The ornamented and magnificent type design used with the color plates of Owen Jones' “The Grammar of Ornament” has served as a model for this nineteenth century typeface. Astoria Antique possesses an intricate and spidery-like quality. Its v-shaped wedge endings make it look like something straight out of an old curiosity shop. In addition, lowercase letters have been added for design convenience. Astoria Antique will make a great choice whenever a period or Victorian look is desired. Astoria Antique is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

The new OpenType font Shrub feels like a printed, textural typestyle, influenced by the great slab-serif fonts of the 20th century and organic, messy effects of old Xerox copiers. You might call this one a “multi-messter font” because it not only comes grainy and coarse, but also features a special stylistic alphabet set to add extra schmutz as you see fit. Users of Adobe’s Creative Suite applications can access this feature as either “Stylistic Set #1” in InDesign or “Stylistic Alternates” in Illustrator. The extra blotches can be turned on or off as you see fit. Put a little organic texture mixed with old-school legibility to make you flyers and other designs look like they were really printed! Shrub speaks with a compelling, grounded personality in a voice that’s easy to read.

Gik is sans serif font family with modular aesthetic and the elegance of contemporary typography. Its compositional and plastic solution combines echoes of (de)constructivism, brutalism, de Stijl and other manifestations of 20th century antiquity + techniques characteristic of italics. But this does not make the font old-fashioned — on the contrary, it helps to understand how to use it. Gik is a product of the metamodernism era — it is on the border between modernist enthusiasm and postmodernist mockery, between simplicity and awareness, wholeness and cleavage, clarity and ambiguity — a kind of conceptual oxymoron. Looking at Gik, you could imagine it at Fashion Week, if there was one for typography. Gik has a message for both the designer and the viewer, it stimulates the imagination, it is the anthology of all fonts of the future.

Restaglion is old-modern serif font with single weight only, it has been inspired by the modern classification of serif typeface in early 20th century. Restaglion is designed to look very fluid and combined with some connected letters, which makes beauty rhythmic of the letters. This typeface is suitable for short-text design, like headlines, logos, and brand names. If you need a multi-weight of this font, just tell us! What you get : Standard glyphs Ligatures (OpenType features) International Accents Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and even works on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters - Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support Image used: All photographs/pictures/vectors used in the preview are not included, they are intended for illustration only. Thank You.

Some years ago I had my first contact with a grotesque typeface, when handling a sample catalog of typographic specimens from the age of phototypesetting. The style eventually settled in my memory waiting for the work of time. Behind its apparent neutrality, there is a complex balance game, that almost leads to the basic principles of design which deliver such power to the grotesque style. Stevie Sans is the answer to the action of time. A bridge that allows the designer to go into the past, while being in the present and looking towards the future. It is what it’s expected from a grotesque designed in the 21st century. With 7 roman styles ranging from thin to black, support to many languages and essential opentype features, Stevie Sans is the ideal choice for your project.

The purpose of Brutman was to create a typeface that reimagined the incise style for the 21st century. Its roots emerge from the humanistic style, adopting the structures of the roman capitals for the upright version and some features of the chancery style for the italics. On the other side, its contours are forged by the frankness of the brutalist style, which can be seen in the asymmetrical flared terminations, the sharp shoulders and the diagonal cuts that emulate the stress of the broad nib pen. The result is a typeface that combines a sleek character with a historical flair. It conveys a feeling of modernity and sophistication when it comes to shine in big sizes, but on the functional size has sharp shapes that make it perform very well on small ones.

Are you getting bored by the growing number of sans-serif fonts that absolutely lack character? Do clean typography and sleek curves repulse you? Maybe it’s time to forget the normal and set sail into the murky waters of abnormality. Abnormal features four styles, ranging from an almost monolinear Light to a reverse-contrast Bold. The design pays homage to 19th century poster typefaces, with their crude character and unconventional means of catching the eye. It is one of the few typefaces out there that features reversed contrast and no serifs. These properties make it an ideal choice for large headlines, posters, flyers and essentially all applications where getting attention is a paramount. Abnormal offers extended language support, standard ligatures, alternative lowercase “a”, fractions, ordinals and a plethora of quirkiness at your disposal.

