The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

Blank Manuscript allows you to produce sophisticated musical scoresheets even on basic Word Processors - anything from simple plain staves to complex full-page orchestral scores of your own design, to write in the notation yourself. The basic stuff is really easy and straightforward, but there's some quite advanced things you can do as well. So Copy and Save these Instructions. • The main stuff is simple and tends to follow the initial letter. Treble, Bass and Alto clefs are on upper case T B A (there are more clefs, below). The 5 Lines for the clefs are on L or l. • A small v will give a small vertical line (like a bar line) and a Big U will give a Big Upright - these can start or end a line or piece. • Time Signatures - type the following letters: Think of W for Waltz and it's easy to remember that 3/4 time is on W. Then from that they go up or down together like this: V=2/4 W=3/4 X=4/4 Y=5/4 Z=6/4 Compound Times are on H I J K like this: H=3/8 I=6/8 J=9/8 K=12/8 Common Time and Cut Common symbols can be found on semi-colon and colon respectively (all begin with Co- ). 2/2 3/2 are on lower case a and b, 7/4 and 7/8 are on lower case c and d, 5/8 is on small k (think POL-k-A) • Flat signs are on the numbers. Flat signs on LINES 1 to 5 are on numbers 1 to 5. Flat signs on SPACES 1 to 5 are on numbers 6 to 0 (space 1 being above line 1, space 5 being above the top line of the stave). Sharp signs are on the letters BELOW the long-row numbers. Which is q w e r t for the sharp signs on Lines 1 to 5, and y u i o p for sharp signs on spaces 1 to 5. Doing it this way means it works the same for all clefs, whether Treble, Bass, Alto, Tenor or any other. Sharp and Flat Signs always go in this order, depending on how many sharps or flats your key signature requires: Treble Clef Sharps t i p r u o e Flats 3 9 7 4 2 8 6 Bass Clef Sharps r u o e t i w Flats 2 8 6 3 1 7 = Alto Clef Sharps o e t i w r u Flats 7 4 2 8 6 3 1 • Guitar Chord Boxes are on G and g (G for Guitar) Upper Case G has a thick line across the top Lower case g has an open top, for chords up the fretboard TAB symbols are available: Six-string Tablature is on s & S for Six. Four-string Tablature is on f & F for Four. (Lower case has the "TAB" symbol on it, Upper Case has just the lines to continue.) Five-string tablature, is on lower case "j" (as in BAN-j-O) and of course L or l will continue the 5 lines. •RARE CLEF SIGNS including Tenor Clef, are on various punctuation marks, i.e. dollar, percent, circumflex, ampersand & asterisk, above the numbers 4 to 8. NOTE: The important symbols were kept on the letter and number keys, which are fairly standard all over, but some of the less important symbols are on various punctuation keys, which in different countries are not the same as on my keyboard. If it comes out wrong on your system, all I can say is it's right on the systems we've tried, and they'll be in here somewhere, probably on a different key. CLOSING THE ENDS OF THE LINES and BAR-LINES is done with the 3 varieties of brackets - brackets, brace and parentheses - Left/Right for the Left/Right end of the line. Parentheses L/R () which are above 9, 0 give a clef with a small vertical upright (the same as a bar line). Brace L/R and Brackets L/R (both on the 2 keys to the right of P on my keyboard) will close off a staff line with tall upright bars. Brace gives a double upright - one thick, one thin. Brackets give a single tall upright. A Big Upright is on Big U, (Big U for Big Upright) and a small vertical line is on small v (small v for small vertical). The Big Upright is the maximum height, and the small vertical is exactly the same height as a stave. And there's a tall upright Bar, on Bar (which is to the left of z on my keyboard, with Shift,) which is the same height as the bar on upper case U but twice as broad. • There's a staff intended for writing melodies, which is a little bit higher up than an ordinary treble clef giving a space underneath to put lyrics in - on m and M for Melody line. Lower case has the Treble Clef on, Upper case M has just the higher-up staff lines with no clef. (Use mMMMMMMM etc.) However this clef will be in the wrong place to put in sharp and flat signs, key signatures and so on, so if you use this clef you'll have to write the sharps, flats and key signature yourself. There's also a clef that's smaller (less tall) than the ordinary clef, but with the same horizontal spacing so it will align with other standard-sized clefs - on slash (a plain clef) and backslash (with a Treble Clef). • There are