Classic Grotesque by Rod McDonald: a traditional font with a modern face. The growing popularity of grotesque typefaces meant that many new sans serif analogues were published in the early 20th century. Setting machines were not compatible with each other but all foundries wanted to offer up-to-date fonts, and as a result numerous different typeface families appeared that seem almost identical at first glance and yet go their separate ways with regard to details. One of the first fonts created with automatic typesetting in mind was Monotype Grotesque®. Although this typeface that was designed and published by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 has since been digitalised, it has never achieved the status of other grotesque fonts of this period. But Monotype Grotesque was always one of designer Rod McDonald’s favourites, and he was overjoyed when he finally got the go-ahead from Monotype in 2008 to update this “hidden treasure”. The design process lasted four years, with regular interruptions due to the need to complete projects for other clients. In retrospect, McDonald admits that he had no idea at the beginning of just how challenging and complex a task it would be to create Classic Grotesque™. It took him considerable time before he found the right approach. In his initial drafts, he tried to develop Monotype Grotesque only to find that the result was almost identical with Arial®, a typeface that is also derived in many respects from Monotype Grotesque. It was only when he went back a stage, and incorporated elements of Bauer Font’s Venus™ and Ideal Grotesk by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry into the design process, that he found the way forward. Both these typefaces had served as the original inspiration for Monotype Grotesque. The name says it all: Classic Grotesque has all the attributes of the early grotesque fonts of the 20th century: The slightly artificial nature gives the characters a formal appearance. There are very few and only minor variations in line width. The tittles of the ‘i’ and ‘j’, the umlaut diacritic and other diacritic marks are rectangular. Interestingly, it is among the uppercase letters that certain variations from the standard pattern can be found, and it is these that enliven the typeface. Hence the horizontal bars of the “E”, “F” and “L” have bevelled terminals. The chamfered terminal of the bow of the “J” has a particular flamboyance, while the slightly curved descender of the “Q” provides for additional dynamism. The character alternatives available through the OpenType option provide the designer with a wealth of opportunities. These include a closed “a”, a double-counter “g” and an “e” in which the transverse bar deviates slightly from the horizontal. The seven different weights also extend the scope of uses of Classic Grotesque. These range from the delicate Light to the super thick Extrabold. There are genuine italic versions of each weight; these are not only slightly narrower than their counterparts, but also have variant shapes. The “a” is closed, the “f” has a semi-descender while the “e” is rounded. Its neutral appearance and excellent features mean that Classic Grotesque is suitable for use in nearly all imaginable applications. Even during the design phase, McDonald used his new font to set books and in promotional projects. However, he would be pleased to learn of possible applications that he himself has not yet considered. Classic Grotesque, which has its own individual character despite its neutral and restrained appearance, is the ideal partner for your print and web project.

In 2009, a book from 1897 in the library of the University of Wisconsin caught David Berlow’s attention. It was set in a clear text face—a predecessor of Bookman—cast by the Western Type Foundry who called it Custer. Upon noting how well the typeface worked in sizes of 6 and 7 points, Berlow developed it into a member of the Reading Edge series specifically designed for small text on screen. Custer RE was a broad and approachable typeface drawn large on the body with a tall x-height to maximize its apparent size when set very small. This was the beginning of the newly expanded series; in 2020, Berlow added new optical sizes and weights, growing the original design’s versatility up to headline sizes.

Font design meets architecture – the unique and architectural design of the urban villa “Dupli.Casa” by the architect J.Mayer.H triggered the inspiration for the typeface “La Casa”.
Inclinations and curvatures mirror the linear, modern impression of the architecture. The overall impression of the sans serif accounts for the great readability, even in lower point sizes – perfect for the design of books and magazines. The fresh and modern appearance of the font is particularly suitable for corporate designs of enterprises. The seven-font weights support more than 100 languages and the Cyrillic characters ensure a versatile and international use. The low contrast, the reduction of the corner points and the clear nature of the font make “La Casa” perfectly applicable as a web font.

