In 1955 the Czech State Department of Culture, which was then in charge of all the publishing houses, organised a competition amongst printing houses and generally all book businesses for the design of a newspaper typeface. The motivation for this contest was obvious: the situation in the printing presses was appalling, with very little quality fonts existing and financial resources being too scarce to permit the purchase of type abroad. The conditions to be met by the typeface were strictly defined, and far more constrained than the ones applied to regular typefaces designed for books. A number of parameters needed to be considered, including the pressure of the printing presses and the quality of the thin newspaper ink that would have smothered any delicate strokes. Rough drafts of type designs for the competition were submitted by Vratislav Hejzl, Stanislav Marso, Frantisek Novak, Frantisek Panek, Jiri Petr, Jindrich Posekany, and the team of Stanislav Duda, Karel Misek and Josef Tyfa. The committee published its comments and corrections of the designs, and asked the designers to draw the final drafts. The winner was unambiguous — the members of the committee unanimously agreed to award Stanislav Marso’s design the first prize. His typeface was cast by Grafotechna (a state-owned enterprise) for setting with line-composing machines and also in larger sizes for hand-setting. Regular, bold, and bold condensed cuts were produced, and the face was named Public. In 2003 we decided to digitise the typeface. Drawings of the regular and italic cuts at the size of approximatively 3,5 cicero (43 pt) were used as templates for scanning. Those originals covered the complete set of caps except for the U, the lowercase, numerals, and sloped ampersand. The bold and condensed bold cuts were found in an original specimen book of the Rude Pravo newspaper printing press. These specimens included a dot, acute, colon, semicolon, hyphens, exclamation and question marks, asterisk, parentheses, square brackets, cross, section sign, and ampersand. After the regular cut was drafted, we began to modify it. All the uppercase letters were fine-tuned, the crossbar of the A was raised, E, F, and H were narrowed, L and R were significantly broadened, and the angle of the leg and arm of the K were adjusted. The vertex of the M now rests on the baseline, making the glyph broader. The apex of the N is narrower, resulting in a more regular glyph. The tail of Q was made more decorative; the uppercase S lost its implied serifs. The lowercase ascenders and descenders were slightly extended. Corrections on the lower case a were more significant, its waist being lowered in order to improve its colour and light. The top of the f was redrawn, the loop of lowercase g now has a squarer character. The diagonals of the lowercase k were harmonised with the uppercase K. The t has a more open and longer terminal, and the tail of the y matches its overall construction. Numerals are generally better proportioned. Italics have been thoroughly redrawn, and in general their slope is lessened by approximatively 2–3 degrees. The italic upper case is more consistent with the regular cut. Unlike the original, the tail of the K is not curved, and the Z is not calligraphic. The italic lower case is even further removed from the original. This concerns specifically the bottom finials of the c and e, the top of the f, the descender of the j, the serif of the k, a heavier ear on the r, a more open t, a broader v and w, a different x, and, again, a non-calligraphic z. Originally the bold cut conformed even more to the superellipse shape than the regular one, since all the glyphs had to be fitted to the same width. We have redrawn the bold cut to provide a better match with the regular. This means its shapes have become generally broader, also noticeably darker. Medium and Semibold weights were also interpolated, with a colour similar to the original bold cut. The condensed variants’ width is 85 percent of the original. The design of the Bold Condensed weights was optimised for the setting of headlines, while the lighter ones are suited for normal condensed settings. All the OpenType fonts include small caps, numerals, fractions, ligatures, and expert glyphs, conforming to the Suitcase Standard set. Over half a century of consistent quality ensures perfect legibility even in adverse printing conditions and on poor quality paper. RePublic is an exquisite newspaper and magazine type, which is equally well suited as a contemporary book face.