some large brackets for enclosing groups of staves, such as you'd use on large orchestral scores, on Upper Case N O P Q R, which can aid clarity. N and O on the left, Q and R on the right. P is a Perpendicular line to be used on both sides to increase the height of the enclosure, in this way but with the staff lines in between: N Q P P P P P P O R OTHERS —————————————— • Repeat marks are on comma (left) and period/full stop (right). • Hyphen is left as a sort of hyphen - it's a thin line like a single staff line, with the same horizontal spacing as ordinary staff lines - in case you want to draw a line across for a Percussion Instrument, or a Title or Lyric Line. • Space is a Space, but with HALF the width or horizontal spacing as ordinary staff lines, so 2 space symbols will be the same width as a clef symbol or line. • Grave (to the left of 1 on the long row, or hold down Alt and type 0096 then let go) gives a staff line that is one eighth the width of an ordinary staff line. • If you want manuscript in a clef and key which requires a flat or sharp sign in the space underneath the 5 lines, they’re on = equals and + plus . SYMBOLS • Many of these symbols will only be useful if you have worked out in advance which bars will need them, but they are here in case you've done that and wish to include them. • Symbols for p and f (piano and forte) are on 'less than' and 'greater than' < > (above comma and full stop) and m for mezzo is on Question, next to them. They can be combined to make mp, mf, ff, pp, etc. These signs -- and other signs and symbols like Pedal Sign, Coda Sign and so on -- can be found on various punctuation mark keys, including above 1, 2, 3 in the long row, and others around the keyboard. There's a sort of logic to their layout, but in different countries the keys are likely to give different results to what is stated here, so it's probably best to just try the punctuation and see if there's any you might want to use. (But on my keyboard a Coda sign is on circumflex - because of the visual similarity. Pedal sign is on underscore. A "Sign" symbol is on exclamation mark.) They were only included in case you really need them to be printed rather than handwritten. • However, a Copyright symbol is deemed necessary, and also included are a "Registered" symbol and a TradeMark symbol. They are found in the conventional places, and can be accessed by holding down ALT and typing 0169, 0174 or 0153 respectively in the numberpad section and letting go. • Staff lines with arco and pizz. above are on capital C and D respectively ---C for ar-C-o. • An empty circle above a staff line (to indicate sections by writing letters A, B, C or 1,2,3 inside for rehearsal marks) is on n. The actual signs for an A, B, C and D in a circle above the staff line can be produced by holding down ALT and typing 0188, 0189, 0190 and 0191 respectively and letting go. • The word "Page", for indicating page numbers, is on the numbersign key. • The two quotes keys, (quote single and quote double) have symbols representing "Tempo is", and "play as triplets", respectively. • INSTRUMENT NAMES There's a whole lot of Instrument Names built in (over a hundred) which can be printed out above the clef, and you do it like this. Hold down Alt and type in the given number in the numberpad section, then let go. For Piccolo it's 0130, for Flute it's 0131, Cornet is on 0154, Violin is on 0193, and the numbers go up to over 0250, it's a fairly complete set. There's also a blank which is used to align un-named clefs on 0096. Put them at the very beginning of the line for the best results. Here they are: WOODWIND Piccolo 0130 Flute 0131 Oboe 0132 Clarinet 0133 Eng Horn 0134 Bassoon 0135 Soprano Sax 0137 Alto Sax 0138 Tenor Sax 0139 Baritone Sax 0140 Saxophone 0142 Contrabassoon 0145 Recorder 0146 Alto Flute 0147 Bass Flute 0148 Oboe d'Amore 0149 Cor anglais 0152 Pipes 0241 Whistle 0242 BRASS Cornet 0154 Trumpet 0155 Flugelhorn 0156 Trombone 0158 Euphonium 0159 Tuba 0161 French Horn 0162 Horn 0163 Tenor Trombone 0164 Bass Trombone 0165 Alto Trombone 0166 Piccolo Cornet 0167 Piccolo Trumpet 0168 Bass Trumpet 0170 Bass Tuba 0171 Brass 0172 VOICES Vocal 0175 Melody 0176 Solo 0177 Harmony 0178 Soprano 0179 Alto 0180 Tenor 0181 Baritone 0182 Treble 0183 Bass 0197 (see also PLUCKED STRINGS) Descant 0184 Mezzo Soprano 0185 Contralto 0186 Counter Tenor 0187 Lead 0206 BOWED STRINGS Strings 0192 Violin 0193 Viola 0194 Cello 0195 Contrabass 0196 Bass 0197 Double Bass 0198 Violoncello 0199 Violin 1 0200 Violin 2 0201 Fiddle 0252 PLUCKED STRINGS Harp 0202 Guitar 0203 Ac. Gtr 0204 El. Gtr 0205 Lead 