Cut as a private version for the Nonesuch Press in the early 1930s, Monotype Bulmer was first released for general use in 1939. Based on types, cut by William Martin circa 1790, used by the Printer, William Bulmer, in a number of prestigious works, including Boydell's Shakespeare. Martins types combined beauty with functionality. Narrower and with a taller appearance than Baskerville, it anticipated the modern face of Bodoni but retained vital qualities from the old face style. This new digital version of the Bulmer font family was drawn by Monotype following extensive research into the previous hot metal versions and a study of Bulmer's printed works. Additional weights have been designed together with a wide range of Expert and alternative characters.

The Ayres Mono font is a clear and geometric mono-spaced font. It is easily legible and has Regular and Bold variants. It has keyboard friendly characters for drawing curved boxes and tables from the 'curly brackets' characters. These can be laid out in the text with the even spacing. It also features easy to use simple maths and music symbols. Some punctuation marks are made half-spaced along with a half-space key for more layout options. It supports many languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Icelandic, Welsh, Finnish, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Hungarian, and Mauri. It includes symbols such as a tick, card suits and smiley face. The geometric layout is ideal for guitar tablature and text art.

Rumi is a script font with organic and natural feel, designed to look as true handwriting. It has a calligraphic touch and shaky, unpredictable execution, being very clear and readable at the same time. In order to achieve realistic look, Rumi features 4 variations of lowercase characters, figures and punctuation. The font mixes randomly all four versions after activating OpenType “calt” feature. Many ligatures help to create even more unrepeatable settings. Rumi has an extended character set of more than 900 glyphs containing alternate styles, standard and discretionary ligatures, symbols, ordinals and case-sensitive forms. It suppors Central, Eastern as well as Western European languages. Rumi is great for all kinds of projects that need strong, personal feeling and natural, organic look.

Elegance flows through Couturier Poster soul. The new cousin of early launched Couturier, brings higher contrast and an extended family, perfect for big sizes. Inspired by the didones from the 18th century, its design its heavily influenced by contemporary ideas makes it suitable to use for almost anything you can think of. Equipped with swashes, ligatures, small caps and alternates, this typography is very versatile and allows you to set a big range of compositions with discretion or personality. Couturier Poster comes in six weights and matching true italics, from thin to black. It's a good choice to pair with Couturier for smaller sizes and Couturier Poster for the big titles. It has a set of 1248 characters that cover more than 200 languages derived from latin.

Popcorn is a brush script family of Regular and Bold weight and a set frisky caps, Casuals. Popcorn is a strikingly clear and smooth display face with short descenders and ascenders—it’s great for stacked layouts too. Popcorn scripts are equipped with plenty of contextual alternates and ligatures, all set in Standard Ligatures to keep the smooth flow. Besides that there’s also Swash alternates for every standard letter. Popcorn scripts are PUA encoded so you can access alternates with most design softwares. Popcorn Print is a rugged version of Popcorn with rough outlines and nice print texture. Popcorn is a great display family with roots in the past but smooth polished contemporary features. For the best price grab the whole pack!

Atmosfera is a classic Didona typeface, recognizable by its extreme vertical tension, great contrast between thin and thick sticks and its straight and fine linear serifs that is angularly related to the staff of the letter, giving them an excellent legibility and a very clear and elegant appearance. In the design of this version, we chose to eliminate some serifs to give it a more avant-garde and modern look while maintaining an elegant style. With its 890 glyphs, it is enriched with a complete set of OpenType Type features: swashes, ligatures, alternates, stylistics sets and small caps, even so in the characters used in Western languages.. Atmosfera is an elegant text typeface that offers a wide range of possibilities.