DIN Stencil Pro on Behance. DIN Stencil Pro: Specimen Manual PDF. Despite the fact that over the years several designers have manually created stencil lettering based on DIN for various projects, there had never been a professional digital stencil version of a DIN-based typeface until 2010 when the original DIN Stencil was first released. The Pro version was released in 2014 and adds multiscript support for Cyrillic and Greek. DIN Stencil Pro was based on its original counterpart DIN Text Pro and was particularly designed to address contemporary projects, by incorporating elements and weights which are akin to industries such as fashion, music, video, architecture, sports and communications. Traditionally, stencils have been used extensively for military equipment, goods packaging, transportation, shop signs, seed sacks and prison uniforms. In the old days, stencilled markings of ownership were printed on personal possessions, while stencilled signatures on shirts were typical of 19th century stencilling. Two companies dominated the market in the mid-twentieth century: the Marsh Stencil Machine Company in the United States and the Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik in Germany. Ever since the late 1930s, it was the German Sächsische Metall Schablonen Fabrik which used heavily the new DIN 1451 standard font (introduced in 1936), attempting to overthrow the reign of the Didot-style modern roman which was at the time the most common stencil letter in Germany. These letters were manufactured mainly as individual zinc stencils which could be ordered in sizes between 10 and 100mm. The DIN Stencil family manages to preserve several traditional stencil features, but introduces additional modernities which enhance its pleasing characteristics which make it an ideal choice for a large number of contemporary projects. Furthermore, the spacing attributes of the glyphs were redefined and legibility was improved by revising the shape of the letterforms. The DIN Stencil Pro family is an enhanced version of the popular DIN Stencil. It consists of 8 diverse weights from the elegant Hairline to the muscular Black and supports Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Eastern European, Turkish and Baltic. The new version 3.0 includes several additions such the recently unicode encoded character of the German uppercase Eszett (ẞ), the Russian currency symbol for Rouble (₽), Ukrainian Hryvnia (₴), Azeri and Kazakh letterforms.

Introducing Quasix—the typeface that defies logic! With its compact industrial headline design, this font is the perfect choice for anyone looking to add an edge to their design work. But beware, its quirky design might have you scratching your head at first. Just like the inside of a machine, Quasix is full of moving parts, each with its own unique purpose—but don’t worry, you don’t have to be an engineer to appreciate its beauty. This typeface is perfect for those who want to convey the concept of engineering devices without using typical techno typefaces or cliche physical symbols like gears and bolts. Quasix will elevate your design to the next level, and its versatility makes it suitable for a range of themes, from retro to modern and even futuristic. Don’t be afraid to get creative with Quasix—this typeface was made to be bold and unconventional. Let it take center stage and watch as it transforms your design into something truly unique. Quasix defies convention and breaks the mold, making it the perfect choice for those who aren’t afraid to think outside the box. Try it out and see for yourself! Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Digital Sans Now combines and completes the many diverse requests and requirements by users of the past years. By now, 36 versions for over 70 Latin and Cyrillic languages have become available, including Small Caps. Digital Sans Now is also available as a webfont and reflects, with its simplified and geometric construction and its consciously maintained poster-like forms as well as with its ornamental character, the spirit of the decorative serif-less headline typefaces of the 1970s. The basic severity of other grotesque typefaces is here repressed by means of targeted rounds. Exactly these formal breaks allow the impression that it could be used in a variety of visual applications. Short texts, headlines and logos of all descriptions are its domain. It is because of this versatility that the typeface has become a desirable stylistic element, especially in such design provinces as technology, games and sports, and that, for many years now, it appears to be timeless. Additional weights designed on the basis of the original, from Thin to Ultra, the Italics, Small Caps and alternative characters allow for differentiated “looks and feels”, and, with deliberate usage, give the “Digital Sans Now” expanded possibilities for expression. The basis for the design of Digital Sans Now is a headline typeface created in 1973 by Marty Goldstein and the Digital Sans family which has been available from Elsner+Flake since the mid-1990s under a license agreement. The four weights designed by Marty Goldstein, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, were originally sold by the American company Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) under the name of “Sol”. Similarly, the company Fotostar International offered film fonts for 2” phototypesetting machines, these however under the name “Sun”. The first digital adaptation had already been ordered in the mid 1970s in Germany by Walter Brendel for the phototypesetting system Unitype used by the TypeShop Group, in three widths and under the name “Digital Part of the Serial Collection.” Based on the versions by VGC, Thin, Plain, Heavy and Fat, new versions were then created with appropriate stroke and width adaptations for data sets for the fonts Light, Medium and Bold as well as for the corresponding italics

