After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

Meet Ollie, a casual signage script whose friendly, bouncy exterior belies a heart of sophisticated OpenType programming. This font is designed to make the most of OpenType savvy applications, and as such is recommended for professional design use. Or to put it another way: Make sure that contextual alternates and ligatures are always turned on! Ollie includes about 900 glyphs, many of which are automagical substitutions to keep the text flowing smoothly, and to pseudo-randomly pick different glyphs to avoid repetition. With contextual alternates turned on (as they should be by default), most lowercase letters will alternate between at least two different forms. The powerful OpenType programming makes the font itself ‘look back’ (up to eight characters) on previously used letters; typing “banana” will give you three different a’s and two different n’s (the last a is a special ‘end form’ character). The calt feature controls many other ‘special effects’ which all add together to give a smooth-flowing, hand-lettered look. These effects include start and end forms (and indeed, ‘loner’ forms) of many letters, which are automatically substituted in at beginnings or ends of words, or when the previous or next letter doesn't connect. Another special feature tests to see if there is room for the crossbar of t (or tt ligature) to extend further over the previous or next letter, or both, as is often the case. The last main effect of the calt feature is to substitute certain letters typed before any ‘e’ character, to make for a more natural connection (see the pe combination in ‘Eclectotype’ in the first poster). Ligatures should be on by default, for a much nicer looking tt combination, and a few others besides. The swash feature should be used sparingly (one glyph at a time, really) to apply a more extravagant look to g,j and y in the lower case, and quite a few of the upper case too. Oldstyle figures are included, as well as the lining defaults. Now to delve into the stylistic alternates... These are all included in the salt feature, or for uses of applications that support them, separated into stylistic sets thus: ss01 - (with swash feature on) L and G swashes get even swashier. ss02 - standard s changes to a connected script s form. ss03 - r takes on a script form. ss04 - z also gets a scriptier look. [the previous three sets also change any versions of s, r or z with diacritics] ss05 - a useful underline function. When enabled, typing two or more underscores will extend a cool underline under the previous letters. More underscores = longer underline. ss06 - the Polish script lslash changes to its more standard form. ss07 - E, S and B change to a more top-heavy alternate form. ss08 - An alternate form for A characters. ss09 - Alterative rounder forms of M and N. ss10 - An alternate ampersand. That about wraps up the features. Now all that’s left is for you to license the font and get experimenting!

Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org TT Ricordi Allegria useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Ricordi Allegria is a sleek and intelligent contemporary Florentine grotesque inspired by the half-erased lettering in Basilica di Santa Croce, Florence. TT Ricordi Allegria was drawn by Antonina Zhulkova and reflects in its graphics the transitional stage between the classic serif with varying proportions, gravitating towards the Roman capital type, and the Florentine sans serif. The font is characterized by variability in the proportions of characters, contrast between strokes, wedge-shaped triangular characters, and the absence of traditional serifs. The main visual feature of the typeface is its diversity and the ability, using different stylistic sets, to completely change the character and perception of the typeface. The drawing of the characters from the main set is strict, thanks to which the font looks stern, as if the inscription in the font was really carved out of stone. And with the help of another set, we can add roundness, or even smoothness, to the font. This is due to the fact that the letters (E R K Q J Y in Latin, and Л К Ж Э in Cyrillic) from the second set have either very noticeable "curls" or smooth, rounded "legs". In addition, the typeface includes a set of beautiful ligatures for use in display inscriptions, such as large headlines. An interesting moment when working on the typeface was the creation of the Cyrillic typeset, since the Cyrillic alphabet does not so easily fit into the concept of the Florentine grotesque and stressed semi-serif. The most difficult thing in working on the Cyrillic alphabet was to create a system of spacing for characters, as it was done in the Latin alphabet, and to make sure that when typing in Cyrillic, the drawing of the text remained beautiful. That is why the letters Д Л У Ы appearing in the font family are somewhat unusual to the eye, and the proportions of other characters in Cyrillic are not quite “classic” either. In general, the Cyrillic set looks more display than its Latin prototype, but at the same time it lacks the sense of historicity or legacy of the Soviet past, which often comes to the foreground when working on the design of the Cyrillic alphabet in this type of serifs. TT Ricordi Allegria consists of two weights (Regular and Bold) and one variable font. Each style includes over 750 characters, as well as 19 OpenType features. Interesting features of the typeface include three stylistic sets that greatly change the perception of the font, a set of bright display ligatures, a few neat icons that are suitable for breaking text and will emphasize the visual language of the font. Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website

Shakila Script is a handwritten font created at the end of March 2021. It is a unique bold font with a pretty and charming casual style with many variants of beautiful swashes, as well as an alternative to capital letters. Shakila is a lovely and delicate font duo (script and sans serif), that exudes elegance and class. This font was particularly crafted for those who need a beautiful and refreshing look to their designs. Also, this font is perfect for branding projects, logo, product designs, invitation cards, wedding cards, stationery designs, advertisements, label, photography, blogging, social media or watermark. Key Features: - Multilingual Accents - Alternative capital letters - Stylistic Alternates up to 20 choices - Has a heart connected feature for a-z and A-Z letters - Available shortcut for Stylistic Alternate by simply adding "period" (.) and “number” (1-20) to each letter. - Has lots of ligatures so the letters connect well together - Has OpenType and PUA Encodes features. This font has a total of 885 glyphs, including capital letters, uppercase alternates, lowercase, numeral and punctuation, multilingual accents, beginning and ending swashes for lowercase, and includes a large number of stylistic alternates and heart swashes (for lowercase-lowercase and uppercase-uppercase). The advantage of the Shakila Script font compared to other fonts is that the alternative capital characters are in 1 font file, so it will make it easier for you to work. Therefore, you are free to choose it as you like, especially this font has the OpenType and PUA Encodes features which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease. As I mentioned earlier, Shakila Script has a large number of Stylistic Alternates features, up to 14 options for letter a-z and up to 20 options for letter b d h k l. In fact, there is also a swash feature in the form of a connected for the combination of each lowercase-lowercase and uppercase-uppercase letters. Interestingly, you can activate all Stylistic Alternates that are owned by each letter, just by typing; letter + period + number. For example: a.1 a.2 a.3 or b.1 b.2 b.3 and so on. As for activating the heart connected for each letter a-z or A-Z is quite easy. Namely by simply typing; letter + underscore + underscore + letter. For example: a__a or A__A and so on. Shakila Script is a Font Duo pack that pairs with Shakila Sans. The two were created at about the same time, but made in separate file packages. The reason I created this font duo is to make your projects more harmonious and unique. At the end of the sentence, Shakila Font Duo is a very authentic and amazing. If there are things you want to ask, don't hesitate to contact my email. For complete details, please visit my Behance profile. Alifinart Studio alifinart@gmail.com Thank you.

