to 36 points or more. In the larger sizes, it is simply stunning. Please note that while most of the uppercase letterforms are repeated in the lower case for convenience, the ‘F’,‘L’ and ‘T’ are rendered a little narrower than in the uppercase to provide for visual variety. The font also includes a generous supply of ligatures for just the right fit ... and just for the fun of using them. Three common ways of inserting a ligature, accented letter or other special character are: 1) Key in “ALT”+“0”+[ascii #]; for example ALT+0233 for the e-acute, 2) From within your application program, go to the INSERT menu and look for something like “Insert Symbol,” (this function is NOT available in all application programs) & 3) Cut & Paste from the CHARACTER MAP display that has been supplied by every generation of Windows Operating System that I can recall (All Programs>Accessories>System Tools). Isn't it amazing what you can do? Don't be afraid to experiment. If you back up your work, you have very little to lose and a lot to gain. Not only do you acquire a new tool, but by the very process you have learned how to continually expand your knowledge and skill base.

TT Travels useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Travels: TT Travels is a geometric grotesque with wide proportions and peculiar shapes of circles and brackets. TT Travels incorporates two stylistic sets which add completely different characters to the type family. The first set ss01 (aka salt) makes the font more humanistic, thanks to the ductal and smooth design of the characters defining the style. And if you want to work with the futuristic version of TT Travels, we recommend that you enable the second set (ss02). In this set, most of the characters defining the style change to characters possessing experimental forms of graphemes. For the convenience of the TT Travels font family use and for working within a complex text hierarchy, we've created 9 weights (Thin, X-Light, Light, Regular, Medium, DemiBold, Bold, X-Bold, Black) and added 9 true Italics. TT Travels also implements standard and discretionary ligatures, oldstyle figures, slashed zero, and much more. The full list of OpenType features used in TT Travels is: ordn, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, onum, tnum, pnum, liga, dlig, salt, ss01, ss02, case, frac, zero. TT Travels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

Looking for a typeface that brings retro flair to your designs? Look no further than Pricedown! This typeface is a modern interpretation of Pinto Flare, a display typeface from the early 1970s. Pricedown has a boxy, retro design that’s perfect for adding a touch of nostalgia to your work. It’s been used in a variety of applications over the years, including as the logotype for the US game show, The Price is Right, and Technos Japan’s Tag Team Wrestling video game in 1986. In addition to its eye-catching design, Pricedown also features some fun interlocking character combinations when used in OpenType savvy applications. For example, when the letter “H” is followed by the letter “I”, a swash tail will tuck under the “I”, adding an extra flourish to your text. And if you prefer a more streamlined look, you can easily turn off this feature in your application. With nine different weights to choose from, Pricedown is a versatile typeface that allows you to skillfully attenuate its impact, making it perfect for a wide range of graphic design projects. So whether you’re designing a logo, a poster, or anything in between, Pricedown is sure to add a touch of retro style to your work. Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.

Introducing Soft Whisperings Calligraphic - A beautifully flowing modern calligraphy font. This delicate, modern script font is full of romance and elegance. It’s perfect for wedding stationery, Save The Date and special occasion cards. Soft Whisperings has a lovely handwritten feel to it so it’s also great for logos, signatures, taglines and calligraphic projects. There are plenty of alternate glyphs and ligatures! International Language Support Soft Whisperings Calligraphic supports 219 latin based languages, which are spoken in different 212 countries. Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu,  Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish (Latin), Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Onĕipŏt, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese,  Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog,Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan,Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The fonts are PUA encoded which means that you don’t need any special software to be able to use the alternates and Ligatures.  Well, that’s about it!  Enjoy! Jo

Monotype Bembo is generally regarded as one of the most handsome revivals of Aldus Manutius' 15th century roman type, but the original had no italic counterpart. The story is told that Stanley Morison commissioned Alfred Fairbank, a renowned calligrapher, to create the first italic for Bembo, which was released as metal fonts in 1929. Alfred Fairbank, however, claimed that he drew the design as an independent project and then sold his drawings to Monotype. According to him, the statement has been made that I was asked to design an italic for the Bembo roman. This is not so. Had the request been made, the italic type produced would have been different." Whichever version you believe, it was obvious that Fairbank's design - while undeniably beautiful - was not harmonious with Bembo roman. A second, more conventional italic was eventually drawn and added to the Bembo family. Fairbank's first design, which was based on the work of sixteenth-century writing master Ludovico degli Arrighi, managed to have a modest life of its own as a standalone font of metal type. It never made the leap into phototype fonts, however, and the face could have been lost, were it not for Robin Nicholas, Monotype Imaging's Head of Typography in the United Kingdom, and Carl Crossgrove, a senior designer for Monotype Imaging in the US. Nicholas and Crossgrove used the original drawings for Fairbank as the starting point for a new digital design, but this was only the beginning. They improved spacing, added subtle kerning and optimized the design for digital imaging. In addition, Nicholas created an alternative set of lowercase letters, fancy and swash capitals and enough alternate characters to personalize virtually any design project. By the time his work was complete, Nicholas and Crossgrove had created a small type family that included Fairbank, a revived version of the earlier metal font, and Fairbank Chancery, a more calligraphic rendition of the design. An additional suite of ornate caps, elegant ligatures, and beginning and ending letters accompanies both fonts, as does a full complement of lowercase swash characters. Now, instead of a failed Bembo italic, Fairbank emerges in its true glory: a sumptuous, elegant design that will lend a note of grace to holiday greetings, invitations, and any application where its Italianate beauty is called for."

