Polias Varia is an all-caps uniwidth variable weight typeface inspired by an ancient inscription carved on a monoblock stone in hybrid characters — between no-contrast linear sans to low-contrast flared serif. The inspiring inscription is the dedication by Alexander the Great, discovered in the Temple of Athena Polias in the ancient Ionian city of Priene. Stanley Morison mentioned this inscription in one of his lectures: “The distinctive feature of this inscription consists of a consistent thickening towards the ends of perpendiculars and horizontals.” … “We have not the right to say that the serif was invented for Alexander the Great’s inscription, only that this is its first datable appearance.” In Polias Varia, the letter proportions are almost identical to the original, but the stroke features have been reinterpreted and characterized. Serif-like nodes at the end of the strokes are subtle extensions that serve to accentuate rather than break its monoline elegance. With an analogy, they are not flowers, but like blooming buds. Polias Varia is a flared sans typeface which is closer to sans-serif forms on the spectrum between sans and serif. It’s especially light looking by design to convey rather thin and white typographic color of its original monumental look. It comes in eight weights and a variable font, scaled from Thin to Bold. It is multiplexed, so the weights do not affect text lengths. Light weights are closely based on the actual carving of the inscription. Thicker weights can be used on smaller typesettings to compensate for the weight difference of larger letters’ strokes, and to keeping the monoline appearance of the entire text block intact. This method can be used for any purpose, such as setting a hierarchy between the lines or to justify their lengths. Some of the original letterforms have been preserved and stylistic alternatives such as Ionic four-bar Sigma, dotted Theta, palm Y are provided as open type feature. Some of the other ancient forms, such as the three-bar Sigma (S), the pointed U, were also added for both the Greek and Latin scripts. Polias Varia is preferable for big type settings such as logos and headlines as a modern representation of perennial classical forms. Its a fine fit for product branding, movie posters, book covers, packaging materials, and more, which require an epic look to attracting attention with a distinctive elegance. Polias Varia can be considered for distinctiveness wherever Roman Capitals work. As a noun, Polias is one of the epithets of Athena / Minerva, and in this case referring to her role as the protector of the city of Priene. Polias (family) is one of the seven typeface designs in Esintype’s ancient scripts of Anatolia project, Tituli Anatolian series.

Classic Grotesque by Rod McDonald: a traditional font with a modern face. The growing popularity of grotesque typefaces meant that many new sans serif analogues were published in the early 20th century. Setting machines were not compatible with each other but all foundries wanted to offer up-to-date fonts, and as a result numerous different typeface families appeared that seem almost identical at first glance and yet go their separate ways with regard to details. One of the first fonts created with automatic typesetting in mind was Monotype Grotesque®. Although this typeface that was designed and published by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 has since been digitalised, it has never achieved the status of other grotesque fonts of this period. But Monotype Grotesque was always one of designer Rod McDonald’s favourites, and he was overjoyed when he finally got the go-ahead from Monotype in 2008 to update this “hidden treasure”. The design process lasted four years, with regular interruptions due to the need to complete projects for other clients. In retrospect, McDonald admits that he had no idea at the beginning of just how challenging and complex a task it would be to create Classic Grotesque™. It took him considerable time before he found the right approach. In his initial drafts, he tried to develop Monotype Grotesque only to find that the result was almost identical with Arial®, a typeface that is also derived in many respects from Monotype Grotesque. It was only when he went back a stage, and incorporated elements of Bauer Font’s Venus™ and Ideal Grotesk by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry into the design process, that he found the way forward. Both these typefaces had served as the original inspiration for Monotype Grotesque. The name says it all: Classic Grotesque has all the attributes of the early grotesque fonts of the 20th century: The slightly artificial nature gives the characters a formal appearance. There are very few and only minor variations in line width. The tittles of the ‘i’ and ‘j’, the umlaut diacritic and other diacritic marks are rectangular. Interestingly, it is among the uppercase letters that certain variations from the standard pattern can be found, and it is these that enliven the typeface. Hence the horizontal bars of the “E”, “F” and “L” have bevelled terminals. The chamfered terminal of the bow of the “J” has a particular flamboyance, while the slightly curved descender of the “Q” provides for additional dynamism. The character alternatives available through the OpenType option provide the designer with a wealth of opportunities. These include a closed “a”, a double-counter “g” and an “e” in which the transverse bar deviates slightly from the horizontal. The seven different weights also extend the scope of uses of Classic Grotesque. These range from the delicate Light to the super thick Extrabold. There are genuine italic versions of each weight; these are not only slightly narrower than their counterparts, but also have variant shapes. The “a” is closed, the “f” has a semi-descender while the “e” is rounded. Its neutral appearance and excellent features mean that Classic Grotesque is suitable for use in nearly all imaginable applications. Even during the design phase, McDonald used his new font to set books and in promotional projects. However, he would be pleased to learn of possible applications that he himself has not yet considered. Classic Grotesque, which has its own individual character despite its neutral and restrained appearance, is the ideal partner for your print and web project.

