Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

Kevin King says: "When I started this font it was called Pestle... It didn't run - it didn't even walk. At some point I thought, Hmm! Looks a bit like Liquorice! And now... Voila! I remember being able to buy about a yard of Liquorice rolled round a central comfit - how fab! Tuppence worth of sticky afternoon! You could also buy bundles of Liquorice root - which looked like black twigs with bright yellow wood - they left my teeth full of black twiggy bits... The past is a strange Lady - Bless her! This was almost Kingthings Leechy... just another one of my bulbous shiny things - I have always liked letter-shapes with 'bottom', probably a 70's thing, as many a seventies thing did indeed possess it - including the fabulous Chaka Kahn... Oooh, Diva!" 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.

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

Sapore is a script font family, mostly monoline, inspired by the elegant handmade signs in the beautiful city of Venice, Italy, where I work and live. Many of these signs were made at the beginning of the 20th century by skillful craftsmen and artists, carrying that distinct vintage Italian flavour, and this is why I named the font Sapore, which means precisely flavour (also, one of the signs is from a pastry shop that makes the most delicious things). The design takes this retro vibe into the 21st century, making it up-to-date and fresh, while keeping it authentic. It is a script font, but I added some stand alone capitals that you can use in all caps words and texts effortlessly, as the open type code is taking care of using the right set of letters at the right time, I could have made two separate fonts, but I wanted to give you the best value I could and ease of use. Make sure contextual alternates are always on! There are also swashes, alternate styles, stylistic sets, small caps, 2 figure sets and decorative elements, all accessible through open type. I think the font is particularly suited for display use, as in logos, packaging design, branding, but it is readable enough for small text blocks. You can access the non-linking caps by clicking on the discretionary ligatures button. You can access the loopy caps by clicking on the titling alternates button. The main version has straight terminals but I included a round version and a calligraphic one, called “classico”. Hope you like it!

Cheer Forever is a delightful display font that merges the timeless simplicity of a sans serif with playful brush-style accents. With its uppercase letterforms and unique design, this typeface adds a touch of cheerfulness and character to your projects. The defining feature of Cheer Forever lies in its combination of a clean and geometric sans serif base with brush-inspired accents. The uppercase letters maintain a sleek and straightforward appearance, while the brush-style elements bring an element of spontaneity and liveliness. This fusion of styles creates a harmonious balance, resulting in a font that is both contemporary and playful. Inspired by the joyful nature of brush calligraphy, Cheer Forever captures the essence of creativity and self-expression. The brush-inspired accents add a touch of whimsy and personality to each letter, as if they were hand-drawn with a brushstroke. This unique style injects a sense of fun and positivity into your designs. Enjoy the various features available in this font. Features: Ligatures Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Cheer Forever fits in logos, titles, headlines, and any design that aims to make a bold statement with a touch of playfulness. It is also particularly well-suited for designs related to children's products, event promotions, and any theme that calls for a touch of creativity. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Delm font family is one of those large and useful families that you really can’t miss if you are looking for typeface combining originality and legibility. Delm is one of these – a sans serif with geometric modern look designed very smart with soft round look and very specific inktraps that complement its uniqueness. It is developed in 9 separate weights ranging from Hairline to Black, each coming with corresponding slanted version (called ‘Oblicua’). The light weights look more elegant, gentle and with more sensible feeling for geometry while the black versions are more soft, friendly even puffy and the geometric skeleton of the family is dominated by the overall roundness. The mid-weights are strong and prominent setting right the middle point in the contrast range of the family. Delm is a font with dedication – with so many options for different character contrast combined with slanted styles, it is perfect for editorial design where it could be easily used either for text or display font. Editorial is not of course the only application – you could successfully rely on this typeface if create brand or corporate identity, typographic posters, signboards, instruction plates, etc. Very diverse and original, this font will not leave you unsatisfied – moreover – it will surely make you try it in more and different designs be it printed or designed for screen. Web sites, banners, applications and e-books are places where Delm will show its best because of its originality, finely tuned contrast and its enhanced legibility. Fully equipped with OpenType features like ligatures and multilingual support, Fontmatters highly recommends to get the whole Delm font family for maximum results and satisfaction.

Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration – particularly its weight and width proportions – can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out – the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears. Upon finishing the serif version, a Serif-serif variant called Dederon Serif was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern Serif serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Serif match the serif version – the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics. Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight, permitting truly professional use in the most demanding projects.

SHE'S DEAD, FRANK It's the year 1991, BC (Before Comicraft) when REM were still making records and Frank Miller’s memorable run on Marvel Comics’ DAREDEVIL was just over ten years old. Comicraft’s Richard Starkings found himself working in Anaheim, California for Graphitti Designs. Graphitti had produced the first hardcover edition of Miller’s Batman tale, DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and was now putting together the sequel to Miller’s DAREDEVIL — ELEKTRA LIVES AGAIN! Richard was not engaged to letter this book, the pages of Frank’s incredible original art that came through Graphitti’s studio were already lettered by Marvel Stalwart, Jim Novak. However, there were some cover elements that needed to be added, based on the logo originally rendered by Frank’s brother, Steve. Starkings set about the task of creating an alphabet that could be used to develop Steve’s idea for the trade dress -- the cover elements, the back cover copy and credits on the interior pages. This was long before Macintosh computers and font programs made this work considerably easier, so Rich sat down with a pencil and a sheet of vellum and rendered an alphabet that could be used as the basis for the text that was needed... Those sketches have languished in a drawer for nearly thirty years, but now, finally, Comicraft’s John Roshell has dusted off those old letterforms and Elektrakuted a font based on those designs, a font we HAD to call ELEKTRAKUTION! As for Elektra; she’s dead, Frank. Features: Ten weights (Light, Regular, Bold; Rough Light, Regular & Bold; Inline, Inline Rough, Outline & Outline Rough) with upper & lowercase characters, Western & Central European accents and Greek characters.

