Wasabi is one of the key ingredients in the Japanese kitchen. Also known as japanese horseradish, it is an extremely spicy condiment made out of the graded root of the Wasabi plant. Its spiciness is different than that of a chili pepper though, more like a hot mustard. The spicy taste shoots right through your nose, but does not last for long. Wasabi is traditionally used in sushi and sashimi dishes, soba noodles, and in a number of Japanese snack foods. Equally sharp and stingy, VLNL Wasabi Turbo was designed by Donald Roos. Despite its japanese outward appearance, the font has its origin in lettering found on a German book. It is hot, and edgy like a samurai sword. Wasabi Turbo will stand out as headline and logo!

Type designers Erik Spiekermann (D), Christian Schwartz (US), and Kris Sowersby (NZ) created this serif FontFont in 2007. Extensions were made by Ralph du Carrois (D) and Botio Nikoltchev (BG). The family has 12 weights, ranging from Light to Black (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries, small text as well as web and screen design. FF Meta Serif provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, fractions, and super- and subscript characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Greek and Cyrillic writing systems. This FontFont is a member of the FF Meta super family, which also includes FF Meta, FF Meta Correspondence, and FF Meta Headline.

The Koelle Ornaments series is based on the etchings of Chris Koelle of Portland Studios. This is the second collaboration between insigne and Portland Studios; the first yielded the inky and active script Blue Goblet. Chris has a unique style where he "frames" his work with small icons related to the story or subject. These are now available as Koelle ornaments. Koelle Ornaments have a gritty, used appearance, and have a late 70's stylistic feel to them. There are 145 highly detailed illustrations in the entire pack, separated into four different fonts. These illustrations can be resized without any loss of quality, and can be easily converted to outlines and modified. Some of the ornaments have a Christian theme, while others are more generic. To view what ornaments are available and the keys they map to, please view the sample .pdf. The sample .pdf is an excellent reference guide, and we encourage you to print it out to quickly refer to your favorite ornaments.

WAVE is characterized by curved lines and intricate details. Each character was individually made in Illustrator and Type Tool using my original illustrations. Wave is a decorative font best used for titles or short bursts of texts in large point settings. The typeface is based on the uppercase letterforms, but I have also created lowercase letters, numbers, and glyphs. The motion lines used in the making of Wave mirror an art deco-style. Inspired by an illustration of a large wave, I was fascinated that by using only lines and solid colors we as artists can depict the translucency and ever-changing movement of waves. I began by delicately sketching out all of the letters using graph paper and micron pens. My work always begins with traditional media. I'm an illustrator, freelance artist, and graphic designer from Chicago, IL. I studied at Texas Christian University, and received my Bachelors of Arts in Graphic Design from Columbia College Chicago. Visit www.jennyddesigns.com for more! :)

Velo leads layouts with a grand tour champion’s panache but is also a hard-working design domestique for text-heavy applications. Superelliptical shapes and sturdy serifs will keep pace with contemporary culture with an aesthetic agility that will never go out of style. Velo Serif includes sixteen fonts: Twelve display styles ranging from thin to black with complementary italics and four text styles designed for longer settings. Velo Serif Display features an increased x-height for more illustrative headlines while Velo Serif Text maintains a readable cadence in high word count environments. Typeface design by House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Mitja Miklavčič and Ben Kiel. FEATURES Text vs Display: Velo Text maintains the distinctive style of its Display siblings, but is enhanced for optimum legibility in running text settings. Key ligature combinations keep headlines and running text flowing smoothly. Velo Serif Text includes a complete small cap alphabet to add another typographic dimension to your layouts. Select Velo Serif figures include illustrative alternates to display numerical superiority.

Hollywood Revue JNL gets its design inspiration and name from a vintage movie poster for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929". The letter style shows early Art Deco influences, yet the hand lettering was done in the late 1920s toward the end of the Art Nouveau period. MGM produced this early "talkie" all-star musical with a cast that included Jack Benny, John Gilbert, Conrad Nagel, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Polly Moran and many others. This is the motion picture where Cliff ("Ukelele Ike") Edwards introduced "Singin' in the Rain" (composed by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown). Years later, Freed was a producer at MGM and gathered up many of the songs he and Brown wrote during the 1920s to form the musical core of the 1952 Gene Kelly-Debbie Reynolds-Donald O'Conner musical "Singin' in the Rain".

