A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul

Earlier this year I visited a bakery in Newport Beach, CA and fell in love with the organic design and typography of the place. Hand-drawn menus, table cards, chalkboards, and wall quotes surrounded the charming spot. It inspired me to create a new font family based on the combination of hand drawn fonts. Included in this package are 5 font families, with 2 graphic ornament fonts. Each font family contains at least a light, medium and bold. Here is a breakdown of what's cookin' at Catalina's Bakery: Catalina Anacapa: Tall and skinny, this font comes in 3 weights for both sans and slab serif styles. It includes contextual alternatives (giving 3 versions of each letter), stylistic alternatives for select letters (A, K, P, Q, R, Y) and also includes Small Caps. Catalina Avalon: Based off Anacapa, this sub family has a high contrasting line weight. It comes in light, regular and bold as well as an inline alternative for both sans and slab serif styles. Avalon also includes opentype features such as contextual alternatives (giving 3 versions of each letter), stylistic alternatives for select letters (A, K, P, Q, R, Y) and small caps for each letter. Catalina Clemente: In a more standard width, Clemente is one of the two sub families that can be used for paragraph text as well as headlines. It's organically geometric in style and comes in ALL CAPS and lowercase, includes upright and custom italics, and has the opentype feature giving 3 versions of each letter. Catalina Script: A great compliment with the display sub-families, Catalina Script rounds out the package with a hand-drawn cursive flair. It includes contextual alternatives (giving 2 variations to each letter) as well as stylistic alternatives for many of the capital and lowercase letters. It has special ligatures for some letter combinations, and titling alternatives for all the capital letters. Catalina Typewriter: The second of the paragraph text sub-families, this typewriter inspired hand-drawn font family works great as either a display or paragraph text. It has contextual alternatives with 3 versions of each letter, and comes in both upright and custom italics versions. Catalina Extras! These two fonts go perfectly with the Catalina Family. They includes borders, frames, arrows, banners, flourishes and more. Catalina Flourish has all of it's options in a light and bold style, to use the light version type all lowercase letters, then to make something bold, used it's uppercase (or shift+) characters. For a breakdown of graphic/letter correlation, see the breakdown PDF. All of Catalina was drawn by the same hand, using the same ink and technique. While they contrast in their type styles, they work together perfectly to create one cohesive font family.

Milkyway, a bubbly-bold font that is perfect for making your project looks even more fun! It’s rounded and curvy shape makes it more unique. Milkyway is very ideal for variety design projects, such as posters, Invitations, greeting cards, logo, and many more. Milkyway will jolly up you and your audiences! Get this font now to magnify your design!

Nick Curtis has created this stylish, Deco inspired design, packed full of quirky features and characters. Some of the letterforms, like the uppercase K, appear to be walking. And dig that lowercase ‘g’! There is a lot of lively design happening here, so much so that its a battle not to be stylish when you are Steppin Out.

This retro serif font features plenty of curvy letters that give it a refined and cheerful vibe. Tap into the 70s with the Geshina Font With Shadow. Perfect for lovers of all things retro, Geshina is available in three styles: regular, outline, and shadow. It includes upper and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation, ligatures, alternates, swashes, and multilingual support.

The type family “Curlaight” has whimsical curly shapes but has some level of uniformity with straight lines and angles. These modern retro feel fonts look great for children’s books, posters, book covers, packaging labels, or even logos like TV and movie titles. Seven weights - thin, light, regular, medium, semibold, bold, and black - are available for your creative projects.

Sayonachi is a fun, curly font to use in a wide range of documents, and works best in display applications, such as posters, greeting cards, awards, invitations, logos and titles. Sayonachi font has a full upper and lower-case, accents, punctuation and a selection of monetary symbols. Currently Available for Mac and PC, in Open Type, PostScript or TrueType.

Sidger Nakson is a display font regular and rough curly style with much alternative and ligature. Its clean and geometric letterforms make it ideal for various design applications, from corporate branding to editorial layouts. Feature Uppercase & Lowercase Number & Symbol International Glyphs Multilingual support Alternative Ligature Thanks so much for checking out my shop. Hope you enjoy it.

