The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Geometric typefaces are a staple in every typographer’s toolbox since the 1920s. It was a time when iconic faces such as Futura, Erbar, and Kabel appeared on the scene and turned the world of type upside-down. Inspired by those early giants as well as later epigones with a legacy of their own (such as 1970’s Avant Garde Gothic), Flink Neue is the Identity Letters take on this genre, characterized by a clean and focused appearance. With neat shapes and the look of pure geometry, Flink Neue adapts to a vast range of applications and topics, from the fine print in contract to website body copy to logo design to billboard-size slogans. Its x-height is considerably larger than in classic geometric sans-serif fonts; its proportions are harmonized as opposed to strictly constructed. This makes for a more contemporary look, setting it apart from the classics. With three different widths, Flink is a true all-rounder. Geometric fonts are usually quite wide, which often leads to text-settings problems with headlines or small print. The Condensed and Compressed variants of Flink Neue solve this problem easily. This font family comes along in 18 weights from Thin to Black with matching Italics. There are almost 1400 characters per style, including nine stylistic sets that offer variations to the look and feel of Flink Neue, making it even more versatile. Besides the default mood of Flink Neue, there is also a Text and Bauhaus variant, where different letters have been changed to create a new mood. In theory, you just need one single font file to change between all three moods, but to make it easier for you, we also exported each mood within a separate file. Plenty of additional Open Type Features like ligatures, small caps, case sensitive forms, old-style figures, tabular figures and symbols make Flink Neue a valuable tool for the discerning typographer. Flink Neue is the reimagination of a classic genre, designed to suit the needs of our time.

Part of the extended Rahere typeface family, Rahere Slab is a humanist slab serif (or Egyptian) in six weights from light to extra bold with corresponding italics. Rahere Slab – like its sibling Rahere Sans – features subtle detailing, giving the typeface a distinctive, warm appearance without distracting the reader. Legible at large and small sizes, Rahere Slab is a versatile, workhorse typeface that is suitable for a wide range of applications such as information signage, packaging, annual reports, advertising, brochures, catalogues, screen text and visual identities. Slab serifs are ideal for projects that need to convey a sense of authority tempered with diplomacy or messages that just need some serious oomph – and Rahere is a great slab for the job. The italic lowercase is more cursive and expressive than the roman and when they’re used together it displays enough character to create emphasis without looking out of place while harmonising admirably. Set on its own (for example, pull-out quotes), the italic exudes a charm that draws attention to the text. The character set covers most European languages plus Vietnamese. Each weight contains lining & non-aligning numerals in both proportional & tabular spacing. The tabular numerals share the same width across all weights and styles (matching Rahere Sans too) – indispensable for financial tables in annual reports. If a companion sans serif is needed, Rahere Sans is the perfect partner. They are both part of the extended Rahere typeface family and have been designed to complement each other beautifully. The typeface is named after Rahere, a 12th-century Anglo-Norman priest, who founded the Priory of the Hospital of St Bartholomew, London in 1123. In 2007 I was successfully treated at Barts for relapsed testicular cancer so I’m indebted to all the doctors, nurses and support staff who work there. A special shout out to Orchid Cancer – a UK charity that helps men affected by cancer – who funded the research for my treatment.

Geometric/Technical style logotypes have been developed for car chrome labels since the early 1980’s, but automobile companies don't monopolize the style by any means. During the 80’s and 90’s, a lot of these logos leaned towards the geometric sans styles and the swiss styling of fonts like Handel Gothic, while playing with varying degrees of squared rounds and varying expanded widths per logotype. Mercurial has this flavor, but it wasn’t derived from logotypes. Instead, it began as a digitization of a film typeface from LetterGraphics in the early 70's known as "Sam". It visual ties to this genre of automotive logotypes and fonts like Handel Gothic lend a familiarity to it, yet it has an identity all its own. As with so many automotive logotypes, this singular style film typeface, lacked an expansive family which shows off all potential the logotypes have and what they "could" be and do. And that's where we come in. What originally began as this family’s Regular Width - Bold Style has been expanded into a collection of 3 Width Families, each containing 5 Weights. Here’s what’s included with the Mercurial Complete bundle: 396 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the final poster graphics for a preview of the characters included) 3 widths in the collection: Narrow, Regular, & Wide 5 weights in each width family: Light, Book, Regular, Medium & Bold. Here’s why the Mercurial Family is for you: - You’re in need of stylish sans font family with a range of widths and weights. - You’re love those 80’s automotive logos, but want more range of use. - You’re looking for an alternative to Handel Gothic. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your rave poster designs. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

Based on a specimen of an obscure and uncredited old face called Kitterland, Hamlet is one of those curiosities hardly ever noticed in the world of modern fonts, the kind that infuses a variety of historic Blackletter and calligraphy traits in an otherwise Roman alphabet. Such typefaces, what few of them exist, are almost always classified by typophiles as traditional decorative Roman alphabets. We beg to differ. We think such hybrids are fascinating enough to deserve a classification of their own. And we think today's aspiring letterers and type designers would benefit from paying special attention to this kind of hybrid alphabet, not only because it has much more hand than machine in it, but also because it is a prime example of how to succeed in mixing different lettering techniques into one self-contained and distinctly functional alphabet. As in any efficient mixture of lettering methods, Hamlet ended up with characters that are uniquely its own, such as the cupped A, M, V, W and Y, the very luscious and inviting curves on the arms of E, F, L and T, both single- and double-story forms of the a, and the humblest, friendliest g and y ever. A dozen alternate characters are sprinkled throughout the character set, so check out the map for a few pleasant surprises. We also made the Handtooled and Headstone styles because we thought these friendly forms were just crying out for such treatments. The Handtooled version turned out quite lovely, if we may say so ourselves, perhaps even better than the main font. The Headstone version is available as a free bonus to those who purchase the complete Hamlet package. All Hamlet styles come with lining figures as well as old style ones. Hamlet comes in all popular font formats. The OpenType fonts contain push-button swapping alternates and figures, which come in handy in software programs that support this kind of thing.