Inspired by a biography of Coco Chanel and trying to capture the quintessential mood of classical fashion elegance, Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini designed Coco Gothic looking for the effect that the first geometric sans typefaces (like Futura, Kabel or the italian eponyms like Semplicità) had when printed on paper. The crisp modernist shapes acquired in printing charme and warmth through a slight rounding of the corners that is translated digitally in the design of Coco Gothic. This signature touch is enhanced by the inclusion of light humanist touches to the proportions of the letters, resulting in the unique mix that makes Coco Gothic one of our best sellers, with a look that is both contemporary and vintage. After six years from the original project (that has spawned in the meanwhile successful families like Cocogoose and Coco Sharp), we went back to the design to completely redraw and expand the original family, creating with a Pro version that has better on-screen readability, a wider weight range, variable type versions and more language coverage (with Coco Gothic Arabic adding a new script to the latin, greek and Cyrillic of the original). Coco Gothic Pro comes in three subfamilies, each with seven weights with matching italics and featuring an extended character set with open type support for small caps, ligatures, alternates, European languages, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. The original, body-text optimised Coco Gothic and Coco Gothic Alternate subfamilies have been kept for compatibility with the previous version, while a new Coco Gothic Display subfamily has been developed with a complete redesign aimed at display usage, featuring tighter spacing and optimised letterforms. A distinguishing feature of Coco Gothic Pro is the inclusion of ten alternate historical sets that allow you to use the typeface as a true “typographic time machine”, selecting period letterforms that range from art deco and nouveau, to modernism and to eighties’ minimalism. Equipped with such an array of historical variants, Coco Gothic Pro becomes an encyclopedia of styles from the last century, ready to transform itself and adapt to the mood of your text.

Introducing Venus Rising, the typeface that defies convention and embodies the essence of industrial design. Its striking quadratical symmetry and ultramodern aesthetic make it the perfect choice for those who seek to convey a sense of futuristic, mechanical precision. Each letterform of Venus Rising is meticulously crafted with a square, industrial edge, evoking the same sense of power and control as a well-oiled machine. And with OpenType numeric ordinals, fractions, and alternate characters like the “Q” and “Y”, Venus Rising offers endless possibilities for customization and flexibility in your designs. Whether you’re creating branding materials for a cutting-edge tech startup or designing a sleek and modern website, Venus Rising’s austere form and audacious design are guaranteed to make a lasting impression. And with seven available weights, including oblique types, you’ll have the versatility you need to create impactful designs across a wide range of applications. Choose Venus Rising for your next project and discover the power of combining cutting-edge design with scientific precision. Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.

Oita might be a carefully crafted typeface family, created by a meat-bag human. Or, it might have been made by a supremely clever sentient robot. Found in the dark recesses of a top secret spy agency’s quantum computer, this font came with this somewhat unusual description, which is presented without comment. "To conquer, we cannot simply overcome. Success is found in supremacy--in the dominance of Oita. While looking for the right tool for this success, our research has led us to the finely executed forms found of military domination throughout history. In our labs, we've used our specialized machines to harness these forms' power and refined their impact through elements of contemporary and computer design. The structure proves to be robotic and squared on its edges. However, the chutzpah of this technical face still allows it to pass as if created by human hands. Our resulting payload, Oita, is modern and sturdy. While based on a practical, octagonal structure, make no mistake; this new instrument will drive forward the energy you want to push through your projects. Oita has 42 cuts certain to encompass your designs on world domination. Each font contains the glyphs to support over 52 languages. The font also includes tabular and lining figures, numerous ligatures, and selected advanced Opentype options, including stencil and experimental options to bring out the dynamic characteristics that have already been crafted into Oita. Early tests have found that the new instrument is easily scalable to smaller dimensions without reducing its impact. The font remains highly readable across a variety of applications. We speculate from our findings that it will be successful for sporting and technical applications. So for you who venture to use Oita, use it boldly. Don't just overcome. Dominate. Go and conquer mightily with Oita. We'll be watching." We may never know whether Oita hails from mind or mechanism. What we do know is that, should you choose to take on Oita, you'll be acquiring a dynamic poster and packaging face, a minigun-toting bad robot of a font that exudes pace and power.

Introducing Syndra, a typeface that’s as timeless as it is modern. With its unique Y2K style, this typeface boasts letterforms that seem to have come straight from a machine. You can almost feel the hum of technology when you look at it. But don’t let its cold, emotionless shapes fool you. Syndra’s tireless character set works hard to make your message sound authoritative and technical. With OpenType fractions, numeric ordinals, and plenty of currency symbols included, you’ll have everything you need to create a professional and polished look. It’s the perfect font for anything related to plastics, medications, technology, and renewable energy. And with seven weights to choose from—Thin, Extra-Light, Light, Regular, Semi-Bold, Bold, and Extra-Bold—you’ll have the flexibility to create the look and feel you want. So if you’re looking for a typeface that’s both unusual and tech-savvy, look no further than Syndra. It’s a font that’s sure to turn heads and make your message stand out in all the right ways. Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.