Introducing “Nesting” – sanserif / display font with a new look, which is stylish and flexible. Its bold, solid, clear, and strong characteristics make this font look beautiful with the right portions in your various design projects This font is made with passionate pleasure and passionate passion applied to this font design, so this font is suitable for offline or online games, PC or smartphone games, adventure posters, children’s movie titles, food titles and logos, magazines, youtube covers, youtube cover images, social media page covers, banner headlines, children’s book titles, film titles, and more. What’s Included : Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

This font has 2 styles in one keyboard layout! There is a solid style, and an outline style. The capital letters match the small-case. The capitals are all solid letters, while the small-case are the same, but an outline version. Same with your numbers, there is 2 styles (Outlined hollow numbers, or press shift and a number to get it's matching solid version). Common punctuation marks, brackets, etc., are included too, in both styles (There's even a hexagonal euro and dollar sign). To make these characters easier to find, repeats are spread throughout your alternate keys. The two styles can be used together, nicely complimenting each other. Hive Mind is NOT appropriate for important business presentations, lengthy novels, or anything you want to be an easy read. Use this font anywhere you want to create a funky look or need to be cryptic... Have fun with it!

Introducing “Teny” – sanserif / display font with a new look, which is stylish and flexible. Its bold, solid, clear, and strong characteristics make this font look beautiful with the right portions in your various design projects This font is made with passionate pleasure and passionate passion applied to this font design, so this font is suitable for offline or online games, PC or smartphone games, adventure posters, children’s movie titles, food titles and logos, magazines, youtube covers, youtube cover images, social media page covers, banner headlines, children’s book titles, film titles, and more. What’s Included : Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

Introducing “Ematane” – sanserif / display font with a new look, which is stylish and flexible. Its bold, solid, clear, and strong characteristics make this font look beautiful with the right portions in your various design projects This font is made with passionate pleasure and passionate passion applied to this font design, so this font is suitable for offline or online games, PC or smartphone games, adventure posters, children’s movie titles, food titles and logos, magazines, youtube covers, youtube cover images, social media page covers, banner headlines, children’s book titles, film titles, and more. What’s Included : Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

Papillon Script is an eloquent pen script with large display capitals and small but legible lowercase letters. It’s ideal for logo, headline, brochure, model for a neon sign or any display use like that. Papillon Script is completely monolinear and it gives a clear but vivid impression of a hand writing style. Papillon Script is equipped with following OpenType features: • Standard Ligatures is automatically on and it adds variation and smoothness to typing. If a same letter repeats in the same word the latter will automatically change to an alternative version. • Contextual Alternates is an optional feature that cuts the connection between letters every once in awhile. • Titling Alternates changes the last character in every word into an ending Swash alternative. • From Stylistic Set 1 you’ll find a set of 34 ornaments, strokes and arrows. • Small Caps turns lowercase into a set of legible capital letters.

Introducing “BROQI” – sanserif / display font with a new look, which is stylish and flexible. Its bold, solid, clear, and strong characteristics make this font look beautiful with the right portions in your various design projects This font is made with passionate pleasure and passionate passion applied to this font design, so this font is suitable for offline or online games, PC or smartphone games, adventure posters, children’s movie titles, food titles and logos, magazines, youtube covers, youtube cover images, social media page covers, banner headlines, children’s book titles, film titles, and more. ============================================================================================================ What’s Included : Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

Introducing “High Mount” – Sanserif / display font with a new look, which is stylish and flexible. Its bold, solid, clear, and strong characteristics make this font look beautiful with the right portions in your various design projects This font is made with passionate pleasure and passionate passion applied to this font design, so this font is suitable for offline or online games, PC or smartphone games, adventure posters, children’s movie titles, food titles and logos, magazines, youtube covers, youtube cover images, social media page covers, banner headlines, children’s book titles, film titles, and more. What’s Included : Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

