While it is obvious that this is an ornamental style font, it is more than that: it is a Celtic Knotwork design tool! Irish, Scottish, Welsh, even Norse and Viking cultures have used knotwork designs for millenia. These ancient traditional interwoven designs are experiencing a revival as Celtic culture gains exposure in the modern world. Intricate Celtic knots are featured everywhere from jewelry to tattoos. While many enjoy them simply for their beauty and fascinating twists, they can also be used to add an air of myth, magic and mystery to any project. The interlaced lines make them perfect for wedding invitations, borders, dividers and rules, web graphics, and logos. I began using Celtic knotwork designs in my own work as part of my knifemaking and jewelry making hobbies. I read all of the books I could find about Celtic knots and at first I drew them by hand with pencil and paper. Then as I realized how nice it would be to have "undos" I switched over to using Corel Draw. Draw proved to be a natural for this type of artwork with tools like contour and the trim function. But even with these great tools, it was still tedious to create these designs. I noticed that I was able to reuse a lot of parts in repetitive sections. I developed a small library of reusable bits and chunks of Celtic designs. I found them so useful and fun to work with that I began thinking about ways to market my Celtic design kit. I thought about CDR and EPS formats, but then I thought of creating this toolset as a True Type Font. That way anyone with ANY program that uses fonts could easily create Celtic knotwork designs. Word processors, embroidery programs, engraving programs, jewelry design programs, CAD/CAM programs...almost every program can use fonts. I was also interested in CNC work and thought that this font would work well for applications such as laser etching, vinyl signs, and machining. With that in mind, I designed each character of the font with extremes of accuracy. If one character from the font is used at one inch tall, every control point will be placed to an accuracy of better than 0.0001 inch. I wanted every piece to meet exactly with the next, with no possibility for misalignment. The different styles are all very carefully created to fit accurately with each other. So the Filled Style fits exactly into the Outline Style, and the Inverse Style fits precisely around the Outline Style so as to make up the background behind the knotwork. Combining the styles allows you to have complete creative control. By assembling the nearly 200 pieces it is quite easy to produce very complex designs. It is actually a bit like playing with a puzzle and many people really enjoy putting the pieces together to make designs. In fact, I have had many customers tell me of how they love playing with this font and making knots into the wee hours of morning. If you like puzzles then you will absolutely love this font! And creating the patterns is just the beginning of the fun! If you apply your favorite Photoshop tricks on them you can make anything from dazzling chrome knotwork to carved stone. Photoshop plug-ins like SuperBladePro are great for converting knotwork text into corroded bronze or rusted iron. Use your knotwork to add texture to a virtual landscape, or add them as surface embelishments on architecture and furniture. You can also make round knotwork by using this font with "WordArt" (WordArt is included with every copy of Microsoft Word. See http://clanbadge.com/round_knots.htm for a tutorial on how to make round knotwork). For Crafters there are limitless uses for this font. It has been used for embroidery, jewelry, leatherwork, stencils, stained glass, quilting, painting, pyrography, woodcarving and lots more. We have even sold copies to monks for use in decorating handmade books!

Tokyo Olive was designed as an homage to nostalgic display types and advertisements in the mid-late 80s. The mid-late 80s was the era of the post-modernism and fancy-decorative design especially in Japan In other words, it was the mixture of superficial form-operation and girly taste. This curious design movement vanished without a trace in the 90s, but it had its moments. Tokyo Olive has voluminous and simple geometric skeleton (for post-modern) with rounded and craft-style stencil joints (for fancy decoration). We added a classic open style as a little spice. The mixture of those essences makes new impression we have never seen before. Tokyo Olive family consists of 5 styles for stacking color font. Please use Photoshop or Illustrator, or your favorite graphic design apps that can handle layers. Layers are the printing plates of wood type. You should be able to change text color for each layer. Tokyo Olive "Standard" style is the base of this font family. You can add open effect by stacking "Fill" layers over the Standard layer. Instruction 1. Type your text as you like. 2. Set font-name "Tokyo Olive" and font-style "Standard". 3. Set color of "Standard" layer. 4. Duplicate the "Standard" layer to make "Fill" layer. 5. Set font-style "Half Fill" or "Full Fill" and new color of upper layer. Tokyo Olive Standard, Half Open, and Full Open style can be used solely.

