Compacta is the work of Fred Lambert and is reminiscent of the extremely narrow, sans serif stencilled fonts of the 1920s, then intended as titles or headlines for magazines and posters. The characters of all cuts are narrow and the space between letters is very small. The white spaces between strokes are perceived almost as only small white stripes and dots which stand out from the black bands of the lines of text. Compacta is not meant for longer texts but is impressive in titles and headlines.

Compacta is the work of Fred Lambert and is reminiscent of the extremely narrow, sans serif stencilled fonts of the 1920s, then intended as titles or headlines for magazines and posters. The characters of all cuts are narrow and the space between letters is very small. The white spaces between strokes are perceived almost as only small white stripes and dots which stand out from the black bands of the lines of text. Compacta is not meant for longer texts but is impressive in titles and headlines.

The sinuous, organic forms of Bing first came into being on a poster for a Smithsonian Institution exhibit on Siegfried Bing, a German art dealer in Paris who figured prominently in the development of Art Nouveau towards the end of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the natural forms of Antonio Gaudi, and the Paris Metro stations of Hector Guimard, Bing can be used effectively in the modernist style of Art Nouveau and is equally at home in the 1960s psychedelic rejuvenation of that genre.

Mentone is a new general purpose typeface, an attempt at extending the line of the great sans-serifs of the previous century, Frutiger - Stone Sans - Myriad. The font has round corners and subtle chamfers, which are all but invisible at text sizes, but add an upbeat, irreverent expression at display sizes. The typeface is named after the beautiful bayside suburb of Melbourne, Australia, where the designer lives. This new version (2.01) was spaced and kerned by Igino Marini of iKern. The semibold cuts are now free!

A great UGLY font. Beauty lies in the eye of whoever. Maybe the beholder is a beast or a Swiss artist. The SHIFT key will give you alternative character shapes. Remember: beauty doesn’t lie in the eye of the beholder – it lies in yours!

Hand-cut wooden letters belonging to a long-defunct salad bar's signage were offered for sale in an online auction. The casual look of the lettering, the hand crafted feel and the rounded ends made for the perfect inspiration for designing Salad Bar JNL.

P22 Late November is a transitional Antiqua-inspired type design great for text and display uses. The name is derived from the dark, November night in which the design of the font began. The Pro version features fractions, ligatures and full Central European support.

Derived from the world famous Rennie Mackintosh Font, the Stems version gives a lightweight look to the genius of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The “Stems” name is a link to Mackintosh’s love of using floral images in his designs, especially abstracts of the rose and tulip.

ALYRAK is born from the anxiety of the future dystopia of the human race. The fear of Artificial Intelligence, robots, and technology that potentially invade living things. Represented in a font and visual to emulate the vibe every time you type it from your keyboard.

MedicineShelf has old-fashioned looking letters on old-fashioned looking bottles. The letters are taken from the typeface NeuAltisch . The MedicineShelf-Blank and MedicineShelf-Outline styles can be used in layers with the base MedicineShelf font to increase the coloring possible with this typeface.

Found on the back of some sheet music to promote another song was the hand-lettered title "The Snake Charmer". While not everyone likes snakes, many designers do like the lettering of the Art Deco era, so Charmer JNL is designed from that lettering.

Salamaca TF is a fun to use typeface. First released in 1994 but completely redesigned in 2013. With the OpenType options or the glyphs palette you make your own special typo's. The font is based on the wall typography of the city of Salamanca.

Evening Gown JNL comes from the lettering displayed on a printed ad for the fictional "Gowns by Roberta" in a scene in the 1935 film of the same name. "Roberta" starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and was based on the successful 1933 stage play.

Evening Paper JNL, one could say, was "culled from the headlines". It was. The front page headlines from some 1938 newspapers archived online were the basic model for this font. The typeface design goes back to a font first issued by Ludlow in the 1920s.

The origin of Grimm was to create a typeface in the spirit of Elliott Peter Earls' Subluxation, but somewhere in the process things shifted to a blackletter influenced uppercase while the lowercase became more roman. The end result is a quirky little blackletter display typeface.

A solid calligraphic letter designed by John Matt in the middle 1960s. The typeface did not see use until Compugraphic copied a set of the sketches in the late 1970s, naming the result Garth Graphic in honor of Bill Garth, late president and founder.

Negen is the dutch word for the number nine. This big and bold font is based on a 9 connected squares, hence the name negen. The squares not used in the characters are left in place so there is almost no space in between.