0206 Bass 0197 Ac. Bass 0207 El. Bass 0208 Slide Gtr 0209 Mandolin 0210 Banjo 0211 Ukelele 0212 Zither 0213 Sitar 0214 Lute 0215 Pedal Steel 0216 Nylon Gtr. 0238 Koto 0239 Fretless 0244 KEYBOARDS + ORGAN Piano 0217 El. Piano 0218 Organ 0219 El. Organ 0220 Harpsichord 0221 Celesta 0222 Accordion 0223 Clavinet 0224 Harmonium 0225 Synth 0226 Synth Bass 0227 Keyboards 0228 Sampler 0249 PERCUSSION and TUNED PERCUSSION Percussion 0229 Drums 0230 Vibes 0231 Marimba 0232 Glockenspiel 0233 Xylophone 0234 Bass marimba 0235 Tubular Bells 0236 Steel Drums 0237 Kalimba 0240 OTHERS Harmonica 0246 Mouth Organ 0247 FX 0251 Intro 0243 Verse 0245 Refrain 0248 Chorus 0250 un-named 0096 (this is a small spacer stave for aligning clefs without a name) ALSO copyright 0169 registered 0174 TradeMark 0153 Rehearsal marks 0188-0191 (giving A, B, C, D in a circle, an empty circle is on n ) Clef signs for Treble Bass Alto without any staff lines 0253-0255 An Alphabetic List of all signs: a 2/2 time b 3/2 time c 7/4 time d 7/8 time e sharp sign, centre line f Tab sign for 4-string tab g Guitar Chord Box, no nut h half-width stave I sharp sign, third space up j Tab sign for 5-string tab k 5/8 time l Lines - 5 horizontal lines for a stave m Melody Clef - a standard clef but placed higher up, with Treble sign n Stave with an empty circle above o sharp sign, fourth space up p sharp sign, space above stave q sharp sign, bottom line r sharp sign, fourth line up s Tab sign for 6-string tab t sharp sign, top line (fifth line up) u sharp sign, second space up v vertical line (bar-line) w sharp sign, second line up x Fretboard, four strings y sharp sign, first space up z Fretboard, five strings A Alto Clef B Bass Clef C “arco” above stave D “pizz.” above stave E Double Vertical Lines F Four Horizontal lines (for 4-string tab) G Guitar Chord Box with nut H 3/8 time I 6/8 time J 9/8 time K 12/8 time L Lines - 5 horizontal lines for a stave M Melody Clef - a standard clef but placed higher up, plain N Bounding Line for grouping clefs - top left O Bounding Line for grouping clefs - bottom left P Bounding Line for grouping clefs - Perpendicular Q Bounding Line for grouping clefs - top right R Bounding Line for grouping clefs - bottom right S Six Horizontal lines (for 6-string tab) T Treble Clef U tall, thin Upright line V 2/4 time W 3 / 4 time X 4/4 time Y 5/4 time Z 6/4 time 1 flat sign, first line up (the lowest line) 2 flat sign, second line up 3 flat sign, third line up 4 flat sign, fourth line up 5 flat sign, fifth line up (the top line) 6 flat sign, first space up (the lowest space) 7 flat sign, second space up 8 flat sign, third space up 9 flat sign, fourth space up 0 flat sign, space above stave

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

TT Barrels useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Barrels is an elegant scotch style modern serif with strong industrial accents in its design. The TT Barrels project was born from a fictional technical assignment in which we tried to combine the technological effectiveness of industrial production used in engineering and the restrictions imposed by it with a beautiful scotch style serif. We decided to create a typeface that could be used to press letters on the metal body of a car, all while the typeface being elegant, and possessing sophisticated details that are typical of the classic text fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the process of designing and sketching, we reconsidered certain aspects and abandoned some of the requirements imposed by the technology of metal letter pressing, for example, from the extensive application of visual compensators, the decreased strokes contrast, and the hyperdeformation of individual letter elements to preserve a more pronounced rhythm of these elements. First of all, we wanted both to maintain the ease of reading for the entire text array and follow the rules of aesthetics of each letter in the typeface, while still leaving some influence of industrialism. In the end, this influence is best manifested in serifs, which are quite massive and have a technologically exaggerated wedge shape. TT Barrels consists of 12 fonts: Light, Regular, DemiBold, Bold, Extrabold, Black and the corresponding Italics. Each outline consists of more than 750 glyphs and includes small capitals, ligatures (for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets), stylistic alternates, old-style figures, and many other useful features. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Barrels OpenType features: ordn, c2sc, smcp, case, frac, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, dlig, liga, calt, salt (ss01). TT Barrels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Iza W and Intellecta Design are proud to announce Invitation Script, a modern and clean revival of the classic work of the Portuguese master penman Manuel de Andrade de Figueiredo, whose work can be seen in “Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar (...)'' (1722). Invitation Script is the third script superfamily published by Intellecta Design, after Penabico and Van den Velde Script. Invitation Script has original letters designed by Iza W. Creative direction and core programming were provided by Paulo W. Chyrllene K assisted with some work on unusual and archaic styles, resulting in a special font - Invitation Script Archaic (soon available). Invitation started out from Andrade’s script style and evolved into a voluptuous script font family. The result is a typeface ideal for beautiful headings, signatures, art work typography, titles and short pieces of hand-lettered text. Invitation family includes two multi-table Opentype fonts, three supplementary fonts for ornaments and fleurons, and the Archaic font with some of the Andrade’s original characters. Embedded in the regular fonts are additional sets of letters. Over 40 variations are available for certain letters via the Special Sets Opentype table. The two regular versions of Invitation Script contains the following: (i) An extensive set of ligatures providing letterform variations that make eye-popping designs or simulate real handwriting. These are accessible via contextual alternates and other open-type features. (ii) Many stylistic alternates for each letter (upper and lowercase, accessed via the glyph palette, encoded in the ranges of the Special Set Opentype feature). Since there are over 1100 glyphs in each font, we suggest using the glyph palette. (iii) A set of ornaments and fleurons accessed with the glyph palette or using the Ornaments feature. Additional ornaments can be found in the two Invitation Script Ornaments fonts. (iv) Initial and final letters with artistic variations accessible using the initial and final form open-type features. (v) Major kerning work: over 6000 kerning pairs, hand-set to avoid collisions and to create intricate combinations of letters, using swashes and other resources. These powerful features are all accessible in InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. We recommend exploring the magic of this font using the glyph palette. Our sample illustrations and PDF brochures showcase the power and pizzazz of this calligraphic script. Let your imagination go wild and use Invitation Script in ways that Andrade could not have foreseen. In non-OpenType-savvy applications, Invitation Script is still an exceptionally beautiful calligraphic typeface that stands up to the competition. The regular fonts contains the complete Latin alphabet, including Central European, Vietnamese, Baltic and Turkish, with a full set of diacritics and punctuation marks. --- 1 FIGUEIREDO, Manuel de Andrade de, 1670-1735 Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar. Offerecida á Augusta Magestade do Senhor Dom Joaõ V. Rey de Portugal. Primeira parte / por Manoel de Andrade de Figueiredo, Mestre desta Arte nas cidades de Lisboa Occidental, e Oriental. - Lisboa Occidental: na Officina de Bernardo da Costa de Carvalho, Impressor do Serenissimo Senhor Infante, 1722. - [18], 156 p., 44 f. grav. a buril : il., ; 2º (31 cm)Engraved royal coat of arms supported by angels over the city of Lisbon, engraved portrait of the author (both of the foregoing by Bernard Picart), (12)ff., 156pp., engraved calligraphic section title, 44 engraved plates. Wood-engraved culs-de-lampe and lettrines. Sm. folio. “Andrade de Figueiredo was born in Espirito Santo, where his father was Governor of the ‘Capitania.’ The fine portrait is dated 1721 and is showing Figueiredo at the age of 48. He was an eminent calligrapher and a creator of the Portuguese handwriting until the reign of Don José I (ca. 1755). His work follows the style of the great Italian masters in its use of clubbed ascenders and descenders, and of Diaz Morante, the famous Spanish writing master, in its very elaborate show of command of hand. By his contemporaries, he was known as the ‘Morante portugues’” (Ekström). “Ce livre est un manuel, composé de quatre parties, destiné à apprendre à lire, à écrire, à conter ainsi que l’orthographe. Les planches comportent des examples d’écritures, d’alphabets et de textes ornés de remarquables traits de plume exécutés d’une main sûre et enjouée” (Jammes).