Martini Script is a cool, retro script with its origins in the hand-lettered ads of the 40s and 50s. During the second half of the 20th century, the introduction of new technologies, along with a change of taste, brought about the demise of hand lettering skills. We have attempted to revive this hand lettered look in the design of Martini Script. Martini Script has a casual, friendly, stylish charm, and is extremely versatile. The font comes in two styles; Martini Script Regular and Martini Script Fat, which work together to create a dynamic, confident look, perfect for a variety of applications, from posters and signs, to book and music covers and product packaging. Martini Script has standard OpenType features, and language support includes all European character sets.

Quiroh is a functional typeface that expresses both artistic life and emotion. Taking its inspiration from the industrial revolution of the 19th Century where romance and science coincided. With a cushioned finish and designed according to traditional conventions, the sentiment is equally as important as the reason, resulting in a very pleasurable read. Quiroh includes both heavy display weights and lighter weights for small copy, it's a perfect tool for communicating to the masses. Tall ascenders and descenders give the typeface a distinctive look with an elegant feel, and while these expressive forms invite the reader to observe its visible shape and appearance, its rhythm and function invites the reader to peruse at their leisure. Full details include 7 weights from thin to heavy with over 470 characters, manually edited kerning and OpenType features.

Star Ornaments are seen as a long standing companion to many wood type poster layouts. Various manufacturers managed to derive many variations of the five pointed star motif and offered them as a ubiquitous ornament option in almost all of their catalogs. Manufacturers such as Wm. H Page, Morgans & Wilcox, Tubbs Mfg. Co. and of course, Hamilton Wood Type each had their own slight variations. This digital font features almost 100 glyphs of mostly stars, but it also features a unique star border that can create boxes just like the modular offerings of the 19th century. The twist on this digital version is the inclusion of additional connection options that become a unique lettering 'kit' that can create typography or maze-like connections using a limited set of component parts.

Unzial typefaces consist of letter forms of the Capitalis Monumentalis and the majescule cursive. The origins of Unizial faces date back to the 5th century. The Neue Hammer Unziale was developed from the Hammer typeface, which was designed by Victor Hammer in 1921, cut by A. Schuricht and appeared with the font foundry Klingspor in 1923. In 1953, American Unizial was expanded to include some new figures, also designed by Hammer, and was rereleased by Klingspor with the name Neue Hammer Unziale. The forms are based on old scripts in books of antiquity and the early Middle Ages and the font is a new variation of a classic. Neue Hammer Unziale has been a favorite for certificates and diplomas and is recommended for headlines and shorter texts in a point size of 12 or larger.

DF Pigtail is the result of a curious marriage of the 'free'-form of writing with the fixed (mono) space for each character of the typewriter typeface. In the early sixties of the last century, typewriter typography became popular as a Fluxus vocabulary. The Fluxus art movement (in fact a Dada like follow up) which encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity and anti commercialism over the conventional market-driven approach. I was educated in the mid seventies when this form of typography was still very popular and was even applied in corporate design. This particular letter has been used by my teacher Jan Begeer to compose his design assignments. Recently I rediscovered this type and was struck by its pigtail similarity and drew it my way.

The Killegar family is inspired by one of the great houses of Ireland...Killegar—which is on the grand Estate of Killegar. I lived there for many years. It is a quiet and peaceful place surrounded by lakes and trees and is inspirational in so many ways. All of my creative talents were boosted by this amazing two hundred year old building with all of it's secrets and heritage. Time stood still in Killegar....except for me and my modern day computers, cell phones and fax machines. This twist of fate, with me living both a rural and hi-tech life, living in an environment of the early 18th century, with the friendliest local people on the Earth, played it's part in the origin of the Killegar family of fonts. Tony Fahy

Partially inspired by the mid XIX century german condensed serif typefaces –and a clear connection to Italian classics– Magari extrapolates that idea of fusion to a new level, getting a unique variable font file, or 9 specific weights. With that in hand the user is able to find the perfect match for any design. From an ultra compressed thin to an extended black style, Magari is a perfect font for display use. It’s jazzy vibes and wide range of weights make it incredibly perform in advertising, packaging or editorial design, assuring great impact whether it’s thin and tall, or big and bold. The addition of three kinds of endings for the lowercase –from a serif to two tailed strokes– and two different swash sets for the capitals, Magari lets the user play with infinite results.

