TT Marxiana useful links: Specimen | History of creation | Graphic presentation | Customization options Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org About TT Marxiana: TT Marxiana is a project to reconstruct a set of pre-revolutionary fonts that were used in the layout of the "Niva" magazine, published by the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx. In our project, we decided to focus on a specific set of fonts that were used in the preparation and printing of the "Niva" magazine in 1887, namely its Antiqua and Italic, Grotesque and Elzevir. As part of the TT Marxiana project, we sought to adhere to strict historicity and maintain maximum proximity to the paper source. We tried to avoid any “modernization” of fonts, unless of course we consider this to be kerning work, the introduction of OpenType features and creation of manual hinting. As a result, with the TT Marxiana font family, a modern designer gets a full-fledged and functional set of different fonts, which allows using modern methods and using modern software to create, for example, a magazine in a design typical of the late 19th century. The TT Marxiana project started in the late summer of 2018 and from the very beginning went beyond the traditional projects of TypeType because of the importance of preserving the historical identity. Since up to this point, we had never before reconstructed the font from historical paper sources and with such a level of elaboration and attention to detail, it took us two years to implement this project. You can read more about all stages of the project in our blog, and here we will briefly talk about the result. As it turned out, drawing a font following the scanned pages of a century-old magazine is a very difficult task. In fact, such a font reconstruction very much resembles archaeological excavations or solving a complex cipher, and all these efforts are needed only in order to finally understand what steps need to be taken so that the resulting font is not just an antiqua, but the specific and accurate antiqua from "Niva" magazine. In addition, due to the specifics of printing, same characters in the old magazine setting looked completely different, which greatly complicated the task. In one place, there was less ink than needed, and the letter in the reference was not well-printed and thin, in some other place there was more ink and the letter had flooded. An important task was to preserve and convey this feeling of typographic printing, but at the same time it was important to identify the common logic and character of the dot gains so that the font would form a harmonious, single, but at the same time lively picture. Since the "Niva" magazine was historically published in Russian, the magazine had no shortage of references for the reconstruction of Cyrillic characters, but there were not many Latin letters in the magazine at all. In addition, the paper source lacked a part of punctuation, diacritics, there were no currency signs nor ligatures at all—we developed all these characters based on font catalogs of the 19–20 centuries, trying to reflect characteristic details from the main character composition to the max. So, for example, the Germandbls character, which is not in the original "Niva" set, we first found in one of the font catalogs, but still significantly redesigned it. We decided that in such a voluminous project, only graphic similarities with the original source are not enough and we came up with a feature that can be used to exchange modern Russian spelling for pre-revolutionary spelling. When this feature is turned on, yat and yer appear in the necessary places (i, ѣ, b, ѳ and ѵ), the endings of the words change, and so appears a complete sensation of the historical text. This feature works in all fonts of the TT Marxiana font family. TT Marxiana Antiqua is a scotch style serif, the drawing of which carefully preserved some of the artifacts obtained by printing, namely dot gain, a slight deformation of the letters and other visual nuances. TT Marxiana Antiqua has an interesting stylistic set that imitates the old setting and in which some of the signs are made with deliberate sticking or roughness. Using this set will provide an opportunity to further simulate the setting of that great time. TT Marxiana Grotesque is a rather thick and bold old grotesk. Its drawing also maximally preserved the defects obtained during printing and characteristic of its paper reference. In addition to pre-revolutionary spelling, TT Marxiana Grotesque has a decorative set with an inversion. This is a set of uppercase characters, numbers and punctuation, which allows you to type inverse headers, i.e. print white on black. As a result of using this set, you get the text against black bars—this way of displaying was very characteristic for print advertising at the turn of the century. In addition, about 30 decorative indicator stubs were drawn for this set: arrows, hands, clubs, etc. TT Marxiana Elzevir is a title or header font and is a compilation of monastic Elzevir that were actively used in the "Niva" magazine for all its prints. Unlike the antiqua, TT Marxiana Elzevir has sharper forms, and the influence of deformations from typographic printing is not as noticeable in the forms of its signs. This is primarily due to the specifics of its drawing and the fact that it was usually used as a heading font and was printed in large sizes. The height of the lowercase and uppercase characters of Elsevier is the same as the heights of the antiqua, but the font is more contrasting and lighter, it has a lot of white and, unlike the antiqua and the grotesque, there are a lot of sharp corners. An exclusive feature of the TT Marxiana Elzevir is an alternative set of uppercase characters with swash. • TT Marxiana Antiqua consist of 625 glyphs each and and it has 23 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, case. • TT Marxiana Antiqua Italic consist of 586 glyphs each and and it has 22 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case. • TT Marxiana Grotesque consists of 708 glyphs and it has 22 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case. • TT Marxiana Elzevir consists of 780 glyphs and it has 21 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, ordn, frac, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, salt, c2sc, smcp, case, liga. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Marxiana language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Ladin, Leonese, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Taita, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tsonga, Tswana, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Valencian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Xhosa, Zulu.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Every year, more and more text is read directly on a computer screen in office applications, or from freshly printed sheets from a copier or laser printer. Clear, legible text faces are more imperative to office communication than ever before. Yet every worker desires a small bit of personality in the corporate world. Most office environments are only equipped with a few basic fonts that are truly optimized for use in text, with laser printers, and on screen. The Linotype Office Alliance fonts guarantee data clarity. All of the font weights within the individual family have the same character measurements; individual letters or words may have their styles changed without line wrap being affected! All numbers, mathematical signs, and currency symbols are tabular; they share the same set character width, ensuring that nothing stands in the way of clear graph, chart, and table design. In addition to being extremely open and legible, the characters in this collection's fonts also share the same capital letter height and the same x-height. The production and reading of financial reports is duly streamlined with the Linotype Office Alliance fonts. The Neuzeit Office family is designed after the model of the original sans serif family Neuzeit S, which was produced by D. Stempel AG and the Linotype Design Studio in 1966. Neuzeit S itself was a redesign of D. Stempel AG's DIN Neuzeit, created by Wilhelm Pischner between 1928 and 1939. Intended to represent its own time, DIN Neuzeit must have struck a harmonious chord. DIN Neuzeit is a constructed, geometric sans serif. It was born during the 1920s, a time of design experimentation and standardization, whose ethos has been made famous by the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements in art, architecture, and design. Upon its redesign as Neuzeit S in the 1960s, other developments in sans serif letter design were taken into account. Neuzeit S looks less geometric, and more gothic, or industrial. Separating it from typefaces like Futura, it has a double-storey a, instead of a less legible, single-storey variant. Unlike more popular grotesque sans serifs like Helvetica, Neuzeit S and especially the redesigned Neuzeit Office contain more open, legible letterforms. Neuzeit Office preserves the characteristic number forms that have been associated with its design for years. After four decades, Neuzeit has been retooled once again, and it is more a child of its age than ever before. Akira Kobayashi, Linotype's Type Director, created the revised and updated Neuzeit Office in 2006. His greatest change was to retool the design to make its performance in text far more optimal. Additionally, he created companion oblique to help emphasize text. The other three families in the Office Alliance system include Metro Office, Times Europa Office and Trump Mediaeval Office.Some weights of the Neuzeit Office are availabla as soft rounded versions. "