Johann Carl Ludwig Prillwitz, the German punch cutter and type founder, cut the first classic Didot letters even earlier than Walbaum. The earliest proof of so-called Prillwitz letters is dated 12 April 1790. Inspired by the big discoveries of archaeology and through the translations of classical authors, the bourgeoisie was enthused about the Greek and Roman ideal of aesthetics. The enthusiasm for the Greek and Roman experienced a revival and was also shared by Goethe and contemporaries. »Seeking the country of Greece with one’s soul«. All Literates who are considered nowadays as German Classics of that time kept coming back to the Greek topics, thinking of Schiller and Wieland. The works of Wieland were published in Leipzig by Göschen. Göschen used typefaces which had been produced by until then unknown punch cutter. This punch cutter from Jena created with these typefaces master works of classicist German typography. They can stand without any exaggeration on the same level as that of Didot and Bodoni. This unknown gentleman was known as Johann Carl Ludwig Prillwitz. Prillwitz published his typefaces on 12th April 1790 for the first time. This date is significant because this happened ten years before Walbaum. Prillwitz was an owner of a very successful foundry. When the last of his 7 children died shortly before reaching adulthood his hope of his works was destroyed, Prillwitz lost his will to live. He died six months later. His wife followed him shortly after. The typeface Prillwitz as a digital font was created in three optical styles (Normal, Book and Display). The typeface Prillwitz Press was created especially for a printing in small sizes for newspapers. »Prillwitz Press« combines aesthetic and functional attributes which make written text highly readable. It was originally designed for a newspaper with medium contrast to withstand harsh printing conditions. Its structure is quite narrow which makes this typeface ideal for body text and headlines where space is at premium. For the Normal – even more for the Book – a soft and reader-friendly outline was created through a so-called »Schmitz« and optimized in numerous test prints. The arris character and the common maximal stroke width contrast of the known classicist typefaces (Didot/Bodoni) were edited by the study of the original prints. This was also done in order to reach a very good readability in small type sizes. This typeface is perfectly suited to scientific and belletristic works. Accordingly it has three styles: Regular, Bold and Italic as Highlighting (1). The typeface Prillwitz is a complete new interpretation and continuing development of the conservated originals from 1790. They have been kept in the German Library in Leipzig. It was always given the priority to keep the strong roughness and at the same time optimizing the readability of this striking font. The type family has all important characters for an efficient and typographic high quality work. ----------- (1) Accentuation of particular words or word orders (e.g. proper names, terms etc.). Typographic means for Highlighting could be Italic, SmallCaps or semi-bold.

TT Barrels useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Barrels is an elegant scotch style modern serif with strong industrial accents in its design. The TT Barrels project was born from a fictional technical assignment in which we tried to combine the technological effectiveness of industrial production used in engineering and the restrictions imposed by it with a beautiful scotch style serif. We decided to create a typeface that could be used to press letters on the metal body of a car, all while the typeface being elegant, and possessing sophisticated details that are typical of the classic text fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the process of designing and sketching, we reconsidered certain aspects and abandoned some of the requirements imposed by the technology of metal letter pressing, for example, from the extensive application of visual compensators, the decreased strokes contrast, and the hyperdeformation of individual letter elements to preserve a more pronounced rhythm of these elements. First of all, we wanted both to maintain the ease of reading for the entire text array and follow the rules of aesthetics of each letter in the typeface, while still leaving some influence of industrialism. In the end, this influence is best manifested in serifs, which are quite massive and have a technologically exaggerated wedge shape. TT Barrels consists of 12 fonts: Light, Regular, DemiBold, Bold, Extrabold, Black and the corresponding Italics. Each outline consists of more than 750 glyphs and includes small capitals, ligatures (for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets), stylistic alternates, old-style figures, and many other useful features. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Barrels OpenType features: ordn, c2sc, smcp, case, frac, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, dlig, liga, calt, salt (ss01). TT Barrels 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.

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.

Impressed by the quality of the Aachen typeface that was originally designed for Letraset in 1969 and extended to include Aachen Medium in 1977, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging has extended this robust display design to create an entire family. Derived from the serif-accented Egyptienne fonts dating to the early 20th century, Aachen has serifs that are very solid but considerably shorter than those of its precursor. The incorporated geometrical elements, such as right angles and straight lines, provide the slender letters of Aachen with a slightly technological, stencil-like quality. Despite this, the effect of Aachen is by no means static; its dynamism means that this typeface, originally designed for use in headlines, has come to be used with particular frequency in sport- and fitness-related contexts. Jim Wasco, for many years a type designer at Monotype Imaging, recognized the potential of Aachen and decided to extend the typeface to create an entire typeface family. He appropriated the existing Aachen Bold in unchanged form and first created the less heavy cuts, Thin and Regular. Wasco admits that he found designing the forms for Thin a particular challenge. It took him several attempts before he was able to achieve consistency within the glyphs for Thin and, at the same time, retain sufficient affinity with the original Aachen Bold. But he finally managed to adapt the short serifs and the condensed and slightly geometrical quality of the letters to the needs of Thin. The weights Light, Book, Medium and Semibold were generated by means of interpolation. Supplemented by Extralight and Extrabold, the new Neue Aachen can now boast a total of nine different weights. Wasco initially relied on his predilection for genuine cursives in his designs for the Italic cuts. But it became apparent with these first trial runs that the soft curves of cursives did not suit Aachen and led to the loss of too much of its original character. Wasco thus decided to compromise by using both inclined and cursive letters. Neue Aachen Italic is somewhat narrower than its upright counterparts; the lower case 'a' has a closed form while the 'f' has been given a descender, but the letters have otherwise not been given additional adornments. The range of glyphs available for Neue Aachen has been significantly extended, so that the typeface can now be used to set texts not only in Western but also Central European languages. Wasco has also added a double-counter lowercase 'g' while relying on the availability of alternative letters in the format sets for the enhancement of the legibility of Neue Aachen when used to set texts. The seven new weights and completely new Italic variants have enormously increased the potential applications of Aachen and the range of creative options for the designer. While the Bold weights have proved their worth as display fonts, the new Book and Regular cuts are ideal for setting text. And the subtlety of Ultra Light will provide your projects with a quite unique flair. The new possibilities and opportunities in terms of design and applications that Neue Aachen offers you are not restricted to print production; you can also create internet pages thanks to its availability as a web font.

The Thief Bird is an informal grotesque font. Although informal and grotesque may seem to be two quite different ideas, we have to dig into the origin of this typeface in order to understand the matter. The concept behind The Thief Bird was inspired by the adaptation that the vintage sign painters made when they took the grotesque style characters they saw in newspapers and magazines and reproduced them using a brush, aiming to make the prices of the products displayed on wooden boards stand out, as opposed to highlighting large headlines (such as the idea behind fonts like Franklin Gothic). The Thief Bird takes the language from sign painters and turns it into a font --this time around not aiming to set prices but to bring children stories to life. Thus, some legibility features from grotesque fonts were mixed with the brush calligraphy to add grace and zest to a font intended for children. The Thief Bird is a playful display font, with cheerful ligatures and alternate characters. It is really attractive for setting short paragraphs that tell stories for little people. The Thief Bird has one single weight and it’s ideal to be used in storybooks, candy packaging, films, toys, logos, labels, etc. The font has an extended set of 643 characters supporting 219 Latin languages. It has a complete set of small caps, sensitive cases, more than 30 pairs of ligatures, alternate characters and much more. This cool, informal and laid back typeface will be the perfect match for illustrations of fairy tales, comics for children and any product or publishing for the little ones. The Thief Bird supports this languages: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Corsican Creek,Crimean Tatar (Latin),Croatian, Czech, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, 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, IgboI, locano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, 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, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, 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, Zulu, Zuni.