K-Type’s ‘Banks & Miles’ fonts are inspired by the geometric monoline lettering created for the British Post Office in 1970 by London design company Banks & Miles, a project initiated and supervised by partner John Miles, and which included ‘Double Line’ and ‘Single Line’ alphabets. The new digital typeface is a reworking and extension of both alphabets. Banks & Miles Double Line is provided in three weights – Light, Regular and Dark – variations achieved by adjusting the width of the inline. Banks & Miles Single Line develops the less used companion sans into a three weight family – Regular, Medium and Bold – each with an optically corrected oblique. Although the ‘Banks & Miles Double Line’ and ‘Banks & Miles Single Line’ fonts are based on the original Post Office letterforms, glyphs have been drawn from scratch and include numerous adjustments and impertinent alterations, such as narrowing the overly wide Z and shortening the leg of the K. Several disparities exist between the Post Office Double and Single Line styles, and K-Type has attempted to secure greater consistency between the two. For instance, a wide apex on the Double Line’s lowercase w is made pointed to match the uppercase W and the Single Line’s W/w. Also, the gently sloping hook of Single Line’s lowercase j is adopted for both families. The original Single Line’s R and k, which were incongruously simplified, are drawn in their more remarkable Double Line forms, and whilst the new Single Line fonts are modestly condensed where appropriate, rounded letters retain the essentially circular form of the Double Line. Many characters that were not part of the original project, such as @, ß, #, and currency symbols, have been designed afresh, and a full set of Latin Extended-A characters is included. The new fonts are a celebration of distinctive features like the delightful teardrop-shaped bowl of a,b,d,g,p and q, and a general level of elegance not always achieved by inline typefaces. The Post Office Double Line alphabet was used from the early 1970s, in different colours to denote the various parts of the Post Office business which included telecommunications, counter services and the Royal Mail. Even after the Post Office was split into separate businesses in the 1980s, Post Office Counters and Royal Mail continued use of the lettering, and a version can still be seen within the Royal Mail cruciform logo.

TT Octosquares useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Octosquares is a fresh, revised, expanded, and significantly improved version of our first commercial typeface TT Squares and its narrow version TT Squares Condensed. With all our love for the original font family, it felt there was a lack of functionality, character composition, features, and design freshness, which prompted us to the idea of a complete restart. Now TT Octosquares can be safely called a superfamily consisting of 4 widths (Compressed, Condensed, Standard, Expanded), 72 faces (18 in each width), and 1 incredible variable font in which variability works jointly on three axes. In addition to working on the contours themselves and their design, we completely revised the composition of the typeface. First, we added two completely new widths: Compressed and Expanded. Secondly, we increased the number of weights in each of the subfamilies—while in the old versions there were 5 weights, now in each of the subfamilies there are 9 weights. At the stage of working with the contours of characters, we revised the roundings, changed the forms of shoulder and stem crossings, added noticeable shelves at the letters, removed the sharpness from the triangular characters and cut off all sharp endings. From the very beginning of work on TT Octosquares, we planned to make a variable 3-axis version of it sewn into 1 font file. This means that by installing just one variable font file, you get access to three axial adjustment of the font: by thickness, width and inclination. Thanks to this flexibility in settings, you can always choose a custom combination of thickness, width or inclination that best suits your tasks. Due to the increased language support and the appearance of a bunch of useful OpenType features, the number of glyphs in the typeface has increased from 480 to 825 in each style. Now you can use stylistic alternates, standard and discretionary ligatures, or use old-style figures, numbers in circles and even slashed zeros in your design. Full list of features: aalt, mark, mkmk, ccmp, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, case, zero, dlig, liga, salt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, ss11, ss12, calt, locl. To use the variable font with three variable axes on Mac you will need MacOS 10.14 or higher. For other software and browsers, you can check the support status here: v-fonts.com/support/.