Coptek is the work of David Quay and gets its name from the high tech look imposed on the design of copperplate script. The capitals are initials which fit well with a lower case alphabet whose letters join in the style of true handwriting.

Apparently original with the Lindsay brothers type foundry in New York shortly before they were merged into the American Type Founders Company. A few characters of the original font have been modified slightly to make them more harmonious with the rest of the alphabet.

Like the study of Kremlinology, this font is an interpretation of Soviet culture for Western audiences. Based on a vintage Russian poster but not in the original Cyrillic, it is an attempt to capture the feel of the era if not the actual characters.

Zodor JNL is modeled from the packaging for injection-molded plastic letters used as a teaching toy for youngsters in the early 1960s. The hand-drawn alphabet on the sides of the package was quirky enough to merit being made into a digital font.

Padraig Nua is a font conceptualized and designed by Tony Fahy. It is a European Celtic font, contemporary to many languages, not just of Europe but of the world. It’s origin is influenced by events in Ireland in the 1960s when it was decided that the uncial letterform should not be used further in Irish schools for the Irish language—Gaelic—and that it should be replaced by the Roman letterform—the Cló Romhanach as it was called afterwards. This happened overnight without any apparent discussion. It probably had a lot to do with Ireland joining the EEC, as the EU was called then. It had a massive effect on the Irish language and culture, in that the distinguishing factor that gave the language it’s identity—the half uncial/uncial fonts that were in use in all school, government and society documentation and merchandise—were lost overnight. No one said how or why. It was just done. To this day, all documentation is bi-lingual in government and Gaelic is taught in schools and universities—and decreed so by the European Union—but the presentation for both languages is the Roman letterform. Throughout the world, there are millions of Irish Americans and Irish Canadians, Irish Europeans, Australian Irish, African Irish and many living in the Middle East and Asia—and this new font—Padraig Nua, will appeal to many of them, visually recalling their roots. No one had thought, in those days, of commissioning a design that might update the Gaelic language to a more contemporary appearance that would keep the cultural nature of it intact with a revised and updated font—at one with Europe, the US and the world. Tony Fahy designed Padraig Nua (New Patrick) to address the problem. It keeps an appearance that lends towards the Gaelic language but steers it in the direction of Roman fonts. Some characters reflect letterforms from the Irish/Gaelic manuscripts and uncial fonts.

In the sketches that formed the basis for his typeface Biome, Crossgrove experimented with inner and outer shapes in different styles, adapted letters to the form of the super-ellipse, and added curves only to remove these again. His challenge was to find a harmonious and coherent approach that provided sufficient contrast with existing fonts. Biome is essentially in the sans serif tradition and the letters exhibit only minor variations in terms of line thickness. There is still a suggestion of the super-ellipse at many points, but this never becomes the predominant design factor. While most of the terminals of the vertical strokes are only slightly rounded, the horizontals and diagonals have pronounced arches and it is these that basically determine the round and soft character of the typeface. The more unconventionally shaped letters, such as the lowercase 'g' with its two semi-open counters and the 'k' and 'x' with their crossbars, provide Biome with an individual personality. And this effect is emphasized by the generously rounded links in the 'v' and 'w' and the uppercase 'M' and 'N'. Biome has been designed as a typeface super-family. From the near hairline Extra Light to the amply proportioned Ultra, there are seven clearly differentiated weights and three tracking widths. There are oblique italic versions of all variants. The range includes small caps and numeral sets containing lowercase and uppercase digits. With its available range of characters, Biome can be used to set texts in all Eastern European languages. Although the remarkable individuality of Biome is most clearly apparent in the larger point sizes, this typeface is not just suitable for producing headlines and logos. Biome's elegant visual effects mean that it is equally comfortable in short texts while its large x-height and generous counters make it readily legible even in the small font sizes. Biome is a contemporary typeface that employs mid-20th century futurist elements which ironically give it a retro feel.