TT Ricordi useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options The TT Ricordi font family is a collection of three display heading serifs designed to significantly diversify the traditional font palette. Each font from the TT Ricordi family was drawn by a separate designer and has its own story. With that, all three fonts are close in thickness and similar in their character compositions and are featured in the uppercase set and the small capitals set, which replaces lowercase characters. The fonts have the broad support of Latin languages and support basic Cyrillic. The project originates from the pre-coronavirus tourist trips to Italy, during which our art director Yulia Gonina has accumulated many photographs of historical inscriptions and tablets. Many of these inscriptions had interesting character or unusual character shapes. We wanted to work with them, to try to reinterpret them, and, if possible, make them ultramodern and accessible to the modern font user. The fonts from the TT Ricordi typeface turned out to be quite display and contemporary, but at the same time, they retained subtle references to historic inscriptions. The fonts fit perfectly both on the covers of book classics and in glossy magazine layouts. They can also be used in posters and packaging, or as the main expressive element of company branding. In addition, all three serifs from the TT Ricordi font family go well with functional sans-serifs such as TT Norms Pro or TT Commons. TT Ricordi Nobili is a display serif with a rich Roman ancestry and contemporary world views. It stands out from the crowd with its subtlety and elegance. The font was drawn by Anna Tikhonova and was inspired by an inscription carved into the stone floor of a cathedral in Florence. Because people walked over the inscription, some of the letters got thinner and worn out over time. It is this feeling of disappearing or flickering elements that we wanted to capture and implement in the project. The TT Ricordi Nobili has high contrast, even though the font itself is quite thin. The serifs in the font are not massive at all, but at the same time, they are display serifs. There is a certain tension in TT Ricordi Nobili, and the viewer perceives this tension. We can say that behind the external classic facade lies a rather modern plot. The font has a large set of discrete ligatures which allow to create interesting combinations and expand the capabilities of the font. There are 709 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Nobili font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, ss01, ss02, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi Todi is a wide serif with a classic base and a contemporary nature. The font turned out to be refined yet sharp, and in places even pushy and aggressive. The font was drawn by Yulia Gonina, and the project was based on plaques with engraved street names from the small Italian town of Todi. The main challenge was to decipher the characteristic features of the signs and emphasize them in a modern way. In addition, it was necessary to draw a Cyrillic alphabet that would not be inferior to the Latin alphabet in its expressiveness. The TT Ricordi Todi has fairly wide character proportions, and there is practically no contrast in them. The main feature of the font is the combination of smooth round shapes with deliberately squared shapes. In addition, the font is characterized by crisp and sharp character details, exaggerated ascenders and descenders, and muted contrast. Among the interesting font peculiarities, you can choose between the characteristic long descenders and ascenders and their more tempered versions, you can find a stylistic set with triangular dots, alternative versions of the EF characters and two letter ? shapes, round and squared. There are 876 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Todi font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, salt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi Fulmini is a fashionable contemporary serif firmly holding on to its historic roots. The font turned out to be like a thistle flower: bright and catchy, but still subtle and delicate. TT Ricordi Fulmini was drawn by Marina Khodak, and the initial inspiration for the project was the inscription on the altar from the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia. As the font was pulled into “contemporaneity”, it was completely transformed and revealed its new side. The main catchy detail in the TT Ricordi Fulmini is the aggressive and rather sharp diagonal serifs. In addition, in the process of working on the font, several graphic solutions emerged, for example, the mono-serifs and the very calligraphic connections of diagonal strokes with their historic spirit. We wanted to keep them, and thus 4 thematic stylistic sets appeared in the font, thanks to which we can greatly change the perception of TT Ricordi Fulmini. In addition, the font has a set of interesting discrete ligatures. There are 793 glyphs in the TT Ricordi Fulmini font, and a whole set of useful features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, pnum, case, dlig, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, calt. TT Ricordi supports more than 180+ languages, such as: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian+, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian+, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani +, Banjar, Basque +, Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama+, Boholano+, Chamorro+, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian+, Cornish, Corsican +, Cree, Croatian, Czech+, Danish, Dutch+, Embu, English+, Esperanto, Estonian+, Faroese+, Fijian, Filipino+, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian+, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician+, Ganda, German+, Gusii, Haitianm, Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian+, Icelandic+, Ilocano, Indonesian+, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian+, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Leonese, Lithuanian, Livvi-Karelian, Luba-Kasai, Ludic, Luganda+, Luo, Luxembourgish+, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay+, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau+, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish+, Portuguese+, Quechua+, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian +, Romansh+, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (lat)+, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak+, Slovenian+, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho+, Spanish+, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish+, Swiss German +, Tagalog+, Tahitian, Taita, Talysh (lat), Tatar+, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan+, Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Tsonga, Tswana +, Turkish+, Turkmen (lat), Uyghur, Valencian+, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Welsh+, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu+, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Erzya, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Macedonian+, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Nogai, Russian+, Rusyn, Serbian (cyr)+, Ukrainian.

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

Style and elegance in 14 styles PS Fournier, created by Stéphane Elbaz, is designed in tribute to Pierre Simon Fournier. Fournier was the prolific Parisian type designer whose work is best known for its iconic representation of French transitional style. PS Fournier elegantly represents the transition to the modern era of typography. Featuring three optical sizes, PS Fournier is designed to perform in any context. The Pierre Simon Fournier heritage Pierre Simon Fournier (1712—1768) was a leading innovative type designer of the mid-18th century. Early in his career, the young Pierre Simon developed a strong aesthetic that he cultivated throughout his life. His art is representative of the pre-revolutionary “Age of Enlightenment” (Siècle des Lumières). Precursor of the Modern style, Fournier’s body of work deeply influenced his times, and created the fertile ground from which the Didot family and Giambattista Bodoni developed their own styles. During the historical period of the 18th century, Fournier exemplified the intellectual pursuits of the times with his own research on type, documenting in detail the typefounding process. He also offered a unique vision: he is the first to clearly comprehend the concept of “type family,” sorting a set of similarly styled alphabets by sizes, width, and by x-heights. In addition, Fournier is one of the earliest advocates of the point system to organize the practice of typography, the point system that contemporary typographers continue to use to this day. The refined and discreet elegance of PS Fournier With a close look at the family, one finds you’ll find that the difference between the optical sizes (Petit, standard and Grand) is more than a contrast variation between the thin and the thick; the eye can also denote a palette of distinct tones: More streamlined and robust in the smaller sizes (Petit), more refined and detailed in the larger sizes (Grand). The PS Fournier standard family is designed to adapt to any situation with its intermediate optical size, from body copy to headlines. With a bit of tracking, PS Fournier Petit will make the smallest captions perfectly readable. However, Petit family is not limited to body and captions — its “slabby robustness” will make a relevant headline choice as well. PS Fournier Grand presents a higher contrast adapted to large text sizes, displays or banners. Its refined elegance makes it a perfect choice for Design, Fashion or Luxury publications. As a “modern” type PS Fournier Grand features a larger x-height than the preexistent old style typefaces such as Garamond or Jenson. These proportions provide any basic text set in PS Fournier Grand a strong typographic texture. As a result, the PS Fournier global family is a versatile alternative to the Modern typefaces commonly used in the publishing industry. The optical sizes, the large range of weights, and the design variations make this family adaptable to captions, paragraphs, and pages, as well as to large texts and displays. A leading-edge typography in the 18th century In the spirit of modernity, Pierre Simon Fournier did not find any use for the conventional swashes still produced by peers such as Caslon or Baskerville. Nevertheless the French designer created many inventive elements to decorate the page and set delightful variations in the text itself. To this regard PS Fournier includes a large set of glyphs variations, ligatures and more than one hundred glyphs for borders, rules and ornaments or — as called in French — “vignettes.” PS Fournier: A tribute to the French modern typography era by Stéphane Elbaz