In 1932, Xanti Schawinsky (1904?1979) designed an alphabet that combines two styles: a neo-classic stroke contrast paired with characteristics of stencil lettering. This mix is a child of its time and seems to reflect the Swiss and Italian biography of Schawinski. Luca Pellegrini took on the modern look and re-drew the letterforms, interrupted by subtle spaces where thick and thin strokes meet. Although Schawinsky had already designed a complete alphabet and figures in the early 1930s, Pellegrini took the character set to another level, adding currency signs, mathematical symbols and all kinds of punctuation ? anything needed to set more than just headlines. Xants is a blend of Swiss elegance and exclusiveness with Italian charm and imperfection, a combination that never gets old.

Font designed from this who was used by an unknown printer in Lyon (France) to print the “Conte de Griseldis ” (Griseldis' tale), from Petrarque, inspired by Boccace, in 1495. The original font has a relatively small number of special characters and ligature, for the time. This font includes “long s”, naturally, as typicaly medieval but numerous letters - as accented ones - were added for this version. A render sheet, enclosed with the file, helps to identify them on keyboard. It is used variously in web-site titles, posters and fliers design, editing ancient texts or greeting cards as a very decorative and fine font... This font works at a small size like 9, remaining clear and easy to read on screen, but always better when printed.

Nicolas Cochin (not to be confused with another font named simply "Cochin") was originally designed by Georges Peignot in the early 20th Century and was based on engraved letters of the 17th Century artist Charles Nicholas Cochin. Many foundries including Lanston released versions in the 1920s. Several digital versions can now be found, but none have kept the irregular details of the metal type which include strokes that cross over each other as if hand drawn (see letters K & y). The new Lanston digitization is the only digital version to retain the idiosyncratic treatment which makes the metal type so alluring. The Opentype version included an expanded Central European character set as well as ligatures, alternates, fractions, superior/inferior numerals (the Italic also has swash characters).

DecorateTheTree is a festive novelty font family containing two styles designed to be used in layers. Each style has letters on Christmas-tree lights. The regular style has clear bulbs and the bold style has filled bulbs. Some characters are on standing bulbs and others on hanging bulbs and these two sets are made to alternate with the OpenType contextual alternatives (calt) feature. To use only one set of bulbs, this feature must be turned off and character spacing adjusted, though why anyone would want to use only one set is a mystery. These fonts are monospaced. They are useful to display a holiday message not just in words but in the lettering itself. (The characters on the bulbs are derived from the font SansduskiMono.)

Our chef Martin Lorenz likes to mix cool and fresh cocktails - shaken, not stirred! You have to taste his awesome Martini or mix it yourself! To make matters more easy, cocktail master Martin reveals his special recipe: “The TpMartini refers esthetically to typefaces drawn with a pointed nib as the Bodoni or Didot, but with the clear distinction that it is obviously constructed by modules. The visual system for the TpMartin is based on a square 5x9-unit grid and three different basic forms with which the font and other elements are designed. The basic forms consist of a straight line and circles of two different sizes. The line can be extended, but the circles retain their related proportions.” One piece of advice: Don’t drink and type!

The above-the-store signage for many newspaper stands, soda shops, candy stores, luncheonettes and pharmacies of the 1950s and early 1960s were what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblems on the left and right, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Candy – Soda – Newspapers”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by these vintage signs, Privilege Sign JNL recreates the condensed sans serif lettering style in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses.

The Alterhard typeface combines the inimitable craftsmanship of the great condensed styles of the early twentieth century and at the same time looks organic and even unusual among modern ones. A distinctive feature of the Alterhard typeface is the smooth transition from the geometrically strict extremely compressed shapes of the bold typefaces to the classic sparse shape of the compressed typeface in light weights. Also unusual for vertical fonts are oblique elements in lowercase letters, which give uniqueness, liveliness and originality to the classic type of font. This allows the Alterhard typeface to be used in any design field such as corporate identity, typography, posters, web design, and other design areas. The set comes in 9 font sizes for rich typography.

1776 Independence was designed inspired mainly from the Caslon typeface used by John Dunlap in the night of 1776 July 4th in Philadelphia to print the first 200 sheets of the Congress' Declaration of Independence establishing the United States of America. I just added accented letters and a few others, with respect for the original design. A render sheet,enclosed with font file, help to identify them on keyboard. It can be used as web-site titles, posters and fliers, editing ancient texts, menus or greeting cards as a very decorative font... This font supports as easily enlargement or small size, remaining clear and easy to read from 8 or 9 points to 72 and over. It gives a smart look especially to prints.

