The design of the first "Fat Face" is credited to Robert Thorne just after 1800 in England. It is considered to be the first type style designed specifically for display or jobbing, rather than for book work. The first instance of Fat Face in wood type is found in the first wood type specimen book ever produced: Darius Wells, Letter Cutter 1828. This style was produced by all early wood type manufacturers. The style is derived from the high contrast, thick and thin Modern style of Bodoni and Didot developed only decades previously. The extended variation makes the face even more of a display type and not at all suitable for text. This type of display type was used to compete with the new Lithographic process which allowed for the development of the poster as an artform unto itself. This new digitization by Jim Lyles most closely follows the Wm Page cut. The crisp outlines hold up at the largest point sizes you can imagine. This font contains a full CE character set.

The Roman alphabet has seen endless variations in interpretations of its classical form, and various wood type styles managed to explore everything from XXX condensed to hyper extended and expanded. This delicate and handsomely proportioned extended Roman was issued by Page Manufacturing Co. in 1872 and released as simply “No. 251” after Page was acquired by Hamilton. It is a rare font to find in print shops, most likely due to the very fine lines that would no doubt be less durable that bolder gothic jobbing fonts. While being quite wide, it still holds the elegant grace of wide Romans such as Craw Modern. This new digitization features a full Western and Eastern European Character set as well as ligatures and alternate characters.

An expanded caps-only cross-stitch font, based on a mid-20th century embroidery pattern. Use it in large sizes for advertising, posters, greeting cards, etc.

Benton Modern was first prepared as a text face by Font Bureau for the Boston Globe and the Detroit Free Press. Design and proportions were taken from Morris Fuller Benton’s turn-of-the-century Century Expanded, drawn for ATF, faithfully reviving this epoch-making magazine and news text roman. The italic was based on Century Schoolbook. These display cuttings were prepared by Dyana Weissman and Richard Lipton; FB 2008

Destroy, destroy, destroy. Insurgent was expanded to include extended Latin, extended Cyrillic and Greek alphabets so it will work with most languages in Europe and the Americas.