Grotesque sans typefaces: you know you won’t ever get tired of those. And any moment you decide that Vignelli was right and one Swiss font is enough, here comes a new specimen from the past inviting you to try new takes on the modernist letterforms. It's a tight and crowded design space, so design decisions are subtle and almost unnoticeable. Whoever you decide to be in the details - either God or the Devil - you surely need a taste for the infinitesimal to work with these shapes. Time design borders sandstoning shapes, in a delicate equilibrium between modernist precise ideals and the fascinating energy of old lead grotesques. The resulting typeface develops around an idiosyncratic relationship with negative space, inspired by the tight metrics modernist designers imposed on their layouts. Leaving a text optimised spacing to the text subfamily, Milligram plays with a feeling of attraction behind shapes, something brought to the extremes in the logo-oriented Milligram Macro Variant. Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini with Andrea Tartarelli, Milligram is a fine but bold homage to the Akzidenz Grotesk that never was. • Suggested uses: Milligram is a versatile type family: perfect for modern branding and logo design (Milligram Macro), for text and editorial design (Milligram Text), web design, packaging and countless other projects; • 36 styles: 7 weights + 7 italics x 3 different styles + 2 variable fonts; • 759 glyphs in each weight; • Useful OpenType features: Access All Alternates, Case-Sensitive Forms, Glyph Composition / Decomposition, Denominators, Fractions, Kerning, Lining Figures, Localized Forms, Mark Positioning, Mark to Mark Positioning, Alternate Annotation Forms, Numerators, Oldstyle Figures, Ordinals, Proportional Figures, Scientific Inferiors, 5 Stylistic Sets, Subscript, Superscript, Tabular Figures, Slashed Zero; • 207 languages supported (extended Latin and Cyrillic alphabets): English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Javanese (Latin), Turkish, Italian, Polish, Afaan Oromo, Tagalog, Sundanese (Latin), Filipino, Moldovan, Romanian, Indonesian, Dutch, Cebuano, Malay, Uzbek (Latin), Kurdish (Latin), Swahili, Hungarian, Czech, Haitian Creole, Hiligaynon, Afrikaans, Somali, Zulu, Serbian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Shona, Quechua, Albanian, Catalan, Chichewa, Ilocano, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Neapolitan, Xhosa, Tshiluba, Slovak, Danish, Gikuyu, Finnish, Norwegian, Sicilian, Sotho (Southern), Kirundi, Tswana, Sotho (Northern), Belarusian (Latin), Turkmen (Latin), Bemba, Lombard, Lithuanian, Tsonga, Wolof, Jamaican, Dholuo, Galician, Ganda, Low Saxon, Waray-Waray, Makhuwa, Bikol, Kapampangan (Latin), Aymara, Ndebele, Slovenian, Tumbuka, Venetian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Swazi, Latvian, Silesian, Bashkir (Latin), Sardinian, Estonian, Afar, Cape Verdean Creole, Maasai, Occitan, Tetum, Oshiwambo, Basque, Welsh, Chavacano, Dawan, Montenegrin, Walloon, Asturian, Kaqchikel, Ossetian (Latin), Zapotec, Frisian, Guadeloupean Creole, Q’eqchi’, Karakalpak (Latin), Crimean Tatar (Latin), Sango, Luxembourgish, Samoan, Maltese, Tzotzil, Fijian, Friulian, Icelandic, Sranan, Wayuu, Papiamento, Aromanian, Corsican, Breton, Amis, Gagauz (Latin), M?ori, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Alsatian, Atayal, Kiribati, Seychellois Creole, Võro, Tahitian, Scottish Gaelic, Chamorro, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Kashubian, Faroese, Rarotongan, Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Karelian (Latin), Romansh, Chickasaw, Arvanitic (Latin), Nagamese Creole, Saramaccan, Ladin, Palauan, Sami (Northern Sami), Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Drehu, Wallisian, Aragonese, Mirandese, Tuvaluan, Xavante, Zuni, Montagnais, Hawaiian, Marquesan, Niuean, Yapese, Vepsian, Bislama, Hopi, Megleno-Romanian, Creek, Aranese, Rotokas, Tokelauan, Mohawk, Warlpiri, Cimbrian, Sami (Lule Sami), Jèrriais, Arrernte, Murrinh-Patha, Kala Lagaw Ya, Cofán, Gwich’in, Seri, Sami (Southern Sami), Istro-Romanian, Wik-Mungkan, Anuta, Sami (Inari Sami), Yindjibarndi, Noongar, Hotc?k (Latin), Meriam Mir, Manx, Shawnee, Gooniyandi, Ido, Wiradjuri, Hän, Ngiyambaa, Delaware, Potawatomi, Abenaki, Esperanto, Folkspraak, Interglossa, Interlingua, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Lojban, Novial, Occidental, Slovio (Latin), Volapük.

Auchentaller was inspired by a travel poster by Josef Maria Auchentaller in 1906. To our knowledge, it was never cast in type. Grado lies on the northern Adriatic, between Venice and Trieste. At one time the port for the important Roman town of Aquileia. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the upper Adriatic region came under the rule of the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Lombards, the Franks, the Germans, the Venetians and finally, in 1796, the Austrian Hapsburgs. So it remained until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1919, following World War I, when the seaport of Trieste was awarded to Italy. With Trieste came Montefalcone, Aquileia and Grado. The area was marked by years of political tension between Italy and Yugoslavia, exemplified by the d'Annunzio expedition to capture Fiume (Rijeka) in September, 1919. Some basic discussion of the period from 1919 to 1939 may be found in Seton-Watson’s Eastern Europe Between The Wars (Cambridge 1945) and Rothschild’s East Central Europe Between The Two World Wars (Seattle 1974). In 1965 I was traveling by train from Venice to Vienna. Crossing the Alps, the train stopped for customs inspection at the rural Italian-Austrian border, just above Slovenia. We were warned not to get off the train because there were still shooting skirmishes in the area. Through all this, Grado remained literally an island of tranquility, connected to the mainland by a only causeway and lines on a map. Auchentaller not only painted the beach scene at Grado, he moved there, living out the rest of his life in this comfortable little island town. His travel illustration contains the text from which the design of our font Auchentaller is drawn. The text translates: "Seaside resort : Grado / Austrian coastal land". Please see our gallery images to see a map locating Grado, as well as Auchentaller’s painting of the resort. Auchentaller is a monoline all-cap font, light and open in design , with a lot of typically art nouveau letter forms. Included in our font are a number of ligatures. As is frequently seen in designs by German speakers, the umlaut is embedded in the O & U below the tops of the letters. This approach led to two whimsies: a happy umlauted O and a sad umlauted U. This font has a clean, crisp look that is very appealing and very distinctive. Auchentaller ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Add glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 336 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, liga, salt & ornm. 3. Added 116 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Revised ‘J’. 6. Minor refinements to various glyph outlines. 7. Inclusion of both tabular & proportional numbers. 8. Inclusion of both standard acute and Polish kreska with choice of alternate accented glyphs for c,n,r,s & z. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

If you want to write something sincere and genuine but not too formal then this is the font for you. It is based on real handwriting, not some artificial calligraphy made to be either too haphazard or spiky or have loads of elegant flourishes but an ordinary person's writing, and designed to look as natural and as close to the original lettering as possible. Like any person's writing it is individual and distinctive, but so easy going on the eye those differences sit comfortably with you. It is friendly and open with easy to read glyphs both as lowercase and uppercase. The letters are relatively wide with clearly shaped distinct outlines. This font may be ideal for projects where you expect a wide readership with different reading abilities from young to old. When you are using this font a slightly bigger point size usually gives a better result so for a standard letter or similar you should size up to 15 points or more. Maree has been individually crafted to the smallest detail. To create a realistic handwriting font that looks relatively simple but works in a wide variety of languages requires a complexity and attention to detail most fonts will never require. This font in any ordinary business environment would never have been made, the effort required to make it too great, the length of time too long. There have been no shortcuts in this font, no automatic scanning or tracing, no automatic generation, no class kerning. Not only is each glyph individual but the width of letters, the height, the accents and the positions of the accents are all different. Even the line weight of the letters is designed to have natural variation but yet similar enough that the font appears as though it were written effortlessly in the same pen. And in order to keep the spacing consistent even though the letters have different widths, heights, lengths of descenders and so on, there are a vast number of kerning pairs, letter to letter, number to number, letter to number... All kerning has been individually assessed with an eye to proportionality taking in character shape, size and weight. For instance if you write a telephone number the numbers all sit close together but if you write a number before a letter such as in a UK post code or before a unit of measurement an extra little bit of space has been added which makes the number more distinct and therefore readable. That space is so natural to the eye that you don’t even know it is there. However even in the spacing allowance has been made for the fact it can’t be too perfect because when you write by hand the spacing is inconsistent. There have to be some letters which are too close or far apart otherwise the font would look artificial. For similar reasons if you are going to print out this font for a letter, etc, check the print version before you make any letter spacing changes because with the zoom functions in modern applications that uneven spacing and lettering can seem more pronounced than it actually is. When this font is printed out you will find it is surprisingly neat. This font is what it is, simple clear handwriting. You will not go wow. But if you want something unique and different and looks good on the page you won’t be disappointed. This font is not a work of art but it is a work of love. This font has a soul. How many fonts can you say that about?

