Ornata B is the second of a series of old ornaments that I am trying to save from oblivion. I am not just scanning these, I am completely redesigning the ornaments from scratch, thereby eliminating imperfections. These ornaments have been first designed by the Elzevier printer family from the Netherlands. The designs date back til the 17th century and I think they just had to be saved. Your digitizing type-designing savior, Gert Wiescher

Fifteen hundred years from now, a man will be selected to go back in time to prevent a catastrophic event which turned his world into a dystopia. Sent back in time, he was enveloped in empyrean fire, the strands of energy that make up time itself. Crash-landing near Astro City in late 1985, he learned how to master and channel the empyrean forces that had suffused his body -- finally learning to control his powers in time to prevent the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the event he had been sent to avert. He described himself to journalists as nothing more than "a Good Samaritan", and has continued to help his fellow man in Astro City ever since. John JG Roshell has also been struggling with the empyrean challenge of fitting all of Kurt Busiek's Astro City dialogue into balloons with the regular Samaritan font, so he created the Samaritan Tall font to help his fellow comic book letterers! It's kinda the same thing really. See the families related to Samaritan Tall: Samaritan &

Guilloches were – in the old days – used to make the falsification of banknotes more difficult. The engraving of these intricate lines was done by a highly specialized mechanical machine, which was operated by an equally highly specialized engraving artist. Once the settings for a specific curve were changed back to zero it was very difficult, if not impossible to set them back to the old design. I have designed a useful set of Guilloches that join to form ribbons that create a kind of op-art 3d effect. Under the keys A-U and a-u you find joining pieces. Under the keys V-Z and v-z I placed start- and endpieces. 0-4 are different lenght straight extensions and 5-9 are not quite so straight extensions. All other keys are corner pieces that can be used as stand-alones or put in rows to make for superb decoration. With a little bit of experimentation and maybe colored overlays you can achieve super-phantastic designs. Your elegant type designer Gert Wiescher.

A little more flower and a little less power, please. Fun, friendly, fashionable, and feminine to a fault, Jojo takes display typography to a whole new level, where eyes can’t help but appreciate the day and the design at hand. It takes a graphic designer very little imagination to see these letters on posters, book covers, clothes, and craft paraphernalia. Or how about a sign over a bakery? A music sleeve? A romantic comedy titling? Cosmetics products? Pretty much anywhere! Jojo takes its name from a Beatles song about getting back to where we once belonged. It also takes most of its shapes from vintage photo-setting days, when an art nouveau typeface called Spring, by B. Jacquet, was putting happy times back where they belonged, which was everywhere. The original photo-setting face came in just 26 letters and 10 numerals. This digital retooling optimizes the original forms and expands on them, for a full character set of over 430 glyphs, including ligatures and stylistic alternates, and support for the majority of Latin languages.

Palms & Chill is a laid-back and stylish script font that effortlessly captures the essence of tropical vibes and relaxation. With its fluid strokes and casual letterforms, this font transports your designs to a sun-soaked paradise, making it the perfect choice for projects that exude a carefree and easygoing aesthetic. Inspired by the leisurely swaying of palm trees and the warmth of a tropical breeze, Palm & Chill is an invitation to infuse your designs with a touch of coastal charm. Its versatility makes it suitable for a range of applications, from beach party invitations to vacation-themed branding and social media graphics. The breezy, handwritten quality of Palm & Chill adds a personal touch to your designs, making them feel approachable and inviting. Whether you're creating logos for beachside cafes or designing laid-back apparel, this font brings a sense of relaxed sophistication to your projects. Embrace the chill vibes of Palm & Chill script font and let your creativity flow as you craft designs that transport your audience to a world where every day feels like a beach day."

Built of all straight lines, Elegeion Script -- inspired by retro printers' scripts with a dash of calligraphy and handwriting thrown in -- mimics the imperfections and irregularities of old letterpress printing. Even better, it comes with lots and lots of swashy alternate characters and ligatures, including a full set of "long s" ligatures.

