New from the Monotype Studio’s Creative Type Director, Emilios Theofanous, Touvlo – meaning brick in Greek – is an homage to London and the view from his studio window. A zestful, modern interpretation of a classic genre, Touvlo skillfully captures the spirit of early British grotesque typefaces through playful terminals and lively curves. Touvlo offers an array of styles, from clean uprights to characterful Italics, and exuberant Backslants. Its regular upright weights are optimized for long text, with prominent and visible vertical contrast, creating rhythm and texture for comfortable reading. The Italics are designed to be visibly distinct, with narrower proportions and calligraphic shapes, offering brightness and emphasis wherever needed. The Backslants are an unexpected and energetic addition, providing an element of surprise while following similar design choices as the Italics, packing a particular punch. With a total of 24 weights in 3 styles across 3 variable fonts, Touvlo’s variety adds flavor in any use case, and can withstand complex typographic layouts or unexpected and peculiar settings. Touvlo’s weights range from Thin to Black, giving it an expressive edge for headlines. Its lyrical Drop caps are the finishing touch, featuring exquisite birds and creatures inspired from ornaments found in type specimen books. Touvlo’s spirit is radiant; becoming more than a voice; a reimagining of a classic genre and a must have for every designer's typographic palette.

A font from the tube: an individual handwriting with a slightly wet character. In this case, the “pen” was a tube of black paint. It’s easy to see that you can’t really write “beautifully” with it. Nevertheless, the “Tube Script” is a beautiful, personal handwriting whose clumsy origins are not at all obvious in small font sizes. But if it’s big enough, then all the peculiarities of the paint container misused as a writing implement become apparent. Sometimes the line is very thin and delicate, sometimes it’s just a thick blob meant to represent a letter, depending on how hard the tube was squeezed. A few spills are inevitable. These coincidences of painterly writing are what make this font so appealing. This creates organic forms, random effects, breaks, streaks, where the writer normally determines the form. As such, this font is a great match for anything organic, picturesque, handmade, personal, or even random, unpredictable, or just plain natural. Hundreds of ligatures make the letters appear in a different form each time depending on it’s combination. And more than a hundred alternate characters can be selected using the corresponding OpenType features, thus enabling even more variety in the typeface. This creates the typically restless, extremely varied impression of a really individual script – almost as if it were really handwritten.

South Picene (also known as Paleo-Sabellic, Mid-Adriatic or Eastern Italic) is an extinct Italic language belonging to the Sabellic subfamily. It is apparently unrelated to the North Picene language, which is not understood and therefore unclassified. South Picene texts were at first relatively inscrutable even though some words were clearly Indo-European. The discovery in 1983 that two of the apparently redundant punctuation marks were in reality simplified letters led to an incremental improvement in their understanding and a first translation in 1985. Difficulties remain. It may represent a third branch of Sabellic, along with Oscan and Umbrian (and their dialects), or the whole Sabellic linguistic area may be best regarded as a linguistic continuum. The paucity of evidence from most of the 'minor dialects' contributes to these difficulties. The corpus of South Picene inscriptions consists of 23 inscriptions on stone or bronze dating from as early as the 6th century BC to as late as the 4th century BC. The dating is estimated according to the features of the letters and in some cases the archaeological context. As the known history of the Picentes does not begin until their subjugation by Rome in the 3rd century, the inscriptions open an earlier window onto their culture as far back as the late Roman Kingdom. Most are stelai or cippi of sandstone or limestone in whole or fragmentary condition sculpted for funerary contexts, but some are monumental statues.

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

Louisa Fröhlich’s Lisbeth is the charming all-italic trailblazer that handles branding and text with internal vividness. With no roman style, it’s an italic-only family whose creation was guided by imagination instead of restrictive writing tools. Some type families aren’t sure what they want. Lisbeth proceeds with the utmost confidence on its own terms — it’s a feisty three-dimensional thespian amidst the cast of strait-laced characters you’re used to. With branding and magazine usage in mind, Lisbeth addresses the distinct challenges of text and display in a characterful way. The curves of the text weights show a soft angularity, emphasising the handwritten quality and the subtle twist inside the letters. The stroke’s carefully balanced contrast is more pronounced in the vibrant heavier weights but almost absent in the graceful structure of the thin weight. The angle of the letters is almost upright and the x-height is relatively large, so longer texts can be read comfortably and without effort. Lisbeth is slightly condensed and so uses a smaller area to efficiently impart much information. So if a type design can be thought of as the clothing letters wear, then Lisbeth is an energetic, freely flowing stroke wrapped around practical and efficient letter proportions. Another highlight of the family is the quirky high-contrast display style, easily catching every eye. The design concept of the twisted stroke shows at the extreme here and makes the letters dance a little on the page. Even though the shapes behave wildly, every letter is carefully balanced in itself so that the rhythmic repetition of the lettershapes results in an even and harmonic total picture. Lisbeth’s five text weights (from thin to bold) perform excellently in text settings, and its funky display style amps up the internal shimmer within each glyph. It supports numerous languages (Latin-A extended) and comes with ligatures and contextual alternates to produce beautiful typography. The character set contains proportional lining and oldstyle figures, tabular figures, subscripts, superscripts, and fractions. The complete Lisbeth family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Quorthon is a collection of blackletter style fonts in 3 distinct voices – Black, Dark, and Grey. Each style has a more contemporary feel than the centuries-old blackletter standard, the capitals in particular were drawn to aid legibility in today’s world rather than to follow tradition. All the fonts contain a number of alternates that will help you embellish your typography – when used subtly, they can add flair to your titles and logo designs. BLACK is the most severe of the three styles, its lowercase forms were inspired by text I discovered on a marble tomb in a remote countryside church in England. The aggressive barbs and spurs give these fonts an imposing stature, ideal for branding, advertising and logotype, where a forceful message is required. DARK is a little more subtle, while retaining a barbed style, more contemporary serifs are present. The highly-contrasted, calligraphic glyphs are full of character and subtle nuances that give these fonts a unique personality. Again, these fonts are perfect for branding, advertising and logotype designs... and maybe even a tattoo? GREY is the softest of all the Quorthon styles, its minimal design and clean, straight lines make it ideal for creating stunning titles and headlines. It evokes the past with its blackletter pedigree, yet is imbued with a modern architectural influence. Key Features: • 15 font family – 5 weights across 3 styles • 17 Alternates in each font • Western European Language Support (Latin only) • 250+ glyphs per font.