Update November 2022: ULGA Grid now features an oblique variant. It’s also been expanded into a family of different but related designs with the addition of ULGA Grid Solid and ULGA Grid Rounded typeface families. All variants and new designs are monospaced, sharing the same width as the original ULGA Grid font and matching character sets. The character set has also been enlarged and now supports Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian. ULGA Grid is a modular, monospaced typeface reminiscent of the old Letraset LCD & Quartz typefaces from the 1970/80s with lots of alternative characters and ornaments to bring a fresh twist to the genre. The idea’s seed germinated while I was going through a phase of binge watching my favourite 1980/90s sci-fi movies (classics such as Terminator, Total Recall and RoboCop). However, perception and reality don’t always align. Thirty years later, when compared to today’s technology, some visual elements look kind of outdated, almost Retro Futuristic. The initial design process started out in Adobe Illustrator when I constructed letters from a few geometric shapes within a square block. Just playing around with different shapes was so engrossing that it wasn’t long before there were enough characters for a basic typeface. The project grew again as I experimented with designs within the shapes and set paragraphs of text in patterns, resulting in over a hundred alternative characters and ornaments, some of which double up as border designs. This typeface may be square but it’s anything but boring. What it lacks in legibility ULGA Grid makes up for in style and the end result is a surprisingly versatile typeface that you'll have fun using for a wide range of display purposes including CD covers, posters, packaging, advertising, brochures and film titles. Ironically, the fixed grid structure frees the characters to create patterns of text not possible with variable widths.

Mantika Book was originally conceived and drawn parallel to the first Agilita drawings. *[images: pencil drawings] It took several years before having a chance looking at these designs again. But then, my first impulse was to turn this alphabet into a new sanserif, which was to become Mantika Sans. This was the starting point to conceive a super family consisting of different design styles and corresponding weights. The initial drawings of Mantika Book were refined and an Italic was developed to go with it. The aim was to create a modern serif typeface which is reminiscent of humanistic Renaissance typefaces, yet without following a particular historic model. Its large x-height for one is far away from original Renaissance models. Mantika Book was designed as a companion serif typeface to Mantika Sans that can be set for lengthy texts as in books, hence its name. It shares the same x-height with Mantika Sans but has longer ascenders and descenders, making for better word shapes in long, continuous reading. The approach of an ›old-style‹ looking typeface with large minuscules makes Mantika Book also a choice for magazine text settings where one often needs smaller point sizes to fit in a multiple columns layout. The unique details of Mantika Book are the asymetric bracketed serifs in the upright font and its higher stroke contrast than usual in a Renaissance style. The stems are slightly curved inwards. Also, the Italics have a low degree of inclination, which makes longer passages of text set in Italic rather pleasing to read. Another feature Mantika Book shares with Mantika Sans is that all four weights take up the same line length. It covers all European languages plus Cyrillic and Greek, is equipped with lots of useful scientific symbols [double square brackets, angle brackets, empty set, arrows] and the regular weight has small caps. There is a kind of an old-style feeling to Mantika Book, yet these citations were turned into a contemporary serif typeface with a soft but sturdy character.

Meet the new TT Trailers! The first version of TT Trailers was conceived as a font suitable for the film industry. The font harmoniously looks in posters, it is ideally suited for setting titles. However, the font has gained wide popularity among designers, and now you can find TT Trailers on the covers of magazines, on restaurant signs and on the main pages of websites. TT Trailers useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options Since 2019 when we released the first version, the TypeType studio team has released dozens of fonts, constantly improving our skills. In 2022, we decided to look at TT Trailers again, improving and expanding the font. In the new TT Trailers, we expanded the character set, corrected the contours, and improved the technical content. We have added extended Latin and Cyrillic characters, new symbols, and additional sets of numbers. The number of glyphs in one style has increased from 1081 to 1242. The inclined styles were long-awaited. The italics in TT Trailers are as eccentric as the upright fonts. The 15-degree tilt looks absolutely harmonious, complementing the character of the font family. We added italics to the variable font, so the new font changes along two axes at once, weight and slant. From the technical point of view, TT Trailers has become more modern and correct, and the number of OpenType features has increased from 29 to 42. We have added new alternative versions of glyphs and created a large number of localized features. The font retained all the qualities thanks to which designers fell in love with it, but became even more convenient. TT Trailers in the new version is suitable for titles and posters, for websites and printed materials. The font will embellish in restaurant and cafe signs and look beautiful in posters. There are 19 styles in TT Trailers: 9 upright, 9 italic and 1 variable font.

