After Nightfall is a handmade fairytale font. It was called Bunting Nook first (after a spooky story of a black dog that haunts a town in Britain), but I figured it was a bit of a weird name, so I settled for After Nightfall. This font comes with some lovely swashes, which should be used sparingly. But that, of course, is entirely up to you.

The Festival Titling font was cut by Monotype in 1950 as the official display face for the Festival of Britain which was staged in 1951. Used for all official Festival announcements, Festival Titling was made available for general use in 1952. The festive feel of this design together with the clean glitter and novelty make it a useful face for display and advertising use.

Petrarka may be described as a Condensed, Sans-Serif, Semi-Fatface Roman. Huh? Bear with me on this. The Fatface is a name given to the popular nineteenth-century romans that where characterized by an extremity of contrast between the thick and thin stroke. The earliest example that is generally familiar is Thorowgood, believed to have been designed by Robert Thorne and released by Thorowgood Foundry in 1820 as "Five-line Pica No. 5." Copied by many foundries, it became one of the more popular advertising types of the day. Later, in the period from about 1890 to 1950, you find a number of typeface designs with the thin stroke beefed up a bit, not quite so extreme. What you might call Semi-Fatfaced Romans begin to replace the extreme Fatfaces. Serifed designs like Bauer’s Bernard Roman Extra Bold and ATF’s Bold Antique appear. In addition, we see the development of semi-fatface lineals or Sans-Serif Semi-Fatfaces. Examples include Britannic (Stephenson Blake), Chambord Bold (Olive), Koloss (Ludwig & Mayer), Matthews (ATF) and Radiant Heavy (Ludlow). Petrarka has much in common with this latter group, but is distinguished by two salient features: it is condensed and it shows a strong blackletter influence, as seen in the ‘H’ particularly. Petrark was released about 1900 by the German foundry of Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig and is one of the designs of the period that attempts to reconcile roman and blackletter traditions. Making a cameo appearance in this Multi-Lingual font is the Anglo-Saxon letter yogh (#729), which, along with the thorn and the eth, is always useful for preparing flyers in Old English. There are still pockets of resistance to the Norman French influence that washed up on England’s shores in 1066. This font stands with King Canute, seeking to hold back the tide (ignoring the fact that Canute was a Dane). Support the fight to preserve Anglo-Saxon culture. Buy Petrarka ML today. Petrarka Initials brings together the Petrarka upper case letters with a very sympatico Art Nouveau rendering of a female face.

The boss of extended typefaces, Brian Bonislawsky, has belted out this ultra wide design, EuroMachina, that looks like an odd meld of OCR-A, Microgramma and Bank Gothic. And if that wasn't enough, Brian then felt the need to distort it in various ways, creating Broken, Eroded and OverGreased. A little something for everyone.

Cursivo Saxonio is a typeface inspired in the famous book The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, by H P Lovecraft. It shows better than I get with my studies the authentic "Insularis" or "Cursivo Saxonio" handlettering of the VIII and XI centuries used by some people in Britain. The text on the accompanying poster reads: “Corwinus necandus est. Cadaver aq(ua) forti dissolvendum, nec aliq(ui)d retinendum. Tace ut potes”