Dimensions is redesigned font family based on Blackout font released as free font in 2005. The original blackout has been used especially for company or brand logo of fashion and music label in the world. In 2011, Blackout had evolved into this Dimensions font family of seven weights with roman and italics. They are one of the most condensed, black and skinny font in the world. All weights and italics have upper and lower cases, accented characters and small capital glyphs that can be used with OpenType smcp feature. There is high contrast version called Speedometer.

Bigfoot is the fattest font ever made. It began as a simple exercise given to students in a design course: Most people don't appreciate type because they don't really know what it actually is. One way to understand it is looking at it like a combination of sculptures that have to work together to achieve a certain harmony, where each letter form is one of those sculptures. Most people understand and appreciate that a sculpture starts from a rock of an incomprehensible form, which is manipulated by someone into becoming the recognizable or abstract work of art it eventually is. Consider type design a kind of two-dimensional sculpting. You have a rectangle. Take away as a little as possible from it until it is recognizable as the letter A. Repeat to get the letter B, and so on. After all 26 minimal letters are made, do they actually function as an alphabet to build words and sentences that are recognizable to the human eye? This exercise can trigger thoughts and theories about the overall subjective nature of identifying abstract yet somewhat familiar shapes. It can go into the psyche of art in general. But one thing for certain, this exercise has so far helped a few people find a new appreciation for finely crafted typefaces. If you are a design educator, your students' typographical perspective and arguments would benefit from it. And if you are a designer, well, fat faces are all the rage these days, and this is as fat as it can get. Please note that that this typeface, due to its minimalistic nature, does not include accented characters. It does however support the full C0 Controls and Basic Latin Unicode set. All proceeds from this font go to support the Type Club of Toronto.

Even though the phrase Art Nouveau originated in Paris at the shop of Siegfried Bing, the French preferred to call it Le style moderne. This very sinuous, very Art Nouveau typeface was designed by an E. Mulier around 1894, probably also in Paris. The organic, vine-like curve forms are frequently seen in the art of the period. Examples include the architecture of Victor Horta, the furniture of Henry van de Velde and the jewelry of Max Gradl. Mulier Moderne is an all-cap font with a full Western European character set plus ST and TH ligatures, an alternate ‘E’ and two glyphs of period printer’s cuts. Warning: do not use for extended text. Duh!

Jugendstil Flowers are a collection of dingbats fonts with ornaments, leitmotivs and fleurons, free inspired in the visual style from the golden age of the Art-Nouveau graphic movement. A beautiful work with and organic forms and sensibility with the taste of the vegetal world, by Chyrllene K, who brings you a extra gift : Buying the three fonts (family pack) you get a special free bonus: the Victorian Advertising EPS PACK with ten amazing artworks (in eps) inspired in the Victorian ages magazine advertisings (see the banners). See all the glyphs from Jugendstil Flowers in the pdf brochure at the gallery section.

This font was inspired by the rare manuscript Roman Quadrata used by an unknown scribe to inscribe a copy of the Roman poet Virgil’s GEORGICS, somehwere around 161 to 180 AD. Only a few sheets have survived, now preserved by different libraries around the world. In creating this font, we have adapted it for contemporary users, making differences between U and V; I and J (which made no difference at all to ancient Latin scribes) and naturally adding the glyphs for Thorn, Oslash, Lslash, W, Y, as well as the usual accented characters and punctuation, none of which existed at the time. Only capitals are present in the original; but we have provided alternates: so alternating each character A-Z/a-z will give a pleasant appearance of manual script. We have added the Roman numerals “I V X L C D M” in the OTF/TTF versions usable as “Old Style Numerals” alternates.

Full of texture and regal personality, Bell Martellus was derived from a book published in 1475 by Henricus Martellus entitled “Liber Insularum.” The writing style is based on the Carolingian Script created by the Emperor Charlemagne and his scribe, Alquin of York, in the 9th century A.D. This old world lettering comes with new world OpenType capabilities, including swash caps and small caps. The James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota commissioned Bill Moran to develop this font as a means of introducing their amazing collection of rare books, maps and manuscripts to a wider audience. Once the historic script was fontified by Bill, it was forwarded to Chank Co, where we added some snazzy baubles for the discriminating typographer. Everybody can enjoy the antique genuine nature of Bell Martellus, but advanced OpenType users also get extra features in Adobe CS applications.