I have improved and added diacritics to this elegant alphabet, and generally cleaned it up to a professional standard. It is well suited to logos, menus, invitations and other things wanting a touch of elegance. Nick Curtis says: "I came across this particular treatment for swash caps in an old book on letterhead design. The original had been handlettered, but I though it might be convenient to have a ready-made font to accomplish the same effect, and here it is. As an extra added feature, the “§” sign is an ampersand with a long tail." ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual “western” glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Grotesques can answer a really wide variety of design problems and go from small sizes to large without missing a beat. Vinila is Flora de Carvalho's take on the genre. The family’s multi-purpose intention comes from having 4 widths - from compressed to extended, each with 6 weights and obliques. Rhythm and music played an important part in the design of this font, which started off as the lettering for a Brazilian Music album. Its distinctiveness comes from having powerful ink traps that go from elegant and supple in the lighter styles to commanding and impactful in the heavier styles. A distinct rhythm is achieved, making it a strong face for editorial design, branding projects and so much more. Vinila is the ideal companion to expressive display faces, where it serves a supporting role with a marked presence. We use Vinila every day in our own brand identity. We've had some of the best designers use it and test it in many different environments, printed, digital, mobile and more (they really like it!). Also in the package, Vinila Variable is an experimental version of Vinila, where you can have a virtually infinite mix of weights, widths and slant, all from a single font file. Available when you license the complete family. Vinila pairs happily with our cheerful Manteiga , elegantly with our organic didone Tenez and mechanically with our monospaced Odisseia . What other matches can you think of?

In March 2010, Émile Fradin, a modest peasant farmer from central France, died at the age of 103. To his grave he took the secret behind one of the most controversial archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. A discovery which put into question the very origins of the written word and the paternity of European culture. It was the uncovering of peculiar artefacts would come to be known as the Glozel runes. The discovery of the Glozel runes On the first day of March 1924, a not yet 18-year-old Fradin was ploughing his family’s field in the hamlet of Glozel, when his cow stumbled into a hole. When he and his grandfather, Claude, looked closer, they discovered a mass of broken stone, under which lay an underground chamber. Within, they discovered pottery fragments, carved bones, and a peculiar clay tablet covered in bizarre characters that neither of the two could decipher. The family requested a subsidy for excavation works to be carried out, but were refused by the regional authority. With that disappointment, it seemed as though the discovery would fade into obscurity. However, the following year, news of Fradin’s unusual clay tablet reached the ears of the physician and amateur archeologist, Antonin Morlet. By the end of May 1925, Morlet began the first of his excavations.4 Within the first two years alone, he had amassed some 3,000 finds.

ITC Werkstatt is a result of the combined talents of Alphabet Soup's Paul Crome and Satwinder Sehmi, along with Ilene Strizver and Colin Brignall. It is inspired by the work of Rudolph Koch, the renowned German calligrapher, punchcutter, and type designer of the first third of this century, without being based directly on any of Koch's typefaces. Werkstatt has obvious affinities with the heavy, woodcut look of Koch's popular Neuland, but also with display faces like Wallau and even the light, delicate Koch Antiqua. Brignall began by drawing formal letters with a 55mm cap height, which Sehmi reinterpreted using a pen with a broad-edge nib. “Not an easy process,” says Brignall, “since one of the features of Koch's style is that while it was calligraphic in spirit, most of the time his counter shapes did not bear any resemblance to the external shapes, as they would in normal calligraphy. This meant that Sehmi could not complete a whole character in one go, but had to create the outside and inside shapes separately and then ink in the center of the letters.” The process was repeated, only without entirely filling in the outlines, for the Engraved version. Crome handled the scanning and digitization, maintaining the hand-made feel while creating usable digital outlines. “The collaboration of artisans with particular skills,” says Brignall, “in a modern-day, computer-aided studio environment, seems very much in step with the 'workshop' ethos that Rudolph Koch encouraged and promoted so much.”

The Richie™ typeface grew out of a lettering experiment inspired by the work of Czech type designer Oldrich Menhart (1897-1962). Menhart’s typefaces were primarily text designs with a strong personal calligraphic influence. Monotype Studio designer, Jim Ford, wondered what a display typeface from Menhart might look like, and began drawing bold script characters with a broad-tipped chisel marker. “It was a familiar but laborious exercise,” explains Ford, “I tried to achieve an authentic – yet controlled – randomness that would serve as the foundation of a typeface.” Ford first drew a large suite of characters using the marker. All the drawings were then carefully adjusted, and scanned. Ford then pieced together a typeface from the best versions of letters, and refined those further. The result is a rugged, somewhat eccentric and playful script built on an obvious hand-drawn foundation. In a world of smooth scripts, the Richie design is heavy, chunky and rough. Its hand-made feel and vigorous rhythm put the power of raw brush lettering into the typographer’s hands. OpenType® fonts of Richie include standard, contextual and discretionary ligatures, in addition to contextual and stylistic alternates, old style, lining and superior figures, plus a large complement of swash characters. The name “Richie”? It grew out of Ford’s original premise for the design. “I wondered what it might it look like if ‘Old Richie’ had designed a heavy display face or script.”