Working on The Lab late one night, evil comic book genius Scott Christian Sava realized there was something missing from his graphic experiment! No, not slugs and snails or puppydogs' tails, nor sugar, spice, everything nice and formula 'X'....No, what his nefarious scheme was missing were the actual numbers and letters with which he could complete his equation! BRILLIANT! What he needed was something antiseptically clean and readable, even at small sizes for megalomanical rambling as well as the 5 point type under the Bio-Hazard logo that nobody really reads, and yet also bouncy and energetic enough for the inevitable sound effects that might follow exclamations such as: "IT'S ALIVE!" or "IT JUST-MIGHT-WORK!" Thanks to those awfully nice chaps at Comicraft, MadScientist is now available to evil geniuses everywhere, and guaranteed Laboratory tested.* *On reanimated human beings reconstituted from bones and organic body parts and organs from local charnal houses. No animals or small children were hurt during the creation and use of this font. Well, not yet, anyway. Artwork by Lew Stringer

Philip Bouwsma's Symposium Pro is a wide Carolingian script that can be set simply or with a wide range of flourishes. It takes its inspiration from the scriptoria of the twelfth century, particularly in Spain, where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived harmoniously in a brilliant culture for two centuries. As manuscripts were translated and copied to meet the Western demand for classical texts, calligraphic elements from Arabic and Hebrew spread throughout Europe, sparking a proliferation of new styles that brought the simple book hand to a higher level. Symposium Pro spans a broad range of time and space, from the court of Charlemagne to the Arabian nights and Renaissance Florence. Symposium Pro comes in four weights, ranging from Light to Bold, with each font containing over 1200 glyphs. Variations on every letter form, from swashes to subtle alterations, are plenty, with some even having up to 40 alternates. Also plenty are the embedded ornaments and flourishes, over a hundred of them. Keep that glyph palette handy for many pleasant surprises and easy setting solutions.

ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a font family based on the logo font used in the Avant Garde magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin’s design firm, worked together to transform the idea into a full-fledged typeface. The condensed fonts were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977. The original designs include one version for setting headlines and one for text copy. However, in the initial digitization, only the text design was chosen, and the ligatures and alternate characters were not included. The font family consists of 5 weights (4 for condensed), with complementary obliques for widest width fonts. When ITC released the OpenType version of the font, the original 33 alternate characters and ligatures, plus extra characters were included. ITC Avant Garde Gothic® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for PowerPoints

The simplified letterforms of Sinova™ make it an ideal choice for those settings where you really don't want the type to shout too loudly or draw unnecessary attention to itself. Christian Mengelt has drawn five weights: Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold, all with complimentary obliques. Sinova is an OpenType family that is unfussy, functional, and legible, with extensive language support (some 48 languages). Thanks to its clear and straightforward design and dynamic rhythm, one of the main characteristics of Sinova is its excellent legibility, irrespective of whether it is used in longer passages as a stylish book script or for text in the digitalised office environment. But Sinova also happily adapts itself to being used as a titling font in combination with Renaissance Antique serif typefaces. For this reason, another potential application for the font family is as a graceful and elegant titling and text script for job printing and in publicity texts. The two complementary stroke widths, light and bold, are perfect for commercial applications.

In the early 1980s, at the start of my career, I had the opportunity to work in a print shop with classic lead setting. In those days I would study issues of U&lc magazine from ITC. What really caught my attention were scripts in the Spencerian style. I’ve been fascinated by this American penmanship tradition ever since. A few years ago I developed a font. Boris Bencic used it when he was redesigning L’Officiel magazine in Paris. I took these initial forms and developed them into the font Mommie when I started my own foundry. Although I usually design text typefaces, working on Mommie taught me how complex it can be to create a script headline font. The biggest challenge in this process has been to keep it alive and fresh. The Regular weight is only made for very big headlines. The thin lines with the bold drops are very elegant. For smaller sizes use the Medium and Small weight. It won the TDC 2008 award and was Judges Choice of Christian Schwartz.

Just as its eponymous ancestors graced vast Western vistas, Buffalo fills broad horizontal typographic topography with distinctive dignity. Buffalo’s migration across a visual landscape that straddles two millennia saw it survive the threat of extinction similar to its mammalian ancestors and emerge with rotund relevance. Now fortified with modern character sets and digital flexibility, nothing espouses an artisanal post-western industrial craft renaissance quite like Buffalo. Legendary lettering artist and type designer Ed Benguiat created the original film version of Buffalo for Photo-Lettering Inc. Working under the direction of the current Photo-Lettering partners, Dutch type designer Donald Roos digitized and expanded Buffalo while expertly maintaining the organic nuances found in the original version. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Exuberantly delicious and lusciously sweet! VLNL Bon Bon embodies the perfect after dinner treat. Chocolate is a known aphrodisiac and bonbons are its most romantic carrier. Bonbon is not for nothing the French word for ‘good’ twice! You could definitely consider VLNL Bonbon the typographic equivalent of these exquisite chocolate sweets. Inspired by lettering on an Amsterdam church facade and a ladies clothing store window, Donald DBXL Beekman started drawing the first incarnation of Bon Bon already in 2004. The original idea was an alphabet design with slanted oval inner shapes and extremely long and striking serifs. This proved to be a quite demanding design job, so It took Bon Bon some time to get finished. But now it’s here in all its extravagant glory. Most recently a number of lowercase characters were added to make Bon Bon more versatile. Totally insane and over-top-the-top it has been called. But hey, we all love Bon Bon. Don't we?