Hey guys! Meet our new font "Honey Vineyard"! It's time to pick up on the wedding trend of script-style fonts, and Honey Vineyard's sophisticated and stylish design is perfect for announcing your elegant wedding. A unique wedding font featuring flourishes of creativity and a graceful design won't leave anyone indifferent. This font includes stunning swashes and ligatures that will make your design even more attractive! Some commonly used letters have multiple swashes, while some rarely used letters have none at all. We also would like to note that when creating this font, a purely calligraphic approach was used. This means that all the letters are not the same: some letters are much thicker and some are thinner, as is the case in real calligraphy! The font also includes the Cyrillic version.

The courageous Russian author of the best seller Anastasia, Vladimir Megre, once said that this remarkable woman would inspire creative people around the world to produce their best work. Since I consider myself a creative person who has been deeply touched by her story, I sincerely hope that this will be true for me also. Anastasia talks a lot about God, the wonders of the natural world and how all things have been created so perfectly. This belief in universal perfection, however, is not confined to mystics alone. Many great mathematicians and scientists, including Albert Einstein, were of the same opinion. Having read Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, I became quite fascinated with the so-called Fibonacci series; "a sequence of integers in which each integer (Fibonacci number) after the second is the sum of the two preceding integers; specif., the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, . . ." (Webster’s Dictionary). These mysterious numbers, which are said to give divine proportions, are found throughout nature in everything from a rose to a spiral galaxy. Many believe that this reinforces the argument that there is a divine intelligence back of creation. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could somehow create a font using these numbers in the design process. If I have succeeded - even partially - in attaining these mystical proportions, it will definitely have been worth all the hard work. And, I sincerely hope that many will enjoy using this font in producing their own best work.

Cinque Donne means “Five Women” in Italian. It was inspired by the five sisters in my family as well as a group of five high school friends I have known for 46 years, aka “The Club Girls”. The Pro version has 3370 glyphs with all the bells and whistles! Women are connectors, encouragers and supporters. Young, old, shy, extroverted, when you put us together, somehow we make a beautiful impact on each other’s lives. This is what Cinque Donne does in a visual way. Some letters are simple and prefer to sit quietly. Others are flourished and proud and like the limelight in the middle of a word. And then there are alternates that are flexible and work in any number of surprising places. Stylistic sets can add a vivacious feel while contextual alternates bring better understanding. Classic or contemporary, subdued or flamboyant, these letters represent the variety of women that make life interesting for us all. Within the varied glyphs, I hope you find characters that remind you of the special women in your life. Let Cinque Donne salute them on the page! The Cinque Donne Family includes: Cinque Donne, Cinque Donne Bold, Cinque Donne Swash and Cinque Donne Pro. Check out the Buying Choices tab to see special discounted combinations! Crafters: All of my fonts have been specially coded for PUA (Private Use Area) so you can access all of the swashes and alternates using Character Map (PC) or Character Viewer (Mac) or with any number of apps including PopChar. If you would like to purchase PopChar at a special discount email me and I will send you the link. Cinque Donne Pro and Cinque Donne Swash include Swash, Stylistic and Titling Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Roman Numerals & Fractions.

A cast iron plaque from Bristol Temple Meads Station serves as inspiration for this antique font. The plaque commemorates the design contribution of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who in March 1833 at only 27 was appointed chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, the line that links London to Bristol. This helped establish Brunel as one of the world’s leading engineers. Impressive achievements along the route include viaducts at Hanwell and Chippenham, Maidenhead Bridge, Box Tunnel and Bristol Temple Meads Station. Ironbridge evokes industrial heritage, gothic spookiness or eroded heavy metal.

Marlin Soft is a rounded corner version of our Marlin Geo font family and like its parent font also includes two sets of italics. The standard italic is set at twelve degrees and the slant version set at six degrees, the slant version is perfect for signage and headlines where you may want the look of an italic but are limited on horizontal space. Marlin Soft includes many alternates which may be accessed using opentype aware applications, with over three hundred alternates to choose from your creative possibilities are great. Whether you're looking for a round dot or a square dot Marlin Soft is one font family that delivers both set up as two separate fonts so you may change a whole page of text at one time. Your projects are sure to look nice and cozy with the warm feeling Marlin Soft will bring to your product label or page design. Three free sample basic fonts are available which are fully functional minus the alternates.

