I recently walked part of the South West Coast Path in the UK. A couple of days in the hike, I came across a small cafe and I decided to have an oat latte (I am lactose intolerant). Since it was early in the morning, the breakfast menu was out and one of the items I noticed was ‘Overnight Oats’. I normally cook my oats with some lactose free milk and water, but apparently you can soak them overnight, add fruit and nuts and eat it like that. I tried it, it’s ok, but I think I prefer the cooked version. Overnight Oats is a bit of an odd font: it is very higgledy piggledy, yet legible and unique. If you want something out of the ordinary, then this may be your font!

Raclette grills are an ingenious Swiss invention. This tabletop grill is used to cook raclette cheese, a unique sort of cheese produced by the happy cows of Valais. Swiss designer Michael Parson created a typeface in 2002 that speaks endearingly to his hearty homeland tradition - endearingly enough, he named it Raclette. Raclette most likely started out as a bold, condensed sans serif. But then, just as one pulls little trays off of a raclette grill, Parsons quickly removed many rectilinear bits from the edges of each letter. Text set in Raclette looks like an old brick wall, or perhaps like a raclette party for several hundred people, that ended an hour ago! Raclette is one of ten of Michael Parson's experiments in type design featured in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH."

Bauhaus Bugler’s design never appeared in Harry Warren’s 6th grade class newsletter The Broadwater Bugler but its design came about during that same period in 1975. Because of this, it has been officially designated an honorary Bugler font! Its theme of broad curves that leap over and under conjure visions of fashion and high-end department stores with their dress boxes and shopping bags, plus hair products, cosmetics, couture, and other stylish personal merchandise of the highest caliber. Bauhaus Bugler also has an art deco flavor, especially when all capitals are used. It comes with two alternate versions of the upper and lower Y to give users more freedom of choice. Put Bauhaus Bugler in your “haus” today! Be sure to check out Bauhaus Bugler Soft also! Digitized by John Bomparte.

Envoy is a serif type inspired primarily by Garalde oldstyle types like those of Claude Garamond. As such, it is particularly well suited for book and magazine text. Characteristic details more typical of Venetian oldstyle faces serve to give Envoy just a bit more personality. The base family includes regular, italic, bold, bold italic and small capitals. Expert sets add ligatures and alternate letterforms. Display sets include letterforms customized for titling. Originally designed in 1995 and 1996, for the 1996 Morisawa International Typeface Design Competition, Envoy was later revived, completed and publicly released in 1998. During the initial design, the family was known as Truman in honor of Northeast Missouri State University becoming Truman State University, but the name was changed to Envoy prior to entry in the competition.

Bleek started its life as a logo for a rock band with the same name. This makes sense as it has distinct roots in classic rock logo design. Any rock band name set in VLNL Bleek looks instantly cool – profi logo quality! Of coarse Bleek will serve an awesome purpose as a headline font as well. Or gig flyers and posters. Or band backdrops. Just turn it up to 11! DBXL expanded the original logo into the full Heavy weight and added Light and Medium cuts. VLNL Bleek is an all caps font with uppercase and lowercase variations for maximum effect. It has a number of Open type features, like and alternate F, mirrored A and O and a TT ligature to spice up your designs. VetteLetters says: Rock on!

Probably one of the most unusual applications of a stencil took place in 1964 when Union Carbide [then-owner of the still-new line of "Glad" brand plastic wrap and storage bags] sponsored a $100,000 contest to match up a stencil of their logo in order to win a prize. The magazine ad told of how one thousand lucky participants would win $100 by simply taking a die-cut stencil of the brand name to the store and overlaying it on the logo printed on the food wrap box to see if it aligned perfectly. The hand-lettered title proclaiming "match the stencil and win" was done in a casual sans design and reflected the cheerfulness of many typestyles found in ads during the late 50s and early 60s.

Years ago, by happenstance, designers Nancy Mazzei and Brian Kelly found an old decrepit typewriter in an abandoned lot with tall grass in Brooklyn. They kept it around their apartment for two years. Then one day they decided that it was time to move and they planned to throw the old typewriter away. But it was so beautiful they wanted to keep at least a part of it. So they decided on keeping the keys. They kept the keys in a brown bag until one fine day the keys were introduced to a camera. It was a match made in heaven that resulted in some beautiful quirky images of typewriter keys. These images were the inspiration for Backspacer. They were scanned, traced and turned into a working typeface by Zuzana Licko.