A comprehensive and faithful rendition of one of the finest metal typefaces of the 20th century. Rudolf Koch designed Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift (initially conceived as “Missal Schrift”, and later referred to also as “Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch”) between 1919 and 1925 for the Gebr. Klingspor Type Foundry in Offenbach am Main. It is an impressive textura typeface, being sharp, elegant, spiky, sensitive and noble at the same time. Some of its most notable features have to do with the delicate decorations, the thin but subtly swelling lines that parallel or bridge strokes in the capitals, the hairline endings that terminate each stroke in both the capitals and the lowercase letters, the subtle joining of hairlines to thicker strokes, and the tension of some of the transitional curves. Koch’s original design included two sets of capitals (normal and condensed); alternates for a, d, e, r, s and z, plus long s; short and long flourished finial forms for f and t; thirty-five ligatures; and eighteen decorative pieces (Zierstücke). All of these features, plus several additional ones for modern use (including the usual standard characters for typesetting in modern Western languages, additional alternates and ligatures, plus carefully coded Opentype features), have been thoroughly implemented to the highest and most lively level of detail in the present font, in the hope that the past greatness of Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift will finally step into the modern OpenType realm. The main sources used during the font design process were several pages from a specimen book issued by the Gebr. Klingspor Type Foundry in 1927. Other sources were as follows: Bain, P., and Shaw, P. (Eds.) (1998), Blackletter: Type and National Identity, New York: Princeton Architectural Press (p. 43); Hendlmeier, W. (1994), Kunstwerke der Schrift, Hannover: Bund für Deutsche Schrift und Sprache (pp. 56-7); Kapr, A. (1983), Schriftkunst, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst (p. 453); Kapr, A. (1993), Fraktur - Form und Geschichte der gebrochenen Schriften, Mainz: Verlag Hermann Schmidt (pp. 124-5); and Klingspor, K. (1949), Über Schönheit von Schrift und Druck, Frankfurt am Main: Georg Kurt Schauer (pp. 136-7). Some public and private comments by renowned designer and design historian Paul Shaw have also influenced both the design and the description of the present font. Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift” Font Page.

Introducing Angostura—the sans-serif typeface that’s set to revolutionize your designs! Drawing inspiration from the bold and beautiful American sign lettering of the 40s and 50s, Angostura is a truly unique typeface that’s sure to turn heads. With low crossbars that harken back to the industrial deco signage of yesteryear, and monocular “a” and “g” that pay homage to the mid-century Futura craze, this font is a true original. But that’s not all; Angostura comes in a range of styles, from Ultra-Light to Bold and everything in between, making it a versatile choice for any project. And if you really want to take things to the next level, be sure to check out the spray-paint, wood grain, and stencil variants—these special editions use ligatures to create bespoke letter pairs that add an extra layer of realism and authenticity to your work. So, why choose Angostura? Simple—this typeface is full of character and individuality, allowing you to convey your message in a tone that’s both distinct and memorable. Whether you’re working on a branding project, a website redesign, or a print campaign, Angostura is the typeface that’s sure to take your designs to the next level. So, what are you waiting for? Try it out today and see the difference for yourself! Most Latin-based European, Greek, and some Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greek, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Ukrainian, Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Savigny began as an offshoot of Le Havre. Le Havre met my design objective of a geometric sans serif with a strong art deco touch. Le Havre’s primary inspiration came from the art deco titling of the 1930’s, and the lower case was just icing. The art of the 1930’s is of particular interest to me, and I love the art deco era and its art, and the simplicity of geometric shapes. I am mostly interested in designing display typefaces. In many ways Le Havre was the exact opposite of another popular insigne offering, Aviano Sans. Le Havre has very high ascenders, a lower case and is very condensed. Aviano Sans has no lowercase and extremely extended capitals. With the rise of webfonts I began to see Le Havre being used frequently online. It’s short x-height and very tall ascenders made it difficult to read in on screen text settings as it was intended as display type. With this observation, I felt that there is more room for a geometric sans in the insigne catalog. So I set about to design a new geometric sans using the successful skeleton of the Le Havre family. Although I planned to extend the Le Havre line, the new family is so drastically different I decided on a new name: Savigny. The face evolved and began to take on a few humanist touches. Designed from the very beginning as a webfont, the design is open and pleasing to the eye, with a tall x-height. To optimize it for onscreen settings, the spacing is generous. In addition, it includes extended and condensed members, making it insigne’s first superfamily. The family includes over 100 OpenType alternate characters. These include several style sets. Some are stemless, others are purely geometric, and in a nod to Savigny’s origins, Art Deco titling alternates. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Savigny is a great choice for a professional designer who wants a well rounded typeface family that is ready for the web.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.