Reminiscent of a stencilled spray-paint message, making a stand against the world, Headlined is equally at home expressing the voices of the oppressors and the oppressed. Simple in application, this font sets down an idea and makes it stand out from the crowd with a bold tone backed up by a slight fading that implies age and wisdom. Make a statement with Headlined and watch the world change. Alternatively if you're looking for something a little cleaner, check out Headlined Solid.

The Tecn@ BC (Building City) family's design was inspired by the Downtown of a Metropolis City surrounded by buildings and real estate structures. Each uppercase or lowercase character represents a building with a unique design, which when forming a word or in an entire piece of writing, the user would be composing their own city.

Gobsmacked is a rather new English word. It has been around since 1959 and was used mostly around Liverpool at that time. The word means: ’astounded’, ‘flabbergasted’ (another nice word!) or ‘speechless’. Gob could be of French or Scottish Gaelic origin and means ‘mouth’. Gobsmacked font was created using a brush and black gouache. The result is a very eroded, very legible and quite unique brush font. I have created alternates for the lower case letters, plus two double letter ligatures (oo and ss). Use it for any design that needs a little brushwork; I am sure the result will leave you gobsmacked!

Mexica is a typographic tribute to Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztecs, but also the lingua franca of ancient Mexico. ‘Mexica’ is not only the feminized, latinized form of the word ‘Mexico’, but also the name of the inhabitants of this place: the Me-xic-cah. Nahuatl, when composed in the Latin alphabet, abounds in diagonal letter shapes: XYZ are ubiquitous in its classic orthography, just as KW are in its modern one. This visual feature is further enhanced by the absence of some rounded letters such as BDG that depict inexistent sounds in this millenarian tongue. Besides, Nahuatl is language with a tendency to form very long words that give the text quite a distinct appearance, unlike English, for instance, with its abundance of short words. Mexica was designed to look well in all these contexts, and to perform as well as a contemporary, daring, stylish serif type family, with several weights for text and display composition. Further, its terminals and general structure —devoid almost completely of straight lines—are inspired by the angled architecture and ornamentation of the ancient city of Mexico- Tenochtitlan. Mexica received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.

One of the most unusual sets of antique stencils spotted for sale online comprises a set of twenty-four classic logos of early 20th Century automobile companies. For whatever purpose that is now lost to time, these stencils represented the logos of many of America's finest auto manufacturers; most now just historical memories. The logos were painstakingly redrawn, maintaining the distinctive look of the hand made cutting, although it was an exacting process - some of the images were taken at an angle, and a bit of artistic license had to be used as a compensatory factor. It is to be noted that any and all of the logos presented in this font are the intellectual property of the companies, successors or assignees that may still hold the rights to these symbols. No endorsements by such corporate entities are either expressed or implied. Additionally, it is advised that any use of these logos be restricted to historical or hobby purposes, and they should not be used in a way that would construe any authorized reproduction of the logos in a commercial fashion.

When looking for a neutral typeface with no historic reminders, we always end up with notorious designs made about 60 years ago. It’s a part of the whole Trivia type system. To our surprise, there are still people who can’t distinguish three basic latin type categories. The present font family has been created for them. A simple typographic Trivia: three ways to look at printed word, three fonts to design anything from business card to a billboard, three tunes for endless variations.

Isabel was made out of necessity to create a new font for children and teenagers, that could be enough friendly and versatile for text in words or even easy-to- read long texts. The purpose of Isabel is to combine all the nice and friendly features of the simple letters that the teachers teach to the pupils at primary school, as they starting to learn to read, together with the normal editorial fonts we read every day. In this way it generates a very joyful serif font, or even friendly font, with some conservative aspects. In other words, Isabel is a font that, despite of being a “classic features” typography, is proud to show its innocent and ingenuous elements, this gives to the font a new point of view. The family is composed of 3 parts: the regular version, the italic version and the unicase version. Each one of them has 5 weights, 551 characters and is composed of 208 languages.

When Joe Madureira saw the custom font we'd created for Jim Lee, he called us up immediately and uttered the immortal words... "I Want One!" We were, of course, only too happy to oblige. Now, this very font, based upon Joe's own handwriting, is available. Think about it, where else can you get a World Famous Comic Book Artist like Joe Madureira to work for you for under a hundred bucks?