Now here's a font with an unusual backstory. You may recall that a while ago we discovered that Tim Burton was using an outdated version of one of our fonts for the interior titles in his The Corpse Bride. Well, our quest to get hold of him didn't bear any immediate fruit, but in a totally unrelated event we were contacted by the graphic arts company working with the overseas distributors for The Corpse Bride and it turned out that they needed a font based on the main title of the movie so they could keep the same style when they retitled it into other languages. The original title was either hand lettered or a heavily modified font, bearing some resemblance to our Ligeia and Tuscarora fonts, so we had to create a whole font more or less from scratch and extrapolate most of the letters from the very limited sample in the original title by identifying certain consistent characteristics and building new characters around them. It was a lot of work, but the good news is that they didn't want exclusivity, so we've got the font to add to our collection. We ended up calling it Beynkales which means 'Bone Bride' in Yiddish, which makes sense given the context of the movie. So here it is, in all its tattered glory, and bound to end up in our Halloween font selection later this year as well. Beynkales Alternate is a companion font that includes a full set of alternative upper and lower case characters which can be used on their own or in combination with the characters from Beynkales to create a more varied and handwritten look.

Goneon is a vibrant and eye-catching display font designed to bring the electrifying energy of neon lights to your designs. With its big, bold uppercase letterforms and mesmerizing neon style, this typeface captures the essence of a lively and dynamic atmosphere.. Each letter is meticulously crafted to emanate a radiant and electrifying glow, just like the vibrant neon signs that illuminate city streets at night. This neon style adds a touch of excitement and energy, instantly drawing the viewer's attention. Inspired by the pulsating rhythm of city nightlife, Goneon exudes a sense of modernity and vibrancy. The font captures the essence of an urban atmosphere, casting a dazzling neon glow that creates a lively and captivating visual impact. Each letter radiates with an unmistakable charm, bringing your designs to life with its electrifying vibes. Features: Alternates Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Goneon perfect for headlines, banners, posters, and any design that requires a bold statement. The neon style adds an extra layer of excitement, making your text shine with a dynamic and eye-catching appeal. Whether you're working on advertising campaigns, event promotions, digital artwork, or any creative project that calls for a lively aesthetic, this font will instantly infuse your designs with an electrifying energy. It particularly shines in applications related to nightlife, entertainment, music, and urban-themed designs. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Genovaite Baroniene is former school teacher and a native of Lithuania who loves fancy letters. When she writes, she likes to add extra flourishes to her handwriting and printing. It simply appeals to her to do so. While living in the United States a few years ago and working in the health care field, she put pen to paper to provide a specimen of her writing from which a font could be developed. The process has taken longer than either of us expected. Now we are finally able to present Baroniene ML, a stylishly unique example of what we call Lithuanian Folk Baroque. Baroniene ML has a total of 362 glyphs, including the Unicode Latin Extended-A glyphs (0100 to 017F), covering the more widely-used Central European languages. To resolve the cedilla/undercomma conundrum, we have chosen to design a hybrid disconnected accent for use with C, G, K, L, N, R, S & T. We hope this solution is acceptable to users of Albanian, Catalan, French, Latvian, Portuguese, Romanian and Turkish. Baroniene ML also comes with four ligatures: gh, Th, th and Ch (167, 172, 177 and 181). Baroniene ML is certainly not the polished script of a professional calligrapher. It is very personal. The human source is still visible in its form. The letter spacing is uneven. Some of the curves are not quite perfect. In sum, the individuality has not been refined out of it. That is why it is so charming. If you want for a font that has a very different look, perhaps Baroniene ML is what you need.

At VetteLetters we like food but we also appreciate our drinks. Yes, of the non-alcoholic kind as well. Like milk. Contrary to what Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, Milk is not just for babies. It contains a whole lot of stuff that is genuinely good for you. Like proteins, carbohydrates, minerals (calcium a.o.) and many vitamins. One time visiting The Hague, Donald DBXL spotted a tile tableau on a brick wall, advertising a dairy factory called ‘De Sierkan’. Yellow sans serif letters on a bright blue background, dating back to the late 19th century, immediately grabbed DBXL’s attention. Especially because the tableau showed both regular and bold letters with some lovely peculiarities here and there. De Sierkan appeared to have been a milk factory solely operating in The Hague from 1879 until 1961. A number of these wall adverts are still to be seen in The Hague streets today. Photos were taken for later reference. Later is now, the lettering has been digitized, missing characters added, and VLNL Melk sees the light of day. VLNL Melk is an all-caps geometric display sans serif family of three weights, Regular, Bold and Black. The basic shape of the letters is a rectangle with rounded corners, leaving a sturdy no-nonsense look and feel. It has a distinct historic aura, but with both feet in this digital day and age. It can equally well be used for the logo of a hipster coffee place, as the cover of a historic novel. Actually, VLNL Melk kan be applied in a wide range of designs like logos, posters, flyers, book covers and magazine headlines.

Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration — particularly its weight and width proportions — can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out — the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears. Upon finishing the serif version, a sans-serif variant called Dederon Sans was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern sans serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Sans match the serif version — the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics. Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight

Follow us to the future. It is in your face. It is fashionable. It is friendly. It is fly, far-out, funkadelic, fun. But first of all, the future is fast and full. Named after the most famous Canadian rock group of all, Rush is a typeface that wants your full attention. It is square like a bodybuilder's jaw, round like a football player's muscles, and tight like an abdomen after a thousand sit-ups. It gives you plenty of attitude. It commands your respect and lets you know that if you've been thinking of giving up on macho in this brave new world, think again. It tells you that everything has an underlying engine, that every engine hums clockwise, that adrenaline is the name of the game, and if you don't like it, get your sensitive self back to your silly scripts. Rush comes in two fully interchangeable variations: Rush One and Rush Two. While Rush Two is the somewhat predictable, determined pedal-to-the-metal contemporary brute, Rush One is sharper, smarter and more sophisticated in the way it affects a design. While Rush Two's message is a straight-forward one of strength and speed belonging in an overall design, Rush One calls attention to itself first then turns on the wonder about everything surrounding it. Expertly mixing shapes from both fonts in the same word or line can achieve just that perfect form a design needs for its message. Such flexibility and distinction in character design and degree of message relay makes Rush the perfect font package for any design that has anything to do with speed, strength, and proud pursuit of adrenaline.

Runway is the font that will satisfy the need for speed in your design. Simple lines and curves, a commanding slant, and big sturdy shapes made to cruise at any speed or altitude, through summer breeze or horrible snowstorms. Runway was designed to be tight like an engine chain, powerful like the hum of the engine itself, and simply the best choice when it comes to strength and velocity in design. Initially Runway was meant to be a single font. But during the spacing and kerning stages, Patrick noticed that most of the letters, especially the vowels and the s, can clasp stylishly with the L or the T to make some really funky combinations. That's how the Alternates font was born. After building a few alternates and about 40 "clasped" combinations around the L and the T, the decision was made to take Runway to the next level: OpenType. The OpenType version of Runway is a single font that contains some serious font magic. Some of the many features the font includes: Over 430 characters for that great character map utility you have, automatic to-and-fro small-capping, discretionary ligatures that call up some pretty funky combinations automatically as you type, and a lot of stylistic and contextual alternates for many characters, ligatures and composites. If your design program of choice supports the features of OpenType fonts (Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS, InDesign CS), then you're in for a lot of enjoyment playing with Runway. For those who don't fancy OpenType or can't handle it, Runway is also available (in Regular, Caps and Alt styles) in the usual font formats for both Mac and PC.

Violety Dreams is a serene and elegant serif font that will transport your designs to a realm of beauty and sophistication. With its timeless letterforms and delicate swinging strokes on select letters, this typeface evokes a sense of tranquility and grace. This serif uniqueness in its graceful swinging strokes, which adorn certain letters, adding a touch of whimsy and charm. These elegant extensions create a sense of movement and fluidity, capturing the essence of grace and elegance. Inspired by the ethereal nature of dreams and the delicate beauty of violet flowers, Violety Dreams embodies a sense of tranquility and enchantment. The serif letterforms are meticulously crafted to exude elegance and sophistication, while the swinging strokes add a unique touch of whimsicality. This font strikes a perfect balance between classic charm and imaginative flair. The letterforms are designed with precision and clarity, ensuring legibility and readability. Each letter retains its distinctive shape, while the swinging strokes create a visual interest and draw the eye. You can use it in big text sizes to be greatly legible and enjoy the available features here. Features: Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Violety Dreams is well-suited for headings, titles, invitations, wedding stationery, luxury branding, editorial layouts, branding materials, and any design project that calls for an elegant and dreamy typography. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing

One of the most widely used typefaces in the world is actually a legacy of 18th century aesthetics, representing the spirit of late Baroque design, architecture, fashion and society. It has been created and printed for millions of readers around the world for more than two and a half centuries. It influenced many modern typographers. It shaped culture, education, entertainment and science, but also the development of typography itself. As a calligrapher and technical innovator, Baskerville invented new design, papermaking and printing methods, and his typography is very natural and legible to this day. Graphic design today calls for clean and minimalistic solutions, where the use of historical typefaces can achieve a vivid contrast with contemporary elements on the page or screen. Baskerville is undoubtedly the best choice for any kind of publishing house. In keeping with the original inventor’s spirit of excellence, we hereby offer its most advanced digital version. This is not a precise remake of rare Baskerville prints or a restoration of the original punches cut by John Handy, but rather our ideal essence of transitional typography. The old masters were limited by the technology of the time, but today we can dare to have very fine lines, unlimited ligatures, size variations and sophisticated OpenType functions. Drawing, programming, proofing and testing took us many years of development and brought thousands of new letters and dozens of language options. We are convinced that your readers will enjoy this font mainly for reading extensive works, but also for creating corporate identity, orientation systems and cultural posters. Baskerville is perfectly modern in its antiquity, striking in its modesty and timeless in its transiency.