TT Mussels useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Mussels: The TT Mussels font family is the successor of such popular fonts as Bender and TT Squares. At the same time, TT Mussels has a number of fundamental differences that make it a unique font family that stands out from other octagonal typefaces. When designing TT Mussels, we paid great attention to the possibility of imposing large arrays of text, and we can responsibly state that TT Mussels is a rare type of technological text fonts. To go along with the rest, we've created a stencil version of the typeface, in which the location of the incisions changes according to their thickness. In total, the TT Mussels font family consists of 36 faces, which include among other things stylistic alternatives, ligatures, and also implements a broad support for OpenType features: case, frac, ordn, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, onum, tnum, pnum, liga, dlig, salt, ss01. Dynamic contrast is widely implemented in TT Mussels. It is most noticeable in the Black typeface, where the ratio of the thickness of the vertical strokes to the horizontal strokes is approximately two to one. For the Thin typeface, the thickness of the vertical strokes is already consistent with the thickness of the horizontal strokes. You can also find other signs of respect for traditional text fonts in the TT Mussels design, such as the trace of pen movement which is historically typical for antiquas. For example, in the letter M from the Black face, we can first see a thin stroke, then a thick diagonal stroke followed by a thin diagonal stroke, and a finishing bold vertical stroke. As in the case of dynamic contrast, this effect gradually disappears when approaching thin faces. In thick faces, in places such as the “armpits” of the letters MN? or the junctions of the diagonals of WVvw, there are visual compensators that brighten the bold typefaces. As the thickness of typefaces moves from thick to thin, the dimensions and conceptual values of compensators change, and in thin typefaces they completely disappear. TT Mussels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Over the past few years, every designer has seen the surprising outbreak of blackletter types in marketing campaigns for major sports clothing manufacturers, a few phone companies, soft drink makers, and more recently on entertainment and music products. In such campaigns, blackletter type combined with photos of usual daily activity simply adds a level of strength and mystique to things we see and do on a regular basis. But we couldn't help noticing that the typography was very odd in such campaigns, where the type overpowers all the other design elements. This is because almost all blackletter fonts ever made express too much strength and time-stamp themselves in a definite manner, thereby eliminating themselves as possible type choices for a variety of common contemporary design approaches, such as minimal, geometric, modular, etc. So extending the idea of using blackletter in modern design was a bit of a wild goose chase for us. But we finally found the face that completes the equation no other blackletter could fit into: Leather is a digitization and major expansion of Imre Reiner's forgotten but excellent 1933 Gotika design, which was very much ahead of its time. In its own time this design saw very little use because it caused problems to printers, where the thin serifs and inner bars were too fragile and broke off too easily when used in metal. But now, more than seventy years later, it seems like it was made for current technologies, and it is nothing short of being the perfect candidate for using blackletter in grid-based settings. Leather has three features usually not found in other blackletter fonts: - Grid-based geometric strokes and curves: In the early 1930s, blackletter design had already begun interacting back with the modern sans serif it birthed at the turn of the century. This design is one of the very few manifestations of such interaction. - Fragile, Boboni-like serifs, sprout from mostly expected places in the minuscules, but are sprinkled very aesthetically on some of the majuscules. The overall result is magnificently modern. - The usual complexity of blackletter uppercase's inner bars is rendered simple, geometric and very visually appealing. The contrast between the inner bars and thick outer strokes creates a surprising circuitry-like effect on some of the letters (D, O, Q), wonderfully plays with the idea of fragile balances on some others (M, N and P), and boldly introduces new concepts on others (B, F, K, L, R). Our research seems to suggest that the original numerals used with this design in the 1930s were adopted from a previous Imre Reiner typeface. They didn't really fit with the idea of this font, so we created brand new numerals for Leather. We also expanded the character set to cover all Western Latin-based languages, and scattered plenty of alternates and ligatures throughout the map. The name, Leather, was derived from a humorous attempt at naming a font. Initially we wanted to call it Black Leather (blackletter...blackleather), but the closer we came to finishing it, the more respect we developed for its attempt to introduce a plausible convergence between two entirely different type categories. Sadly for the art, this idea of convergence didn't go much further back then, due to technological limitations and the eventual war a few years later. We're hoping this revival would encourage people to look at blackletter under a new light in these modern times of multiple design influences.