Invaded 2600 is based on the screen font of the 70's arcade classic Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. Each time you use Invaded 2600 you will be at war with enemies from space who are threatening the earth. Good luck!

As you can see, Nefertiti is a font based on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and could be classified as a fun-font. I've always been really interested in Egyptology and a couple of years ago I thought it would be great to be able to write in hieroglyphs. I started to study them but soon realized it would take me a long time to be able to do this. Still, I was determined to find a way around this problem. At some point I came up with the idea of rearranging and reforming the hieroglyphs so as to resemble the English alphabet. During this process I tried as much as possible to preserve their ethos and appearance. However, since they are designed to write in English with, it's obvious that they are not always going to look like the real thing. Despite this, I'm really happy with the final result and I think many Pharaohphiles who just want to have some fun will be also. The only difference in this font between lower and upper case characters, is that the latter are set between two parallel, horizontal lines. These are for use with brackets (motif ends) to form cartouches - elongated ovals for names and/or titles. Try typing the following using the upper case in the sample text box. e.g. (JOHN} The zigzagged vertical lines at each end, separate the motifs from the hieroglyphs. Note the three types of ends/brackets. These lines are also used to separated words from one another and to give a more authentic appearance. So pressing the space bar gives a zigzagged line - not a space. They can also be used at any point within a cartouche to separate first and last names or titles. e.g. ; (JOHN;BROWN} walked straight home after work. Notice the eye glyph (period/full stop) at the end of the sentence. This is the only punctuation mark which can be used within a cartouche, e.g. after Mr. or to add a more Egyptian appearance to a name or title. e.g. (MR>;JOHN;BROWN} Parallel lines dividing hieroglyphical inscriptions and writing into rows or columns are very common. To incorporate these in a body of text, simple use the underline U. e.g. (OSIRUS) and {ISIS} were important gods of the ancient Egyptians. (HORUS) {HATHOR} and [RA],the sun god, were also highly revered deities. The punctuation marks available are shown below. . , " " ' ! ? "where is the king?" The font also includes the numbers 0-9, the following mathematical symbols and the hash sign(Scarab beetle). Once again, I've tried to make them look as Egyptian as possible; whether I've succeeded or not is open to debate. e.g. + - x / = # This font is named after Akhenaten's beautiful wife, Nefertiti, who's image can be seen in the graphic on this page.

Introduced by Timurtype Studio! Roasted Bailey is a Handwritten Script Font This font takes you into a world of timeless elegance and individuality with the charm of a charming handwritten font. In a digital landscape dominated by uniformity, these fonts stand as a testament to the timeless charm of the human touch and artistic expression. Each letter becomes a brushstroke, and each word a canvas of authenticity, imbuing your designs with a distinct personality that goes beyond the ordinary. Handwritten script fonts captivate with their unique rhythm, celebrating the fluidity of handwriting and the spontaneity of creative expression. More than just typography, they are a bridge between analog and digital, a poetic dance between tradition and modernity. the true warmth these fonts bring, elevate your projects to a world where every word becomes a heartfelt brushstroke in a design masterpiece Roasted Bailey Font also supports multilingualism. Enhance your designs with our original fonts, feel free to comment or provide feedback, Enjoy the fonts 😊 Thank You

Houdini was extemporized from the single word "Houdini" on a lithographed poster for the magician. The original was a shaded outline like our Houdini Shaded font, but we felt that a solid version would be worthwhile too. Like the companion font Houdini, the shaded version was created from the single word Houdini on an old lithographed poster for the famous magician. The original was hand-lettered by a litho lettering artist.

A precise legible typeface inspired by the classic font Eurostile. The idea was to produce a functional text based font that would demonstrate technical interest at a variety of sizes. The typeface is ideal for use on print, web, motion, t-shirts and apparel. Details include 250 characters, manually edited kerning and Euro symbol.

Eirinn was designed by Norbert Reiners for Linotype in 1994. Its forms are based on those of Irish scripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, an example of which can be found in the Book of Kells in Dublin. Characteristic of this style are for example the lower case f with its short cross stroke on the base line and long cross stroke above, the unusual form of the g, and the t, whose form is almost like that of a c. This style consisted of a mixture of lower case and capital letters at the time of its conception, but Eirinn has a full set of both lower case and capital alphabets. At first glance the viewer is reminded of ancient and indecipherable writings of the Celts before the forms of our contemporary letters and words become evident. Eirinn will lend a touch of mysticism and secrecy to any text.