Proud to introduce: The all hand-drawn Mila Script Pro Family Mila Script is a handmade brush script with round and soft letterforms, a low x-height and jumping baseline. Smart OpenType features care about all letterforms and choose between connected and non-connected styles. AutomaticSwashControl adjusts the swashy letters to the available white space. It’s installed within Mila’s main features OpenType Contextual-Alternates, Swashes and Titling-Alternates. Switch one on and let Mila do the rest. · Please read over the manual. It describes the family in detail. · Of course there’s a little more know about Mila Script Pro: 2600+ characters offer four different initial styles, capital swash and titling alternates, connected words, 17 different initial and terminal swashes and much more. All of course with full ISO latin 1 & 2 language support. · Mila Script Basic (900+ characters) offers all single features contained in OpenType Contextual-Alternates: subtle contextual swash alternates, positional forms, ligatures, connecting and non-connecting characters … · Mila Script Sans: Mila Script Sans is a hand-drawn/handwritten “all caps” in three different weights. Mila Script and Mila Script Sans go well together: combine them and equal the line weights by choosing Light, Regular or Bold. Always keep it way smaller than Mila Script. Mila Script Sans also works well as a standalone. It offers negative typesetting, bicolor typesetting by layering two styles and even alternates without counters. Please see the manual for instructions. · Mila Script Ornaments: Change the size and keep the line weight: activate Contextual Alternates, type a letter and add + to enlarge all swashes according to your likings. Mila Script Ornaments contains 69 different swashes and symbols, all of them available in seven different sizes, which makes a total of 483 characters. All ornaments are within easy reach and there’s no need to access certain symbols manually via your glyph palette. · Have fun! · View other fonts from Georg Herold-Wildfellner: Sofa Serif | Sofa Sans | Mila Script Pro | Pinto | Supernett | Mr Moustache | Aeronaut | Ivory | Weingut · Language Report for Mila Script / 195 languages supported: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic, Asturian, Aymara, Bashkir, Basque, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofan, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz, Galician, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean, Gwichin, Haitian Creole, Han, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcak, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istroromanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese, Jerriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak, Karelian, Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino Sine, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marquesan, Meglenoromanian, Meriam Mir, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinhpatha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Ossetian, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Qeqchi, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami Lule, Sami Southern, Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio, Somali, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Sotho Northern, Sotho Southern, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek, Venetian, Vepsian, Volapuk, Voro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waraywaray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wikmungkan, Wiradjuri, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu, Zuni

With its extended complement, this comprehensive redesign of Bank Gothic by Elsner+Flake offers a wide spectrum for usage. After 80 years, the typeface Bank Gothic, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930, is still as desirable for all areas of graphic design as it has ever been. Its usage spans the design of headlines to exterior design. Game manufacturers adopt this spry typeface, so reminiscent of the Bauhaus and its geometric forms, as often as do architects and web designers. The creative path of the Bank Gothic from hot metal type via phototypesetting to digital variations created by desktop designers has by now taken on great breadth. The number of cuts has increased. The original Roman weight has been augmented by Oblique and Italic variants. The original versions came with just a complement of Small Caps. Now, they are, however, enlarged by often quite individualized lower case letters. In order to do justice to the form changes and in order to differentiate between the various versions, the Bank Gothic, since 2007 a US trademark of the Grosse Pointe Group (Trademark FontHaus, USA), is nowadays available under a variety of different names. Some of these variations remain close to the original concept, others strive for greater individualism in their designs. The typeface family which was cut by the American typefoundry ATF (American Type Founders) in the early 1930’s consisted of a normal and a narrow type family, each one in the weights Light, Medium and Bold. In addition to its basic ornamental structure which has its origin in square or rectangular geometric forms, there is another unique feature of the Bank Gothic: the normally round upper case letters such as B, C, G, O, P, Q, R and U are also rectangular. The one exception is the upper case letter D, which remains round, most likely for legibility reasons (there is the danger of mistaking it for the letter O.) Because of the huge success of this type design, which follows the design principles of the more square and the more contemporary adaption of the already existing Copperplate, it was soon adopted by all of the major type and typesetting manufacturers. Thus, the Bank Gothic appeared at Linotype; as Commerce Gothic it was brought out by Ludlow; and as Deluxe Gothic on Intertype typesetters. Among others, it was also available from Monotype and sold under the name Stationer’s Gothic. In 1936, Linotype introduced 6pt and 12pt weights of the condensed version as Card Gothic. Lateron, Linotype came out with Bank Gothic Medium Condensed in larger sizes and a more narrow set width and named it Poster Gothic. With the advent of photoypesetters and CRT technologies, the Bank Gothic experienced an even wider acceptance. The first digital versions, designed according to present computing technologies, was created by Bitstream whose PostScript fonts in Regular and Medium weights have been available through FontShop since 1991. These were followed by digital redesigns by FontHaus, USA, and, in 1996, by Elsner+Flake who were also the first company to add cursive cuts. In 2009, they extended the family to 16 weights in both Roman and Oblique designs. In addition, they created the long-awaited Cyrillic complement. In 2010, Elsner+Flake completed the set with lowercase letters and small caps. Since its redesign the type family has been available from Elsner+Flake under the name Bank Sans®. The character set of the Bank Sans® Caps and the Bank Sans® covers almost all latin-based languages (Europe Plus) as well as the Cyrillic character set MAC OS Cyrillic and MS Windows 1251. Both families are available in Normal, Condensed and Compressed weights in 4 stroke widths each (Light, Regular, Medium and Bold). The basic stroke widths of the different weights have been kept even which allows the mixing of, for instance, normal upper case letters and the more narrow small caps. This gives the family an even wider and more interactive range of use. There are, furthermore, extensive sets of numerals which can be accessed via OpenType-Features. The Bank Sans® type family, as opposed to the Bank Sans® Caps family, contains, instead of the optically reduced upper case letters, newly designed lower case letters and the matching small caps. Bank Sans® fonts are available in the formats OpenType and TrueType.