In its heyday, the Starlight Room of the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City quite frequently printed lunch and dinner menus for not only their rotating bill of fare, but also for special events held there. The 1937 Electrolux (Eastern) Appreciation Banquet has its own menu cover, and the lettering was in a simple, yet Art-Deco influenced condensed block design with squared features. This simple and quirky typeface has been digitally redrawn as Sales Convention JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Densa font family has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells in 2020. It is a condensed sans serif typeface with some unconventional display endings. Its condensed design makes it very effective for space economizing and its display features make it a very interesting option for display usages such as logos, packaging and posters. It has been conceived to be most suitable for headlines and short length text blocks. Densa consists of 8 styles. Each containing small caps and glyph coverage for several languages.

Maybe I should have named this font “Communist Block”. But it also works well for Colonial-style tavern signs. It’s square, geometric and rigid, and is the perfect thing for totalitarian themes. The family consists of three fonts: Kolega (“Comrade” in Polish), Kolega Tall, and Kolega Podrobska (Fake Comrade). Kolega and Kolega Tall are fully charactered with U.S., European, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs. The latter font is meant to use in English only; although it contains many accents and character variations, they mean nothing. It’s a joke.

SS Vortax is a space-age themed display sans featuring broad strokes and tight spacing. This close relative of Galaxus features imposing Capitals with some sharp slants in the Italic version. It’s designed to cover horizontal blocks effortlessly. Most characters have curves on the exterior with right angles on the interior. This dynamic contrast makes it a great choice for a video game/app, toy packaging, or sports logo. SS Vortax is equipped with European accents for international support. Please check glyph maps for all supported characters.

Around 1931, the Los Angeles Times (in partnership with the Richfield Oil Company) installed on its building a moving message board similar to the one at the New York Times in New York City which they dubbed an “electric newspaper”. The style of characters used on this electronic sign were the basis for the namesake font Electric Newspaper JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. A blank space to place between words is available on both the solid bar and broken bar keystrokes.

Tecnica font family has been designed for Graviton Font Foundry by Pablo Balcells. It is a modular, geometric, sans serif typeface with a slightly condensed design and subtle rounded angles. It has been conceived to be most suitable for all sized headlines, as well as short and middle length text blocks. The standard styles give texts a classic appearence while alternate styles give texts a playfull one. Tecnica consists of 4 styles, 2 weights plus alternates, each containing small caps and glyph coverage for several languages.

Telephone Extended is a geometric semi-slab family with block serifs positioned to assist wordflow. The typeface evolved from an italic wordmark designed in 1966 for the British GPO by the Banks & Miles agency to publicize all-figure telephone dialling (all-number calling), and the new fonts retain that italic spirit, even in the upright romans. The squarish glyphs, with a mix of rounded and angular corners, have a post-modern feel suggesting technological advance, innovation and vitality. A normal width family, Telephone, is also available.

Bullish is a clean, contemporary, geometric font family. There are 12 fonts in the Bullish family, Light, Medium and Bold. Each with a lower case, small caps, lower case oblique and small caps oblique. The small caps versions have small caps in place of the lower case alphabets. The lower case and small caps versions have the same uppercase alphabet, numbers, punctuation, symbols and miscellaneous characters. The Bullish fonts are ideal for headlines, titles, branding, small blocks of text or wherever a fresh font is desirable.

Telephone is a geometric semi-slab family with block serifs positioned to assist wordflow. The typeface evolved from an italic wordmark designed in 1966 for the British GPO by the Banks & Miles agency to publicize all-figure telephone dialling (all-number calling), and the new fonts retain that italic spirit, even in the upright romans. The squarish glyphs, with a mix of rounded and angular corners, have a post-modern feel suggesting technological advance, innovation and vitality. A wide version, Telephone Extended, is also available.

The font was intended primarily to have a stronger body. It has a simple geometrical surface. This font has a strong personality, that makes it perfect for use in headline sizes but means it also works gracefully within text blocks. Finalists Round Slab is carefully crafted and a unique slab serif. Use for websites, print, motion graphics, logo design, packaging design, t-shirts and more. **UPDATES:** -16 Agust 2021: New version 2.0 Variable Font -28 January 2022: Some bug fixes You can enjoy using it.

Stylish, elegant, and alluring, Sekhmet got its name from the lion-headed war goddess of ancient Egypt. And the typeface does possess a kind of feline, forward-directed energy - a result of its calligraphic detailing combined with a very slight slope in the roman. Sekhmet is essentially a display face; still, it's as carefully crafted as any of the designer's text fonts and so also works well in reasonably large text blocks, especially at larger point sizes. Comes with a book-weight roman and calligraphic italic.

