The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

Arapix is a 12 pixel high multilingual Latin-Arabic pixel font with incredible capabilities. The Arapix is an almost traditional Naskh. It is elegant and easy to read even in very small sizes. It includes almost every feature you would expect from a high range Naskh font. Its humanistic look and feel fit perfectly to its Latin counterpart. Arapix was originally designed for a web project that didn't see the light a few years back. It started with the idea of fitting both Latin and Arabic into a 12 pixel vertical grid. The latin glyphs fit properly within the vertical limits, but when it came to the arabic glyphs, it proved to be more challenging. Arabic letters with lower diacritic dots like the (Yeh-fina) or letters with accents above like the (Alef-Hamza-above) need much more space than any Latin letter. Add to this the fact that accents needs to be positioned above and below the glyphs. It is technically impossible to fit a (Yeh-fina-kasratan) or a (Alef-Hamza-above-shadda-damma) into 12 pixels. Initially the accents were dropped and not included in the design. Although it seemed impossible at the start, Sylvain found a solution in the end, including as many contextual alternates and contextual kerning as needed to avoid every collision between letters and diacritics, letters and accents, and diacritics and accents. The contextual kerning was added to achieve an even letter and word spacing in longer text. Arapix is amazingly legible in small size on screen and in print. On the other hand, it also works perfectly as display titling font due to its unique and contemporary pixel approach. It can be used for screens with very low resolution as well as for high resolution screens and prints. The new Arapix comes with various new features and new glyphs including Persian and Urdu letters, stylistic set, old style figures, contextual kerning, contextual alternates and a few icons too. Enjoy the new Arapix and have fun with it.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

INSPIRED BY THE LOVERS OF LETTERS AND ANCIENT ANIMATED DRAWINGS: We present one of our most desired typographical tools of 2019: NUTCAKE CATCH-WORDS! Designed and produced by #carlosfabiancg and #a_freitez at different times and places in Venezuela and Colombia. Each word design was like “travel to the old school of hand lettering of 1930” due to the number of options and alternatives we discarded to solidify meticulous researches and Bezier drawings, based on analysis and synthesis of empty and full calligraphy, first done with a round brush and then perfected with pencil and paper. For this reason, each NUTCAKE CATCH-WORDS design contains a high dose of cursive expressiveness, apparently handwritten, and that is why our customers can take advantage of more than 160 words compiled in a single OTF file. NOTE: if you need any new word with the NUTCAKE CATCH-WORDS style, please write us and we will gladly design it to include it in your file. Below the list of 160 catch words: and, An, All, As, After, Ante, Avec, Break, Bright, Big, Back, Both, Best, Body, Butter, Breakfast, By, Bajo, Coffe, Café, Closet, Can, Cocktail, Cookies, Custom, Cabe, Con, Contra, Could, Crisp, Candy, City, Chocolate, Chocolat, Come, Del, Don't, Deliver, Desde, Di, Durante, Enjoy, Eat, Example, El, En, Entre, Front, Fire, Free, Fashion, For, Fresh, Friday, Family, Going, Great, Go, Heres, Here, Hand, Hacia, Hasta, Have, I'm, It’s, Imagine, It, Join, Just, Jam, Kitchen, Kiss, Know, Keep, Like, Life, Lady, La, Las, Les, Los, Le, Love, Money, More, Master, My, Mediante, Now, now, New, new, next, nuevo, nueva, Off, out, ofertas, oferta, offer, offers, Please, Para, Per, Page, Quality, Queen, Question, Valley, Queso, Right, Road, Save, See, Show, Something, So, Según, Sin, So, Sobre, Sale, Shop, Style, Styles, Sweet, Special, To, the, The, Theres, There, To, This, Three, They, That, Tras, Think, Time, Take, Transfer, Until, Vacation, Value, Vote, What, Hats, With, Welcome, Which, You, Y, You're, you, Zip, Zoom, Zombie.

Geometric/Technical style logotypes have been developed for car chrome labels since the early 1980’s, but automobile companies don't monopolize the style by any means. During the 80’s and 90’s, a lot of these logos leaned towards the geometric sans styles and the swiss styling of fonts like Handel Gothic, while playing with varying degrees of squared rounds and varying expanded widths per logotype. Mercurial has this flavor, but it wasn’t derived from logotypes. Instead, it began as a digitization of a film typeface from LetterGraphics in the early 70's known as "Sam". It visual ties to this genre of automotive logotypes and fonts like Handel Gothic lend a familiarity to it, yet it has an identity all its own. As with so many automotive logotypes, this singular style film typeface, lacked an expansive family which shows off all potential the logotypes have and what they "could" be and do. And that's where we come in. What originally began as this family’s Regular Width - Bold Style has been expanded into a collection of 3 Width Families, each containing 5 Weights. Here’s what’s included with the Mercurial Complete bundle: 396 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the final poster graphics for a preview of the characters included) 3 widths in the collection: Narrow, Regular, & Wide 5 weights in each width family: Light, Book, Regular, Medium & Bold. Here’s why the Mercurial Family is for you: - You’re in need of stylish sans font family with a range of widths and weights. - You’re love those 80’s automotive logos, but want more range of use. - You’re looking for an alternative to Handel Gothic. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your rave poster designs. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