Engraving inspired typeface The AW Conqueror Carved encapsulates perfectly the lettering styles in fashion during the 19th century quite often in the frontispieces of books. It wasn’t rare to see these kinds of typefaces, with their variations in depth and relief effects, adorning boxes and other forms of packaging of the time. AW Conqueror superfamily AW Conqueror Didot is part of a larger family, who include 4 others subfamilies with great potential: They’re but based on same structure, with some connection between them (width for example), to offer a great & easy titling toolbox to any designers, from skilful to beginner. Each of the members try their best to be different from the others because of their features. They should work harmoniously in contrast. Club des directeurs artistiques Prix 2010 European Design Awards 2011

Itacolomi is a font family conceived for editorial purposes. Based on historical models, it is well placed in the present time, turning classic proportions into contemporary letter shapes. It is robust and clean in small sizes, keeping the consistency in both print and digital environments. Itacolomi is a result of an extensive investigation into Scottish style types produced in Brazil around 1820. A possible connection between Brazil and Scotland. In short, it preserves the qualities of the famous 19th-century Scotch Roman types while adding a personal approach with unique features from the early Brazilian models. It has six weights, romans plus respective italics, which makes twelve fonts with an extensive character set that supports over two hundred languages and includes small caps, ligatures, old-style and tabular numerals.

Quarkwell™ by The Typeworks is a line based typeface ideal for use in designs that require a modern and highly legible appearance whilst still retaining a classic feel. The Quarkwell font family is inspired by lettering from twentieth-century pantograph engraving machines. The letterforms give a nod to the signature copy sets used on many computer mechanical keyboard keycaps and vintage typewriters, plotter engraved plastics signage fonts and others using modified Gorton lettering. Quarkwell font faces include many stylistic alternates for its uppercase and symbols characters sets. Need a different "Q" design? Use access all alternates or insert symbol to select a different "Q" form! Vector lines for plotting machines are also available to purchase on request at TheTypeworks.com So take Quarkwell home today! It's a perfect fit for all sorts of projects.

Carpenter® is a beautiful script perfectly suited for invitations and announcements. Created by James West, the design was a facsimile of the penmanship of Mr. Carpenter of R. Hoe & Co. and released by the Cleveland Type Foundry as one weight in 1882. It is now also available in SemiBold and Bold. The style of this script is very reminiscent of formal handwriting popular in the late 19 and early 20th centuries. It is graceful with formal structure. Its x-height is very small, with unusually long ascenders and descenders. Although there are many script fonts available, Carpenter is a historical design with a truly unique personality that will add a truly unique look and feel to your design. From GroupType™, Carpenter is available in TrueType and OpenType.

Hollander is a refined, yet sturdy text typeface designed by Gerard Unger. The name stems from the font’s similarity to the types attributed to van Dijk and Voskens, two Dutch punchcutters from the seventeenth century. Like those earlier Dutch types, Hollander has generous proportions, a tall x-height, and high contrast between thick and thin strokes. It was designed to work in the early arenas of digital technology, when letters were generated as coarse pixels with a cathode ray tube in the typesetters of the 1970s, and then as finer pixels with a laser beam in the machines of the 1980s. Hollander has a well-drawn stability that maintains legibility even on inferior quality paper. When used as a display face, Hollander is an excellent companion to one of Unger’s most successful text faces, Swift.

This family is a compilation created from a Garamond set in use in Paris circa 1651, but similar to those, eroded and tired, that were in use during centuries to print cheap publications, as well as in Europe than in America, and from a large choice of printed symbols—all specially redrawn—used for alchemical, pharmaceutical and astrological books, covering 1550 to late 1800s period. Each alphabet is doubled by a slightly different one, and a special OTF encoding allows to give an irregular effect with never the same twin letters in a single word. The Normal style is enriched by small caps, and the Italic style by Swashes. A lot of symbols, too, are given twice with differences. This font may be used with our calendar specialized 1689 Almanach.