As a unique example of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Victorian type, Zinc Italian emits a strikingly beautiful and twinkling luminescence. Oversized initial caps, each containing intricate swirls and curlycues, vibrate stunningly alongside a variety of amusing lowercase letters. Also known as Zinco, this typeface is generously equipped with a charming set of alternate characters including capital figures and some easier-to-decipher lowercase letters. Zinc Italian with Alternates is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new features including discretionary ligatures and expanded standard ligatures 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.

Praktika Modern grotesk super family Praktika is a multifunctional super family of 40 fonts. It consists of three distinct widths and weights from extra light to extra bold. Conceptually, it is a rendition of the familiar early 20th century European grotesque styles, used in road signage – reimagined to meet the needs of contemporary world. Its design language, however, has been kept decidedly rough and bulky, to achieve a unique-yet-familiar look and feel. Praktika comes with more than a few features, accessible in any open type savvy program. • Built-in small capitals • Both lining and old style numerals, in tabular or proportional form • Superscript and subscript numerals • Many alternate characters For the best experience, purchase the whole family which is available for a good bargain price.

Chaparral is the work of type designer Carol Twombly and combines the legibility of slab serif designs popularized in the 19th century with the grace of 16th century roman book lettering. The result is a versatile, hybrid slab-serif design. Unlike ""geometric"" slab serif designs, Chaparral has varying letter proportions that give it an accessible and friendly appearance in all weights from light to bold. And because it is a multiple master typeface with an optical axis (ranging from 7 to 72 points), Chaparral is clear and legible in smaller text settings while remaining subtle and lively at display sizes. Chaparral�s highly functional design is surprisingly beautiful, the perfect choice for correspondence, as well as book, poster and newsletter design.

Titul is a display typeface with strong historical connotations. It is based on a series of stylish lettering for book covers, designed by Russian graphic artist Alexander Leo in the 1920s. The historical reference for him was book design of the 1st half of the 19th century. Type family consists of four ornamented and three basic styles: one solid, one inline and one striped. All seven faces have corresponding oblique styles. Also, there is a beautiful vignette font and a style for constructing ornamental borders. Titul suits best for vintage spirited typography, from the 19th to early 20th century. It is perfect for book covers, theater posters, packaging and greeting cards. Typeface was created by Isabella Chaeva and released by Paratype in 2020.

Yet again, a font inspired by my work as a kindergarten teacher! The other day, I had a conversation with some of the kids, about what they ate for breakfast. Some had oatmeal, some bread and others yogurt. But this kid - he insisted that every morning, his mother would serve him cookies, “morning cookies”. It sounded too good to be true, and when I asked his mother, it turned out that “cookies” were actually bread, but to make it sound more appetising, they called it cookies! The letters are rounded and in some way quite naive, but still clear and legible. With an extreme ascender and descender, the font stands out with its oddities. I’ve added 3 different versions of each lowercase letter!

Calgary Script was mostly inspired by a brush script on a Welcome To Calgary sign in, you guessed it, Calgary. Though now, after it's finished, I can easily tell the influence is evident of all the books on American sign painting I have absorbed over the years. The overall effect of the font is similar to something that Fonzied itself, big hair and leather jackets and all, out of the early 1980s, but the feeling really dates back to a few decades earlier. Heady caps and free-flowing lowercase make for a speedy, determined, and instinctively organized buffalo herd of a typeface. This is a packaging font with a true supermarket sign spin, with OpenType features including ligatures, alternates, and ordinals specifically made to follow numbers.