VLNL Berlagebrug Designer Donald DBXL Beekman daily crosses the Berlage bridge spanning the Amstel river in Amsterdam. The Berlagebrug was built as part of the city planning project ‘Plan Zuid’ by H.P.Berlage and opened in May 1932. Its name, carved out of two granite headstones, sparked the design of this font family. The original lettering is attributed to Anton Kurvers in the early 19th century, and can be seen on many Amsterdam buildings and bridges. It’s typical lettering of the Amsterdamse School, the Dutch equivalent of the expressionist art deco architectural style, and mostly known for its extravagant brick work. VLNL Berlagebrug is a rounded display font that comes in three outline styles matching the building materials used in the bridge. Gietijzer (cast iron) is smooth, Zandsteen (sandstone) has a softly distressed outline, and Graniet (granite) is outspoken rough and crumbled. The capital letters in VLNL Berlagebrug are in the Amsterdamse school style, the lowercases are more straight alternate capitals, giving you more design options.

ITC Avant Garde Gothic¿ was designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase in 1970. They based it on Lubalin¿s logo for Avant Garde Magazine - an exciting construction of overlapping and tightly-set geometric capitals. ITC Avant Garde is a geometric sans serif; meaning the basic shapes are constructed from circles and straight lines, much like the work from the 1920s German Bauhaus movement. The early versions of ITC Avant Garde became well-known for their many unique alternates and ligatures that still conjure up the typographic aura of the 1970s. These fonts contain the basic alphabets (without the old unusual ligatures). Still strong and modern looking, ITC Avant Garde has become a solid staple in the repertoire of today's graphic designer. The large, open counters and tall x-heights seem friendly, and help to make this family work well for short texts and headlines. The condensed weights were drawn by Ed Benguiat in 1974, and the obliques were designed by Andr¿ G¿rtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt in 1977. ITC Avant Garde¿ Mono is a monospaced version done by Ned Bunnel in 1983.

Velo leads layouts with a grand tour champion’s panache but is also a hard-working design domestique for text-heavy applications. Superelliptical shapes and sturdy serifs will keep pace with contemporary culture with an aesthetic agility that will never go out of style. Velo Serif includes sixteen fonts: Twelve display styles ranging from thin to black with complementary italics and four text styles designed for longer settings. Velo Serif Display features an increased x-height for more illustrative headlines while Velo Serif Text maintains a readable cadence in high word count environments. Designed by House Industries, Christian Schwartz, Mitja Miklavčič and Ben Kiel. FEATURES Text vs Display: Velo Text maintains the distinctive style of its Display siblings, but is enhanced for optimum legibility in running text settings. Key ligature combinations keep headlines and running text flowing smoothly. Velo Serif Text includes a complete small cap alphabet to add another typographic dimension to your layouts. Select Velo Serif figures include illustrative alternates to display numerical superiority. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Fast Rewind: A Timeless Handwritten Script Font A handwritten brush script with a versatile, relaxed and nostalgic feel. This illustrative brush script owes its inspiration to the 1950s art direction typical of mainstream magazines and book covers. A relaxed hand-lettered title was often paired with illustrations of handsome couples or escapist scenes, encouraging readers to settle into the latest gripping story from authors such as Ray Bradbury, Donald Westlake or Arthur Miller. Fast Rewind aims to repurpose this vintage look for contemporary designers with two handwritten fonts, drawn in ink and brush, and then digitally mastered to maintain those all-important human imperfections. Included are the Regular and Alternative designs, with a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numbers, symbols and language support. Also included are a variety of underlines and illustrations as seen in these visuals. Each style also comes with its own selection of extra glyphs to helps you achieve the perfect flow between characters and avoid tell-tale repetition. Thanks to all the great photographers who provided images for these visuals.