Kris is a powerful typeface based on humanistic minuscule with a touch of Uncial script. An alphabet with an unusual appearance. It is based on the paradigm of classical handwriting. Kris is handwritten with a broad nib pen and ordinary black ink. The somewhat fanciful shapes are created by lifting the pen randomly left and right. This causes unpredictable frayed edges that make the typeface exciting. It bursts with character and is very versatile. Kris is written by the Dutch calligraphy artist Corrie Smetsers. Corrie threw all basic characters in a plastic bag and René Verkaart built the typeface and created all remaining characters. “Most special about this project was collaborating with Corrie. She's an expert in handwriting and has developed writing systems for the educational sector for decades”, René says.

Looking for a font that will make your branding stand out? Do you sometimes have an appetite for a bit more wholesome typography? Looking for a fabulous, stylish, and adventure font? We've got what you want. Allonges -A Script Font Alllonges script is suitable for today's growing market design, this font has a model trendy, natural and soft, with this font you can take advantage of an occasion in every moment. Allonges is a new modern script font with an irregular base line. Style trendy and feminine. Allonges looks beautiful for branding, logos, wedding goods, greeting cards, fashion, lookbook, marketing promotions. Our font always includes Multilingual Support to make your branding reach a global audience. Features: Ligatures Stylistic Set Swahes PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuation Thank you for downloading premium fonts from Natha Studio

Hyperartism is an artistic movement born in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland) which advocates free and uninhibited creation, in all forms, for everyone. HyperBrush was originally created for the new collective's logo and is the perfect cross between the corrosive spirit, the assumed nonchalance and the natural class of Hyperartists' works. HyperBrush is the ideal font for anyone who wants to add a touch of fantasy to a soft design, or a bit of seriousness to a completely crazy project. Its quirky, edgy and clean look is just as suitable for a festival poster as it is for a DIY shop sign, for the title of a trashy short movie or else for a toilet door sign in a hipster lounge bar. With HyperBrush, it's easy to put more hyper into any project!

Terrance Weinzierl's Terry Junior typeface is a perfectly imperfect design – one that retains the marks of the brush used to create it and harks back to the craft required to hand make letterforms. Originally drawn during a Monotype Font Marathon, Weinzierl later refined the typeface digitally – adding an Inline version and designing alternates that replicate the irregularity of real-life brush scripts. “It has a natural, cheery and bold appearance,” says designer Terrance Weinzierl. “It's young, but not wild. Painted, but not sloppy. A sign painter's apprentice, perhaps.” Terry Junior is an obvious choice for designers and brands communicating with younger audiences, but would also work well on book covers, packaging, and in digital environments that need a little bit of extra playfulness. The family includes five fonts, including an Inline version.

Granolia is a stylish serif with an artistic and classy touch that brings us into an era of nostalgia. The anatomy of thin letters collaborates with quirky alternatives and beautiful bindings to make any project look chic, upscale, quirky, artistic, and a bit of a retro vibe. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Features: All caps Stylistic Alternates & Ligatures Numerals & Punctuation Accented characters Multiple Languages Supported HOW TO ACCESS ALTERNATE CHARACTERS PUA Encoded ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open glyphs panel: In Adobe Photoshop go to Window - glyphs In Adobe Illustrator go to Type - glyphs ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow my shop for upcoming updates including additional glyphs and language support. And please message me if you want your language included or If there are any features or glyph requests, feel free to send me a message, I would like to update it.

Coming again to complete your script font collection. Belinda Carolyne is a beautiful classic calligraphy font. This font has a modern swirl that can make your work look elegant, sweet and perfect. With a style like this, Belinda Carolyne will be suitable for logo's, branding projects, homeware designs, product packaging, mugs, quotes, posters, shopping bags, t-shirts, book covers, name card, invitation cards, greeting cards, and all your other lovely projects. You can use this font very easily because there are many features in it. It contains a complete set of lower and uppercase letters, punctuation, numbers, web fonts, and multilingual support. This font also includes several ligatures and alternative style Stylistic Set for those of you who have software that is capable of working OpenType (Corel Draw / Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign).