“Kindah” is a Yemeni ancient tribe with evidence of its existence going back to the second century B.C.E. The kings of Kindah exercised an influence over a number of associated tribes more by personal prestige than by coercive settled authority. The Kindites were polytheistic until the 6th century CE, with evidence of rituals dedicated to the gods Athtar and Kahil found in their ancient capital in south-central Arabia. It is not clear whether they converted to Judaism or remained pagan, but there is a strong archaeological evidence that they were among the tribes in Dhu Nuwas' forces during the Jewish king’s attempt to suppress Christianity in Yemen. They converted to Islam in the mid-7th century CE and played a crucial role during the Muslims' conquests of their surroundings. Among the most famous figures from Kindah known as Kindites are Imru' al-Qays (526-565?), al-Ash'ath ibn Qays (599-661), Hujr ibn 'Adi al-Kindi (?-660), al-Miqdad Ibn Aswad al-Kindi (589-653), and Abu Yusuf Yaíqub ibn Ishaq as-Sabbah al-Kindi (805-873) known as the Philosopher of the Arabs. "Kindah" font is a modern Kufic font comes in three weights (i.e., bold, regular, and thin) which is mainly designed to be used as a display Arabic font. The main feature of this typeface is the mixture of curves and rectangular shapes used in the designed Arabic characters. Kindah font was inspired by the design of the Yemeni modern windows of houses in which only top part of the arc is used for building such windows which reflects the originality of the architecture preserved in this part of the world. "Kindah" font is extremely outstanding when used in printed materials with big sizes especially for headline, titles, signs, and names of brands. Hence, it is suitable for books' covers, advertisement light boards, and titles in magazines and newspapers. It has also a Latin character set and it also supports several Arabic character sets which makes it proper for composing alphabetical and numerical words in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian.

Matthew Carter has been refining his design for Alisal for so long, he says, that when he was asked to complete the design for the Monotype Library, it was almost as if he were doing a historical revival of his own typeface. The illusion even extended to changes in his work process: although he now does all his preliminary and final drawing on screen, the first trial renderings of Alisal were done as pencil renderings. Alisal is best classified as an Italian old style design. Originally created between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries in northern Italy, the true Italian old styles were some of the first roman types. They tend to be the most calligraphic of serifed faces, with the axis of their curved strokes inclined to the left, as if drawn with a flat-tipped pen or brush. These designs offer sturdy, free-flowing and heavily bracketed serifs, short descenders, and a modest contrast in stroke weight. Alisal has nearly all the classic Italian old style character traits, plus a few quirks of its own. It is calligraphic in nature, with more of a pen-drawn quality than faces like Palatino or Goudy Old Style. It is more rough-hewn than either Goudy's Kennerley or Benton's Cloister, and is generally heavier in weight than most of the other Italian old style designs. One place where Alisal makes a clean break with traditional old style designs is in the serifs. While sturdy and clearly reflecting pen-drawn strokes, Alisal's serifs have no bracketing and appear to be straight strokes crossing the main vertical. Like Caslon or Trajanus, Alisal is a handsome design when viewed as a block of copy. Ascenders are tall and elegant, and serve as a counterpoint to the robust strength of the rest of the design. Alisal is available as a small family of roman and bold with a complementary italic for the basic roman weight, providing all that is needed for the majority of text typography. Alisal is not as well-known as some of Carter's other typefaces, but this lovely and long-incubated design was certainly worth the wait.