Introducing Draghord, a bold and dynamic typeface that embodies the essence of superheroic power and adventure. This font is a visual journey into the realm of fire, swords, skulls, and wings, capturing the spirit of mighty heroes and formidable villains alike. Characteristics: Flaming Elements: Each letter of Draghord is adorned with fiery accents, reminiscent of a blazing inferno. The flames dance around the characters, conveying a sense of untamed power and intensity. Sword-Inspired Strokes: The letterforms draw inspiration from the sleek and sharp edges of legendary swords. The angular and precise strokes give the font a cutting-edge aesthetic, symbolizing strength and precision. Skull Motifs: Intricately integrated skull motifs within the font add an element of danger and mystery. The skulls serve as a visual reminder of the challenges faced by our superheroic characters, embodying both mortality and defiance. Dynamic Winged Elements: The font incorporates dynamic winged elements that soar across certain letters, emphasizing the theme of flight and freedom. These wings symbolize the superhero's ability to rise above adversity and transcend limitations. Usage Scenarios: Comic Books: Draghord is perfect for comic book titles, captions, and speech bubbles, adding a dramatic and visually striking element to the narrative. Movie Posters: Use Draghord to create attention-grabbing titles and taglines for superhero movies. Its bold and adventurous design will set the tone for epic storytelling. Gaming Graphics: Ideal for in-game text, Draghord adds a heroic touch to video game interfaces, especially in fantasy or superhero-themed games. Event Promotion: For superhero-themed events, Draghord can be utilized in promotional materials, posters, and banners to convey a sense of excitement and power. In Conclusion: Draghord is not just a font; it's a visual experience that transports you into the heart of superheroic tales. With its fiery, sword-inspired design, skull motifs, and dynamic wings, Draghord is the perfect typographic companion for any project seeking to channel the thrilling energy of the superhero genre. Unleash the power of Draghord and let your words ignite the imagination!

American Revolution is a unique collection of signatures of 84 key personalities from both sides of the American Revolutionary War, one of the supreme dramas in history. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail “signed” as if by one of these famous Revolionary War figures. This font includes signatures from the following American Revolutionary War personalities, from both sides: Ethan Allen, Charles T. Armand, John Armstrong, Benedict Arnold, Pudhomme de Borre, John Cadwalader, George Rogers Clark, George Clinton, James Clinton, Thomas Conway, William Davidson, Philippe du Coudray, The Chevalier Louis Lebegue dePresle Duportail, Chistopher Gadsden, Horatio Gates, Moses Hazen, John Glover, Mordecai Gist, Nathaniel Greene, William Heath, Edward Hand, John E. Howard, Robert Howe, Isaac Huger, William Irvine, Henry Knox, Baron Johann de Kalb, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Marquis de Lafayette, Charles Lee, Henry Lee, Andrew Lewis, William Maxwell, Benjamin Lincoln, Francis Marion, James Moore, Daniel Morgan, William Moultrie, Peter Muhlenberg, Alexander McDougall, Lewis Nicola, Lachlan McIntosh, John Nixon, Hugh Mercer, Samuel H. Parsons, Thomas Mifflin, John Paterson, Richard Montgomery, Andrew Pickens, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Enoch Poor, Count Casimir Pulaski, Israel Putnam, Joseph Reed, Elisha Sheldon, Arthur St. Clair, William Smallwood, Philip Schuyler, John Stark, Charles Scott, Adam Stephen, John Sullivan, Jethro Sumner, Thomas Sumter, James Varnum, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben, Lord Stirling, Artemas Ward, Joseph Warren, George Washington, Anthony Wayne, James Wilkinson, Otho H. Williams, John Paul Jones, William Woodford, David Wooster, John Burgoyne, Sir Guy Carleton, Charles Cornwallis, Sir Henry Clinton, Sir Thomas Gage, Richard, Earl Howe, Sir William Howe, Sir Banastre Tarleton. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map.

Emulating real handwriting has always been an aim of font designers in the digital age. The standard mainstream scripts and doodles that were available for the longest time have not successfully reached that goal. A letter always looked the same wherever you placed it. Some workarounds, such as letter alternates and ligatures, were used in many fonts, but they were a bit inconvenient to use, and in some cases didn't work correctly because they had to be placed in separate fonts from the main character set. Not until now, with OpenType technology, have we been able to emulate real handwriting, by including multiple character sets in the same font and programming it for smart form changes through letter sequence counting. Secret Scrypt was the first Canada Type font to make it to the bestseller list in the summer of 2004. In early 2005 a New York restaurant chain picked Secret Scrypt to use on its menus and internal signage, but they wanted to look even more like real handwriting, where two or three instances of the same letter used in one word would automatically change and look different from each other. Using OpenType technology, Canada Type produced a Secret Scrypt Pro for that restaurant chain under the direction of Mucca Design in New York City. That initial version contained three different character sets in the same font, and some intelligent programming that determines the sequence of the letters and change their shapes accordingly. Now the retail version of Secret Scrypt Pro is available, with four character sets built into the font for even more variety on the real handwriting theme. Make sure to check out the Secret Scrypt Pro PDF in the MyFonts gallery for tips on using Secret Scrypt Pro. Secret Scrypt is perfect for menus, handwritten notes, theater programmes, charity organization posters, and any design that attempts to get close to people with the personal magic of real handwriting.