Quilt Patterns Three was inspired by the patchwork designs used in quiltmaking in early America. There is an assortment of 94 patterns located under the character set and shift+character set keys. Quilt Patterns Three is based on the nine patch pattern, a block that is 3 squares by 3 squares, the most basic and most common. The nine patch pattern can be subdivided into 6 squares by 6 squares, 9 squares by 9 squares, etc. Characters of Quilt Patterns Three can be typed in a vector drawing program and then converted to paths/outlines, color may then be added to various parts of a given pattern. Patterns can be stacked horizontally and vertically creating an infinite number of quilt designs.

Quilt Patterns One was inspired by the patchwork designs used in quiltmaking in early America. There is an assortment of 94 patterns located under the character set and shift+character set keys. Quilt Patterns One is based on the nine patch pattern, a block that is 3 squares by 3 squares, the most basic and most common. The nine patch pattern can be subdivided into 6 squares by 6 squares, 9 squares by 9 squares, etc. Characters of Quilt Patterns One can be typed in a vector drawing program and then converted to paths/outlines, color may then be added to various parts of a given pattern. Patterns can be stacked horizontally and vertically creating an infinite number of quilt designs.

For weekly freebies, follow me on Instagram @joannemarie_cm Cake & TARTS is a cute handwriting font with lots of personality. The caps work so well together too. I’ve loved making hand lettered designs with it (in fact, that’s how I became to make the font - from my own hand lettering) and have shared some of those with you here. It’s perfect for anything casual. It can be used for a wide range of projects, such as logo designs, party & wedding invitations, t-shirt designs, signs, magazine design, greetings cards, poster design and much more! This casual handwriting script font is clear, smooth and easy to read, making it perfect for large amounts of text too! It has alternates, ligatures and international characters.

Art Deco turned mundane objects into graceful, sensual works of art, with a nod towards the opulent and extreme. Art Deco sought to build upon the elements of Modern Art movements by focusing on the principal object and removing the extraneous elements found in the Victorian era and in Art Nouveau. The concept of "form following function" and the technological advances of the early 20th century played a very important role in defining the direction of Art Deco. Popular images included stylized people, svelte animals, tall buildings, sleek vehicles and exotic scenes. Art Deco typographic designers were also inspired by these diverse themes. P22's Art Deco font set shows the influence of a cross section of some of the various European and American Art Deco styles.

YR Qaf is a clean, modern, and highly legible font. Featuring clear, easy-to-read letterforms with a focus on legibility. The font is carefully crafted with balanced proportions and an emphasis on vertical lines, resulting in a harmonious and streamlined appearance. YR Qaf offers a sleek and modern aesthetic, with exceptional legibility and versatility. Its clean lines and balanced proportions make it a perfect choice for a variety of design projects where clarity and readability are essential. YR Qaf is ideal for a wide range of applications, including branding, web design, editorial design, and more. With a comprehensive set of glyphs, including both upper and lowercase letters, numerals, and symbols, this font can adapt to diverse design needs with ease.

This font is based on the popular and timeless Caslon design and was carefully digitized from the pages of an early 19th century book. I was excited to see some unique design treatments of characters such as the lower case italic 'p', the question mark, and various swash caps that I had never seen before. During the conversion process, I made sure to preserve the worn look of faded ink on old paper by maintaining a subtle level of decay and opacity with each character. For missing characters not found in the book, I created new characters that were faithful to the style of the rest of the family. Used as a text font, The Letterpress Text Family successfully reproduces the appearance of old letterpress lithography.

The German typeface artist Lucian Bernhard designed Bernhard Antiqua as the first of his many text typefaces. The first weights were produced in 1912 by the foundry Flinsch in Frankfurt am Main. Further weights followed in the 1920s, produced by the Bauersche foundry, which had acquired Flinsch in the meantime. Bernhard font is an alphabet with a marked historical influence. It brings the viewer back to the early 20th century, when the bold forms of this typeface graced advertising displays and posters. Distinguishing characteristics of this typeface are the cross of the capital W and the rounding of the capital R. Linotype's Bernhard condensed bold, with its narrow, robust forms, is best for headlines in medium and larger point sizes.