Buffet Script is based on fantastic calligraphy by Alf Becker, arguably the greatest American sign lettering artist of all time. The Alf Becker series of nameless alphabets published by Sign of the Times magazine in 1941 has attracted letter digitizers for a few years now, so it’s really a wonder that a few of those alphabets are still in the non-digital realm. It is understandable, though, that the basis for Buffet Script was not digitally attempted until now. The page presenting this alphabet shows a jungle of letters running into each others and swashes intertwining. The massive amount of work involved in digitizing such lettering, where scanning is nowhere near being an option, is quite obvious at a mere glance. If anyone was going to commit this particular alphabet to a digital form, it would have to be redrawn stroke by stroke and curve by curve on the computer. And don't we love a challenge! But seriously, the challenge was not the main attraction. In a way, the Becker approach to lettering is so far from digital that the imagination is almost forced to work out possibilities and letter combinations to solve problems presented by the scant showings in that magazine. After a few imaginative visualizations, the digital potential becomes clear in the mind, and the eye and hand follow. The result with Whomp (another Alf Becker-inspired work) was an enormous font with a lot of alternates and ligatures. With Buffet Script the imaginative process was no different, but the result particularly shines here, because this is some of the most fascinating flowing calligraphy ever seen. Calligraphy is where the accountability of all the little extra touches, such as alternates and swashes and ligatures, is raised to a higher level than in most other type categories. Buffet Script’s OpenType programming contains discretionary ligatures, stylistic and contextual alternates, interacting with each other to allow the composition of just the right word or sentence. This font is best used where lush elegance is one of the design’s requirements.

Create your own world with the Picture Yourself collection! Picture Yourself is a graphic image collection, which functions a font family instead of hundreds of EPS files. The family is made up of 24 different symbol typefaces. Designed by the collaborative effort of Karin and Peter Huschka, both living in Germany, Picture Yourself was a winner in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype GmbH. The symbol library found in Picture Yourself offers an astounding array of high-contrast, simple forms, which may be used happily either separately or together in your layouts. Just as the fonts themselves stem from two designers working in collaboration, the imagery of the collection itself stems from two different influences. In large part, the font family was inspired by work displayed in the Frankfurt-based German Architecture Museum's 2003 Oscar Niemeyer exhibition. The photographs and sketches that were displays there inspired the first ideas for the Picture Yourself world of images. More of the typeface's design, as well as its name, were inspired by the underlying philosophy of the Beatles' music, especially the classic song from Lennon and McCartney, "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds." In comparison with other large pictographic type collections, all of the characters in Picture Yourself fonts share the same horizon. The glyphs themselves are also drawn so that many of them can be combined with one another, creating tall or wide decorative compositions. Additionally, the proportions of the forms of the pictographs are aligned with various industry standards, in order to harmonize workflow. Picture Yourself Portraits (3:4), Landscapes (6:4), Cinema (9:4), and Panorama (12:4) each adhere to one of several photo or video formats. The Picture Yourself family of fonts can best be used with graphics applications like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, where different characters may be assigned to different layers, each with their own color.

Get in the swing with Metairie. This high-contrast script from Jeremy Dooley sets the rhythm for your next headline or short phrase with its fresh, expressive forms. Metairie’s (sometimes exaggerated) scrawled letterforms play on the colorful world of calligraphy to bring you a fully developed personality of its own. Inspired by elixirs and pharmaceuticals of the 1800s, this design has forms that dig down deep to the soul. It brings a unique, vibrant feel for your next message. The typeface supports all major Latin languages, and the expanded OpenType capabilities let you slide elements easily and quickly into your design. Metairie also includes a number of distressed options. Improv a bit, too, with Metairie’s decorative ornaments, variations on the fleur de lis. Ornaments and tails are accessed through the glyph palette or using the Swash function. An extensive set of ligatures gives you more options for humanizing the handwriting on the page. Then take it up a notch by using the glyph palette to find the perfect solution for project. You have full access to this amazing capability with InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. We recommend that you explore what this font can offer by using the glyph palette. Get a glimpse of ​​the font’s strength by looking over the brochure in PDF format in the "Gallery" section. Ready to step in? Take a stab at your next design with Metairie. It could be just the color you need.

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.

ITC Werkstatt is a result of the combined talents of Alphabet Soup's Paul Crome and Satwinder Sehmi, along with Ilene Strizver and Colin Brignall. It is inspired by the work of Rudolph Koch, the renowned German calligrapher, punchcutter, and type designer of the first third of this century, without being based directly on any of Koch's typefaces. Werkstatt has obvious affinities with the heavy, woodcut look of Koch's popular Neuland, but also with display faces like Wallau and even the light, delicate Koch Antiqua. Brignall began by drawing formal letters with a 55mm cap height, which Sehmi reinterpreted using a pen with a broad-edge nib. “Not an easy process,” says Brignall, “since one of the features of Koch's style is that while it was calligraphic in spirit, most of the time his counter shapes did not bear any resemblance to the external shapes, as they would in normal calligraphy. This meant that Sehmi could not complete a whole character in one go, but had to create the outside and inside shapes separately and then ink in the center of the letters.” The process was repeated, only without entirely filling in the outlines, for the Engraved version. Crome handled the scanning and digitization, maintaining the hand-made feel while creating usable digital outlines. “The collaboration of artisans with particular skills,” says Brignall, “in a modern-day, computer-aided studio environment, seems very much in step with the 'workshop' ethos that Rudolph Koch encouraged and promoted so much.”