The signs of the Bosnian pyramids The pyramid researcher, Semir Osmanagic, began excavations in 2005 in Visoko, Bosnia, 30 km North from Sarajevo. Mr. Senad Hodocic, the curator at the local museum, pointed out at the pyramidal shape of the Visocica Mountain, which grabbed Osmanagic's attention. It is also suspected that the four adjacent hills, covered by plants and greenery, also hide the pyramids. The main sites of the excavations are called the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon, and the results achieved so far have already proved that those structures are man-made and artificial. The Pyramid of the Sun is bigger and older than the pyramid in Giza, which was built by Pharaoh Cheops 4600 years ago. Gábor Szakács, who went to the site in June 2006 for the first time, found the symbols on the megalithic blocks inside the tunnel of the Pyramid of the Sun, which correspond to the ancient Hungarian runic writings. Further information about the Bosnian Pyramids is available at the website http://www.piramidasunca.ba/. There are also researchers who do not accept the subject of the Bosnian pyramids. Time will tell the truth.

Vintage Comics JNL was inspired by the way the word “comics” was hand lettered on many of the comic book covers of the 1940s, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This typeface is a carefully crafted display-typeface of fairy-tale breadcrumbs and fleeting love messages in the sand: Dusty or sparkly, legible or hard to decipher … but always a little bit magical. DEUTSCH: Hänsel und Grete hätte ihre Freude an diesem magischen Brotkrumen-Font. Ob taubig, sandig oder funkelnd. Dieser mit viel Liebe kreierte Font hat viele Anwendungen…

After the Second World War, the Ionic style replaced Modern Face as the favored typeface for newsprint. A couple decades later, it was in turn replaced by the next generation of newspaper fonts, a mix of Old Face, Transitional and Modern Face forms. Olympian itself tends toward the Old Face style but is nevertheless an example of this new generation, a result of a time of change and experimentation.

The year 1914 marked the appearance of Washington Ludlow's first typograph machine. This remarkable invention permitted typesetters to quickly cast a full line of lead type in one operation using supplied brass matrices, a procedure which was for the time a major technological improvement over the usual hand-set foundry type methods. Casting type the Ludlow way necessitated the creation of an entire range of new Ludlow typefaces, a development which made Ludlow not only a major manufacturer of printing machinery, but also one of the world's leading sources of professional type design. Renowned typographers such as Douglas C. McMurtrie and Ernest F. Detterer created original faces at Ludlow's request. Robert Hunter Middleton was Ludlow's design director for over fifty years, and during his distinguished career produced an entire library of typefaces representing virtually every known typographic style. He is recognized as one of the most prolific type designers of all time. Today, new Ludlow computer fonts are in preparation, including optically-correct versions of many classic Ludlow typefaces, drawn directly from the originals in the Ludlow company library.

At home, we don’t drink soft drinks at all. Maybe sometimes, when one of the kids has a birthday party, but we normally don’t have a stash of the stuff. We have cordial, or, as wel call it in Holland: limonadesiroop (‘Lemonade Syrup’). There you go, another font name xplained! Today Syrup was made with a marker pen and a lot of paper! It comes with a frizzy, sticky goodness to give your designs that extra kick.