Balboa Plus is a condensed sans serif display family. It was originally conceived as a simple black and white typeface. But it seemed unfinished, begging for something more. I decided to try adding a couple layers of fill and detail to try and make it interesting. The result is this four-layer chromatic font family. The Primary Font is the Main Font. The other fonts ( Fill, Inline, and Gradient) only exist to support the Primary Font. The Fill font should sit behind the Primary font (there is a little color trapping going on). The rest is even easier. There is a free downloadable PDF Balboa User Manual in the Gallery section for this family. It has samples and some backstory. Balboa™ is a trademark of Parkinson Type Design.

Millie is a stressed, geometric script who spends her days as industrial lettering and her nights paired with blackletter on the patches of motorcycle gangs. Millie was weighted by the conventions of broad nib calligraphy, inspired by the Milwaukee Tools logo, and finds herself best used in logos and titles. She was designed to be used on about a 20 degree angle, though she looks just fine on a level plane. By using opentype, many ligatures, and two sets of stylistic alternates, Millie was developed to look great with any string of letters. Access the first stylistic set for a disconnected script look, and the second set for even more connections and fluid script than standard. Millie Round takes the edge off a bit, giving the entire set a more approachable and versatile feel.

Gramatika is a typeface family of sans serif from the neo-Grotesque styles. There are four different weights available, ranging from light to bold. Each weight is equipped with an italic style that is a bit like an oblique style and lifted by some unique characters, with an alternative to the single story ‘a’ for example. Inspired by the famous grotesk typefaces such as Akzidenz Grotesk and Bauersche Giesserei’s Venus Grotesk, Gramatika shapes and styles are consistently adjusted for each character to meet the classic contemporary style, treated with some ciruclar-based characters in descender g, y. By balancing balance and flexibility, Gramatika was established to create alternative communication for current trends. The latest version of this fonts comes with Latin plus script coverage, and supported by the basic characters of Cyrillic and Greek.

Marylebone is a font duo inspired by its namesake neighborhood, located in central London. Marylebone was designed to compose short text for advertisements, blackboards and shop windows in coffee shops, small bookstores, flower shops and local shops. The set is made up of a hand made brush script, composed of 519 characters including ligatures, initials and terminals; as well as a very clean, geometric unicase sans serif with some alternates and ligatures that can double as monograms, it also includes a hand-drawn floral dingbat set. Marylebone allows you to design beautiful compositions for packaging, advertising, quotes, wall art, branding, photography overlays, magazines, motion graphics, scrapbooking, planners, window art, tags, tote bags and much more, thanks to its irregular appearance that gives a unique personality to your design projects.

Museo... it all started with my love for the letter ‘U’. This uppercase letter just came to me as an image in a daydream. The top of both stems bent into semi-slab serifs. From this principle I worked out the rest of the uppercase letters. My first intention was to make it an all-caps display font, but after a while, I changed my mind. I wanted it to be a bit more versatile, so I decided to add lowercase and adjust spacing and kerning to increase legibility. This OpenType font family comes in five weights, and each weight comes with support for CE languages, even Esperanto. Besides ligatures, contextual alternatives, stylistic alternates, fractions and proportional/tabular figures, Museo has a ‘case’ feature for case-sensitive forms.

Hanleth family is a combination of script and all cap sans. This duo font was made and inspired by old vintage script and simple sans, polished with a little bit of modern style. This font family is a vintage, authentic and hand crafted piece of typeface. 1. Hanleth script : comes with clean and rough version. with some swash and alternates that make it looks unique and elegant. 2. Hanleth sans : comes with clean and vintage rustic version. a simple sans that generally good for tittle and body text. 3. Hanleth icon : comes with 52 vintage rustic icons is perfect to boost the vintage feel of this family. Hanleth family is perfect to make logotype, product packaging, tittle for poster or greeting card, promotional message, branding project and more.

Squared is a Geometric Display typeface with a box like sharped edge feel to pass the message of being Trendy but also candid in sending the desired message. It can be used to create a range of design projects like posters, advertising and marketing flyers and even to printed items. It just requires you to use your imaginative strength and your design projects will look more Bold and trendy and even better pass your message. With this typeface you can create a party poster, movie flyer, advertising and marketing posters, it can also be used on branding items, Advert Posters, book covers, music cover arts, or any purpose of your choice to make your designs look Sharp and a bit trendy, feel free to play with this typeface.

Nosegrind is a bit of a departure from our usual more traditional font offerings. It's based on skate-culture graffiti gleaned from various samples of similar style found on walls in Austin and online. The font includes two character sets, one which is plain and one which is enhanced with outlines. In normal usage the characters should nest, with slight overlap from one character to the next as shown in the sample to the right, but the lower case characters in the font are spaced evenly but not pre-nested, leaving the degree of overlap up to the user - nesting is easily adjusted with the tracking option in programs like Photoshop, Quark or InDesign. Ultimately Nosegrind will be added to our Modern Fonts collection, where it ought to fit in nicely.