Jean Evans' interest in type design dates back to her third-grade fascination with fancy script writing. Years later, work at a sign-painting school she found in the Yellow Pages® cemented her relationship with letterforms. Evans went on to study with master calligraphers and type designers, including the likes of Donald Jackson, Hermann Zapf and Matthew Carter. Evans' designs have been exhibited and collected around the globe, and her distinctive calligraphic style has been lauded by leading trade organizations, annuals and publications. Hatmaker, one of Evans' more popular typefaces, was originally developed for the Boston-based broadcast design firm of the same name. Inspiration for the design came from Ben Shahn's famous hand-constructed alphabet. Shahn's alphabet, however, was limited to capital letters. Daunted by the idea of designing a lowercase that would measure up to Shahn's capitals, I developed a second set of caps-simple, quirky, yet almost classic-to work as 'lowercase' with the Shahn-like caps," explains Evans. Mixing the two in Hatmaker, creates a lively interplay of light and dark."

The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same. The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes; in the 10th century, it was further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes. The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age. Their use declined after the Christianization of Scandinavia; most writing in Scandinavia from the 12th century was in the Latin alphabet, but the runic scripts survived in marginal use in the form of the medieval runes (in use ca. 1100–1500) and the Latinised Dalecarlian runes (ca. 1500–1910)

VLNL Beatbox is a solid tech heavy straight stencil-face with a lot of character. It was originally designed as a logo for dj Markus Schultz back in 2004, who rejected it. His management couldn't read it, or thought people wouldn’t be able to read it. But Chef Donald DBXL found the concept interesting enough to finish it and has used it in many projects since. It was the identity font for the Battle of Amsterdam, a talent showcase in beat boxing and other skills. Beatboxing is a style of hiphop music (beats) made with the mouth and a microphone. A box is a handy container to store stuff. Like food, or fonts. We use a lot of boxes at the VetteLetters office. VLNL Beatbox is best deployed big, like in logos or headlines. Or flyers, album covers, posters and signage. As a display and headline typeface it’s got a lot of character. We could definitely see it painted on the side of a tank, or an airplane. It’s heavy, but not at all dangerous. Use it without risk. VLNL Beatbox comes in two variations; Regular and Small (smallcaps)

Kornelis de Vries, a headmaster from the Dutch province of Friesland, cultivated new potato breeds that he named after pupils in his school. In the early 1900s he came up with the tasty Bintje (a Frisian girl’s name) and it became a big success – in Belgium and France it has remained the most popular potato for french fries to this day, more than a century since its introduction. Donald Roos took 10 kilos of fresh Bintje potatoes and cut the Bint typeface by hand with a short, sharp knife. He then inked each character once and printed it twice; the second, lighter printing is accommodated in the lower case alphabet. The Bint family offers a script to make the letters bounce up and down the baseline; with OpenType functionality the font randomly chooses each character from the upper- or lowercase alphabet. ‘Tabular lining figures’ will activate a series of negative numerals in boxes; ‘Discretionary ligatures’ activates specially designed letter combinations like ‘www’ as well as arrows and stars. Bint has a distinct, slightly rough handmade appearance, making it useful for a wide range of designs.

The Vondelpark is the famous Amsterdam city park, 47 hectares stretching out from Leidseplein to the Amstelveenseweg. It was founded in 1864 when a group of well-to-do Amsterdam citizens got together and bought land at the (then) edge of the city centre in order to create a park ‘for riding and strolling’. Designed by architect J.D. Zocher, it opened officially in 1865. The park received its name two years later when a statue of Dutch writer Joost van den Vondel was placed in the park. In the 1960s and 1970s the Vondelpark became a symbol and epicenter of the hippie flower power era. The park was declared a state monument in 1996. Donald DBXL was intrigued by the handmade iron nameplate lettering on the park’s entrance gates, and decided to design VLNL Vondelpark in its glory. The somewhat clumsy iron letters were not revived as is but optimized to turn it into a useful typeface. The all-caps serif with a deliberate constructed feel, contains a Positional Open Type feature that places half circles on the vertical stems, at the beginning and end of a word, to enliven the rhythm.