Dick Jensen (USA) designed Serpentine, is a contemporary-looking display font, for the Visual Graphics Corporation in 1972. With the rise of digital typesetting and desktop publishing, this typeface quickly became both popular and ubiquitous. This dynamic, wide, boxy design is identifiable via tiny triangular swellings at the stroke endings - what might be called semi-serifs. Serpentine is available in six different font styles: Light, Light Oblique, Medium, Medium Oblique, Bold, and Bold Oblique. Serpentine" is a greenish rock that sometimes resembles a serpent's skin, and is often used as a decorative stone in architecture. Though this font doesn't seem at all snaky or sinuous, it does have an architectural, stone-like solidity. The subtle, almost non-existent curves and semi-serifs keep it from being too stern or cold. Although the underlying strokes of each weight are similar, the six members of the Serpentine font family all present their own individual personalities. Serpentine Light lends itself well to text for onscreen displays, for instance, while the numbers from typeface's heavier weights are seen around the world on soccer jerseys! Additionally, the oblique styles convey a streamlined sense of speed, furthermore lending Serpentine well to sport and athletic applications (especially the faster, high-speed varieties). Because of its 1970s pedigree, Serpentine has come to be known as a genuine "retro" face. This makes the typeface even more appropriate for display usage, in applications such as logo design, magazine headlines, and party flyers. If you like Serpentine, check out the following similar fonts in the Linotype portfolio: Copperplate Gothic (similar serifs) Eurostile (similar width) Princetown (another "athletic" font) Insignia (similar "techno" feeling)"

Lythmore This font is called Lythmore and is inspired by Lithos. Lithos was originally designed for Adobe by Carol Twombly in 1990, based it on the lettering from ancient Greek inscriptions. The Capitals are similar in feel and design, but is totally original and built from scratch. It is designed to be similar intentionally, but it is not a clone or rip off. Lithos is an example of a simple blocky san serif font style, with subtly concave sides, angled ends, and off centred curves. Lythmore is also an example of that same style. But is also different in places where I felt it could be improved. And it has a complete lower case set, which Lithos doesn't. I built Lythmore with 8 different weights. Lythmore can be very effective when used in advertising and general display work, but it can also be used for much more. Although it was never designed to be body copy, when used as such, it is still perfectly readable and adds its own version of sans serif style and flavour. I have included two versions of the Lythmore family. Lythmore A and Lythmore B. In the Lythmore A family, the lighter 4 weights all vary in weight in both the horizontal and vertical axis. The heavier 4 weights all vary in the horizontal axis only. In the Lythmore B family, the transition is even in both directions across the entire family. The result of this difference is that the A and B versions difference is most noticeable between the Regular and Medium weights. While the extreme ends of each family version are virtually identical.

FangsALot is a bizarre typeface family that was designed to alternate two character sets. These sets are alternated automatically in applications that support the OpenType feature Contextual Alternatives (calt). The template used to design characters is a distorted triangle that resembles a curved tooth or a fang. This shape can be flipped horizontally, vertically, and both horizontally and vertically to give four orientations. Two of these orientations are used in the regular style and two in what is called the italic style. I thought the fang motif did not come through clearly in the regular and italic styles. Rather the impression they give is more like graffiti lettering. To emphasize the fang motif I added two more members to the family by filling fang outlines with unadorned sans-serif characters. Then to allow more color in lettering, I added two more styles with letters on black. I then had six styles based on triangles skewed left and right. Why not fill the family out with three more styles based on an isosceles triangle? The end result is a family of nine. All members of the family are monospaced and are hard to read. The three graffiti-like styles have some alternative letters that can be accessed with the OpenType feature Stylistic Sets. Also, for each style it is possible to use only one set of characters by adding a space after each letter and then adjusting the character spacing. The graffiti-like styles can be useful in situations where the hard-to-read property is not important but where a menacing and vicious touch is needed, such as topics of sharks, teeth, biting, and vampires.