Varidox, a variable typeface design, allows users to connect with specific design combinations with slightly varied differences in style. These variations in design enable the user to reach a wider scope of audiences. As the name suggests, Varidox is a paradox of sorts--that is, a combination of two disparate forms with two major driving influences. In the case of type design, the conflict lies in the age-old conundrum of artistic expression versus marketplace demand. Should the focus center primarily on functionality for the customer or err on the side of advancing creativity? If both are required, where does the proper balance lie? Viewed as an art, type design selections are often guided by the pulse of the industry, usually emphasizing unique and contemporary shapes. Critics are often leading indicators of where the marketplace will move. Currently, many design mavens have an eye favoring reverse stress. However, these forms have largely failed to penetrate the marketplace, another major driving factor influencing the font world. Clients now (as well as presumably for the foreseeable future) demand the more conservative forms of monoline sans serifs. Typeface designers are left with a predicament. Variable typefaces hand a great deal of creative control to the consumers of type. The demands of type design critics, personal influences of the typeface designer and the demands of the marketplace can all now be inserted into a single font and adjusted to best suit the end user. Varidox tries to blend the extremes of critical feature demands and the bleeding edge of fashionable type with perceptive usability on a scalable spectrum. The consumer of the typeface can choose a number between one and one-thousand. Using a more conservative style would mean staying between zero and five hundred, while gradually moving higher toward one thousand at the high end of the spectrum would produce increasingly contemporary results. Essentially, variable fonts offer the ability to satisfy the needs of the many versus the needs of the few along an axis with a thousand articulations, stabilizing this delicate balance with a single number that represents a specific form between the two masters, a form specifically targeted towards the end user. Practically, a user in some cases may wish to use more conservative slab form of Varidox for a more conservative clientele. Alternatively, the same user may then choose an intermediate instance much closer to the other extreme in order to make a more emphatic statement with a non-traditional form. Parametric type offers a new options for both designers and the end users of type. In the future, type will be able to morph to target the reader, based on factors including demographics, mood or cultural influences. In the future, the ability to adjust parameters will be common. With Varidox, the level of experimentality can be gauged and then entered into the typeface. In the future, machine learning, for example, could determine the mood of an individual, their level of experimentality or their interest and then adjust the typeface to meet these calculated parameters. This ability to customize and tailor the experience exists for both for the designer and the reader. With the advent of new marketing technologies, typefaces could adjust themselves on web pages to target consumers and their desires. A large conglomerate brand could shift and adapt to appeal to a specific target customer. A typeface facing a consumer would be more friendly and approachable, whereas a typeface facing a business to business (B2B) customer would be more businesslike in its appearance. Through both experience, however, the type would still be recognizable as belonging to the conglomerate brand. The font industry has only begun to realize such potential of variable fonts beyond simple visual appearance. As variable font continues to target the user, the technology will continue to reveal new capabilities, which allow identities and layouts to adjust to the ultimate user of type: the reader.

From today's point of view Katarine has a rather unusual origin. Initially an all-caps display face, what was to become the Medium weight of the family was augmented with a lower case, then the character set was completed by adding all the missing glyphs. The next step was the creation of the Light and the Bold weights with matching Italics. This working method compromised the relationships between the characters across the different weights After some consideration the decision was made to start over and draw the complete family from scratch. This time the "conventional" process was followed — first the Light and Bold weights were designed. Those extremes were used to interpolate the Regular, Medium and Semibold weights. When compared to the original, the glyphs of the new fonts are slightly wider. The construction of the letters is sturdy, with an x-height that varies from the heaviest to the lightest weights. The relationship of the stem weight between the horizontal and vertical strokes is carefully balanced. Characters are open and firm; the italics have room to breathe. The original fonts included two sets of small caps — Small Caps and Petite Caps. However neither set were suited for emphasis, with the Small Caps being too tall and the Petite Caps too short. We decided to replace them both with one set of traditional small caps, slightly taller than the x-height, perfectly suited for emphasis in text usage. The original version of Katarine was partly incorporated into the new OpenType versions. Thus most of the original arrows, frames and boxes can be found in the new Katarine. Each individual weight now contains 830 glyphs, nine sets of numerals, small caps, numerous ligatures and fractions. An additional font named Numbers contains numerals in circles and squares, and is now augmented with accented caps and a number of terminal alternatives, which can easily be accessed through stylistic sets. We also added two extra variants, Experts Regular and Experts Black (in inverted form). Katarine Std preserves the solid construction and excellent legibility of the original family, but has now become a fully featured OpenType typeface. Katarine is suited for a broad range of applications, from simple layouts to intricate corporate systems. It is the typeface of choice where the cold, austere character of modern sans serifs are inappropriate, yet simple shapes and good legibility are required.