Signal1885 is the abbreviated name for "(Sig)nature Jour(nal)" a font that harkens back to an era, when fine handwriting filled journals with observations of science and adventure. Intimate and reflective of an individual entering his thoughts in his personal journal or a ship’s captain documenting his voyage on a daily basis. Signal1885 is penmanship that reflects hand forms from by-gone days. Its a minimal glyph set which can be used at various sizes as small as 18 points. It includes a selection of ink drips and smudges, that are the “mark” of a hand done entry. These can be placed in strategic places on the type to indicate a hand dragging through or dripping fresh ink on to the paper. Set sail- and keep a diary of your voyage.

AJSHA font, even though being our newest font, is inspired by ancient Japanese and Chinese culture, eastern style of life of about 5000 years before present day, when honor and a good sword were respected. Japanese special sword Katana is known to be handcrafted to be extremely sharp and deadly. Therefore, the shapes of the AJSHA font accompanies the moves of a Katana master when he uses the power of his sword. The font comes in two styles, light and medium. Medium is a bit bolder style while the exact bold or strong version lacks due to the fact that the font's lines needed to be sharp as a swordsman's cuts. We expect this font to be a great asset tool for top-notch designer companies that put quality before everything else.

Looking for a font that will make your branding stand out? Do you want to make a touch of elegance and retro for your designs? This font was created for you! Vintage Signature- A Script Font Vintage Signature is a fabulous signature font, carefully handcrafted combined with a little bit retro style to become a classic favorite. Its casual charm makes it appear wonderfully down-to-earth, readable and, ultimately, incredibly versatile. Vintage Signature will look outstanding in any context, whether it’s being used on busy backgrounds or as a standalone headline! Well suited to titles, poster designs, branding, logos, and many more. Our font always includes Multilingual Support to make your branding reach a global audience. Features: Ligatures Stylistic Set PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuation Thank you for downloading premium fonts from Natha Studio

We’re delighted to bring you ‘I’m Fashionista,’ which simply oozes trendiness, style, glamour, and of course high fashion! This is a font that sings out ‘elite’ in the design sense of the word. Its sophisticated sensibility sets it apart from any other font you may have used. If you’ve ever needed to create your own fonts to use on a fashion flyer, you can already appreciate the value of having ready-to-use fonts such as ‘I’m Fashionsita’ in your bag of tricks! Anything to do with fashion and glamour needs to have that touch of delicacy, charm, beauty, and exclusivity to it, and we find the ‘I’m Fashionsita’ a perfect fit for such jobs. ‘I’m Fashionista’ is a must-have for any designer, especially those working with modern and upmarket designs.

Pounder Fonts were designed by Tom Nikosey / CozyFonts Foundry. This font, as all my fonts started with pencil sketches based on the letter O. Once I arrived at the comfortable shape I worked out the C, G, & Q. The H, M, T matched the visual weight and so I moved on to E & S. As the E & S are 2 of the most repeated characters in fonts' I wanted a little bit extra here. The font is obviously heavy weighted yet very legible and almost architectural in presence. There are flashes of Art Deco yet futuristic style. After sketching the feel of this font I was excited by the possibility of the numerals styling. I can see these used for many applications. Why the title Pounder? Why not it seems to fit.

Here’s a different kind of font for the hand lettered look! Use Your Words is a catchwords font family consisting of 3 fonts: 1.) Use Your Words Circles 2.) Use Your Words Arrows 3.) Use Your Words Banners It’s all hand drawn and hand lettered in a monoline script font with a shadow effect to boot. This font will be perfect to include on designs such as mugs, t-shirts, bags, notebooks, inspirational quotes for the home and office, and more. There are 215 words (no more than 4 letters per word) in both upper and lowercase, plus numbers, ampersand, question and exclamation marks in all three styles. There are 444 glyphs per font. I love using this font in my hand lettering designs and I hope you will too!