Roller Poster is named after Alfred Roller. In 1902, Roller created a poster to advertise the 16th exhibit of Austrian Artists and Sculptures Association, representing the Vienna Secession movement. The exhibit was to take place in Vienna during January & February 1903. The location is not mentioned because everyone in Vienna knew it would be held at the exhibit hall in the Secession Building at Friedrichstraþe 12, a few blocks south of the Opernring, near the Naschmarkt. Designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1897, the buiilding has been restored and stands today as one finest of the many fine examples of Art Nouveau architecture in Vienna (see vienna_secession_bldg.jpg). Because of its dome, it is called “the golden cabbage.” The poster itself is unique. The word “secession” is in one type style and takes up two-thirds of the elongated poster. At the bottom of the poster are the details in a different lettering style. It is this second style at the bottom that is the basis for the font Roller Poster. In keeping with our regular naming conventions, we were going to call it Roller Gezeichnete (hand-drawn), but the wonderful play on both words and the shape of the three S’s in secession was too compelling. In November 1965 there was an exhibit of Jugendstil and Expressionist art at the University of California. Alfred Roller’s Secession Poster was part of that exhibit. Wes Wilson was designing promotional material at Contact Printing in San Francisco. Among their clients was a rock promoter named Bill Graham, staging dance-concerts at Fillmore Auditorium. Wilson saw the catalog from the UC exhibit and Roller’s lettering. Wilson adapted Roller’s letter forms to his own fluid style. The result was the poster for the August 12-13, 1966 Jefferson Airplane/Grateful Dead concert at Fillmore put on by Graham (BG23-1). Wilson continued to use Roller’s letter forms on most of the posters he did for Graham through May 1967, when he stopped working for Graham. The posters were extremely successful and the lettering style along with Roller’s letter forms were picked up by other artists, including Bonnie MacLean, Clifford Charles Seeley, James Gardner, and others. The Secession poster and the Fillmore posters have inspired a number of fonts in addition to ours. Among them are JONAH BLACK (& WHITE) by Rececca Alaccari, LOVE SOLID by Leslie Carbarga and MOJO by Jim Parkinson. Each is different and yet each clearly shows its bloodlines. Our font differs in two ways: 1) the general differences in the interpretation of the letter forms and 2) the modification of the basic letter form to incorporate the diacriticals within the implied frame of the letter, after the manner of the original design by Roller. We borrowed Carbarga’s solution to the slashed O and used it, in a modified form, for other characters as well to accomplish the same purpose. We recommend that you buy ours and at least one of the other three. According to Alaccari, a version called URBAN was released by Franklin Lettering in the 70’s (and is shown on page 51 of The Solotype Catalog). For comparison of our font to original design, see image files roller_poster_2s.jpg of original poster and roller_poster_2sx.jpg showing reconstruction using our font for the lower portion (recontructed area indicated by blue bar). Please note the consistency of character width. In the lower case, 23 of the basic 26 letters are 1/2 EM Square wide. The ‘i’ is an eighth narrower, while the ‘m’& ‘w’ are one quarter wider. All the Upper Case letters are 1/8 EM wider than the lower case. This is to make it easier to fill a geometrical shape like a rectangle, allowing you to capture a little of the flavor of Wes Wilson’s Fillmore West poster using only a word processor. We have also included a number of shapes for use as spacers and endcaps. If you have a drawing program that allows you to edit an ‘envelope’ around the letters to distort their shape, you can really get creative. I used Corel Draw for the gallary images, but there are other programs that can accomplish the same thing. The image file “roller_poster_keys.jpg” shows the complete character set with the keystrokes required for each character (see “HiH_Font_readme.txt” for instruction on inserting the non-keyboard characters). The file “roller_poster_widths.jpg” shows the exact width of each character in EM units (based on 1000 units per EM square). You will notice that the font is set wide for readability. However, most programs will allow you to tighten up on the character spacing after the manner of Roller & Wilson. In MS Word, for example, go to the FORMAT menu > FONT > CHARACTER SPACING. Go to the second Drop-Down Menu, labeled ‘Spacing’ and select "condensed' and then set the amount that you want to condense ‘by’ (key on the little arrows); two points (2.0) is a godd place to start. Let your motto be EXPLORE & EXPERIMENT. Art Nouveau has always been one of my favorite movements in art -- I grew up in a home with a couple of Mucha prints hanging on the living room wall. Perhaps because of that and because I lived through the sixties, I have enjoyed researching and designing this font more than any other I have worked on. Let’s face it (pardon the pun), Roller Poster is a FUN font. You owe it to yourself to have fun using it.

Anna Gagarin is the loving matriarch of the Gagarin Family. Her life was full of love and passion. She had several affairs with Futurist and Contstructivist artist in the beginning of the 20th century. She was in love with the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovski (born on July 19th, 1893 and died in Moscow on the April 14th, 1930). She gave birth to his son Boris. She called him 'a cloud with trousers'. After this love story, Anna Gagarin met the designer and artist Gustav Klucis in Italy. His radical and political ideas were much too childish for her. After a period of love and passion Anna gave birth to his son. At that time they were in Italy, which explains his italic forms. After her return to Moscow in the beginning of the 1920's Anna was introduced by Alexander Rodchenko. They were heavenly in love but Ilja Stepanova was very jealous on her husband. Anna once said that 'Alexander fills mine construction with love...' That phrase can be an explanation for the term Constructuvism as an art movement. Alexander was the great love of Anna. She gave birth to their love-baby Dimitri Gagarin. That night Alexander designed his most famous poster. A decade before that Anna told it was
'a time for a change'. In a local bar in Sint Petersburg she met Gregory Rasputin. At that time Rasputin was a well known person and a respected member of the Sint Petersburg upper class.His diabolic character influenced Anna and after several months she gave birth to their son Kurt. He inherited the main characteristics of his father. The Gagarin Family wants to give love and wants be loved...

In 1939 the Stephenson Blake Company bought a very popular script called Undine Ronde and began marketing under the name Amanda Ronde. Although Undine/Amanda was quite popular and can be seen in many advertisements from the 1930s and 1940s, there seems to be no surviving record stating the original foundry or designer. We thought that six and half decades of dust layers over the once-popular typeface were enough, so here and now you have its complete and expanded digital incarnation, Adore. It is quite easy to see why this typeface was popular. A round script with graceful meaty curves is rarely found and can be used in plenty of applications. Wedding paraphernalia, chapter titles, posters, poetry, book covers, religious literature... you name it, Adore can fit it. Aside from its totality being unmatched by currently available designs, Adore also possesses some of the most unique and imaginative letter shapes. The narrow loops on the B, P and R, the minuscule-like Z, the looped b and d, the descending h... all these shapes contribute to a breathtaking and adorable calligraphic work unlike any other. The original design came in a basic alphabet, but we have updated it for current digital technologies, and expanded it to include plenty of alternates and ligatures, as well as some ornaments. The Postscript Type 1 and True Type versions come in two fonts, the second containing the alternates and extras, while the Open Type version is a single font containing all the alternates and extras in conveniently programmed features, easily accessible at the push of a button in OpenType-supporting software. We also encourage you to take a look at Typodermic's Mecheria font, which is further experimentation with the same letter forms, resulting in a quirky, friendly, curly, angular gothic-like creature.