Rossika is a four-style typeface designed by Oleg Karpinsky in 2002-2004 for the ParaType company. The general design and some letterforms were borrowed from antique Russian typefaces of XV-XVIII centuries. For example, the upper Cyrillic N has a diagonal stem, a tail of Ц character is attached in the center unlike major contemporary designs. Some characters have alternatives. There are several Latin and Cyrillic ligatures. Rossika is intended for logos, headlines and short text blocks: posters, calendars, post cards, diplomas, certificates and the like.

The symbols in ITC TotSpots include everything from a child's life, except maybe the mess. In this font you'll find diaper pins, alphabet blocks, teddy bears, and even an inchworm-everything a digital baby would need. Polish-Canadian designer Victor Gad has specialized in editorial illustration, and also has extensive experience in poster design. These illustrations maintain his original sketchbook quality, despite being digital renderings. ITC TotSpots offers a clear, new style of symbols, which might be the perfect fit for your next project!

Transitional serif font inspired by the italian’s lettering tradition, in particular by the street sign letters you can find around Florence. All elements are designed to be elegant and easy-to-read, even in a long blocks of text. -- The HT Fera Text is freely inspired by the typographical tradition of Florence's municipality and its streets. Letters shape, contrasts, junctions, stems, teardrops, they are all the result of careful research carried out on the Dante's streets, redesigned in a contemporary mood. -- hype-type.com / kidstudio.it

Leo Slab is a clean, contemporary slab-serif font. It's bold extended design makes it a perfect choice for headline and larger text block use. Extremely readable for a strong impact! Leo Ornate is a decorative companion to Leo Slab. With it's detailed inlines and linear drop shadow, Leo Ornate is ideally suited for use on headlines, display titles, logos, as well as a variety of other applications. Bold, extended and robust, this font is sure to make a strong impact in your next design.

Zootype –the first original single font– was designed in 1997 by Victor Garcia of Argentina and as a winner of Linotype's Second International Type Design Contest is included in the TakeType Library. The three additional family styles –Zootype Air, Zootype Land, Zootype Water– were added in 1999. In the words of the designer, the design concept is meant to display the funny, happy joy of animal nature.’ Animal heads peek into the block forms of the letters, giving the font a unique whimsical character.

Whitehaven is the spirit of the Art Deco movement made into a very solid and blocky Sans Serif font. The name owes its inspiration to Whitehaven Mansions, a block of flats where that greatest of 1930s detectives, Hercule Poirot lived. Use this to make bold statements, to give posters and designs a taste of thee 30s, and wherever you want to be clear and definitive. Whitehaven is offered in two widths and a range of embossed and engraved styles for flexibility in design work.

Sovba is an amiable rounded sans-serif inspired by handwriting. Sovba is useful for a look that is uniquely casual, fresh and smooth. Sovba simplifies character forms down to their basic characteristics, and has a strong, silky smooth forward motion. Sovba includes more traditional optional alternates for a number of characters, including the ëEí and ëF,í OpenType alternate characters, old style figures and small caps. Sovba is a fine choice when you require a versatile upright oblique for logotypes, headlines or short blocks of text.

Remember clear summer days as a kid? Remember open fields that you explored? Sun shining? Simple breezes sweeping past your face as you ran far and free? The feeling was uncomplicated and enjoyable. It was natural. That’s Verao, the simple spirit of summer. Alive and vibrant, Verao takes a turn away from the cold structure of today’s rigid creations and embraces the movement back to the value of things handmade. This artisan creation represents the rare, soul-invested fusion of the craftsman’s tools, materials, and hand movements, which shapes the solid--but beautifully defined--parts, pieces that, when put together, breathe a measure of life into everyday paragraphs and other bodies of text. Verao’s hand-written brush script, with its characters’ imperfect elegance and handmade quality, keeps your work looking organic. Write a word in more than a hundred different ways thanks to the large number of extra letters it offers. Two sets of lowercase alternative letters without connectors are included as is a set of swashed endings. Verao contains stylistic substitutions and ligatures, too, that you can combine however you like. Whichever way you design, the elements continue to appear balanced and separate and will undoubtedly add more personality to your design. So stop switching out cogs in your rigid set of fonts. Take time again to play with a natural face that’s both easy and energetic. Verao’s great temperament makes it a joy to design with. Let this spirit of summer take you away from the mundane. There’s a good chance Verao will lead you where you need to go. Production assistance from Lucas Azevedo.