With its well-defined characters that are readily legible even in the small font sizes, Mantika Sans by Jürgen Weltin is ideal for typesetting. The elaborately designed and highly individual set of italics enhances the attractiveness of the font.Jürgen Weltin developed the Mantika™ Sans sans serif font using older designs for an serif font as his inspiration. Nothing more than the merest suggestion of the original serifs has survived. Bevelled line endings and the slight variation in thickness of verticals, in particular, provide Mantika Sans with a very dynamic character that evokes manuscript. Short ascenders and descenders give the font a compact appearance that is also underscored by its condensed proportions. Weltin has achieved his aim of producing a typeface with excellent legibility even in small sizes not just by means of the x-height, which is tall in comparison with the capital letters, but also by using clearly defined and well differentiated designs for critical letters, such as i", "I" and "l". Lower case "i", for example, has a serif while the "l" has a curved base.In addition to uppercase numerals, Mantika Sans also has lowercase or old style numerals that have been designed so that they can be used in both tabular and proportional settings. The uppercase numerals are slightly shorter than the uppercase letters, ensuring that the latter can be sympathetically incorporated within continuous text.The Mantika Sans italics are very unusual. They are inclined at only 4.5° (the usual angle for italics is 10 - 12°) and so appear to be almost upright. In addition, they also have quite distinctive forms. The overall effect calls attention to their curvilinear, manuscript character, enhances contrasts and further emphasizes the terminals. Weltin explains: "Within the variety of forms of the italics there are many contrasting terminal elements that create dynamism. The result is a diversity of interaction between the rounded and angular forms". Mantika Sans Italic thus has all the features of a display typeface, but can also be happily used on its own to set longer text passages. Mantika Sans is available in two weights; Regular and Bold, both of which have corresponding italics sets. Mantika Sans has been designed so that the widths of the four related cuts are identical, meaning that a change of font within a single layout will have no effect on justification. In addition, the members of the Mantika Informal font family, designed by Jürgen Weltin in 2010, also have the same thickness. Other font families having weights with equal thickness can be found in the "Linotype Office Alliance series".The Mantika Sans character sets are paneuropean. There are characters for setting texts in Eastern European languages, Greek and Cyrillic. There is also a range of special symbols, including right-angled brackets, subscript and superscript lower case letters, together with numerals, arrows and many different bullet points.As a vibrant and highly legible text font, Mantika Sans has a broad spectrum of potential applications. Its unusual italics are not just perfect for use in display text. The fact that it has only four cuts means that Mantika Sans is particularly suitable for office use or for the setting of business reports. Its excellent legibility even in the small font sizes also makes it ideal as a text for electronic reading devices; this also applies to Mantika Informal.At the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition Granshan 2010, Mantika Sans was awarded in the category Greek text typefaces."

With its well-defined characters that are readily legible even in the small font sizes, Mantika Sans by Jürgen Weltin is ideal for typesetting. The elaborately designed and highly individual set of italics enhances the attractiveness of the font.Jürgen Weltin developed the Mantika™ Sans sans serif font using older designs for an serif font as his inspiration. Nothing more than the merest suggestion of the original serifs has survived. Bevelled line endings and the slight variation in thickness of verticals, in particular, provide Mantika Sans with a very dynamic character that evokes manuscript. Short ascenders and descenders give the font a compact appearance that is also underscored by its condensed proportions. Weltin has achieved his aim of producing a typeface with excellent legibility even in small sizes not just by means of the x-height, which is tall in comparison with the capital letters, but also by using clearly defined and well differentiated designs for critical letters, such as i", "I" and "l". Lower case "i", for example, has a serif while the "l" has a curved base.In addition to uppercase numerals, Mantika Sans also has lowercase or old style numerals that have been designed so that they can be used in both tabular and proportional settings. The uppercase numerals are slightly shorter than the uppercase letters, ensuring that the latter can be sympathetically incorporated within continuous text.The Mantika Sans italics are very unusual. They are inclined at only 4.5° (the usual angle for italics is 10 - 12°) and so appear to be almost upright. In addition, they also have quite distinctive forms. The overall effect calls attention to their curvilinear, manuscript character, enhances contrasts and further emphasizes the terminals. Weltin explains: "Within the variety of forms of the italics there are many contrasting terminal elements that create dynamism. The result is a diversity of interaction between the rounded and angular forms". Mantika Sans Italic thus has all the features of a display typeface, but can also be happily used on its own to set longer text passages. Mantika Sans is available in two weights; Regular and Bold, both of which have corresponding italics sets. Mantika Sans has been designed so that the widths of the four related cuts are identical, meaning that a change of font within a single layout will have no effect on justification. In addition, the members of the Mantika Informal font family, designed by Jürgen Weltin in 2010, also have the same thickness. Other font families having weights with equal thickness can be found in the "Linotype Office Alliance series".The Mantika Sans character sets are paneuropean. There are characters for setting texts in Eastern European languages, Greek and Cyrillic. There is also a range of special symbols, including right-angled brackets, subscript and superscript lower case letters, together with numerals, arrows and many different bullet points.As a vibrant and highly legible text font, Mantika Sans has a broad spectrum of potential applications. Its unusual italics are not just perfect for use in display text. The fact that it has only four cuts means that Mantika Sans is particularly suitable for office use or for the setting of business reports. Its excellent legibility even in the small font sizes also makes it ideal as a text for electronic reading devices; this also applies to Mantika Informal.At the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition Granshan 2010, Mantika Sans was awarded in the category Greek text typefaces."

Times with a Human Face: In my article of the same name which appeared in the magazine Font, volume 2000 I described the long and trying story of an order for a typeface for the Czech periodical Lidové noviny (People’s Newspaper). My task was to design a modification of the existing Times. The work, however, finally resulted in the complete re-drawing of the typeface. The assignment, which was on the whole wisely formulated, was to design a typeface which would enable “a smooth flow of information in the reader’s eye”, therefore a typeface without any artistic ambitions, from which everything which obstructs legibility would be eliminated. A year later Lidové noviny had a different manager who in the spring of 2001 decided to resume the cooperation. The typeface itself definitely profited from this; I simplified everything which could be simplified, but it still was not “it”, because the other, and obviously more important, requirement of the investor held: “the typeface must look like Times”. And that is why the above-mentioned daily will continue to be printed by a system version of Times, negligently adjusted to local conditions, which is unfortunately a far cry from the original Times New Roman of Stanley Morison. When I was designing Lido, the cooperation with the head of production of Lidové noviny was of great use to me. Many tests were carried out directly on the newspaper rotary press during which numerous weak points of the earliest versions were revealed. The printing tests have proved that the basic design of this typeface is even more legible and economical than that of Times. The final appearance of Lido STF was, however, tuned up without regard to the original assignment – the merrier-looking italics and the more daring modelling of bold lower case letters have been retained. The typeface is suitable for all periodicals wishing to abandon inconspicuously the hideous system typefaces with their even more hideous accents and to change over to the contemporary level of graphic design. It is also most convenient for everyday work in text editors and office applications. It has a fairly large x-height of lower case letters, shortened serifs and simplified endings of rounded strokes. This is typical of the typefaces designed for use in small sizes. Our typeface, however, can sustain enlargement even to the size appropriate for a poster, an information table or a billboard, as it is not trite and at the same time is moderate in expression. Its three supplementary condensed designs correspond to approximately 80% compression and have been, of course, drawn quite separately. The intention to create condensed italics was abandoned; in the case of serif typefaces they always seem to be slightly strained. I named the typeface dutifully "Lido" (after the name of the newspaper) and included it in the retail catalog of my type foundry. In order to prevent being suspected of additionally turning a rejected work into cash, Lido STF in six designs is available free of charge. I should not like it if the issuing of this typeface were understood as an “act out of spite” aimed against the venerable Times. It is rather meant as a reminder that there really are now alternatives to all fonts in all price categories.