Smart, legible and elegant, Gravesend Sans is a based on the unique typeface used for the iconic grass-green signage for the Southern Railway. In existence from 1923 to 1948, when the network was nationalised, the Southern Railway linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, the South coast resorts and Kent. The same design was also used for the ‘hawkeye’ signs on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, differentiated by black letters on a yellow background. Reference for each letter was taken from vintage ‘target’ station nameplates and other platform signage. The rarest letters were the Q, seen in Queens Road Battersea, the X, seen in East Brixton, and the Z, used in Maze Hill, site of an infamous train crash in 1958. Being hand-made, the letters often differ in width and thickness. There was no lower case. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, runs over part of the old Southern Railway network and uses a very similar type. The design of the numbers differed considerably, but here have been taken from the Device 112 Hours font Smokebox. As well identifying platforms, they were used on the front of the steam engine’s smokebox, hence the name, and stylistically are more in keeping with the letters than some of the squarer versions that can be seen in old photographs. William Caslon IV is credited with the first Latin sans-serif type, shown in a 1816 Caslon specimen book. ‘Two Lines English Egyptian’, as it was called, was caps-only, and there are several other correlations between that type design and this one. Includes a selection of authentic arrows and manicules, plus abbreviated ligatures such as ‘St.’ (Saint or Street) ‘Rd.’ (Road) and ‘Jn.’ (Junction). The Cameo version includes many graphic banner elements that can be freely combined.

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

Rinzler AOE is a revival of a LetterGraphics film type called Caren. A modular, mechanical, sans-serif stencil all rolled up into one retro typeface. It's not an all-purpose typeface, it's not an everyday typeface, but it is a cool typeface for the right design projects. Rinzler AOE carries itself with a bold weighted style, and stencil cutouts that don't follow standard stencil formatting. It might be considered more of a techno stencil (if there is such a thing). It reminded me in a vague way of TRON, hence the main poster graphic styling, although it looks NOTHING like the Tron titling typeface. Nevertheless, it's a fun typeface that needed to be preserved and used again. WHAT'S INCLUDED: Extensive language support. Rinzler has accented and special characters that support the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan Cornish, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Leonese, Luxenbourgish, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Walloon, & Welsh. One of my guilty pleasures is in taking the time to recreate historical typefaces as digital fonts, but a lot of incredible historical typestyles created as wood or metal or film type usually have bare bones character sets and have been lost or only exist as limited specimen proofs in old books. These typefaces may have more niché uses than modern typefaces, but I believe it is important nonetheless to preserve these typefaces for future generations. These typefaces, if nothing else, can often inspire new creations.

Night Train is a new font built from the ground up; while Night Train may resemble an old classic wood type there are a few lines that make this font a little more modern setting it apart from other wood type revivals. If you're a railroad enthusiast you're sure to enjoy the steam locomotive graphic located on the less than and greater than keys on all versions of this font, due to the fine detail of this train illustration the best printing results will be at 600dpi or higher on a laser printer. An alternate K and R are within the Night Train fonts, for Win Type1 these alternates are on the left and right bracket keys, for Truetype and OpenType you may access the alternates by using the Character Map in Windows or Adobe Illustrator, for OpenType you may also find them on the stylistic alternates page of the glyph map in Illustrator. There's something new with Night Train that the sign making people will love, for the first time FontMesa is pleased to offer a block shadowed version in four directions. One fill font is all that is needed for all four open faced fonts, you'll need an application that works in layers in order to use the fill font with the open faced fonts, simply place the fill font in its own layer then move it behind one of the open faced fonts of Night Train. The Night Train name has been on my list to use as a font name for a few years, a friend from years ago used to sail his boat in the Mackinac race from Chicago to Mackinac Island, the name of that boat was the Night Train. Watching the 2010 Olympic four man U.S. bobsled team win gold with their sled also called Night Train has inspired me to complete this font.

Circe Rounded is an extension for a popular Circe typeface, with rounded terminals. Bold and ExtraBold faces have two variants with different radius of the roundings. Circe Rounded is even more friendly than the original Circe. The typeface is designed by Alexandra Korolkova and Alexander Lubovenko and released by ParaType in 2015. It is known that the Circe typeface is distinguished by mild and humanist nature being formally a geometric sans-serif. However, as an experiment we decided to make it even softer: Circe now has a version with rounded terminals — Circe Rounded. Rounding is generally regarded as a mechanical operation, but in this case a lot of manual adjustment was needed because of the humanist nature and peculiarities of type design. Moreover, the two bold styles now have two options: a basic one is slightly rounded and an alternate one is fully rounded. In Circe Rounded we decided to dismiss characters with swashes that are rather inappropriate in such a rounded font, but the stylistic sets and alternate characters are remaining. Rounded terminals make an open and friendly typeface even more childish. For example, in quite large point sizes (because the x-height is still not big) it can be used as a body type in infant books. Circe Rounded, similar to Circe, has alternative forms of lowercase characters, which are called “infant” and are used in publications for children’s reading. However, a humanist basis is preserved alongside with its softness and it does not allow it to be as “plasticine” as many other rounded fonts. Two of the most obvious areas of possible application of Circe Rounded are everything for children and everything edible, especially all that is sweet and puff. However, we believe that there are other options.

