Marble is part of Asterisk Type Collection by URW Type Foundry. Marble is a modern sans serif with a distinct character and comes in 108 styles plus Variable Fonts. It grew from the desire to create full bodied letters in contrast to the economy of most sans serif faces. Designed for corporate and publishing use it is rounded and approachable, its three styles (Condensed, Normal and Wide) range from slender elegance to warmth and playfulness without ever being informal. Designed by Alessia Mazzarella and Vaibhav Singh, Marble derives its character from the generous roundness of the x-heights which is balanced by the striking horizontal or vertical cuts to the terminals. The result is a readable font that encourages the eye to move from one shape to the next and that offers a range of possibilities for digital and print. The Marble family has nine weights in Latin for each variant. Eminently versatile, it’s ideal for establishing hierarchies of information with a wealth of choices for headlines, subheadings, captions and body copy styles that are all in harmony with each other. The Wide style allows headlines to be set with width and presence.

Born in 1831, Hermann Berthold was the son of a calico-printer. On completion of his apprenticeship as a precision-instrument maker and after practical experience gained abroad in galvanography, Hermann Berthold founded his "Institute for Galvano Technology" in Berlin in 1858. Very quickly he discovered a method of producing circular lines from brass and not, as customary at that time, from lead or zinc. The soldering normally necessary could also be dispensed with. The lines were elastic and therefore highly durable. They produced outstandingly fine results. Most of German's letterpress printers and many printers abroad placed their orders with Berthold. His products became so popular that the print trade popularized the saying "As precise as Berthold brass". In 1878 Hermann Berthold was commissioned to put an end to the confusion of typographic systems of measurement. With the aid of Professor Foerster he succeeded in devising a basic unit of measurement (1m = 2,660 typographic points). This was the birth of the first generally binding system of typographic measurement. It is still used in the trade. Hermann Berthold served as the head of the Berthold type foundry until 1888.

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

Nikola is a text typeface that offers a wide range of possibilities. While its regular and medium weights were specially optimized for maximum performance, balanced for excellent legibility and carefully crafted to spread a scent of tradition on long text settings; its extreme weights, on the other hand, were designed with a more display use in mind, and thanks to the flexibility place at disposal by its many alternates, swashes, decorative cartouches, borders and ornaments, can deliver a vintage, reliable, dynamic, fancy and even playful inflection to the text. Nikola includes a large set of over 1400 glyphs, support for more than 200 latin script languages and 1.21 gigawatts of the finest type design generated by classic proportions, the elegance and formality of the early XX century and a glimpse of expressionism on terminals and serifs. Nikola was named after Nikola Tesla as a tribute to the pioneers of the electric age.

Hejira means “rupture” and this concept was the primary principle that guided the creation of this typeface: to escape conventions and take up the challenge of designing letters with an unusual and fresh approach. Unlike traditional typefaces, each member of this somewhat atypical family has its own distinct personality and formal features. A thin, spiky font that looks like its sharp serifs could pierce through. A more experimental sibling, based on the same skeleton but taken to the extreme, that is best suited to setting big titles. An odd-one-out, sans-serif style whose shapes mimic those generated by the movement of a calligraphic pen. And a quirky fat-face with a flair for combining round curves with pointy elements. Regardless of how different they may be, all four styles feel part of the same system and can be used alongside each other seamlessly. The Hejira set includes multiple ligatures and supports a wide variety of Latin alphabet-based languages.

The 1765 Stamp Act ignited in American colonists a simmering distrust of the distant British Parliament, whose oppressive trade duties they deemed unfair assaults on their rights as English subjects. Before long, of course, this little dustup spawned The Boston Tea Party, the American Revolution, and the birth of the U. S. of A. But before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, a group of Philadelphia merchants made one last-ditch call for commercial cooperation across the Atlantic. This futile appeal survives to this day on a three-page broadside, finely engrossed by a penman of the period and passed down through the generations of a family named Remsen. Remsen Script is an interpretation of that penman’s neat, formal cursive—from its broad antique flourishes to its subtle unevenness and gently ragged strokes. Perfect for event announcements, fine product packaging, recreations of historical documents, or anywhere you wish to offer a whiff of a bygone era.

What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

'Obvia' appeared as a result of direct observation on typefaces classified as geometric and the plan to explore for the first time width axes Condensed, Narrow (soon), Normal and new Wide and Expanded. The idea behind 'Obvia's design was to create a distancing from geometrically pure shapes, in this case, square shapes. Then some details were added, such as subtle inktraps, concave endings of the stems and carefully drawn alternate characters, giving a 'geohumanist' tone to the font. This first family of 'Obvia' has 9 weights ranging from Thin to Black, delivering a strong typographic identity, from the paper to the pixel.

Taro Why do designers make more and more geometric fonts? There are already many geometric sans in the world. Because It is a natural flow of design. It is true that we like geometric type instinctively. Taro was designed to archive a good balance between the following three things geometrically. 1. To be Natural, Flowing, Organic. 2. To be Neutral, Unbiased, Universal. 3. To be legible, distinguishable, readable. Consists of eight weights and their matching italics. Supporting almost all latin languages. All-caps text for one line or a few is as wonderful as normal mixed-case typesetting.

This family was inspired by numerous documents and books printed in Paris during the end of the 1700s. Mainly, documents printed by P.G. Simon & N.H. Nyon, “Printers of the parliament” were used for the Normal and italic styles and “Caps”. “Titling” characters were coming from a collection of hymns printed by Nicolas Chapart. In France these Fournier characters, as Baskerville in Great Britain, were the most often in use in the late 1700s, just before the Didot designs. This font supports strong enlargements, specially the capitals of “Caps” file and “Titling”, remaining very smart, elegant and fine.

A condensed sans serif designed as an additional companion to the Corbert font family. Incorporating the key characteristics from the original family with influences drawn strongly from the Bauhaus and modernist era. This condensed version is 15% closer than the normal family improving economy of space across design layouts. Used in conjunction with the regular widths Corbert becomes a functional and versatile font system ideally suited for large complex design projects. Details include 9 weights with italics, 540 characters with alternative lowercase a, e and g, 5 variations of numerals, manually edited kerning and Opentype features.

This family was inspired by a small French "toy print" box, with rubber stamp characters, from the 1920s. The set contained only capital letters, no accented letters and limited punctuation. We have reconstituted a complete modern standard set. The doubling of each usual character in each style (A-Z/a-z and numerals) gives a rich and variously uneven appearance, looking like the results of the real use of those old rubber stamps. The bold style may be used as a reinforcement, mixed with Normal style without disadvantage, allowing four choices for each usual letter... The original size is 6mm (about 17 pts).

'Obvia' appeared as a result of direct observation on typefaces classified as geometric and the plan to explore for the first time width axes Condensed, Narrow (soon), Normal and new Wide and Expanded. The idea behind 'Obvia's design was to create a distancing from geometrically pure shapes, in this case, square shapes. Then some details were added, such as subtle inktraps, concave endings of the stems and carefully drawn alternate characters, giving a 'geohumanist' tone to the font. This first family of 'Obvia' has 9 weights ranging from Thin to Black, delivering a strong typographic identity, from the paper to the pixel.

»AlphaOne« is my newest addition to the experimental Alpha-font-collection. I just had to do this one! It is based on Paul Renners fonts, but has got nothing to do with them, I just took the widths and some basic forms. No – or hardly no – optical corrections were made to the glyphs. I wanted the pure geometric forms to come to life. This was a lot of fun to design, I especially like the »Q« with the negative tail. I did make four weights, but nothing is normal with this font, so weight doesn’t really mean anything. Have fun!