INTRODUCING THE GEMINI TYPE FONTPACK, an industrial-strength OpenType font bundle inspired by and optimized for dimensional type. Chank Co is proud to introduce the new “Gemini Type Fontpack,” a collection of ten fonts available for use on your desktop computer or web pages, but also optimized for use as exterior cast-metal signage in bronze or aluminum in collaboration with Gemini, a family-owned industry leader in the wholesale manufacture of dimensional letters, logo and plaques based in Cannon Falls, MN. Gemini collaborated with Chank Co to assemble a line of fonts that would work well as dimensional, cast-letter signage for use on the sides of buildings, in stores, and other public spaces. The fonts included in the “Gemini Type Fontpack” are reinterpretations of previous Chank Fonts, now optimized for dimensional signage display, but then also repackaged and presented for your use as an OpenType desktop computer font collection: GT-Adrianna DemiBold GT-Adrianna Bold GT-Adrianna ExtraBold GT-Fairbanks GT-Forward Thinking GT-Hydropower ExtraCondensed GT-Kegger GT-Shopaganda GT-Shopaganda Condensed GT-Timeless Geometric. This is a multi-purpose collection of heavy-lifting fonts to convey your message strong and clearly, full of legibility and clarity, but also displaying personality and distinction. You can purchase and download these fonts in OpenType format for your desktop computer right now via MyFonts. Get it today and you'll also get a great introductory special sale price. These exclusive typefaces are also available as dimensional letters, manufactured by Gemini in bronze or aluminum, from 6" tall up to 18" tall, with a variety of finish options, for use in public signage and wayfinding systems. Gemini manufacture their products in 20 plants through out the US, Canada and Mexico, and all their products are backed by a lifetime guarantee. Chank Co is excited to offer these ten strong, industrial font designs in durable cast metal format via Gemini. ----- More about the fonts in the Gemini Type Fontpack: GT-Adrianna DemiBold, Bold, and Adrianna ExtraBold Clear, invisible, no-nonsense, multi-purpose. A versatile sans-serif heavy-lifting font family. GT-Fairbanks Vintage, silent film, speedball, old-timey, old-fashioned, retro. Based upon the lettering in the 1914 silent film, “The Good Bad Man.” GT-Forward Thinking Futuristic, semi-serif, clean, distinctive, contemporary, idiosyncratic. A font for tomorrow and the future. GT-Hydropower ExtraCondensed Extra-condensed, compressed, strong, rigid and concise. GT-Kegger Strong, sporty, collegiate, athletic. Nothing says “GO TEAM” quite like a big, bold slab-serif font. GT-Shopaganda and GT-Shopaganda Condensed Industrial, geometric, constructivist, propaganda, oh there’s so much to love about the strength and clarity of these two fonts. Based on Chank’s Liquorstore and Nicotine fonts, which have been married and unified here, with a few new twists and turns to their letterforms. GT-Timeless Geometric Bauhaus, anyone? The geometric and minimalist alphabet here is about as clean and straight-forward as a semi-condensed sans can get. ----- All of the fonts in this package are available individually, or save money when you purchase all ten of them as a collection. Download this digital font package from MyFonts today and you'll receive both OpenType and TrueType formats in your download for your desktop computer. Webfont format is also available. (If you'd like to use these fonts as cast-metal letters for exterior, architectural purposes, visit the Gemini website to learn more about how you can find a signage retailer near you.)

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

It took me a long time, but I think I now understand why people of my generation and older feel the need to frame current events in an historical context or precedents, while most of the young couldn't care less about what happened ten years ago, let alone centuries back. After living for a few decades, you get to a point when time seems to be moving quite fast, and it’s humbling to see that your entire existence so far can be summed up in a paragraph or two which may or may not be useful to whoever ends up reading the stuff anyhow. I suppose one way to cope with the serenity of aging is trying to convince yourself that your life and work are really an extension of millenia of a species striving to accept, adapt to, and improve the human condition through advancing the many facets of civilization -- basically making things more understandable and comfortable for ourselves and each other while we go about doing whatever it is we are trying to do. And when you do finally convince yourself of that, history becomes a source of much solace and even a little premonition, so you end up spending more time there. Going far back into the history of what I do, one can easily see that for the most part it was ruled by the quill. Western civilization’s writing was done with quill pens for more than thirteen centuries and with newer instruments for about two. By the mid-18th century, the height of the quill experience, various calligraphy techniques could be discerned and writing styles were arranged in distinct categories. There are many old books that showcase the history of it all. I recommend looking at some whenever the urge comes calling and you have to get away from backlit worlds. Multiple sources usually help me get a better perspective on the range of a specific script genre, so many books served as reference to this quill font of mine. Late 17th century French and Spanish professional calligraphy guides were great aides in understanding the ornamental scope of what the scribes were doing back then. The French books, with their showings of the Ronde, Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets, were the ones I referenced the most. So I decided to name the font Auberge, a French word for hotel or inn, because I really felt like a guest in different French locales (and times) when I going through all that stuff. Because it is multi-sourced, Auberge does not strictly fit in a distinct quill pen category. Instead, it shows strong hints of both Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets. And like most of my fonts, it is an exercise in going overboard with alternates, swashes, and ornamental devices. Having worked with it for a while, I find it most suitable for display calligraphic setting in general, but it works especially well for things like wine labels and event invitations. It also shines in the original quill pen application purpose, which of course was stationery. Also, as it just occurred to me, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to describe your entire life in 50 words or less, you may as well make it look good and swashy, so Auberge would probably be a good fit there as well. This is one quill script that no large bird had to die for. A few technical notes The Auberge Script Pro version includes 1800 glyphs, everything is included there. Also latin language support. We recommend you to use the latest design application to have full access to alternates, swashes, small caps, ornaments, etc. The images from the gallery uses this version. For better results use the fonts with “liga” feature on. Awards During 2014 the early develop of Auberge Script was chosen to be part of Tipos Latinos, the most important type exhibition in South America.