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.

This typeface comes from a self initiated project called Sápmi, which aims to contribute to keep a group of minority languages alive through solving issues in the education environment. This re-thought edition takes the name of Aanaar and joins our library with a bigger character set and two new weights which complete the typeface providing a big typographic palette as well as adding stylistic two-story a and g for more advanced readers as well as to enable the typeface to be used in other environments. The typeface was originally designed for children’s text books. Analysing kid’s typeface design, we identified some important problems and solved them within the boundaries we had. The main concern in a typeface which will be used by children is letter recognition, as they have not yet fully develop their reading skills. For example, letters like “a” and “g” share a very similar structure in this particular kind of typefaces, where the only distinctive part is the descender of the “g”. It is known that the lower part of the letter is the less important feature when reading, therefore we decided to make a clear distinction between them by having an “a” with a spur on the top right. This also helped distinguishing “a” and “o”. Children typefaces usually have one story “a”, making “a” usually too close to “o”. Additionally we moved the joint in “a” upwards and narrowed very slightly the “a” to make sure they cannot be mistaken. More generally, the x-height is fairly tall and the typeface has a bit of movement which give it a good rhythm helping moving along nicely when reading. Aanaar consists of 5 weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black) plus two Italics (Light Italic and Italic).

Neonline is a captivating display font that combines rounded letterforms with a subtle neon-inspired style. With its elegant uppercase characters and unique design, this typeface adds a touch of sophistication and modernity to your projects. The defining feature of Neonline lies in its rounded shapes, which exude a sense of softness and approachability. Each letter is meticulously crafted with smooth curves, creating a harmonious and pleasing aesthetic. The rounded forms give the font a friendly and inviting appearance, while the subtle neon style adds a hint of excitement and vibrancy. Neonline infuses a sense of allure and intrigue into each character. The font captures the essence of neon signs, casting a subtle glow that evokes a contemporary atmosphere. The neon style adds a touch of modernity and visual interest without overwhelming the design. The uppercase letterforms of Neonline are refined and sophisticated, commanding attention with their rounded shapes. The moderate boldness of the letters strikes a balance between impact and legibility. Enjoy the various features available in this font. Features: Alternates Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Neonline perfect for headlines, branding materials, titles, and designs that call for a touch of elegance with a hint of neon inspiration. Whether you're creating posters, logos, packaging, or anything in between, this font will elevate your projects with its unique charm. It particularly shines in applications related to fashion, beauty, technology, and modern lifestyle themes. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

The sister fonts Andron 2 English and Andron 2 Deutsch provide a groundbreaking new possibility to render literature text bodies in a sophisticated traditional and yet modern way of type. In German typographic history there has once been a long-lasting struggle called the Frakturstreit (the blackletter quarrel). It was about wether German text ought to be composed in blackletter or rather in Roman type, a question upon which even Goethe, Schiller and other period celebrities got grey over time. However, blackletter type remained alive and has just recently seen an astonishing renaissance. This is not about a blackletter revisionism or some ‘mixture’ concept arguably bridging the gap between either worlds. Andron 2 English and Andron 2 Deutsch offer a new approach to circumvent that old antagonism. As for the lowercase letters I applied certain features of blackletter type onto the glyphs – but entirely abandoned the principle of the broken stroke as such. The result is a lowercase alphabet in the classical Andron style which may be considered an attractive alternative for text in English, German or even other languages. So it’s no longer entirely about choosing between ‘modern’ Roman or ‘ancient’ blackletter only. Andron 2 English Regular and Andron 2 Deutsch Regular feature the same lowercase glyphs but differ in the majuscules (Andron 2 English has normal Latin capitals). ++++ 2012 + NEW! +++ In response to its growing popularity we now present five new fonts as part of the Andron 2 series. Andron 2 English is completed by an Italic and a Bold font. Andron 2 Deutsch now contains three interesting alternative fonts: Italic, Scriptive and Laendlich. Last but not least – A new set of wonderful classical typographic ornaments is part of the Italic and Scriptive fonts. – You can also purchase these ornaments separately as “Andron Ornamente”.

Cooper Black's second coming to American design in the mid-sixties, after almost four decades of slumber, can arguably be credited with (or, depending on design ideology, blamed for) the domino effect that triggered the whole art nouveau pop poster jam of the 1960s and 1970s. By the early 1970s, though Cooper Black still held its popular status (and, for better or for worse, still does), countless so-called hippie and funk faces were competing for packaging and paper space. The American evolution of the genre would trip deeper into psychedelia, drawing on a rich history of flared, flourished and rounded design until it all dwindled and came to a halt a few years into the 1980s. But the European (particularly German) response to that whole display type trend remained for the most part cool and reserved, drawing more on traditional art nouveau and art deco sources rather than the bottomless jug of new ideas being poured on the other side of the pond. One of the humorous responses to the "hamburgering" of typography was Friedrich Poppl's Poppl Heavy, done in 1972, when Cooper Black was celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is presented here in a fresh digitization under the name Gator (a tongue-in-cheek reference to Ray Kroc, the father of the fast food chain). To borrow the title of a classic rock album, Gator is meaty, beaty, big and bouncy. It is one of the finest examples of how expressively animated a thick brush can be, and one of the better substitutes to the much overused Cooper Black. Gator comes in all popular font formats, and sports an extended character set covering the majority of Latin-based languages. Many alternates and ligatures are included in the font.