Typefaces, like most other works of art, provide a small window into the personalities and sensibilities of the artists who create them. ITC Panache not only provides this window, it is also aptly named. Mr. Edward Benguiat the dreator of ITC Panache, has all the dash, verve (and panache) hinted at in the design, Creative, capable and prolific, Ed Benguiat has drawn hundreds of exciting and popular typeface designs. Benguiat's design goal was to create a sans serif typestyle that is versatile, utilitarian - and distinctive. We think he has succeeded admirably. ITC Panache's three weights mix exceptionally well to complement each other or provide emphasis where necessary. Extensive testing at text sizes and design fine-tuning has produced a typeface family which is remarkably homogenous and consistent in color. Text set in ITC Panache is inviting without dissapointment. It is exceptionally easy to read, even in long text blocks of copy or small point sizes. When set in larger sizes or used for headlines, ITC Panache's character traits becomes more apparent and pronounced to the reader. They help to create graphics with distinction and style. Big or small. a little or a lot. it's hard not to use ITC Panache well. If you could pigeonhole ITC Panache, it would probably be classified as a stressed sans", but this would not completely describe, or do justiceto, the design. There is a slight contrast in stroke weight, which becomes more pronounced as the familiy weight increases; but there is a more to distinguish ITC Panache from ather sans serifs. Perhaps most obvious is its high waist and correspondingly slight condensation of the top half of the "round" capitals. Both of these traits link ITC Panache with the sensuous forms of art nouveau creations. In contrast are the typicall old style "e" found in designs like Cloister and ITC Berkeley Old Style, and the two storied "g" common to the early 20th century sans serif designs. The capital "A" even has the cupped top found in Caslon designs. Part of the beauty of ITC Panache is that all of these seemingly unrelated desig traits are melded into a design of exceptional continuity."

Roundabout is a typeface that is extracted from an ellipse shape. Each and every character started at the same geometrical figure. By cutting it up in sections, twist and rotate the separate characters could be build. The ellipse provides this typeface with evident and smooth looking features. The name Roundabout is misleading, an ellipse is not round. But the word Roundabout has a nice ring to it and it seems to fit this typeface perfectly. The Roundabout as we know it is a place where the traffic circles. Sometimes in the greater metropoles it jams like clotting veins. Various exits are presented for those who know which way to go, for those who don’t it seems an eternal treadmill. Unlike my typeface, that seems rather careless, light weighted and knows her way around. A roundabout in a child’s mind is a playful carrousel or a merry go round. Merry go round has the sweetest sound and a match is found. My Roundabout is a joyful, optimistic and open typeface, which can be used over and over and over again for many or any purposes. ----- Roundabout ist eine Schrift die aus der Form einer Ellipse entstand. So teilen alle einzelnen Zeichen denselben geometrischen Ursprung. Durch das zerteilen, verdrehen und verflechten der elliptischen Grundform konnten die separaten Zeichen so geformt werden, dass sie einen klaren und weichen Charakter erhielten. Der Name Roundabout scheint auf den ersten Blick etwas irreleitend - ist eine Ellipse ja nicht wirklich rund. Er hat aber einen schönen Klang und doch eine tiefe Verbindung zu dieser Schrift. In unseren Gedanken ist Roundabout ein Kreisverkehr: Manchmal, in großen Städten, kann er blockieren, so wie eine verstopfte Ader. Verschiedenste Auswege zeigen sich denen, die ihr Ziel kennen; für alle anderen erscheint dieser Ort wie eine endlose Schlaufe. Dieses Bild widerspricht dem Auftreten meiner Schrift, welche eher sorglos und leichtfüßig ist; sie kennt ihren Weg. In dem Kopf eines Kindes jedoch ist ein Roundabout ein verspieltes Karussell, ein „merry go round“. ,,Merry go round“ klingt bezaubernd und so fiel die Entscheidung. Meine Roundabout ist eine fröhliche, optimistische und offene Schrift, die immer und immer wieder genutzt werden kann, zu jedem erdenklichen Zweck.

Blue Goblet is a series of fonts and ornaments by Cory Godbey and Jeremy Dooley. This best selling series has now been extended to include a new member, Blue Goblet Serif. Blue Goblet Serif comes with a variety of weights and also an outline version. Blue Goblet is hand-lettered by the artist, Cory Godbey, and is organic, spontaneous and exuberant. Characters bounce and dance above and below the baseline and x-height, making this a whimsical and fun script. Not only is Blue Goblet Serif a excellent choice, it also is a member of a wide family of different fonts. You can use it side by side with the original Blue Goblet, and there are a wide range of ornaments available, totaling over 350 illustrations! These illustrations include frames, florals and other text ornaments that can be inserted into your text and resized at will. This makes the Blue Goblet series a great pick when you want a type system that works very well together for a very unique and consistent look. The Blue Goblet series continues to grow and be expanded, making it a valuable investment. Blue Goblet Serif also includes auto replacing ligatures that make it appear that the script was drawn by the artists own hand, just for you! Blue Goblet Serif also includes a wide variety of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType enabled application. Blue Goblet includes over 150 OpenType glyphs, and is loaded with features including an even more unique alternate alphabet. Included are swash alternates, style sets, old style figures and small caps. Please see the informative PDF brochure to see these features in action. OpenType enabled applications such as the Adobe suite or Quark can take full advantage of the automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Blue Goblet Serif is great choice for display and short blocks of display text, children's books, packaging, or other unique applications. Fill in the counter spaces with color for a unique look, or alternate the different weights. Use Blue Goblet whenever you want to inject a sense of fun and whimsy to your designs. Give the Blue Goblet series a try today!