Richard J. Neutra became an icon of Modern architecture as an artistic visionary, social commentator and outspoken defender of the environment. He refined his unique approach to design, for which he coined the term biorealism, over half a century ago. Regarding humankind and its surroundings as two inseparable halves to a greater whole, Neutra created habitats with the welfare of man and nature as his utmost concern. His ideas of evolutionary growth and adaptability compelled House Industries to develop Neutraface Condensed, built upon the original typeface and driven by the enduring spirit of the revolutionary who inspired it. “I have tried to be a feeling observer of life in all its manifestations, not a cold rationalist.” House Industries adopted this precept of Neutra as the guiding principle when the foundry commissioned Christian Schwartz to draw Neutraface Condensed. Instead of being exactingly compressed, the new companion fonts were composed around a complementary structural framework in order to better reflect the sensibilities of their predecessor. The result is an individualistic design with a restrained exuberance that shuns stylistically ersatz imitation. This compact yet lively presence allows Neutraface Condensed to lend flexibility and economy to headlines without sacrificing the simplicity and charm of the original. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Flamenco is an Andalusian art. Who think in flamenco, think in Spain. Is the result of a cultural mix: Gypsies, Arabs, Jews and Christians mixed elements of their respective cultures with traditional Andalusian elements. It incorporate dance, song and guitar music. Known for its emotional intensity, flamenco is distinguished by the graceful arm movements, ferocious stomping’s flamenco dancer, deep groans and strumming guitar. Flamenco is an art of passion. Flamenca Regular and Flamenca Luz is a brush script inspired by the flamenco dance. Flamenca is an organic, modern and casual calligraphy family font that has preserved in its glyphs its original textured appearance for a more personalized effect even more authentic. 
As an exclusively Open Type release, with 747 glyphs, it has several special alternatives for all letters with lots of possibility an infinity of combinations. There are plenty of options to allow you to create something unique and special: standard and discretionary ligatures, several swashes, initial and terminal forms and stylistics alternates for each letter, catchwords, ornaments that can be added to the beginning or end of each letter, and much more. Ornaments has been created inspired in the bars of the Andalusian patios where flamenco is danced. These lovely fonts have already an extended character set to support Central and Eastern as well as Western European languages. 
As a whole, Flamenca was made to make your project more beautiful and attractive! Have fun with it! Flamenca is fancy, delicious & fresh!

Kъnig – the old Bulgar runes The writing kъnig emerged in the places of ancient Thraco-Bulgarian migrations in ante-deluvial times and developed in stages paralleling the other ancient writings. There have been many interactions and loanings between kъnig and these other writings. The root of the word kъnig (OBg: кънигъı) comes from the Old Chinese k'üen 'scroll' (ModCh: 纸卷 zhǐjuǎn) [57]. The word was loaned directly in the Bulgar language (*kün'ig > *küniv) restoring two individual Old Chuvash forms: 1. *k'ün'čьk > кўнчěк kind of ornament on a woman's garment; *k'ün'-gi / *k'ün'-üg > k'ün'iv book, codex, which is evidenced by the Hungarian könyv book and Mordvinian konov paper borrowings; 2. *k'ün'i- > *k'ün'i-gi > к'әn'iγь > кънигъı. This word has been preserved in Sumerian as kunuku (inscription) and kəniga (writing, knowledge). It is inherited from Bulgar to Slavic: книга (Bulgarian and Russian), књига (Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian), kniha (Czech and Slovak), książka (Polish), and non-Slavic: könyv (Hungarian) languages. Kъnig letters (kъni) have been known from archeological finds for more than 100 years already; however, until recently, no attempt has been made to decipher them, find their phonological value, or connect them to their natural successors: the Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets. The oldest mention on the Bulgar runes is found in the mid-9th c. AD work On the Letters by the Bulgarian writer Chernorizets Hrabъr. Being already a Christian, he wrote pejoratively about the pagan Bulgars

While sketching for a music project logo, Donald DBXL Beekman looked at several wood type alphabets as a starting poing. One of these was No.120, patented in 1880 by William Hamilton Page. With its distinct diagonally cut serifs and round shapes cut off at top and bottom, it bore just the right feel for the project. DBXL digitized the alphabet, adding all characters needed for a full set. During this process all shapes were widened, tweaked and streamlined to enhance consistency and rhythm along the whole font. VLNL Bonen is an all-caps display font with a very specific western cowboy or circus look. For instance burger or barbecue grill restaurants would do well with this one. We can easily see it shine on a festival flyer or poster as well, and not just country & western festivals. VLNL Bonen is suitable for any ‘big’ use that needs to stand out of the crowd. Bonen is the Dutch word for beans, a world wide source of nutrition and proteins it comes in a multitude of shapes, colours and sizes. Beans are also the most eaten foods in a cowboy’s diet along the trail. Available in abundance and easily preserved and transported, many recipes on the cattle drives in the American Wild West used beans. Think of chili, mashed beans with biscuits and bean soups. “Keep them doggies movin’, cowboy!”