You might call this a Bodoni Ornate font that Bodoni never made, close examination of this old 1800s font and it's plain to see that the top half of the letters is very Bodoni in appearance. Apple Pie is a revival of and old font from the William Hagar Type Foundry, which I've been able to date back to 1850. The William Hagar type specimen book from the 1850s only shows this font as a caps only typeface plus numbers, later in 1869 MacKellar Smiths and Jordan offered this font with a lowercase. Over a two year period I was able to collect enough letters to begin production of this old decorative font, the type specimen books only showed a small line of text for this font so I would search through old documents on eBay and also shows relating to Ephemera. I could have easily developed a new font based on a very small sample of letters but I wanted to wait and find as many letters as possible, I was unable to find the Q, X, Z and ten lowercase letters so those missing letters are of my own design. New to this font is the addition of an all Caps Greek character set, accented letters for Eastern Central and Western European countries is also within this font. Fill fonts are available for the Apple Pie font, you will need an application that works in layers such as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Corel Graphics in order to use the Fill fonts. Some Fill fonts may be used as stand alone fonts but the versions for Apple Pie look best when layered behind the parent or main Apple Pie fonts. Be sure to check out the left and right hands located on the Less Than and Greater Than keys.

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."

Born on May 8, 1892 in Reno Nevada, Lewis Franklin (“Lew” ) Hymers left an indelible mark as a caricaturist, cartoonist and graphic artist. At the age of twenty [in 1912] he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. During World War I he worked for the Washington Post. He even was employed for a time by Walt Disney as an animator - but most of his life was spent in either Tujunga, California or his birthplace of Reno, Nevada as a self-employed illustrator. Hymers inked a feature for the Nevada State Journal called “Seen About Town”, which was published during the 1930s and 1940s. In this panel, he caricaturized many of the familiar faces around Reno. He also designed signs, logos, post cards and numerous other commercial illustrations for clients, but what has endeared him to a number of fans was his vast library of stock cuts (the predecessor to paper and electronic clip art) which feature his humorous characters in various professions and life situations. So popular is his work amongst those “in the know” that a clip art book collection of over seven hundred of his drawings that was issued by Dover Publications [but long out of print] commands asking prices ranging from just under $15 to well over $100 for a single copy. Lew Hymers passed away on February 5, 1953 just a few months shy of his 61st birthday. Although his artwork depicts the 1930s and 1940s lifestyles, equipment and conveniences, more than sixty years after his death they stand up amazingly well as cheerful pieces of nostalgia. The twenty-seven images (and some variants) in Hymers JNL were painstakingly re-drawn from scans of one of his catalogs and is but just a tiny fraction of the hundreds upon hundreds of illustrations from the pen of this prolific artist.

Gaslon is a slight reinterpretation and major expansion of a 1973 film type called Corvina Black, originally designed for VGC by A. Bihari. While the original typeface was popular in its own right, there were some things in it that were too quirky to work in the display applications it was intended for. Some of the letter combinations just didn't work to their visual optimum. For example the a and o were too similar, ditto the C and G, the E, F and J were too overwhelming to be set properly within certain display uses. Gaslon eliminates these problems by the inclusion of plenty of alternates for the vast majority of the original letters. In fact, the original a is itself now an alternate to a gorgeous new one. The Gaslon Alt font includes tremendous possibilities for both unicase use, and proper use in conjunction with the main font. This is our true homage to a typeface that had great potential more than three decades ago, but was overlooked by digitizers because of a few quirks it had in film type contexts. Full of curves and invitation, Gaslon ranks very high among the friendliest poster faces ever made. It is ideal for friendly store signs, children book covers, and plenty of other applications. In fact, if you're planning on contributing to a few protests around your neighborhood or city, you would probably be better off using Gaslon to help your sign/placard carry words and slogans that are big but friendly. Nothing beats "DOWN WITH GAS PRICES" set in a nice imaginative mix of the many Gaslon letters. The OpenType version of Gaslon is a single font that contains all the alternates and niceties programmed within features accessible by OT-friendly programs.

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “/fonts/sweet/square/” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

I hate the idea of revivals. I have publicly said I choose not to do revivals because they make me uncomfortable. This is as close as I have been to crossing my own line. To be direct, Rhythm is based on the ATF typeface, Ratio (I just recently learned the foundry of origin). I came across this typeface from a printed specimen years ago when I was in school and held onto it. It was unique and I loved how well integrated the inline worked within both the flourish and serif of the glyphs—it was old, but not, reminiscent, but fresh. My specimen was limited in the glyph offering (it was c. 1930ish) and I realized a lot would need to be done to ‘finish’ it and bring it to contemporary expectations. I didn't want to do ‘retro’ and tried to avoid the visual trappings associated with it. What I did want to do is interpret what I had in the specimen and reinterpret it digitally, refining its construction and extending its typographic equity along the way. The ‘One’ and ‘Two’ (and their matching ‘Solids’) styles diverge providing various elaborations that coordinate well between rigid bracketed serifs and compact tails. I further expanded the glyph offering to include a full diacritic set, old style numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates, swashes, titling alternates and controlled flourishes that adhere to the efficient framework of the script. And yes, I refer to it as a ‘script’ because calling it a ‘cutesy serif’ seems wrong :) I hope this is seen less as a slavish revival and more as a championing of a really unique typeface. The Original Typeface was Adastra, designed by Herbert Thannhaeuser for the Foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, Germany.