Aire is what Sproviero would call a < big display family >. We recommend seeing its user’s guide. After his success with Reina, Sproviero comes out with this big family of 7 members: Each of them loaded with lots of sophisticated ligatures, alternates and the entire cyrillic alphabet. The overall impression that the font gives is lightness and delicateness; that’s the reason the designer chose to call it Aire, or Air, in English. "Aire was somehow having a rest from my fat face Reina [...] It started as a really thin style of Reina, but it rapidly migrated from it and grew up alone. And how it grew..." The inspiration came from his own past creations: “The heavy strokes of Reina were shouting for a more delicate thing. Something more feminine. More fragile. Something which had a lot of elegance and fresh air inside”. Aire responds to this: Sproviero found that many of the typefaces of nowadays which are used for headlines (best known as display fonts) have almost always just one, maybe two weight styles. This was his opportunity to try something new. Aire makes it easier for the user to generate different levels/layers of communication thanks to its variety of styles. With this font you can solve entire decorative pieces of design with just one font, and that was the aim of it. Aire was designed to be playful yet formal: While none of its alternates are activated it can be useful for short to medium length texts; and when the user chooses to make use of its open-type decorative glyphs, it can be useful for headlines with dazzling results. On March of 2012, Aire was chosen to be part of the most important exhibition of typography in Latinoamerica: Tipos Latinos 2012. TECHNICAL Aire is a family with many members. In total, the user can choose between almost 6,000 (!) glyphs (1,000 per style). Each member has variants inside, which are open-type programmed: The user decides which glyph to alternate, equalizing the amount of decoration wanted. Every decorative glyph has its weight adjusted to the style it belongs to. Exclusively for decoration, Aire Fleurons Pro is an open-type programmed set of ornaments. And last but not least, remember Aire is delicate. What’s my point? It is not recommended to activate all the alternates at the same time. It is typo-scientifically proved: A maximum of 3 or 4 alternates per word would be more than enough.

Gears, designed by Janet Valdez of Janworx, was inspired by the popularity of steampunk artwork, for which gears and levers are a defining element. Gears is a single bold typeface, incorporating gears and levers into each glyph in one form or another. It is intended to be used at a large size, and works well in graphics with gradient finishes, textures, and bevels. Lower case letters are uniformly understated, whereas upper case are more elaborate. This typeface is suitable for posters, screen printing, or any general graphics work that requires short words or slogans with high-impact, particularly in a steampunk theme.

Yet again, a font inspired by my work as a kindergarten teacher! The other day, I had a conversation with some of the kids, about what they ate for breakfast. Some had oatmeal, some bread and others yogurt. But this kid - he insisted that every morning, his mother would serve him cookies, “morning cookies”. It sounded too good to be true, and when I asked his mother, it turned out that “cookies” were actually bread, but to make it sound more appetising, they called it cookies! The letters are rounded and in some way quite naive, but still clear and legible. With an extreme ascender and descender, the font stands out with its oddities. I’ve added 3 different versions of each lowercase letter!

Hello, Let's play with Moontok! a handmade font with a fun, sweet, also playful type character that gave extra cuteness and perky at once. Like how it named, the cheerful shape bring imaginations to fluffiness, sweetness, cuties, cookies, coffee latte smells, cheesecake, happy kids, even refresh summer trip Moontok has an OpenType feature that will automatically change each character into stunning ligatures, easy! The alternates tail bring cheerful accent to your wondrous display composition, both make more flexible exploring your needs and also including sexy punctuations Even the font shape has a fun impression, the clear bold line still fit to represent something cool and fresh also making it very easy to read and applied in various design styles such as crunchy poster designs, snacks packaging, logos, promotional artworks, storybooks, business cards, website header, and many more design projects. Moontook has its own charm of cheerfulness itself moreover combined with sharp and funny color. It will so easy to remember, catchy and flawless. wanna play more? jump up to try your words Happy summer times!

Chianti was designed at Bitstream by senior designer Dennis Pasternak in 1991 and initially released in 1995. The intent behind the design was to provide a humanist sanserif of high readability at a wide range of sizes and weights. Humanist sanserifs (others that fall into this category are Linotype’s Frutiger and Optima, and Monotype’s Gill Sans) are an attempt to improve the readability of sanserifs by applying classical roman structure to the letterforms. To enhance its versatility, Mr. Pasternak designed a wide variety of alternate characters, rare ligatures, ornaments and swashes. Chianti is a friendly sanserif useful for a broad range of typographic needs.

Chianti was designed at Bitstream by senior designer Dennis Pasternak in 1991 and initially released in 1995. The intent behind the design was to provide a humanist sanserif of high readability at a wide range of sizes and weights. Humanist sanserifs (others that fall into this category are Linotype’s Frutiger and Optima, and Monotype’s Gill Sans) are an attempt to improve the readability of sanserifs by applying classical roman structure to the letterforms. To enhance its versatility, Mr. Pasternak designed a wide variety of alternate characters, rare ligatures, ornaments and swashes. Chianti is a friendly sanserif useful for a broad range of typographic needs.

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