“Hand Stamp Gothic Rough” is based on real vintage rubber stamp letters from Germany. A classic american gothic face mixed with a modern condensed sans serif type. Rough & dirty with a authen­tic hand stamped look for a warm analogue vintage charm. It star­ted ana­lo­gous with only a few rubber stamps and finally it was digi­tal 776 gly­phs. With 4 × A–Z, 4 × 0–9, 4 × a–z and many other alternative glyphs like @. Plus modern OpenType Features like contextual alternates (automatic generated loop for letter variation). The different variations from the dynamic pressure by hand inten­ded to show the hand-made nature and crea­tes a live­li­ness in the display font. The font has 80 decorative extras in the form of symbols & dingbats like arrows, hearts, smileys, stars, further numbers, lines & shapes. A range of figure set options like oldstyle figures, lining figures, superiors & inferiors. Additionally stan­dard liga­tures, deco­ra­tive liga­tures (type the word “show” for ☛ and “love” for ❤ … ), Ver­sal Eszett (German Capital Sharp S) and many emojis & symbols. Example of use It’s your turn … for example everywhere where it makes sense. The hand stamped font would look good at head­lines. Advertising (big headlines), Corporate Design (type for logos & branding), Edi­to­rial Design (maga­zine or fan­zine headlines), Product Design (typographical packaging) or Web­de­sign (head­line web­font for your web­site), flyer, pos­ter, music covers or web banner … How To Use – awesome magic OpenType-Features in your layout application: ■ In Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign, font feature controls are within the Character panel sub-menu → OpenType → Discretionary Ligatures … Checked features are applied/on. Unchecked features are off. ■ In Adobe Illustrator, font feature controls are within the OpenType panel. Icons at the bottom of the panel are button controls. Darker ‘pressed’ buttons are applied/on. ■ Additionally in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator, alternate glyphs can manually be inserted into a text frame by using the Glyph panel. The panel can be opened by selecting Window from the menu bar → Type → Glyphs. Or use sign-overview of your operating system. For a overview of OpenType-Feature compatibility for common applications, follow the myfonts-help http://www.myfonts.com/help/#looks-different ■ It may process a little bit slowly in some applications, because the font has a lot of lovely rough details (anchor points). Tech­ni­cal Spe­ci­fi­ca­ti­ons ■ Font Name Hand Stamp Gothic Rough ■ Font Weights Regu­lar & Dirty (Bold) ■ Font Cate­gory Dis­play for head­line size ■ Font For­mat.otf (Open­Type Font for Mac + Win) ■ Glyph Set 776 glyphs ■ Lan­guage Sup­port Basic Latin/English let­ters, Cen­tral Europe, West European diacritics, Turkish, Bal­tic, Roma­nian, OpenType Features, Dingbats & Symbols ■ Spe­cials Alter­na­tive let­ters, sty­listic sets, automatic con­text­ual alter­nates via Open­Type Fea­ture (4× different versions of A–Z & 0–9 + a–z), Euro, kerning pairs, stan­dard & deco­ra­tive liga­tures, Ver­sal Eszett (German Capital Sharp S), 80 extras like Dingbats & Symbols, arrows, hearts, emojis/smileys, stars, further numbers, lines & shapes. ■ Design Date 2016 ■ Type Desi­gner Manuel Vier­gutz ■ License Desktop license, Web license, App license, eBook license, Ser­ver license

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.

Out of a lifelong inner struggle, Philip Bouwsma unleashes a masterpiece that reconciles classic calligraphy with type in a way never before attempted. Maestro takes its cue from the Italian chancery cursive of the early sixteenth century. By this time type ruled the publishing world, but official court documents were still presented in calligraphy, in a new formal style of the high Renaissance that was integrated with Roman letters and matched the refined order of type. The copybooks of Arrighi and others, printed from engraved wood blocks, spread the Italian cancellaresca across Europe, but the medium was too clumsy and the size too small to show what was really happening in the stroke. Arrighi and others also made metal fonts that pushed type in the direction of calligraphy, but again the medium did not support the superb artistry of these masters or sustain the vitality in their work. As the elegant sensitive moving stroke of the broad pen was reduced to a static outline, the human quality, the variety and the excitement of a living act were lost. Because the high level of skill could not be reproduced, the broad pen was largely replaced by the pointed tool. The modern italic handwriting revival is based on a simplified model and does not approach the level of this formal calligraphy with its relationship to the Roman forms. Maestro is the font that Arrighi and his colleagues would have made if they had had digital technology. Like the calligraphic system of the papal chancery on which it is modelled, it was not drawn as a single finished alphabet, but evolved from a confluence of script and Roman; the script is formalized by the Roman to stand proudly in a world of type. Maestro came together on screen over the course of several years, through many versions ranging widely in style, formality, width, slant, weight and other parameters. On one end of the spectrum, looking back to tradition it embodies the formal harmony of the Roman capitals and the minuscule which became the lower case. On the other it is a flowing script letter drawing on the spirit of later pointed pen and engravers scripts. As its original designers intended, it works with simple Roman capitals and serifs or swash capitals and baroque flourishes. The broad pen supplies weight and substance to the stroke which carries energy through tension in balanced s-curves. Above all it is meant to convey the life and motion of formal calligraphy as a worthy counterbalance to the stolid gravity of metal type. The Maestro family consists of forty fonts distributed over two weights. The OpenType version compresses the family considerably down to two fonts, regular and bold, each containing the entire character set of twenty fonts, for a total of more than 3350 characters per font. These include a wide variety of stylistic alternates, ligatures, beginning and ending letters, flourishes, borders, rules, and other extras. The Pro version also includes extended linguistic support for Latin-based scripts (Western, Central and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Welsh/Celtic, Maltese) as well as Greek. For more thoughts on Maestro, its background and character sets, please read the PDF accompanying the family.