What do you imagine the ideal casual invitation font would look like? It has to be cheerful, inviting, legible, creative, and loads of fun. But first and foremost, it has to look like real handwriting. Fonts seeming like real handwriting are always a major task, and although Canada Type already has plenty of fonts that solve the “looks like handwriting” issue in a variety of ways, we're once again raising the bar a little higher with this one. Birthday is a massive package that crosses the traditional font/handwriting solution of 2-letter ligatures and waltzes into the land of 3-letter combinations. Plenty of them, too! The complete Postscript and True Type versions of Birthday ship with no less than five separate fonts full of nothing but ligatures. And for even more realism, an alternates font is also included in the package, for a total of seven fonts of happy handwriting that can be used anywhere and everywhere personalization is of importance to a layout. For layout artists with advanced typography tools that take advantage of the power of OpenType, Birthday Pro is a wunderkind. All the individual letter alternates are accessible through the Stylistic Alternates feature, the 2-letter ligatures through the standard Ligatures feature, and the 3-letter ligatures via the Discretionary Ligatures feature (for the technically inclined: this includes a nice liga-to-dlig crossover, where the maximum number of possible ligated letters is automatically chosen at the push of a button). If you enjoy using OpenType, Birthday Pro is definitely for you. If on the other hand you like your fonts in Postsript or True Type, it is advisable to keep a character map handy while using Birthday. You will need it to take advantage of the many, many alternates and ligatures distributed over the fonts. The next time someone asks you for the perfect casual invitation font is, look no further. And as usually is with Canada Type, quality fonts are more affordable than ever.

In the sketches that formed the basis for his typeface Biome, Crossgrove experimented with inner and outer shapes in different styles, adapted letters to the form of the super-ellipse, and added curves only to remove these again. His challenge was to find a harmonious and coherent approach that provided sufficient contrast with existing fonts. Biome is essentially in the sans serif tradition and the letters exhibit only minor variations in terms of line thickness. There is still a suggestion of the super-ellipse at many points, but this never becomes the predominant design factor. While most of the terminals of the vertical strokes are only slightly rounded, the horizontals and diagonals have pronounced arches and it is these that basically determine the round and soft character of the typeface. The more unconventionally shaped letters, such as the lowercase 'g' with its two semi-open counters and the 'k' and 'x' with their crossbars, provide Biome with an individual personality. And this effect is emphasized by the generously rounded links in the 'v' and 'w' and the uppercase 'M' and 'N'. Biome has been designed as a typeface super-family. From the near hairline Extra Light to the amply proportioned Ultra, there are seven clearly differentiated weights and three tracking widths. There are oblique italic versions of all variants. The range includes small caps and numeral sets containing lowercase and uppercase digits. With its available range of characters, Biome can be used to set texts in all Eastern European languages. Although the remarkable individuality of Biome is most clearly apparent in the larger point sizes, this typeface is not just suitable for producing headlines and logos. Biome's elegant visual effects mean that it is equally comfortable in short texts while its large x-height and generous counters make it readily legible even in the small font sizes. Biome is a contemporary typeface that employs mid-20th century futurist elements which ironically give it a retro feel.

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

The silent film »The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari« (1920) is undoubtedly one of the breathtaking milestones within the German Expressionist Movement, a time of extraordinarily creative works of art as a reaction to a world in rapid change. The original intertitles of Caligari were worked out by the set designers (and painters) Walter Reimann, Walter Röhrig, and Hermann Warm, using a unique expressionistic language of form for dramatic and iconic lettering. When in 2010 KOMA AMOK’s Joerg Ewald Meißner and Gerd Sebastian Jakob were commissioned by the Institut Mathildenhöhe Darmstadt and publisher Hatje Cantz to design the catalog for the exhibition »The Total Artwork in Expressionism«—showing works of art, architecture, film, literature, theater, and dance—it was soon perfectly clear that a new typeface, inspired by the Caligari intertitles, should speak for all the expressionistic arts. An intense process of research and analysis began. The original letters of the Caligari intertitles were individuals on their own. Furthermore, each of the three title designers had added his specific approach to the basic Caligari type style. From hundreds of different As to Zs a choice had to be made, which should be THE characteristic Caligari letter for a digital typesetting font. Finally the chosen letters were cut and drawn again, missing letters were added according to the formal priniciples, all-in-all 1000 glyphs were digitised to complete a usefull OpenType font ready for use. When in the autumn of 2010 the exhibition started successfully with great media interest, the posters all over Darmstadt announced »You must become Caligari!« – set in the brandnew typeface. The font Caligari Pro offers alternative forms for every letter and a whole bunch of ligatures, thus creating an expressive, individual image of headlines and text. By using included Stylistic Alternates the image will get even more vivid. Caligari comes with a complete set of expressionist ornaments and true old style figures—thus the heyday of the Expressionist Movement and the era of the silent films can be revived typographically by the means of today: »Express Yourself!«.