TT Runs useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Runs Version 2.0—an Unusual Wide-Proportioned Sans Serif! An update that expands the font's capabilities. TT Runs is a font designed for the sports industry. Before starting the development, we researched the identities of various Olympic venues and analyzed current sports brands. We put in maximum effort to design a unique yet elegant modern font well-suited for the sports sector. TT Runs has wide and unusual proportions that are different from traditional ones. It is because of the reversed contrast, which refers to the distinction between the upper and lower parts of letters. The uppercase letters have distinctive inverted proportions, particularly noticeable in characters like K, C, S, and R. This design choice gives the font an original personality and makes the letters look stylish and suitable for both athletic and casual sportswear. While updating the font, we kept its distinctive characteristics and preserved the graphical look of the majority of the characters. However, we thoroughly redesigned the outlines and italic font styles and updated the font's technical aspects entirely. As a result, TT Runs has become more convenient to use, and its range of applications has significantly broadened. - More projects and countries! The set of each font style has expanded from 791 to 917 characters. We added new languages and characters of the expanded Latin and Cyrillic writing systems. - Perfect italics! The new italic font styles are flawless from both graphical and technical points of view. The updated variable font. We have united the roman and italic font styles. You can now change the font on the axes of slope and weight, choosing the suitable values. - The new set of OpenType features! We added the updated numerators with currency symbols, numbers in filled circles, and localization features for the Dutch, Catalan, Turkish, Serbian, Bashkir, Chuvash, Bulgarian, and Romanian languages. TT Runs is an expressive font. It looks aesthetically pleasing on both athletic and casual clothing and is well-suited for printing on any material. Due to its proportions, the font is an ideal choice for headings, offering excellent readability and an elegant appearance in bigger blocks of text. Created with the sports industry in mind, this font brings a touch of style to any modern project. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Runs OpenType features: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, case, dlig, liga, salt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, ss11, ss12, calt. TT Runs language support: English, Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian (lat), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss German, Valencian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh (lat), Turkish, Uzbek (lat), Acehnese, Banjar, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Cebuano, Chamorro, Fijian, Filipino, Hiri Motu, Ilocano, Indonesian, Javanese, Khasi, Malay, Marshallese, Minangkabau, Nauruan, Nias, Palauan, Rohingya, Salar, Samoan, Sasak, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Uyghur, Afar, Asu, Aymara, Bemba, Bena, Chichewa, Chiga, Embu, Gikuyu, Gusii, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Luba-Kasai, Luganda, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Mauritian Creole, Meru, Morisyen, Ndebele, Nyankole, Oromo, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sena, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Swahili, Swazi, Taita, Teso, Tsonga, Tswana, Vunjo, Wolof, Xhosa, Zulu, Ganda, Maori, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asturian, Belarusian (lat), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (lat), Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Esperanto, Faroese, Frisian, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, Interlingua, Judaeo-Spanish, Karaim (lat), Kashubian, Ladin, Leonese, Manx, Occitan, Rheto-Romance, Romansh, Scots, Silesian, Sorbian, Vastese, Volapük, Võro, Walloon, Walser, Welsh, Karakalpak (lat), Kurdish (lat), Talysh (lat), Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Turkmen (lat), Zaza, Aleut (lat), Cree, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Innu-aimun, Lakota, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karelian, Livvi-Karelian, Ludic, Tatar, Vepsian, Guarani, Nahuatl, Quechua, Russian, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Macedonian, Serbian (cyr), Ukrainian, Gagauz (cyr), Moldavian (cyr), Kazakh (cyr), Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen (cyr), Uzbek (cyr), Azerbaijan, Lezgian, Abazin, Agul, Archi, Avar, Dargwa, Ingush, Kabardian, Kabardino-Cherkess, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Lak, Nogai, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Buryat, Komi-Permyak, Komi-Yazva, Komi-Zyrian, Shor, Siberian Tatar, Tofalar, Touva, Bashkir, Chechen (cyr), Chuvash, Erzya, Kryashen Tatar, Mordvin-moksha, Tatar Volgaic, Uighur, Rusyn, Karaim (cyr), Montenegrin (cyr), Romani (cyr), Dungan, Karakalpak (cyr), Shughni, Mongolian, Adyghe, Kalmyk, Talysh (cyr) .

The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

TT Ramillas useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Ramillas in numbers: • 28 styles: 7weights, 7 true italics, 4 decorative styles, 7 initials styles, and 3 variable fonts • 900 glyphs in each style (except decorative & initials styles) • Support for more than 180+ languages: extended Latin, Cyrillic • 25 OpenType features in each style (except outline styles): small capitals, ligatures, old-style figures, arrows and other useful features • Amazing Manual TrueType Hinting TT Ramillas is a fully reconsidered high contrast transitional serif, which is perfectly adapted to modern realities and requirements. When starting this project, we wanted to try to draw a modern serif with the precisely verified shapes, high contrast and detailed elaboration of each character. The visual features of TT Ramillas are high contrast, small flared serifs, variable slope of ovals, open aperture of signs, contrasting thin nodules and no drops. In addition, TT Ramillas has a characteristic flame-like element in the lowercase Cyrillic letter ? and a bright "tongue" in the letters ??, ductile legs in ??, ??, and ??, as well as a very interesting upper terminal in the letter a. TT Ramillas is perfect for use in magazines, in the fashion industry, in the branding of premium goods and services. TT Ramillas is quite versatile and suitable for use both in headings and in text arrays. In addition, we have done manual hinting in the typeface, and now it can be used with a clear conscience in the web and applications. In the process of working on TT Ramillas, we wanted to expand the functionality of the typeface a little more, and thus, after a few experiments, two pairs of decorative fonts were born: Outline, Decor and their oblique versions. These decorative fonts work great for headlines and bold accent lettering. We thought that in these decorative fonts, small caps and some specific features would not be needed, otherwise the composition of decorative fonts is identical to the basic ones. The TT Ramillas typeface consists of 28 styles: 7 weights and 7 corresponding italics, 4 decorative ones, 7 initials styles and 3 variable fonts. Each typeface style consists of 900 glyphs (except for the decoratives). TT Ramillas supports over 180+ languages, including Cyrillic support and Extended Latin support. When creating the typeface, we did not forget to add small caps, ligatures, old style figures, arrows, hands, card suits and many other useful characters and OpenType features. For the most demanding users, we have prepared a variable version of basic styles. Using the variability slider, you can adjust and select the individual thickness, without reference to the existing weight distribution. An important clarification — not all programs support variable technologies yet, you can check the support status here: https://v-fonts.com/support/. TT Ramillas OpenType features list: aalt, kern, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, c2sc, smcp, liga, dlig, case. TT Ramillas language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Erzya, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, Ganda, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Leonese, Lithuanian, Livvi-Karelian, Luba-Kasai, Ludic, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (cyr), 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, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Valencian, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

TA Bankslab graphic presentation at Behance The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

A slab serif Mr Palker and grotesque Mr Palkerson build one superfamily together.  These are blank types. In a way even the display ones. Typefaces for newspapers, announcements, cheap advertising and police posters.  Mr Palker and Mr Palkerson will turn every language into a fence. And due to six types of faces one can choose what material should the fence be made from — from Thin steel rods to   the Black stone blocks. In their simplest appearance Mrs P&P are  intended for the solid blank composition in victorian or industrial style. They are quite decent, a bit old-fashioned slab serif and grotesque with closed aperture. All my types have layers. Walker and Palkerson also do. Besides the standard set of symbols, they have 4 add-ons. 1. Alternate glyphs, including unicase ones. 2. Ligatures with A letter. 3. Extra tall small caps. 4. Two-storey ligatures. All this options are intended for the complex composition. The additional letters are rather eccentric as their main function here is to imitate the victorian oddities. Imitate, parody, just not repeat. There are lower-case As and Es in the set in height of small caps and uppercases. They can turn every writing into the unicase.    The lower-case A (as well as uppercase and small caps version of it) has deliberately by my taste grown a ludicrous tail. To compensate it I’ve built all the possible ligatures - ад, ал, ая. There are 35 of this ligatures all together. Take a closer look at the Russian letters D, L, K, Ya from the main set as well as their alternates. The additional glyphs are one more comic than the other — on purpose to imitate (not to repeat!) the victorian set. This sets have lowercase numbers. And small caps numbers as well. What a modern typeface without them. They also have an У-letter with a generously curvy tail. As if before the WWI. The Latin of course has alternates as well. It has letters to make the perfect French sound more like the russian provincial version of it. The tails of Js and Ts can be made a little bit more open — or a little bit closed. My favorite feature here, an invention of a kind - extra tall small caps. It allows to compose logos with the small caped uppercases directly from the keyboard. The small caps of this typefaces are usually much taller than the customary ones. This is the kind of small caps that Palker and Palkerson have. More to that, the strokes’ weight and the letters width are corresponded to the uppercases. Just a ready set for making a logo a la 1913 style. With a unicase, one has to mind! One more trick with the tall small caps is a possibility to make them work like lower uppercases. Their height is just in between of lower- and uppercases. Isn’t it great to have an additional set of uppercase working ponies in stock for the case of emergency. And finally — the trademark of Palkers family, two-storey ligatures. They are made in the height of uppercases and turn every writing into an ornament or a puzzle of a kind, while at the same time making them much shorter. Each face has 90 of them. Mainly those are twins: CC, BB, DD and so on. ll this things are for the unhasty compositing, even for lettering. Which means that for the things which are not there you always should have Command+Option+O and some patience. Also — among the two storey ligatures one also can find some belvedere villas. All my types are glasses from the one kaleidoscope. The P&Ps family was preliminary part of the victorian set, which already has 1 Cents and Clarendorf - optionally one can add Costro, Gordoni, Handy, Guardy, Surplus, Red Ring, Red Square, Babaev to the list. And also Sklad, Odessa, Dreamland, Romb, Platinum - here, at Letterhead’s, every second one is victorian. All together our typefaces can allow one to set advertisement of any kind, even the trickiest one, and compose everything, from the coffee place’s menu to the antiquarian magazine.

