Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023

The general idea: Can You imagine to yourself, what the hydroelectric power station is? The building of this electricity production foundry is half hidden under the water, but the visible above-water part astonishes your sense. It is a construction almost 1,5 km length dammed out the powerful river stream. Besides thousand of electricity conduction lines supports it bears also the highway and the railroad. From a faraway distance the train seems like a caterpillar that has climbed up the stout tree. There are also the navigable sluices, the flood channels and other erections. The idea of this typeface outlines arrived to the authors exactly on the viewing platform, under the impression of the waterfalls, which are escaping from the dam womb, falling from almost 50 meters altitude and becoming white-haired during this flight. Release: in the form of "gorod.Volgograd" font with the one style. We work with other styles now and sometime we will be very glad to introduce the Bold and Italic styles to You. We should explain the font name meaning. "Gorod" is "city of" in Russian and Volgograd is the old, big and famous Russian city. The Volga hydroelectric power station of a name of XXII congress of the CPSU caused the Volgograd sea formation. It expands of 14 km width and more than 600 km along the Volga river-bed. But HEPS isn't the sole Volgograd sight. There are many interesting places here. The most known tourist sight, the visit card of Volgograd is the Mamaev Hill. Being here You can see almost all 100 kilometers of city length. Due to its geographical position, Mamaev Hill has got a great importance during the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). It became and still is the Main Height of Russia. Soviet people have built the huge stately memorial ensemble here. There are many other witnesses of the heroic past of Volgograd: the Alley of Heroes, the Perished Fighters Square, the Soldiers Field and others. The line of tank turrets is stretched out along all town not far from Volga bank. It marks the line, where fascist troops was stopped in 1943. It is very amazingly when You dive under the ground on a usual tram. Volgograders have built a few underground station for the high-speed tramway. The river tram need a quarter of an hour to get an island in the Volga. And You need the same time to walk across the river station. The Volga-Don navigable channel starts from Volgograd. There are planetarium, circus, some theatres, many museums in Volgograd. One of football matches of Euro-2004 qualifying round took a place in the "Rotor" stadium in Volgograd. Volgograd holds the longest - above 50 km - park in the world. Its avenues, squares, embankments are beautiful, Volgograd central districts are built in unique architecture style called the Stalin Empire. You can enjoy fountains, parks, attractions, water-pools and other Volgograd sights. If You visit Volgograd once You'll never forget it. You can read about the ancient history of Volgograd city on the Tsaritsyn font page. Also we plan to create the Stalingrad font and give You a short story about another period in Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad-Volgograd history.

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.