On a cold winter's night, George Ryan, of Galápagos Design Group, began musing on the possibilities for a “truly original” sans serif typeface. What came out of his musing, and his always-present sketchpad, was ITC Adderville, a typeface whose visual impact is immediate and strong. Ryan explains how he did it: “The rounded ends of its strokes and their skewed baseline contact create an illusion of dancing feet. The tops of lowercase stems emit serif buds, suggesting transition into or out of the serifed form. The spear-like lowercase stroke terminators, along with other distinctive elements such as the stylized reticulation of the lowercase 'g' segments, the salute of that same character's spur, and the bold, non-self-conscious 'i' and 'j' dots, all contribute to the playful and unique nature of this design.” The result is a friendly, lively type family whose graduated weights -- book, medium, and heavy -- lend themselves especially well to use at small display sizes and in short blocks of text.

ITC Abaton, by Argentinian designer Luis Siquot, is an exercise in geometry and simplification. “It is done,” says Siquot, “with few elements, with modules of only straight lines (horizontals, verticals and diagonals of almost 45 degrees). Drawing the I and the O, I got the basic elements, and so started the fight between strict geometry and optical impression, until I obtained the rest of the characters.” The basic rectangular form is characterized by wedge-shaped serifs, almost like caps on the heads and feet of the letters. “Abaton has the 'spirit' of 19th-century faces used on money bills or postage stamps, but the realization is totally different,” Siquot explains. Abaton is a “shaded” typeface of caps and slightly smaller caps, upright and slightly condensed in form. Although the letterforms are legible at small sizes, the shading tends to clog up if it gets too small, so Abaton is happiest as a distinctive display face.

ITC Noovo is from British designer Phill Grimshaw and grew out of his work on ITC Rennie Mackintosh. He says, I still had 'Nouveau' coming out of my ears" and he drew it after a series of computer-intensive projects, "when I was missing the smell of permanent marker pens and the feel of paper." ITC Noovo is highly stylized yet works as both a text and display typeface."

Pacella was designed by Vincent Pacella and fashioned in the tradiation of Century Schoolbook, Corona and Nimrod. Pacella maintains high legibilty and exhibits a character and personality all its own.

ITC Merss proves that sometimes accidents work out just fine. Late one evening Eduardo Manso, an Argentinean graphic and type designer, spilled coffee on his desk. When he began to wipe up the mess, he noticed that one of the splashes looked like a roman letter 'l' - complete with serifs. This triggered his imagination. “What if a complete alphabet was created with this same irregular flow to the character designs?” ITC Merss was the result of Manso's experiments with “fluid” letter shapes. The oddly handsome design looks aged and spontaneous at the same time. Its irregular texture is striking-the result of careful modeling of character shapes. While Manso wanted to maintain the free-form character of spilled liquid, he also knew the individual letters had to work together with an underlying harmony. When not experimenting with typefaces - or spilled coffee - Manso creates award-winning graphic and publication designs. A contributor to the design magazine el Huevo (the Egg), he also writes articles on type and typography and is part of the publication's design team.

ITC Jaft is the work of New York designer Frank Marciuliano, an adventurous, energetic display typeface. It began with a series of posters designed by Marciuliano for the New York Times. The lettering was drawn with a bamboo pen and then filled in to create the unusual angles that give ITC Jaft its unique look.

ITC Farmhaus is the work of British designer Tim Donaldson and is, in his own words, Neil Young meets Paul Renner." Donaldson borrowed the perfect circles and clean lines of Renner's drawings for Futura and gave them jagged edges and uneven, thick strokes. Farmhaus contains one set of capitals and two sets of lower case letters."

ITC Kristen is the work of American designer George Ryan. He describes it as not your average text or display font." The inspiration for the design came from the handwritten menu at a neighborhood restaurant. With time, the forms moved away from the originals and towards something more like a child's scrawl. The result is singularly unique. ITC Kristen remains legible without losing any charm.

With you is a sweet brushed handwritten font. Its natural and unique style makes it incredibly fitting to a wide spectrum of ideas. Thank You, Subectype

ITC Redonda is the work of Montreal designer Gerard Mariscalchi and based on a common style of 19th century French handwriting. It comes with two sets of caps, both highly flourished, which are complemented by a refined lowercase. ITC Redonda is a distinctive upright script with intricate forms and will lend elegance to any application.

ITC Esprit is the work of designer Jovica Veljović and blends the classic proportions of a serif typeface with the grace and charm of calligraphy. Highly legible even in small point sizes, the font can also be used as an impressive display face for use with sans serif text. In 2010 Veljovic revised this family and released this as ITC New Esprit.

ITC Rastko began as a series of initial letters for a book of poetry. Serbian designer Olivera Stojadinovic had been working with a small publishing house creating a special series of books under the Masterpieces" brand. Her goal was to draw a new set of initial letters for each book. ITC Rastko, named after the Serbian poet Rastko Petrovic, was a project that required initial letters for the entire alphabet. Once Stojadinovic had drawn the majority of the capital letters, she realized that a companion lowercase would make a distinctive script typeface. Sketches of the letters were drawn quickly with a pointed pen. Stojadinovic then refined these, keeping the spontaneous, hand-drawn quality. Capitals are wide and flourished, while the lowercase letters are more condensed and subdued. It's no surprise that the capitals also make great initial letters."