The great enigma There are hidden depths to FS Silas Sans. First impressions are of a functional, multi-purpose typeface with a cool, edgy, angular character. Gaze into its eyes a little longer, though, and you'll detect a more nuanced, colourful personality, with full, open, satisfyingly squarish forms balancing the abruptness of the sharply-angled terminals and ascenders. Authoritative, official and stern on the outside; amiable and welcoming on the inside. You’re so Dane The designers, led by Phil Garnham, were trying to capture something straight-talking, authentic, and a little... Scandinavian. ‘We were thinking about some of the characters in Danish dramas that were on in the early stages of the font’s development, like The Killing and The Bridge,’ says Phil. ‘The police officers, that is, not the psychopathic killers. Smart and a bit cool, but with a warm heart.’ For a good Danish name, we settled on Silas. It was that or Hans-Christian. The finer points Silas Sans rewards close inspection. Study, if you will, its amply squarish forms, the roomy ‘o’ and ‘e’, in particular. Observe the angular ascenders and terminals of, for example, the ‘L’, ‘I’, ‘d’ and ‘i’, inferring the movement and lift of a pen. Consider the cuts to the ‘A’ and ‘v’ that create harmony with adjacent letters. And scrutinise the subtle ink traps set within the ‘A’ and ‘Y’ for reproduction at small sizes. A fine subject, we think you’ll agree, and available in a versatile range of weights to make (with FS Silas Slab) a typographic system with a comprehensive hierarchy.

The original metal Neue Haas Grotesk™ would, in the late 1950s become Helvetica®. But, over the years, Helvetica would move away from its roots. Some of the features that made Neue Haas Grotesk so good were expunged or altered owing to comprimises dictated by technological changes. Christian Schwartz says Neue Haas Grotesk was originally produced for typesetting by hand in a range of sizes from 5 to 72 points, but digital Helvetica has always been one-size-fits-all, which leads to unfortunate compromises."""" Schwartz's digital revival sets the record straight, so to speak. What was lost in Neue Haas Grotesk's transition to the digital Helvetica of today, has been resurrected in this faithful digital revival. The Regular and Bold weights of Helvetica were redesigned for the Linotype machine; those alterations remained when Helvetica was adapted for phototypesetting. During the 1980s, the family was redrawn and released as Neue Helvetica. Schwartz's revival of the original Helvetica, his new Neue Haas Grotesk, comes complete with a number of Max Miedinger's alternates, including a flat-legged R. Eight display weights, from Thin to Black, plus a further three weights drawn specifically for text make this much more than a revival - it's a versatile, well-drawn grot with all the right ingredients. The Thin weight (originally requested by Bloomberg Businessweek) is very fine, very thin indeed, and reveals the true skeleton of these iconic letterforms. Available as a family of OpenType fonts with a very large Pro character set, Neue Haas Grotesk supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

ITC Legacy¿ was designed by American Ronald Arnholm, who was first inspired to develop the typeface when he was a graduate student at Yale. In a type history class, he studied the 1470 book by Eusebius that was printed in the roman type of Nicolas Jenson. Arnholm worked for years to create his own interpretation of the Jenson roman, and he succeeded in capturing much of its beauty and character. As Jenson did not include a companion italic, Arnholm turned to the sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond for inspiration for the italics of ITC Legacy. Arnholm was so taken by the strength and integrity of these oldstyle seriffed forms that he used their essential skeletal structures to develop a full set of sans serif faces. ITC Legacy includes a complete family of weights from book to ultra, with Old style Figures and small caps, making this a good choice for detailed book typography or multi-faceted graphic design projects. In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e."" Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

ITC Legacy¿ was designed by American Ronald Arnholm, who was first inspired to develop the typeface when he was a graduate student at Yale. In a type history class, he studied the 1470 book by Eusebius that was printed in the roman type of Nicolas Jenson. Arnholm worked for years to create his own interpretation of the Jenson roman, and he succeeded in capturing much of its beauty and character. As Jenson did not include a companion italic, Arnholm turned to the sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond for inspiration for the italics of ITC Legacy. Arnholm was so taken by the strength and integrity of these oldstyle seriffed forms that he used their essential skeletal structures to develop a full set of sans serif faces. ITC Legacy includes a complete family of weights from book to ultra, with Old style Figures and small caps, making this a good choice for detailed book typography or multi-faceted graphic design projects. In 1458, Charles VII sent the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson to learn the craft of movable type in Mainz, the city where Gutenberg was working. Jenson was supposed to return to France with his newly learned skills, but instead he traveled to Italy, as did other itinerant printers of the time. From 1468 on, he was in Venice, where he flourished as a punchcutter, printer and publisher. He was probably the first non-German printer of movable type, and he produced about 150 editions. Though his punches have vanished, his books have not, and those produced from about 1470 until his death in 1480 have served as a source of inspiration for type designers over centuries. His Roman type is often called the first true Roman." Notable in almost all Jensonian Romans is the angled crossbar on the lowercase e, which is known as the "Venetian Oldstyle e."" ITC Legacy® Sans font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