Dynamic by name, and dynamic by nature - this sleek font is perfect for logos and hightech quotes. The original lowercase f had a big overhang - I redesigned it so it fits better with accented letters, but also kept the original shape as a contextual alternate: the font automatically uses the "large" f before any low letters... Also the lowercase j would crash into any preceding letters with a righthand descender - so I also designed an automatic alternate j. Result: no colliding letters! The Slanted version adds a touch of speed. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

A playful handwriting of a child Twelve-year old Tobias Düsel designed the characters of this font in 2002 during his family’s furlough in the USA. He drew the alphabet freehand in pencil on a piece of stationery, and clearly had examples of the well-known college and military fonts in mind. The characters in their basic form are geometrically thought out, as well as the construction of the shadows. But remarkably, while drawing, Tobias Düsel did not reach for the obvious aid of a ruler. In fact, the strokes of the letters are not linear, rather are recognizably well-balanced with declining and increasing straights as can be seen in polished classical fonts. Originally this font consists only of upper case letters — all other characters (punctuation marks, figures and similar) have been modified from the components of the capital letters. Complementary to the original Outline-Shadow-Version TobyFont Empty, the variations TobyFont Inside and TobyFont Full are also available. ”Empty“ is, so to speak, the frame of the typeface as “Inside” is the filling, and “Full” is the sum of both. All three versions have the exact same body size so that they can be placed over one another congruently. In this way the effect of a font in two or three colors can be attained. TobyFont is excellently suitable for designing “picturesque” or “hand-carved” contents; large weights are especially charming and striking.

Lycia (Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 Trm̃mis; Greek: Λυκία, Lykia; Turkish: Likya) was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time (546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope (Ancient Greek: Ἀλόπη, Alópē). Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, but on the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks, it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria, returned to the Persians, and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Due to the influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized under the Macedonians, and the Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage.

The Phantom Isles: Retro Tiki Font A Textured Retro Font Inspired by Tropical Tiki Style and South Sea Adventures! The Phantom Isles is a hand-drawn font inspired by 1950s Tiki culture, tales of exotic locations and south sea adventures. It features the textured look of weathered wood and is the perfect choice for book covers, movie titles, theme parks or vintage themed events. The font includes a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numbers, punctuation, symbols and language support. You’ll also find a set of specially illustrated underlines, shapes and icons including flora and fauna, old rope, skulls and more. A Brief History of Tiki Culture Originating from Māori mythology, a tiki is a wooden or stone carving that represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures. The mainstream and commercialised Tiki Culture that became popular across America from the 1930s to 50s was inspired by the sentimental appeal of an idealised South Pacific, particularly Hawaii, as viewed through the experiences of those who had visited such areas during World War II and cinematic depictions of beautiful scenery, forbidden love and the potential for danger. Over time it selectively incorporated more cultural elements of other regions that affected Polynesia, such as Southeast Asia. The Americanised form of Tiki Culture maintains a dedicated following today, particularly among those interested in 1950s graphic and interior design, history and the escapist lounge aesthetic it inspires. Learn more about the history of Tiki and Polynesian culture.

The digital font Technotyp is based on the hot metal typeface created by the German typographer and type designer Herbert Thannhaeuser (1898-1963) for the former East German type foundry Typoart in Dresden. In the typography book ‘Der Schriftsetzer’ (Fachbuchverlag, Leipzig, 1952), by Paul Fritzsche, this absolutely beautiful slab serif design is presented in all its variations. Fritzsche remarked that – because of its rather condensed form and its relatively long ascenders – the 'Werkschrift' of the Technotyp (comparable with our 'Regular') seemed to be very well suited to serve as a text face, and recommended for this purpose that the face be cut for the composing machine. However, this never happened and the entire Technotyp family was made available for hand composition only. This is finally changing and being remedied for good now: URW++ proudly presents the new digital version of this really charming font family with its distinct flavor of the 1950s, adding it to the other digital renditions of Herbert Thannhaeuser fonts at URW++, namely Garamond No. 4 and Magna. The original Typoart family had an italic style for the light version only. The new digital version of Technotyp includes italic styles for the regular, medium and bold weights as well, enhancing the family to meet today’s standards and requirements for professional type setting. To further increase its usefulness, Cyrillic faces were created, too. True to the standard for all digital fonts at URW++, the character set for Technotyp covers all West- and East European languages.