Introducing 58 Rodeo: A Classic Redefined 58 Rodeo is based on several different woodtypes used primarily as display faces in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The difference with this version of a classic woodtype is the balance and legibility. 58 Rodeo has been redrawn to emphasize line and character uniformity. The goal is to create a eurostyle, square look in a western font designed for modern applications with wild west sensibility. Additional characters provide whimsy and flair to round out any layout on the fly. Stars and other sorts are included in this reinterpreted design. Egyptienne-style fonts possess a universal appeal and are spectacular for adding interest and legibility in a variety of applications. The extended character set includes the Euro, placed on the currency key.

Alexander Quill was originally designed in the early 1980s to be cut in 14 point for casting into foundry type for the setting and printing of limited edition books at Pie Tree Press, Jim Rimmer's private sanctum. This alphabet exhibits traditional calligraphic tension, which helps its simple, somewhat octagonal forms play well together for an easy read. Its setting expresses a dramatic sense of history or fantasy. Alexander Quill was updated and remastered for the latest technologies in 2012. It comes with plenty of built-in alternates, a glyphset of over 410 characters, and supports the majority of Latin-based languges. 20% of this font's revenues will be donated to the GDC Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Jackbird is a display typeface, perfect for making your designs stand out among the crowd. The font is versatile and can be used in a variety of designs, from branding materials to social media graphics. It's perfect for creating logos, headlines, posters, and more. This all-caps font is designed to be bold and attention-grabbing, ensuring that your message is communicated loud and clear. The typeface comes with OpenType Stylistic Alternatives feature giving you the option to add some unique characters which can be transformed into wonderful monograms. Please see the examples shown above to get an idea of the capability of this typeface. Jackbird comes with extended language support including Western European, Central European, and South-Eastern European character sets (total of 273 glyphs).

Bombelli is a font that looks like it has been handwritten by a meticulous architect in one of those hand-drawn blueprints of the old days. I chose the name to honor one of my ex-bosses -- a graphic designer-architect who taught me a lot of things when I was young and needed the money. One of the things he taught me – and probably the most important one – was to always be on time in the morning. He never said a word about me being late, but it worked. He taught me about being meticulous in detail and many other things I only appreciated much later. This clear and straightforward font deserves bearing his name. Your grateful type designer Gert Wiescher

Mido is designed with the aim to recreate all the power of the early 19h century slab serifs, but without their geometric monotony. The ambition was to make a humanist slab serif that would function both in smaller sizes, as headlines, and poster size. Careful attention has been payed to the spaces within and inbetween letters – they show slight irregularities to create dynamic negative spaces, which in turn makes the letters sit solidly together as words and sentences. Mido is suitable for packaging, posters, book covers, identities and headlines, as well as type set in smaller sizes. It comes with both upper- and lower case figures. The typeface Mido is an ongoing design project of which the first font is now released.

This family was inspired by the pure Jenson set of fonts used in Venice to print De preparatio evangelica in the year 1470. The present font contains all of the specific latin abbreviations and ligatures used in the original. Added are the accented characters and a few others not in use in this early period of printing, also small caps, these, contained in a separate file in the Mac TT version. This font supports strong enlargements as easily than small size remaining very smart, elegant and fine. Decorated letters like 1512 Initials, 1550 Arabesques, 1565 Venetian 1584 Rinceau or other fonts from GLC Foundry, can be used with this family without anachronism. If Italic style is required, we recommend the use of 1557 Italique.

Crewekerne is a typeface family which speaks of the villages that are at the heart of English life. It is inspired by the arts and crafts movement of the early twentieth century, and is complimented by two other families, Crewekerne Magna and Crewekerne Magister. Three widths - condensed, regular and expanded and three weights - regular bold and heavy are offered. Crewekerne is especially good when combined with its two complimentary families and when used in poster and design work that needs a rustic hand crafted flair but still needs to be easily legible. Crewekene is a fun family and a serious set of faces all in one. Crewekerne, Crewekerne Magna and Crewekerne Magister can also be purchased together in the Crewekerne Value Pack.