The Neue Haas Unica™ family is an extended, reimagined version of the Haas Unica® design, a Helvetica® alternative that achieved near mythical status in the type community before it virtually disappeared. Originally released in 1980 by the Haas Type Foundry and designed by Team ’77 — André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt— for phototypesetting technology of the day, the design was never successfully updated for today’s digital environments – until now. Toshi Omagari of Monotype Studio has given this classic a fresh, digital facelift with more weights, more languages and more letters to meet today’s digital and print needs. Available in 18 styles, the Neue Haas Unica family is remarkably appropriate for a wide range of applications, possessing a delicate gradation of weights and clear character shapes. The family's lighter weights are perfect for headlines and other large settings, as well as small blocks of copy at typical text sizes. The regular, medium and bold weights know no boundaries and the heavy and black designs are ideal for when typography needs to be powerful and commanding. Like the Neue Helvetica and Univers Next typefaces, the Neue Haas Unica family can be used just about anywhere – or for any project. In addition to its 9 tailored weights and complementary italics, the Neue Haas Unica family also possesses additional characters for Eastern and Central European, Greek and Cyrillic language support, which did not exist in the original design. A cosmopolitan typeface for today's modern, discerning design needs, the Neue Haas Unica collection is a new classic in the making—one that every designer should surely have at their disposal.

The first weights of Neue Haas Grotesk were designed in 1957-1958 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei in Switzerland, with art direction by the company’s principal, Eduard Hoffmann. Neue Haas Grotesk was to be the answer to the British and German grotesques that had become hugely popular thanks to the success of functionalist Swiss typography. The typeface was soon revised and released as Helvetica by Linotype AG. As Neue Haas Grotesk had to be adapted to work on Linotype’s hot metal linecasters, Linotype Helvetica was in some ways a radically transformed version of the original. For instance, the matrices for Regular and Bold had to be of equal widths, and therefore the Bold was redrawn at a considerably narrower proportion. During the transition from metal to phototypesetting, Helvetica underwent additional modifications. In the 1980s Neue Helvetica was produced as a rationalized, standardized version. For Christian Schwartz, the assignment to design a digital revival of Neue Haas Grotesk was an occasion to set history straight. “Much of the warm personality of Miedinger’s shapes was lost along the way. So rather than trying to rethink Helvetica or improve on current digital versions, this was more of a restoration project: bringing Miedinger’s original Neue Haas Grotesk back to life with as much fidelity to his original shapes and spacing as possible (albeit with the addition of kerning, an expensive luxury in handset type).” Schwartz’s revival was originally commissioned in 2004 by Mark Porter for the redesign of The Guardian, but not used. Schwartz completed the family in 2010 for Richard Turley at Bloomberg Businessweek. Its thinnest weight was designed by Berton Hasebe.

Mackay is a powerful transitional serif in 6 weights plus matching italics, designed for screen and print. The eccentric serifs on uppercase letters like E, F, L and T are inspired by Alexander Kay’s “Ronaldson” from 1884, working as the starting point for the family. The lowercase letters follow the traditional Antiqua model with attributes tracing back to drawings from the early 20th century. The “grotesk” lowercase a, as well as the sharp lowercase s, derived from the closed shapes of uppercase letters like C, G or S, create a compact and bold appearance while a large x-height and small descenders add a modern look. In favor of a dynamic and elegant impression, the design of the italic cuts come with a strong calligraphic influence. This results in completely new shapes for letters like lowercase a or g, ensuring a smooth integration into their surrounding letters while maintaining a distinctive appearance when combining with romans. The family comes with a variety of opentype features like case sensitive shapes, old style figures, fractions, ordinals and many more. Additional attention was given to the standard and discretionary ligatures, extending the structure of the basic glyphs with elegantly designed letter combinations for g/i, i/t or s/t. According to their dynamic architecture, the italic weights are equipped with additional initial swash characters to subtle accentuate the calligraphic roots. As a result of a high stroke contrast the family works great in paragraphs with medium to large font sizes like headlines, short paragraphs or logos. With its 12 cuts, the family meets all requirements on high quality typography.

Jan Tschichold designed Sabon in 1964, and it was produced jointly by three foundries: D. Stempel AG, Linotype and Monotype. This was in response to a request from German master printers to make a font family that was the same design for the three metal type technologies of the time: foundry type for hand composition, linecasting, and single-type machine composition. Tschichold turned to the sixteenth century for inspiration, and the story has a complicated family thread that connects his Sabon design to the Garamond lineage. Jakob Sabon, who the type is named for, was a student of the great French punchcutter Claude Garamond. He completed a set of his teacher's punches after Garamond's death in 1561. Sabon became owner of a German foundry when he married the granddaughter of the Frankfurt printer, Christian Egenolff. Sabon died in 1580, and his widow married Konrad Berner, who took over the foundry. Tschichold loosely based his design on types from the 1592 specimen sheet issued by the Egenolff-Berner foundry: a 14-point roman attributed to Claude Garamond, and an italic attributed to Robert Granjon. Sabon was the typeface name chosen for this twentieth century revival and joint venture in production; this name avoided confusion with other fonts connected with the names of Garamond and Granjon. Classic, elegant, and extremely legible, Sabon is one of the most beautiful Garamond variations. Always a good choice for book typography, the Sabon family is also particularly good for text and headlines in magazines, advertisements, documentation, business reports, corporate design, multimedia, and correspondence. Sabon combines well with: Sans serif fonts such as Frutiger, Syntax. Slab serif fonts such as PMN Caecilia, Clairvaux. Fun fonts such as Grafilone, Animalia, Araby Rafique. See also the new revised version Sabon Next from the Platinum Collection."