The Roos family is a digitization and expansion of the last typeface designed by Sjoerd Hendrik De Roos, called De Roos Romein (and Cursief). It was designed and produced during the years of the second World War, and unveiled in the summer of 1947 to celebrate De Roos's 70th birthday. In 1948, the first fonts produced were used for a special edition of the Dutch Constitution on which Juliana took the oath during her inauguration as the Queen of the Netherlands. To this day this typeface is widely regarded as De Roos's best design, with one of the most beautiful italics ever drawn. In contrast with all his previous roman faces, which were based on the Jenson model, De Roos's last type recalls the letter forms of the Renaissance, specifically those of Claude Garamont from around 1530, but with a much refined and elegant treatment, with stems sloping towards the ascending, slightly cupped serifs, a tall and distinguished lowercase, and an economic width that really shines in the spectacular italic, which harmonizes extremely well with its roman partner. The Roos family contains romans, italics and small caps in regular, semibold and display weights, as well as a magnificent set of initial caps. All the fonts contain extended language support, surpassing the usual Western Latin codepages to include characters for Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese, and Turkish.

The TYMA Garamont Roman was inspired by the Berner-Egenolff type sample from the 1560s. The Italic was inspired by a sample from Robert Granjon, also from the 1560s. The name TYMA is short for AB Typmatriser, a Swedish company founded 1948, because the Second World War stopped all import of matrices for Linotype and Intertype typesetting machines. It took until 1951-52 before the import was up to speed again. Until then, Sweden had to fend for itself. TYMA produced all technical equipment needed for type production, including the pantograph to cut the matrices, a complete set for each size and version. The templates for Garamont Roman were initiated by Henry Alm 1948. Bo Berndal was hired the following year, and continued the work by drawing and cutting templates for the rest of Garamont Roman, as well as for the remaining Garamont family. Bo Berndal stayed at TYMA until it went bankrupt in 1952. At that time Bo Berndal had already kick-started his career as type designer by drawing the typeface Reporter for one of the big daily newspapers, Aftonbladet, a version of Cheltenham for another daily, Dagens Nyheter, and copied several old typefaces for other customers. Librarian Sten G. Lindberg at The Royal Library of Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, procured copies of original type samples. Henry Alm started the work in 1948, and Bo Berndal completed it - finally in this OpenType version.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

Iturritxu (a small spring or fountain in the Basque language) is the basic style, one letterform per character, using highly readable glyphs suited to text applications. It includes Latin characters for Western European, Central European and Baltic Languages, plus Romanian and Turkish. Iturritxu 2020 is the feature-rich style for OpenType friendly applications. Designed to work especially well with the concave consonants and nesting vowels (KO, RO, TXO, ZO etc.) common in Basque (Euskara), the font also has many ligatures and contextual features for other languages such as English and Welsh. Much of the inspiration for the contextual forms comes from the compound consonants and vowel signs of North Indian scripts. Small capitals, old-style numerals (with optional swashes), sub and superscript numerals are all present. A PDF guide to the features is included in the 2020 package together with the basic Iturritxu font. The Features Guide is also posted in the Gallery.

The Vale Press was a contemporary of Willam Morris's Kelmscott Press. The types used by the Vale Press were designed by artist Charles Ricketts, who also supervised the design and printing of Vale Press books. The main type used, Vale, was based on the Jenson 15th century roman type style. The King's Fount was an experimental semi-uncial font based on the Vale type. The King's Fount was designed in 1903 for the Vale edition of the 15h century poem "The Kingis Quair". This semi-uncial font evokes old English and Anglo-Saxon lettering. P22 Vale Pro combines the two fonts P22 Vale Roman and P22 Vale King's Fount into one "Pro" font. This pro font also includes a Central European character set, old style figures, fractions, ornaments and a special faux "Middle English" feature to make "anee text appeer Olde." This feature is not known to exist in any other font.