Mackay is a powerful transitional serif in 6 weights plus matching italics, designed for screen and print. The eccentric serifs on uppercase letters like E, F, L and T are inspired by Alexander Kay’s “Ronaldson” from 1884, working as the starting point for the family. The lowercase letters follow the traditional Antiqua model with attributes tracing back to drawings from the early 20th century. The “grotesk” lowercase a, as well as the sharp lowercase s, derived from the closed shapes of uppercase letters like C, G or S, create a compact and bold appearance while a large x-height and small descenders add a modern look. In favor of a dynamic and elegant impression, the design of the italic cuts come with a strong calligraphic influence. This results in completely new shapes for letters like lowercase a or g, ensuring a smooth integration into their surrounding letters while maintaining a distinctive appearance when combining with romans. The family comes with a variety of opentype features like case sensitive shapes, old style figures, fractions, ordinals and many more. Additional attention was given to the standard and discretionary ligatures, extending the structure of the basic glyphs with elegantly designed letter combinations for g/i, i/t or s/t. According to their dynamic architecture, the italic weights are equipped with additional initial swash characters to subtle accentuate the calligraphic roots. As a result of a high stroke contrast the family works great in paragraphs with medium to large font sizes like headlines, short paragraphs or logos. With its 12 cuts, the family meets all requirements on high quality typography.

Style and elegance in 14 styles PS Fournier, created by Stéphane Elbaz, is designed in tribute to Pierre Simon Fournier. Fournier was the prolific Parisian type designer whose work is best known for its iconic representation of French transitional style. PS Fournier elegantly represents the transition to the modern era of typography. Featuring three optical sizes, PS Fournier is designed to perform in any context. The Pierre Simon Fournier heritage Pierre Simon Fournier (1712—1768) was a leading innovative type designer of the mid-18th century. Early in his career, the young Pierre Simon developed a strong aesthetic that he cultivated throughout his life. His art is representative of the pre-revolutionary “Age of Enlightenment” (Siècle des Lumières). Precursor of the Modern style, Fournier’s body of work deeply influenced his times, and created the fertile ground from which the Didot family and Giambattista Bodoni developed their own styles. During the historical period of the 18th century, Fournier exemplified the intellectual pursuits of the times with his own research on type, documenting in detail the typefounding process. He also offered a unique vision: he is the first to clearly comprehend the concept of “type family,” sorting a set of similarly styled alphabets by sizes, width, and by x-heights. In addition, Fournier is one of the earliest advocates of the point system to organize the practice of typography, the point system that contemporary typographers continue to use to this day. The refined and discreet elegance of PS Fournier With a close look at the family, one finds you’ll find that the difference between the optical sizes (Petit, standard and Grand) is more than a contrast variation between the thin and the thick; the eye can also denote a palette of distinct tones: More streamlined and robust in the smaller sizes (Petit), more refined and detailed in the larger sizes (Grand). The PS Fournier standard family is designed to adapt to any situation with its intermediate optical size, from body copy to headlines. With a bit of tracking, PS Fournier Petit will make the smallest captions perfectly readable. However, Petit family is not limited to body and captions — its “slabby robustness” will make a relevant headline choice as well. PS Fournier Grand presents a higher contrast adapted to large text sizes, displays or banners. Its refined elegance makes it a perfect choice for Design, Fashion or Luxury publications. As a “modern” type PS Fournier Grand features a larger x-height than the preexistent old style typefaces such as Garamond or Jenson. These proportions provide any basic text set in PS Fournier Grand a strong typographic texture. As a result, the PS Fournier global family is a versatile alternative to the Modern typefaces commonly used in the publishing industry. The optical sizes, the large range of weights, and the design variations make this family adaptable to captions, paragraphs, and pages, as well as to large texts and displays. A leading-edge typography in the 18th century In the spirit of modernity, Pierre Simon Fournier did not find any use for the conventional swashes still produced by peers such as Caslon or Baskerville. Nevertheless the French designer created many inventive elements to decorate the page and set delightful variations in the text itself. To this regard PS Fournier includes a large set of glyphs variations, ligatures and more than one hundred glyphs for borders, rules and ornaments or — as called in French — “vignettes.” PS Fournier: A tribute to the French modern typography era by Stéphane Elbaz