Cunaeus is intended primarily for use in running text. It brings together the types of two renowned sixteenth-century punchcutters: the roman is an interpretation of a pica font cut by Ameet Tavernier (c.1522–1570), and the italic that of a pica font of Robert Granjon (1513–1589/90). Granjon’s italics have inspired a number of revivals in the past, but usually of his more slanted styles; the present digitization features the lesser slant of his so-called ‘droit’ style typical of the mid 1560s. Cunaeus provides wide support for west, central, and east European languages that use the roman alphabet. Among its OpenType features are ligatures, small caps, several sets of numerals, contextual alternates, intelligent implementation of long ‘s’, and fractions. For more detail, please see the pdf available in the Gallery.

Who is not totally captured when looking at those marvelously handmade old manuscripts, where letters, borders and elements were so masterfully realized with some touch of Gold leaf (or Silver in some cases) that was making of an ordinary book a piece of art? The name of the pack “Illuminated” comes, like the ancient art used for the old manuscripts, from the latin word “Illuminare” (to light up) and it’s symbol of great value, preciousness and beauty skilfully created with patience and love from artists for centuries. What we at Fontscafe wanted to give you was the opportunity to get a whole “ready to use” set of fonts that could, in a modern and revised form, give that “Illuminated” feeling to our “Digital Era”. A set of new tools to make your art shining!

WildSong was inspired by the exuberant flight and beautiful song of birds. While most brush scripts take their cue from mid-twentieth century samples, WildSong is a fresh, contemporary alternative. WildSong reflects a dynamic interplay between dark and light, creating a sense of drama while hinting at a calligraphic background. Words suggest a baseline, yet are not bound by it. Letters interweave in a seemingly random dance, sometimes connecting smoothly, then breaking that connection as a calligraphic scribe does intuitively. Exuberant swash alternatives to uppercase letters, as well as ligatures can be accessed through both the type and glyph palettes. The font contains over 235 characters - (upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals, symbols and accented characters are present). It has all the accented characters used in the major European languages.

Black Ridge is a strong and rugged typeface, supplemented by its tall x-height, angled cuts, and quirky curves—all giving it a unique touch of character. It was inspired by the bold, modern, and condensed sans-serif typefaces created by typographic pioneers such as El Lissitszky, Herbert Bayer, and Jan Tschichold of the early twentieth century. This typeface is intended for display headlines and comes with a customary set of Latin characters, including diacritics, accents, symbols, mathematical glyphs, and more. Black Ridge comes in five styles—thin, light, regular, bold, and black—and supports over 80 different languages. Each weight contains a set of alternate glyphs and discretionary ligatures specially designed for better spacing and aesthetic enhancements for the more awkward character pairs such as fi, fl, rv, TY, FT, and more.

Meet Vendura, an elegant serif-family with a modern touch. While being a homage to the beloved high-contrast didone typefaces from the 18th and 19th century, Vendura comes up with some unique design details, giving this family a modern twist. It adds a lot of personality to any Editorial Design, Branding Project or User Interface. The seven weights of Vendura have lots of crisp sharp edges, while its matching italics create a slightly softer and warmer look. Vendura has an extensive character set to offer, covering more than 200 languages. Plus, there are ligatures, stylistic alternates, numerical variations, automatic arrows and so much more to find, making sure it can catch up with all your typographic demands. Offering 625 glyphs per font, Vendura is a truly versatile companion for your next design project.

Bougainville was inspired by many of my favorites and has been on the drawing board in excess of ten years. Only this year I decided to expand the original 1994 design to include other weight variants. The quirky Binner Gothic-inspired high axis and its funky g, rounded e, angled stroke endings together with the influence of contemporary designs such as Officina Sans, Din Mittelschrift and MetaPlus, Bougainville exhibits a similar flavor and compactness to Bodega Sans. This typeface family has been named in honor of the renowned eighteen-century French mathematician and explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to whom we owe the naming of South Sea Islands and colorful tropical flora he discovered along his journey. Bougainville makes for effective headings at any size and is equally readable at semi-display sizes.