Derived from a photograph Rian Hughes took in Hong Kong, the Roadkill family of typefaces is a literal interpretation of rough and worn road lettering. The original provided almost all of the key character shapes, with the others being designed to keep the unique hand painted feel intact. Most of the letters have alternate versions provided. This font works equally well at wider letterspacing settings. Roadkill Alternates provides curved versions of the 2 and the S, a G with higher crossbar, and less worn versions of several other characters. The heavy version packs even more gritty wallop in a non-condensed and blacker weight. Roadkill Heavy packs even more gritty wallop in a non-condensed and blacker weight. Use in conjuction with the original Roadkill and Roadkill Alternates. A set of arrows and other road symbols again taken directly from tarmac to Mac, thus preserving the worn and eroded appearance of the original characters is also part of the Roadkill family.

Saracen is the Latin (wedge serif) member of The Proteus Project, a collection of four interchangeable type families designed in different nineteenth century styles. The Saracen typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 1992. Saracen is a design in the ‘latin’ style, characterized by wedge-shaped serifs, a genus of type that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. A part of The Proteus Project, the typographic theme-and-variations based on related Regency styles, Saracen was created for Rolling Stone, in whose pages the typeface first appeared in 1993 . From the desk of the designer: Though the wedge serif printing type is a nineteenth century innovation, Saracen does not resemble any font from this era. It’s mysterious that typefounders of the Victorian age who sought the extreme and fanciful in their work — exploring all manner of serif treatments, and creating extra-condensed and super-expanded designs — never made a latin font of this straightforward proportion. <

It's another beautiful day in scenic Astro City, home of post modern gods and ordinary mortals alike. Look into the sky and perhaps you'll get a glimpse of everyone's favorite man of the hour, if not the man of tomorrow... SAMARITAN! Relocated to Vertigo Comics in 2013, the ASTRO CITY series continues to tell the stories of people like you and me living in a world of super heroes like Winged Victory, Jack in the Box, the Honor Guard and Samaritan. In honor of the relaunch, Comicraft's JG Roshell has taken the original fifties style Astro City font apart, remastered it, expanded the international character set and given it a whole new secret identity – Samaritan. Everything old is new again. Pax Purists -- the SAMARITAN fonts come with our First Family of ASTRO CITY fonts, as published alongside the Image ASTRO CITY title in 1995. See the families related to Samaritan: Samaritan Tall & Samaritan Lower .

Voluta Script is the work of Austrian designer Viktor Solt, created for use in a guide to the Austrian Gallery at Castle Belvedere. A volute (Latin voluta") is a spiral or scroll-shaped ornament used in the Baroque architecture of Castle Belvedere, similar to the swashes in this typeface. The castle was the historic residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy, one of the great military commanders of the 18th century and a prominent figure in Austrian history. When asked to create a typeface based on the calligraphy of the period to illustrate Eugene's epic, Solt turned for inspiration to Kurrent writing, a cursive blackletter style. Solt created a hybrid style that embodies the rhythm and basic forms of its ancestors, with large capitals, dark vertical strokes, and flourished beginning and ending characters. The typeface was designed to be used in sizes of 24 points and greater. Voluta Script allows designers to evoke the Baroque era or to lend a hint of majestic grace to contemporary typesetting."

Lydia (Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, Śfarda; Aramaic: Lydia; Greek: Λυδία, Lȳdíā; Turkish: Lidya) was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland Izmir. The ethnic group inhabiting this kingdom are known as the Lydians, and their language, known as Lydian, was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. The capital of Lydia was Sardis. The Kingdom of Lydia existed from about 1200 BC to 546 BC. At its greatest extent, during the 7th century BC, it covered all of western Anatolia. In 546 BC, it became a province of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, known as the satrapy of Lydia or Sparda in Old Persian. In 133 BC, it became part of the Roman province of Asia. Lydian coins, made of silver, are among the oldest coins in existence, dated to around the 7th century BC.

The all-caps display face Sandwich was inspired by historic, hand lettered sans serif alphabets with slightly sloping terminals, as found in showcard lettering and on billboards. Besides a number of alternate glyphs located in the lowercase area of the font, the typeface features about forty 'ligatures'. These are not ligatures in the traditional sense of the word, but short two- or three-letter combinations — mostly prepositions, conjunctions, articles and so on — in different languages, which are positioned vertically, not horizontally. Since the number of such pre-fabricated ligatures in a font is limited and cannot possibly cover all the desired combinations, a special algorithm programmed into the OpenType font permits the user to compose any two- or three-letter words, provided no accented characters are used. This is why Sandwich includes five versions of each letter. Using the full possibilities offered by the OpenType format, the automatic vertical aligning of glyphs is based on a combination of optional ligatures, style sets, and modified kerning.