Originally created for Sound Effects in Marvel's GHOST RIDER 2099, our spraycan stylish HOOKY font has just the right Scrawl of the Wild for graph-iti enthusiasts everywhere -- and they wash right off with just a little splash of 'delete'. Spray it, don't Say it!

Originally created for Sound Effects in Marvel's GHOST RIDER 2099, our spraycan stylish HOOKY font has just the right Scrawl of the Wild for graph-iti enthusiasts everywhere -- and they wash right off with just a little splash of 'delete'. Spray it, don't Say it!

Get your Aussie on! The new typeface, Ainslie, with its mix of influences from Oz, makes its mark as the first semi-serif from insigne Design. Ainslie, named for Mt. Ainslie and Canberra’s inner suburb of the same name, was originally developed for the Canberra Australia Centennial Typeface Competition. Canberra is Australia’s capital, and it’s a planned city designed by American Walter Burley Griffin, a contemporary and one-time associate of Frank Lloyd Wright. Griffin’s plan involved a distinctly geometric design with several focal points--one of which was Mt. Ainslie. This same purely geometric scheme is now the basis for insigne’s new release. Similar to the Chatype project in its scope, its challenge, and the way its concept was developed, Ainslie incorporates influences from Canberra and surrounding areas to form a font that is uniquely Australian. In comparison, Chatype was developed for the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee by insigne in conjunction with designer Robbie de Villiers. Chatype took elements from Chattanooga’s industrial character and Cherokee past and merged them with the area’s technological influences. Likewise, Ainslie takes Canberra’s distinct, geometric design and blends it with the organic, flowing effect of aboriginal art. Add in touches from the smooth, aerodynamic design of the boomerang and Ainslie gives you a look uniquely Australian yet usable in a wide range of applications. The fashionable typeface includes a multitude of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType-enabled application. These stylish alternates along with a number of swashes as well as meticulously refined details with ball terminals and alternate titling caps keep the font well accessorized. Also included are capital swash alternates, old style figures, and small caps. Peruse the PDF brochure to see these features in action. OpenType enabled applications such as the Adobe suite or Quark can take full advantage of the automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also offers the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. While Ainslie wasn't selected as the final font in the Canberra competition, the outcome allowed for additional adjustments to the typeface. Several approaches were attempted for the final product including a technological hexagonal concept, which may still be developed to another form later. Some of the organic forms were removed and substituted with more abrupt endings, leaving the face looking pretty spiffy and a fair bit more legible. In the end, Ainslie was pulled back to the basic forms from which it was started. Give it a go for your next project. It’s guaranteed to be anything but a barbeque stopper.

ITC Stranger is the work of California designer Jill Bell, a slashing, almost menacing calligraphic typeface in a narrow, upright style. In small sizes, the strokes themselves draw more attention than the letterforms. In larger sizes, the effect is a little rougher and more diffuse, as the bristled ends of some strokes become apparent.

Bedtime Jewel was inspired by a kids drawing in the kindergarten, and I did my best to keep the childish approach while keeping the legibility. The result is a charming and naive font with a adventurous twist. Every lowercase letter has 3 different versions and capital letters R, K and Q has a swashy tail.

Bellino is a well-crafted script typeface. Drawn by Måns Grebäck during 2018, this high-quality font has beautiful letter shapes and swashy capitals. Use one or more underscores after any word to underline. Example: Bellino___ The font contains stylistic, initial and final alternates, as well as ligatures. It also has extensive language support.

Basique Pro is a modern, geometric sans serif font family. It contains more than 1000 characters including the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabet. There are also 14 OpenType features (Superior; Inferior; Numerator; Denominator; Fraction; Tabular Lining; Slashed Zero; Small Capital; Small Capitals from Capitals; Standard Ligature; Case Sensitive; Ordinals; Access All Alternates; Stylistic Set)

Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023