A grotesque Mr Palkerson and slab serif Mr Palker build one superfamily together. These are blank types. In a way even the display ones. Typefaces for newspapers, announcements, cheap advertising and police posters.  Mr Palker and Mr Palkerson will turn every language into a fence. And due to six types of faces one can choose what material should the fence be made from — from Thin steel rods to   the Black stone blocks. In their simplest appearance Mrs P&P are intended for the solid blank composition in victorian or industrial style. They are quite decent, a bit old-fashioned slab serif and grotesque with closed aperture. All my types have layers. Walker and Palkerson also do. Besides the standard set of symbols, they have 4 add-ons. 1. Alternate glyphs, including unicase ones. 2. Ligatures with A letter. 3. Extra tall small caps. 4. Two-storey ligatures. All this options are intended for the complex composition. The additional letters are rather eccentric as their main function here is to imitate the victorian oddities. Imitate, parody, just not repeat. There are lower-case As and Es in the set in height of small caps and uppercases. They can turn every writing into the unicase.    The lower-case A (as well as uppercase and small caps version of it) has deliberately by my taste grown a ludicrous tail. To compensate it I’ve built all the possible ligatures - ад, ал, ая. There are 35 of this ligatures all together. Take a closer look at the Russian letters D, L, K, Ya from the main set as well as their alternates. The additional glyphs are one more comic than the other — on purpose to imitate (not to repeat!) the victorian set. This sets have lowercase numbers. And small caps numbers as well. What a modern typeface without them. They also have an У-letter with a generously curvy tail. As if before the WWI. The Latin of course has alternates as well. It has letters to make the perfect French sound more like the russian provincial version of it. The tails of Js and Ts can be made a little bit more open — or a little bit closed. My favorite feature here, an invention of a kind - extra tall small caps. It allows to compose logos with the small caped uppercases directly from the keyboard. The small caps of this typefaces are usually much taller than the customary ones. This is the kind of small caps that Palker and Palkerson have. More to that, the strokes’ weight and the letters width are corresponded to the uppercases. Just a ready set for making a logo a la 1913 style. With a unicase, one has to mind! One more trick with the tall small caps is a possibility to make them work like lower uppercases. Their height is just in between of lower- and uppercases. Isn’t it great to have an additional set of uppercase working ponies in stock for the case of emergency. And finally — the trademark of Palkerson family, two-storey ligatures. They are made in the height of uppercases and turn every writing into an ornament or a puzzle of a kind, while at the same time making them much shorter. Each face has 90 of them. Mainly those are twins: CC, BB, DD and so on. ll this things are for the unhasty compositing, even for lettering. Which means that for the things which are not there you always should have Command+Option+O and some patience. Also — among the two storey ligatures one also can find some belvedere villas. All my types are glasses from the one kaleidoscope. The P&Ps family was preliminary part of the victorian set, which already has 21 Cents and Clarendorf - optionally one can add Costro, Gordoni, Handy, Guardy, Surplus, Red Ring, Red Square, Babaev to the list. And also Sklad, Odessa, Dreamland, Romb, Platinum - here, at Letterhead’s, every second one is victorian. All together our typefaces can allow one to set advertisement of any kind, even the trickiest one, and compose everything, from the coffee place’s menu to the antiquarian magazine.

With its extended complement, this comprehensive redesign of Bank Gothic by Elsner+Flake offers a wide spectrum for usage. After 80 years, the typeface Bank Gothic, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930, is still as desirable for all areas of graphic design as it has ever been. Its usage spans the design of headlines to exterior design. Game manufacturers adopt this spry typeface, so reminiscent of the Bauhaus and its geometric forms, as often as do architects and web designers. The creative path of the Bank Gothic from hot metal type via phototypesetting to digital variations created by desktop designers has by now taken on great breadth. The number of cuts has increased. The original Roman weight has been augmented by Oblique and Italic variants. The original versions came with just a complement of Small Caps. Now, they are, however, enlarged by often quite individualized lower case letters. In order to do justice to the form changes and in order to differentiate between the various versions, the Bank Gothic, since 2007 a US trademark of the Grosse Pointe Group (Trademark FontHaus, USA), is nowadays available under a variety of different names. Some of these variations remain close to the original concept, others strive for greater individualism in their designs. The typeface family which was cut by the American typefoundry ATF (American Type Founders) in the early 1930’s consisted of a normal and a narrow type family, each one in the weights Light, Medium and Bold. In addition to its basic ornamental structure which has its origin in square or rectangular geometric forms, there is another unique feature of the Bank Gothic: the normally round upper case letters such as B, C, G, O, P, Q, R and U are also rectangular. The one exception is the upper case letter D, which remains round, most likely for legibility reasons (there is the danger of mistaking it for the letter O.) Because of the huge success of this type design, which follows the design principles of the more square and the more contemporary adaption of the already existing Copperplate, it was soon adopted by all of the major type and typesetting manufacturers. Thus, the Bank Gothic appeared at Linotype; as Commerce Gothic it was brought out by Ludlow; and as Deluxe Gothic on Intertype typesetters. Among others, it was also available from Monotype and sold under the name Stationer’s Gothic. In 1936, Linotype introduced 6pt and 12pt weights of the condensed version as Card Gothic. Lateron, Linotype came out with Bank Gothic Medium Condensed in larger sizes and a more narrow set width and named it Poster Gothic. With the advent of photoypesetters and CRT technologies, the Bank Gothic experienced an even wider acceptance. The first digital versions, designed according to present computing technologies, was created by Bitstream whose PostScript fonts in Regular and Medium weights have been available through FontShop since 1991. These were followed by digital redesigns by FontHaus, USA, and, in 1996, by Elsner+Flake who were also the first company to add cursive cuts. In 2009, they extended the family to 16 weights in both Roman and Oblique designs. In addition, they created the long-awaited Cyrillic complement. In 2010, Elsner+Flake completed the set with lowercase letters and small caps. Since its redesign the type family has been available from Elsner+Flake under the name Bank Sans®. The character set of the Bank Sans® Caps and the Bank Sans® covers almost all latin-based languages (Europe Plus) as well as the Cyrillic character set MAC OS Cyrillic and MS Windows 1251. Both families are available in Normal, Condensed and Compressed weights in 4 stroke widths each (Light, Regular, Medium and Bold). The basic stroke widths of the different weights have been kept even which allows the mixing of, for instance, normal upper case letters and the more narrow small caps. This gives the family an even wider and more interactive range of use. There are, furthermore, extensive sets of numerals which can be accessed via OpenType-Features. The Bank Sans® type family, as opposed to the Bank Sans® Caps family, contains, instead of the optically reduced upper case letters, newly designed lower case letters and the matching small caps. Bank Sans® fonts are available in the formats OpenType and TrueType.