An American Scotch remixed in 27 fonts Mencken has twenty seven styles, divided into three widths, three optical sizes, romans and italics. Generally, optical size typeface families belong to a same common construction. It falls into the same category of type classification, while presenting different x-heights or contrasts. Mencken is unique because it is designed according to different axis and optical sizes. Firstly, Mencken Text is a low-contrast transitional typeface, designed on an oblique axis, asserting horizontal with featuring open counters. Its capitals follow Didots to better harmonize the rest of the family. On the other side of the spectrum, Mencken Head (and narrow variations) is designed on a vertical axis, high contrast, in a contemporary Didot style. The Mencken is therefore a typeface answering to different sorts of uses, whose design is different according to its uses: from oblique axis in small size to vertical axis in large sizes. Vertical proportions (x-height, capitals height, etc.) were calibrated to be compatible with many Typofonderie typeface families. Lucie Lacava and I followed the idea launched by Matthew Carter few years ago for some of his typefaces intended for publications. From Baltimore Sun’s project to Typofonderie’s Mencken It is a bespoke typeface for American newspaper The Baltimore Sun started at the end of 2004 which marks the beginning of this project. The story started with a simple email exchange with Lucie Lacava then in charge of redesigning the American East Coast newspaper. As usual, she was looking for new typeface options in order to distinguish the redesign that she had started. At the time of its implementation, a survey of the newspaper’s readers has revealed that its previous typeface, drawn in the mid-1990s, was unsatisfactory. The Mencken was well received, some reader responses was particularly enjoyable: “It’s easier to read with the new type even though the type is designed by a French.” Why it is called Mencken? The name Mencken is a tribute to H. L. Mencken’s journalistic contributions to The Sun. According to the London Daily Mail, Mencken ventured beyond the typewriter into the world of typography. Because he felt Americans did not recognize irony when they read it, he proposed the creation of a special typeface to be called Ironics, with the text slanting in the opposite direction from italic types, to indicate the author’s humour. Affirming his irreverence, the Mencken typeface does not offer these typographic gadgets. Henry Louis Mencken (1880 — 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore”, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. Creative Review Type Annual 2006 Tokyo TDC 2018

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

Gothic Tuscan One is a all-cap condensed gothic with round terminals and decorative “tuscan” center spurs. It was first shown by William H. Page of Norwich, Connecticut among his wood type specimen pages of 1859. Gothic Tuscan One exemplifies the strength of decorative wood types: large, simple type forms that provide the visual boldness sought by advertisers of the Victorian period. While our marketing has gotten so very sophisticated, there is always a place for simple, visually strong typeface. Although about 14 miles inland, Norwich lies at the head of the Thames River. The river is both wide and deep, and therefore was not bridged in the early 20th century. From the 17th century until then, if you wanted to get from Groton on the west bank to the whaling port of New London on the east bank by land, you had to had to go by way of Norwich. Because of its size, the Thames is navigable all the way from Norwich to New London. Docks were built in Norwich around 1685 and the city became Connecticut’s 2nd largest port by 1800. With the construction of the Norwich & Worcester Railroad in 1835, Page could easily ship his wood type north by rail or south by coastal schooner. Included with our font, Gothic Tuscan One, are two 19th century printer’s ornaments of sailing ships similar to those that sailed up the Thames to Norwich. There is also a more contemporary glyph of a whale, looking quite pleased that the only whaling ship left in Connecticut is the Charles W. Morgan, permanently moored at Mystic Seaport. Reference: Moon’s Handbooks, Connecticut 2nd Edition (Emeryville CA 2004). Gothic Tuscan One ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 332 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, ornm and dlig. 3. Added 330 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Redesigned mathamatical operators 6. Included of both tabular (std) & proportional numbers (optional). 7. Refined various glyph outlines. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.