Originally made for a health food store chain we cannot name, Pipa is the embodiment of organic display typography. Although it draws inspiration from some cold type ideas, like the uncredited Atlantis from VGC and a couple of older photo-lettering faces, its overall expression is right in line with what has become today's vernacular in integrity organic display packaging. Pipa's construct approaches the thick-and-thin idea from a rarely used perspective, where the flow in form contrast naturally seeps out from within each stroke, while minimizing the amount of strokes helps the totality of the setting come positively alive. This is bead and lava lamp psychedelia for the 21st century. Pipa comes with plenty of alternates, including some very cool unicase variations, and extended Latin language support.

The vintage display font family Vernyhora. The typeface is intended to be used in those places where the letters when it is necessary to transmit the strong character, stability and historicity. The font has got 6 weights. It contains extended Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. It also consists of the alternative set of characters from the old Ukrainian alphabet. It can be used for the state institutions names. It was planned to be a font of old cities and towns. From the very beginning the font was created in order to execute signboards at the entrance of towns. For the font creation the author was inspired by the graphic designers of the early 20th century, such as Georgiy Narbut and Fedir Krychevs'kyi. From the Ukrainian language the font name is translated into English as mountains mover.

Hello! Inspiration for this beautiful script font I found in “A Source of Solace in Illness” (Trost Bronn der Kranchhen) book, published in the middle of 17th century. There was an entire on the back of the top cover: Joannes Auanger Parochus Sinchingae 1808”. That's why I named my font family Parochus. In the Catholic Church, a parish is a community of the faithful within a particular church, whose pastoral care has been entrusted to a parish priest (Latin: parochus). There are original and regular style fonts. Also, I’ve added some modern symbols. With this set, you can precisely imitate medieval style text. I designed a full uppercase and lowercase set with Multilingual support and ligatures. You'll found ß, &, Š, ę and many other beautiful glyphs. Best, Roman.

Telemark is a monolinear slab serif influenced by the wide serif typefaces of the 19th century. The name refers to the vintage form of skiing which was introduced in Norway at the same period of time and allowed more fluid turns. After the Telemark style was replaced by newer techniques in the Alpine countries it has experienced a rise in popularity in recent years. The Telemark type family features the three weights in an additional label style which allows an uncomplicated creation of editable pointers, banners and cartouches. Different combinations of end pieces result in a great variety of designs. Telemark is suitable for headlines and logotypes and complements script typefaces as well as any neutral grotesque. Details include 207 characters in three weights, a total of six styles and manually edited kerning.

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.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. This version of Bodoni was done by Morris Fuller Benton for American Typefounders between 1907 and 1911. Although some of the finer details of the original Bodoni types are missing, this family has the high contrast and vertical stress typical of modern types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising, and text."

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.

LFT Arnoldo began as an all-caps book cover typeface created during the rebranding of Oscar Mondadori, the most important Italian publisher, with over 4,500 titles from ancient classics to contemporary works, and spanning academic essays to children’s and self-help books. For such a diverse catalogue, it was necessary to find a coherent and flexible paradigm which took into account genre and readership differences and ensured harmony among its works. The main idea was to create a typeface suitable for the branding element and which could be used for each title of the immense catalogue. So what makes LFT Arnoldo a companion to the centuries? Starting with the design of the capital letters, it is first a rational typeface with contemporary proportions. But rationality without style wasn’t enough, so its glyphic nature carries an engraved feeling to resemble letters when chisel is put to stone. Once these two traits were settled, the entire character set was developed as a flared humanist sans in order to complete the family and extend its usage, from titles and display settings to texts. LFT Arnoldo sets titles with dignified authority to appear digitally carved and more arresting than the usual sans or flared sans designs of the past. It is calm and dependable in paragraph use and a captivating vehicle of aesthetic expression in title and display use. At once rugged and syncopated, the slight hourglass stems and incised details make each letter come alive and engrave each paragraph upon our emotions. LFT Arnoldo intends to be a resilient type family for centuries to come. Its seven roman weights have italic counterparts and the entire family is loaded with OpenType features: alternates, ligatures, small caps, oldstyle and lining numerals, and science and math capabilities. In the battle of charisma, where the right voice must project intelligence, influence, and refinement, LFT Arnoldo is the victor.

