Tomato is the digitization and quite elaborate expansion of an early 1970s Franklin Photolettering film type called Viola Flare. This typeface is an obvious child of funk, the audio-visual revolution that swept America and put an end to the art nouveau period we now associate with the hippy era. Funk is of course little more than jazz with a chorus and an emphatic beat. Nevertheless, it became the definition of cool in the 1970s, thanks to blaxploitation movies with excellent soundtracks like Shaft and Superfly. Funk began as a commercial audio experience, then later expanded its signature to cover everything, from design to fashion to the later birth of disco, which is really a further simplification of funk. Funk had very strong and unique typographical elements, particularly a kind of titling with an essentially western, wooden core that suddenly changed and flared in unexpected areas until a very individual brand was achieved. Everything that can be tacked on to the alphabet was used towards that individuality. Things like curls, swirls, swashes, ligatures were always plentiful in funk, sometimes giving the titling a specific gender, sometimes bulging, sometimes speeding, sometimes fading in the distance, sometimes doing nothing but crazily aligning with other design elements, but the result was always a fascinating creature that seemed to invariably want to dance and have fun. Tomato was built in exactly that spirit. The original film type certainly had enough swashes and curls to be an unmistakable funk font in itself, but our further expansion of it cements it and makes it the definite font for the genre. With as many as 12 different possibilities for some letters, the designer's choices for a titling set in Tomato are virtually limitless. The Postscript and True Type versions of Tomato come in five fonts, including two fonts for alternates, one font for ligatures, and one font for swashes. These are split into two affordable packages. The entire family package is also available at an even more affordable price, and includes complimentary Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, and Central European versions of Tomato. A Tomato Pro OpenType version is also available. It is a single font that includes over 650 characters, glued together with extensive programming for convenience of use in OpenType-friendly applications, where you can watch the letters morph and dance as you push the buttons and change the options of your OT palette. Now you know which font will come to mind when someone says the word "funky".

Van den Velde Script Pro is the definitive edition of the original Van den Velde Script, by Intellecta Design, a free interpretation of the work of the famous master penman Jan van den Velde, to be found in the “Spieghel der schrijfkonste, in den welcken ghesien worden veelderhande gheschrifften met hare fondementen ende onderrichtinghe. ” (Haarlen, 1605). This font has evocative ancient ligature forms from the XVII Century Dutch master penman Jan van den Velde. Your indescritible writing-book was important not only with regard to the specific period it represents, but also in relationship to the entire history of calligraphy as an art: Van den Velde is rightly credited with having introduced and perfected a new trend in Dutch calligraphy. Our font, Van den Velde Script, merges modern necessities or better legibility without loosing the taste of his archaic origins. This enhanced OpenType version is a complete solution for producing documents and artworks whith an evocative and voluptuous style of calligraphic script: Van den Velde Script PRO has - more glyphs than the original Van den Velde Script. We created hundred of new glyphs, deactivated old non-representative glyphs and redesign the remaining library of original glyphs. Van den Velde Pro is more functional, soft and beauty than the original. - to keep the powerful of this unusual kind of script we make a tour-de-force kerning work: 771 glyphs in this font was adjusted in 5400 kerning pairs handly. - hundreds of contextual alternates combinations, some of them with three or more letters, - historical ornaments and fleurons in the typical style (and motifs) from the XVII century at the Lower Countryes accessed with the glyph palette using the Ornaments feature); - an extensive set of ligatures (100s of contextual alternates plus discretionary ligatures) providing letterform variations that make your designs really special, resembling real handwriting on the page; .... and, much better, Van den Velde Scriopt PRO is plus cheap than the original font !!! In non-OpenType-savvy applications it works well as an unusual and beautiful script style font. Because of its high number of alternate letters and combinations (over 700 glyphs), we suggest the use of the glyph palette to find ideal solutions to specific designs. The sample illustrations will give you an idea of the possibilities. You have full access to this amazing stuff using InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. However, we still recommend exploring what this font has to offer using the glyphs palette: principally to get all the power of the Contextual Alternates feature. Van den Velde Script PRO has original letters designed by Iza W and overall creative direction plus core programming by Paulo W.