Sánchez Niu is a redesign of Sánchez—one of the first font families by Latinotype designed in 2011. In the typedesign industry the terms ‘nova’, ‘neue’, ‘next’, ‘new’ are often used to refer to a typeface that has been modified in different ways: redesign, technical readjustments, greater number of characters, etc. At Latinotype we are now starting to use the word ‘niu’ to refer to these kinds of typefaces. Niu is an adaptation of the original word ‘new’, i.e., we have adapted this English word to the phonology and spelling of our own language but keeping the original meaning. Race mixing, diversity, change and adaptation are part of the essence of Latin American culture and, at Latinotype, we are all constantly expressing these elements in everything we do. Latin Power! This new version includes improvements that make it work well with longer text. Such improvements have not had a major effect on the look of the font, though. We have adjusted the original proportions and added a number of new characters as well as OpenType features such as small caps, oldstyle figures, tabular numbers and stylistic alternates. Sánchez Niu contains a set of 720 characters that support 219 languages. The font is well-suited for long text, headlines and logotypes, and it has been optimised for web usage. Sánchez Niu comes with two free fonts—Regular and Regular Italic! Corrections, digital editing and review by César Araya, Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Alfonso García.

Lust Didone’s character set was expanded as well during the redraw and update, the Italics were separated and reimagined anew from the universal italics in the original offering. Lust Didone also includes the new Fine optical size with complementing Italics for each size as well. And, yes, more swashes. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.

Lust’s original masters were completely redrawn, expanded, with a new optical size added based on customer requests. Lust now sports 6 fonts, instead of the original 4: Standard, Display, Fine, and complementing Italics. The character set has been expanded as well to include more OpenType features and more swashes. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.

The Jazayeri Kufic Shoushtar font is a beautiful typographic implementation of the decorative Kufic calligraphy inscribed on the walls of the historic Grand Mosque of Shoushtar in southwestern Iran. This mosque contains many other inscriptions added over time for documentary purposes but its four monumental Kufic inscriptions which are revived in this font are the most essential ones to understand its design and meaning. Built in the ninth century CE, this mosque is one of the earliest hypostyle mosques in Iran. It was built in “the city of scholars” when its residents included two great Sufis, Sahl Ibn Abdullah Tostari and Mansur Hallaj. The designer and producer of the font is Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri, a well-known Iranian master calligrapher, designer, scholar, and author. Mousavi Jazayeri has taken a personal interest in the Kufic script and devoted years to independent research, visiting archaeological locations, historic buildings and cemeteries, mosques, libraries and museums to study the script through direct contact. He has developed a systematic research methodology and published his findings in several books. His professional interest in script and calligraphy stimulated his discovery of the historic method for cutting the Kufic pen, which has had a direct impact on his own work, as seen in several well-received exhibitions and workshops. The historical research and achievements of Mousavi Jazayeri brought together the first international group dedicated to the study and revival of the historic Kufic script operation through kuficpedia.com.

The characteristic ‘French face’ was originally made in 1899 under the supervision of Joseph Pinel. Thus, what was originally French 10 pt. Nº 2, got its present name. The Frenchman Joseph Pinel called himself a "typographical engineer", but was at the time employed as a type draughtsman at the Linotype Works in Altrincham. It appears that this and some other faces that he supervised, were, except for use on the Linotype, also meant for manufacturing matrices for the Dyotype. This composing machine was an invention of Pinel. The Dyotype was a rather complicated machine and consisted, like the Monotype, of two separate contraptions, a keyboard which produced a perforated paper ribbon and a casting machine which produced justified lines of movable type. Unlike the Monotype which has a square matrix carrier, the Dyotype had the matrices on a drum (in fact two drums, hence the name of the machine). A Pinel Diotype company was founded in Paris and a machine was built with the help of the printing press manufacturer Jules Derriey. As is often the case, a lack of sufficient capital prevented the commercializing of this ingenious composing machine. Coen Hofmann digitized the font from a batch of very incomplete, damaged and musty drawings, which he dug up in Altrincham. He redrew all characters, bringing up the hairstrokes somewhat in the process. The result is a roman and italic, while the roman font also includes Small Caps

This is the redrawn and expanded version of an alphabet Rebecca Alaccari made back in 2009 as a bespoke font for a tourism agency looking to recapture the appeal of New Orleans after the hurricane Katrina disaster robbed it of its core industries. The brief back then was to "revive the unique spirit of what always made Nola great for new adults, which is the excellent combination of history, romance, food and music." No word of a lie, the brief actually contained "new adults." Storyville contains two interchangeable sets of forms drawn in the doodly, loose and organic way now conspicuously popular with today's young designers, almost every one of whom thinks they will get to design something for a boutique coffee bar somewhere. Well, this whole thing perhaps means freedom, youth, fun, happiness, good stuff like that. But just in case, a little caution doesn't hurt: Use this font only if you know what you're doing. We don't want to go back to the 1990s. Please. We were nearly done for by that exposure the first time around. The ligatures feature in this font does some pseudo-randomization, so the forms in doubled letters don't repeat. Serious fun can be had by also applying the stylistic alternates feature, or picking a letter in the middle of a setting and disabling the ligatures feature. Or various sequences of all that. If you don't like any of that stuff, just forget about it. Uh, wutever.