At VetteLetters we like food but we also appreciate our drinks. Yes, of the non-alcoholic kind as well. Like milk. Contrary to what Arnold Schwartzenegger once said, Milk is not just for babies. It contains a whole lot of stuff that is genuinely good for you. Like proteins, carbohydrates, minerals (calcium a.o.) and many vitamins. One time visiting The Hague, Donald DBXL spotted a tile tableau on a brick wall, advertising a dairy factory called ‘De Sierkan’. Yellow sans serif letters on a bright blue background, dating back to the late 19th century, immediately grabbed DBXL’s attention. Especially because the tableau showed both regular and bold letters with some lovely peculiarities here and there. De Sierkan appeared to have been a milk factory solely operating in The Hague from 1879 until 1961. A number of these wall adverts are still to be seen in The Hague streets today. Photos were taken for later reference. Later is now, the lettering has been digitized, missing characters added, and VLNL Melk sees the light of day. VLNL Melk is an all-caps geometric display sans serif family of three weights, Regular, Bold and Black. The basic shape of the letters is a rectangle with rounded corners, leaving a sturdy no-nonsense look and feel. It has a distinct historic aura, but with both feet in this digital day and age. It can equally well be used for the logo of a hipster coffee place, as the cover of a historic novel. Actually, VLNL Melk kan be applied in a wide range of designs like logos, posters, flyers, book covers and magazine headlines.

The story of Serena is a unique one among revivals. Serena was neither a metal face nor a film one. In fact it never went anywhere beyond Stefan Schlesinger’s 1940-41 initial sketches (which he called Saranna). A year later, while working with Dick Dooijes on the Rondo typeface, Schlesinger was sent to a concentration camp where he died, along with any material prospects for the gorgeous letters he'd drawn. The only sketches left of Schlesinger’s Saranna work are found in the archives of the Drukkerij Trio (the owner of which was Schlesinger’s brother-in-law). The sketches were done in pencil and ink over pencil on four sheets of paper. And now Hans van Maanen revives Schlesinger’s spirit as closely as the drawings permit, and elaborately expands the work to cover a multitude of codepages and languages. It took more than 65 years for Schlesinger’s drawings to see the light, so van Maanen made sure to bring them to life stylishly and respectfully. Serena embodies the peace and calm rarely ever found in mainstream calligraphy or other genres of display type. With upright elegance and a slight Eastern touch, this typeface expertly bridges the gracefully casual with the deeply spiritual. The light and soft letter forms add a pleasant, breezy element to anything they touch. When used sparingly in titling or display, Serena is like a sigh of desire, rare but quite memorable and very appreciated.

Whatever the medium, Girard’s love for typography was the common thread that wove his work together. We are honored that the Girard family has entrusted us to celebrate and expand upon the legacy of this design icon with this collection of fonts. The Girard Slab family gracefully synthesizes illustrative sensibilities into a practical typographic framework. Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. From boutique chocolate packaging to the titling sequence for an indie vegan superhero cartoon, Girard Script deftly adds a contemporary sophistication to text and display settings. Inspired by a workhorse lettering style that helped Alexander Girard implement thousands of design elements in his overhaul of the Braniff identity system, Girard Sky pulls its weight in any contemporary application. In Girard Sansusie, each character stands alone as an illustrative element while coming together with its counterparts as a whimsical yet functional typeface. FEATURES: The ligatures feature substitutes specially-drawn letter combinations that combine two, three or even four characters to create smoother transitions and simulate lettering sensibilities. Girard Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. Copious alternate characters and “smart” OpenType programming allow Sansusie to escape the rigid confines of typography to come alive as if flowing from Girard’s sketchpad. This animation shows a sampling of the swash characters available in the font. GIRARD CREDITS: Typeface Design: Alexander Girard, Ben Kiel, Ken Barber, Laura Meseguer Typeface Production: Ben Kiel Typeface Direction: Christian Schwartz, Andy Cruz, Ken Barber Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

“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.