Guanabara is the third release of Plau Type Foundry. It started from the need of a wayfinding typeface that had personality enough to be the brand typeface for a city. The city of Rio de Janeiro, with its never-ending curves and all year long summer weather provided the constraints and requirements of this typeface. From there, it evolved to be a workhorse, with 8 weights from Thin to Black and matching true italics. It just had to have the features that all us designers have grown to love, such as alternate letters (a, g and r for the romans), tabular and proportional figures in lining and oldstyle set-ups as well as small caps, fractions and all that jazz (I mean, samba). And it needed to be recognizable and distinct. For that, design features like tapered R legs, capitals with classic proportions and calligraphic finishes on the terminals proved crucial. And last, but not least, like Rio, it had to welcome many cultures. We came to think of it as the “Typeface from Ipanema”, with a classic, timeless look, swinging elegance and joyful attitude.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City when Rob Roy Kelly was at the Kansas City Art Institute, teaching and writing his book on American Wood Type. I got to know him just well enough to gain access to his fabulous collection of wood type and wood type catalogs. Later, in the1970s, I tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black at New West magazine. And again for Roger, in the 1980s, I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so, over time, I’ve been adding some things and dressing it up a little. Sutro Shaded has existed for a few years as a one color, outlined, drop-shadowed display font. It seemed like it was just dying for a little color. I added five more fonts: Fill, Gradient, Hatching, Rules and HiLite. These fonts can be used in different combinations to achieve various effects. There is a downloadable SUTRO SHADED USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

In August of 2009, I was commissioned by Zoo York, a New York City based skateboard company, to visit Buenos Aires to study and document street typography. As soon as my taxi driver took the bustling street Entre Ríos, it was clear that the city and I were going to be good friends. Many of the independently owned businesses on Entre Ríos are adorned with handmade signage. These signs are painted in a style called Fileteado which is a century-old Argentinian type of lettering and floral ornamentation. Nowadays, Fileteado is still a prominent part of the city’s landscape, coloring the façades of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Calaveras and Diablitos are two new typefaces that were inspired by Fileteado. Stylistically, the fonts are a return to a rhythmic and playful sensibility reminiscent of Vitrina and Cuba, two fonts that I designed in 1996. Along with dynamism and dance, these new fonts incorporate a rigor and functionality essential to labelling any font a ‘workhorse.’ The names Calaveras and Diablitos, came from the name of a song by the infamous Buenos Aires rock band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. —Pablo A. Medina

In August of 2009, I was commissioned by Zoo York, a New York City based skateboard company, to visit Buenos Aires to study and document street typography. As soon as my taxi driver took the bustling street Entre Ríos, it was clear that the city and I were going to be good friends. Many of the independently owned businesses on Entre Ríos are adorned with handmade signage. These signs are painted in a style called Fileteado which is a century-old Argentinian type of lettering and floral ornamentation. Nowadays, Fileteado is still a prominent part of the city’s landscape, coloring the façades of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Calaveras and Diablitos are two new typefaces that were inspired by Fileteado. Stylistically, the fonts are a return to a rhythmic and playful sensibility reminiscent of Vitrina and Cuba, two fonts that I designed in 1996. Along with dynamism and dance, these new fonts incorporate a rigor and functionality essential to labelling any font a ‘workhorse.’ The names Calaveras and Diablitos, came from the name of a song by the infamous Buenos Aires rock band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. —Pablo A. Medina

Ainslie Contrast is the newest in the Ainslie series, named for the famous mountain overlooking the Australian city of Canberra. The Ainslie series currently consists of four typefaces. The Ainslie design is very unique and originally began life as a semi-serif. Also available are a normalized sans serif and slab variants. This contemporary typeface’s high contrast catches the eye. The design flows with ease and sophistication. There are a mix of influences from Australia, which gives it a unique flavor. The original Ainslie was designed for the Canberra Australia Centennial Typeface Competition and named for the mountain that overlooks the beautiful capital city of Australia. Ainslie takes Canberra's distinct geometric design and blends it with the organic, flowing essence of aboriginal art and the smooth aerodynamic design of the boomerang. The typeface includes a multitude of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType application. There are swashes and other details such as small caps, alternative titling caps and swash alternates. If you’re searching for a contemporary high contrast typeface with geometric simplicity and a hint of antipodean flair, Ainslie Contrast is fair dinkum.

The Vondelpark is the famous Amsterdam city park, 47 hectares stretching out from Leidseplein to the Amstelveenseweg. It was founded in 1864 when a group of well-to-do Amsterdam citizens got together and bought land at the (then) edge of the city centre in order to create a park ‘for riding and strolling’. Designed by architect J.D. Zocher, it opened officially in 1865. The park received its name two years later when a statue of Dutch writer Joost van den Vondel was placed in the park. In the 1960s and 1970s the Vondelpark became a symbol and epicenter of the hippie flower power era. The park was declared a state monument in 1996. Donald DBXL was intrigued by the handmade iron nameplate lettering on the park’s entrance gates, and decided to design VLNL Vondelpark in its glory. The somewhat clumsy iron letters were not revived as is but optimized to turn it into a useful typeface. The all-caps serif with a deliberate constructed feel, contains a Positional Open Type feature that places half circles on the vertical stems, at the beginning and end of a word, to enliven the rhythm.

Mighty Oaks is a collection of stylized oak leaves. There are 47 oak leaves located under the character set keys. There is a flopped version of each leaf located under the shift+character key.

A display face with rounded terminals stylized like drops of a liquid. For use in large sizes in advertising matter and decorative headings. The face designed by Natalya Vasilyeva and licensed by ParaType in 2007.

Cyra is a shaded roman serif classic font. Distressed and antique, use this font in display purposes for a stylized type design. Uppercase letter designs only, works best when used for headers and set manually.

Chiara Script has a very simple origin. It's a highly stylized interpretation of Greater Albion's chief designer's handwriting! It combines legibility and cursive characters in a distinctive blend and includes a range of OpenType features.

Tumb is a bold quirky modern display font with stylized ink traps. It is perfect for giving your project a fun sophistocated playfulness. Perfect for headlines on posters, Instagram, print projects, branding, and logo design.

Bases Loaded JNL is a contour outline variant of Ebbets JNL, which was in turn a stylized variant of the retro-inspired Base Runner JNL. The design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The collection of letterpress cuts included in Printers Helpers JNL offers a generous helping of billing and accounting helpers along with the usual assortment of pointing hands, stylized arrows, cartoon embellishments and other miscellaneous images.

The cover title for “Private Detective” magazine (from October, 1942) was hand lettered in a stylized, extra bold Art Deco type design which is now available as Detective Case JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Sign Trade JNL is a reworking of Sign Crafter JNL. With a traditional M,N and W replacing the stylized versions of these letters in the previous font, Sign Trade JNL also offers an oblique version.

BluHead Studio LLC is pleased to announce the release of Churchward Chinatype by New Zealand typeface designer Joseph Churchward. This stylized brush script is intended for display use, but is surprisingly legible at smaller point sizes.

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

Legatum is a new look at a classical serif Roman font and inspired by Roman sycamore, columns and architectural details of the Eternal City. The shapes of the letters and perfectly balanced high-contrast makes each sign look elegant, sophisticated and eye-catching. Looks great in headlines of posters, text in magazines, books. Also can be used in logos and blog posts. Each font has Latin multi-lingual support as well as uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and basic punctuations and all necessary ligatures and alternates.

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