Rufina was as tall and thin as a reed. Elegant but with that distance that well-defined forms seem to impose. Her voice, however, was sweeter, closer, and when she spoke her name, like a slow whisper, one felt like what she had come to say could be read in her image. Rufina’s story can only be told through a detour because her origin does not coincide with her birth. Rufina was born on a Sunday afternoon while her father was drawing black letters on a white background, and her mother was trying to join those same letters to form words that could tell a story. But her origin goes much further back, and that is why she is pierced by a story that precedes her, even though it is not her own. Maybe her origin can be traced back to that autumn night in which that tall man with that distant demeanor ran into that woman with that sweet smile and elegant aspect. He looked at her in such a way that he was trapped by that gaze, even though they found no words to say to each other, and they stayed in silence. Somehow, some words leaked into that gaze because since that moment they were never apart again. Later, after they started talking, projects started coming up and then coexistence and arguments, routines and mismatches. But in that chaos of crossed words in their life together, something was stable through the silence of the gazes. In those gazes, the silent words sustained that indescribable love that they didn’t even try to understand. And in one of those silences, Rufina appeared, when that man told that woman that he needed a text to try out his new font, and she saw him look at her with that same fascination of the first time, and she started to write something with those forms that he was giving her as a gift. Rufina was as tall and thin as a reed, wrote her mother when Rufina was born. Photo (Fragilité): Karin Topolanski / Post: Raw (www.raw.com.uy) - María Pérez Gutiérrez

Morris Fuller Benton, the principal designer of the American Type Founders, designed Mariage in 1901. Mariage, which has been sold under a plethora of different names during the last century, is a blackletter typeface belonging to the Old English category. The term blackletter refers to typefaces that stem out of the historical printing traditions of northern Europe. These letters, called gebrochene Schriften, or "broken type" in German, are normally elaborately bent and distorted. Their forms often print large amounts of ink upon the page, creating text that leaves a heavy, black impression. The Old English style is a subset of blackletter type that dates back to 1498, when Wynken de Worde introduced textura style printing to England. Continental printers had been printing with textura style letters since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press fifty years earlier. Italian printers stopped using them around 1470. For northern Europeans, texturas remained the most popular form of typeface design until the invention of the fraktur style in Nuremberg. Mariage is heavily classicized sort of Old English type. During the Victorian era, designers admired the Middle Ages for its chivalric, community-based values and its pre-industrial lifestyle. Yet they also found the basic medieval textura letterform too difficult to read by present standards. They desired to modernize this old style. Today, this sort of update is often referred to not as "modernization" but as classicism. Benton's design for ATF builds upon earlier Victorian classicist interpretations of Old English/textura letters. For an example of what these Victorian designs looked like, check out the popular 1990 revival of the genre, Old English . Old English style types often appear drastically different from other blackletters. For contrast, compare Mariage to a classical German fraktur design, Fette Fraktur , a schwabacher style face, or the popular early 20th Century calligraphic gothic from Linotype, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch . Especially in the United States, classicist Old English typefaces are thought to espouse tradition and journalistic integrity. These features, together with the inherent, complex beauty of Mariage's forms, make this typeface a perfect choice for certificates, awards, and newsletter mastheads.