The Bauer Typefoundry first released the Beton family of types in 1936. Created by the German type designer Heinrich Jost, the present digital version of the Beton family consists of six slab serif typefaces. First developed during the early 1800s, by the 1930s slab serif faces had become one of many stock styles of type developed by foundries all over the world. Because of their distance from pen-drawn forms and their industrial appearance, they were seen as “modern” typefaces. (Their serifs kept them from being too modern.) The first slab serif typefaces were outgrowths of didone style text faces (e.g., Walbaum). As newspapers and advertising grew in importance in the western world (especially in “Wild West” America), type founders and printers began to create bigger, bolder typefaces, which would set large headlines apart from text, and each other. Through display tactics, businesses and industry could begin to visually differentiate their products from one another. This craze eventually led to the development of monster sized wood type, among other things. By the 20th Century, the typographic establishment had begun to tame, categorize, and codify 19th Century type styles. It was in the wake of this environment that Jost developed Beton. The Beton family is a type “family” in a pre-1950s sense of the word. Although six styles of type are available, only four of them fit in logical progression with each other (Beton Light, Beton Demi Bold, Beton Bold, and Beton Extra Bold). The other two members of the family, Beton Bold Condensed and Beton Bold Compressed, are more like distant cousins. They function better as single headlines to text set in Beton Light or Beton Demi Bold, of as companions to totally separate typefaces.

Although geometric Sans Serifs have been in vogue for nearly a century, they have never been as ubiquitous. It is not improbable that the old adage would be phrased: “When in doubt, set it in geometric sans”, had it been composed today. Have we not had enough? We think, not. Postmodern times demand a variety of expressions. The vision behind Geometria was to revisit the perennial favorite to lend subtle individuality to its tried and true forms. Geometria stands out in the crowd of similar fonts thanks to its complicated nature. It combines dynamic elements with a certain degree of stability. A slightly higher waistline of the capitals contributes to their distinctive appearance. If the upper case refers to the American grotesques of the 19th century, the lower case tends toward the forms of the Renaissance in its proportions. Geometria is a typeface of clean shapes that is well-suited for continuous reading, and it sets remarkably well. At the same time, it can be friendly, even flirtatious. Its distinct personality combines seeming opposites. At times it may appear serious, at times playful. On occasion, it may be deliberate, other times dynamic. It could seem rigid, then elegant. It is a typeface that could be perceived either as cutting-edge, or as nostalgic. A careful and discerning typographer will bring out and emphasize those aspects of its multifaceted personality that are needed to solve the problem at hand. Geometria consists of 24 fonts — eight weights with matching italics and narrow styles. The font includes multiple sets of figures and currency signs, alternate glyphs, a variety of experimental ligatures, and punctuation marks for the two cases. The 835 glyphs support 72 languages. Granshan 2013 award.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. Parma was designed by the monotype Design Team after studying Bodoni's steel punches at the Museo Bodoniana in Parma, Italy. They also referred to specimens from the "Manuale Tipografico," a monumental collection of Bodoni's work published by his widow in 1818.

Gotica Lumina is a an attempt to make blackletter more legible to the 21st century's eye. It is available in two styles: soft (for text) and sharp (for display). Both of them have an alternate font, which contains stylistic alternate forms for several characters, for a more “traditional” look. Opentype features: four styles of figures and currencies, ligatures (f-ligatures and c-ligatures), historical forms (long-s).

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.

Our font of the original was only ten point, so we had to use our imagination to a great extent. As specialists in Victorian typography, we have found that many people do not like the "center alignment" idea, used on several old time faces, but we have been faithful to the original. So there!