ITC Photoplay is another gem from Nick Curtis. Unearthed from the 1927 edition of Samuel Welo's Studio Handbook for Artists and Advertisers, the design's original suggested use was for title and caption cards for silent movies. A monoweight design that bridges the gap between turn-of-the-century decorative type and Art Deco, ITC Photoplay is both casual and stylish. And, yes, the cap S" is supposed to look that that. To expand this already handy typeface's versatility, a Black weight has been added to the original design. Curtis has also created an array of alternate characters, a couple of conjunctions, and a handful of "bishop's fingers" to help make your point. ITC Photoplay is eminently suitable for all those occasions when you need to say, "Unhand that fair damsel, you dastardly cad!", and really mean it."

Catsy is a cute and curly upright script family. Catsy is great for any kind of display use from packaging to poster to headlines. Catsy makes clear word images but if you want more curly action try Swash, Stylist or Titling Alternates on any OpenType savvy software. If that isn’t enough you can manually select from even more alternates from Glyph Palette: Each version of Catsy contains more than 700 glyphs. Keep Standard Ligatures on for smooth flow. Catsy Printed is a texturised version of Catsy. Catsy Printed also has softer features than Catsy. Catsy Ornaments is a pack of 86 extra swashes, badges, ornaments and swirls designed to play with the font, though they work nice on their own as well. For the best price purchase Catsy Family, Catsy Printed Family or Catsy Complete Family.

Hello Melone Font is Beautyful Serif and modern font combined with a sweet touch and beautifully curved each letter. Equipped with stunning character alternatives to make your design more strikin. using a touch of soft curves so that it is pleasing to the eye. Hello Melone Font is great for: Wedding invitations, fashion magazines, logos, signatures, and suitable for watermark. photography.branding, merchandise and so on. Type and type now to pour your creative ideas.... Features: Uppercase, Lowercase, Numeral, Punctuation, Multilingual, Alternates, Ligatures & PUA Encoded.

Dear and Fans is all class. A stylish modern font that is a mix of serif and sans serif. It's soft curves mixed with high contrast glyphs lend it self to both feminine and masculine qualities. With a contrasting light italic, Dear and Fans works great in layout design for quotes or body copy. The Elegant curves also make for a unique logo or masthead. Dear and Fans comes with multilingual support also. Full upper/lower case, numbers, punctuation and multilingual support. Full italic style included also.

LaFemme Vibe is a conceptual serif font that exudes a modern and elegant aesthetic, tailored specifically for women. Featuring uppercase characters with distinctive curly signatures, LaFemme Vibe combines the following elements to create a unique visual experience: Classy Serifs: LaFemme Vibe boasts serif characters with soft, graceful serifs that add an element of sophistication to each letterform. Asymmetrical Charm: This font is intentionally imperfect in its symmetry, as if crafted by a gentle, artistic hand. It radiates an inviting and charming quality. Curly Signature Flourish: The curly, signature-like embellishments that adorn the letterforms in LaFemme Vibe infuse a personal and artistic touch. This imparts the sense that each word written with this font is a unique work of art. Modern Harmony: Despite its classical elements, LaFemme Vibe maintains a modern sense of harmony. The letters appear assertive yet gentle, making it perfectly suited for contemporary women seeking timeless elegance. Elegance and Chic: LaFemme Vibe embraces an elegant and chic aesthetic that is particularly fitting for products or designs targeted towards women who aspire to exude luxury and style. LaFemme Vibe is a typographic masterpiece created to bring a modern and elegant sensibility to women who appreciate beauty in every detail. It’s a font that effortlessly blends classic charm with contemporary allure, making it an ideal choice for a wide range of design projects aimed at celebrating the essence of femininity.

Hello Everyone.. Introducing a new Font " El Fonte Angelia " Beautiful Serif Type Family is inspired by the serif typefaces used in editorial media in the 70s and 80s.such as the soft and gentle shapes found in Cooper or the fluid, angled strokes in Windsor— mixed into one single design that features familiar, fresh, modern flavors. Designed to reflect nature, it creates a sense of natural softness and expressiveness. We pushed the concept into a usability focused direction, to work as a bold tool and beautiful communicator. El Fonte Angelia variable allows fluid design across 5 weights The font broadens its use by supplying weights all the way from Light to Bold. The natural curves, swells and sloping trunks, grow in character as the font gains weight. Whilst the thinner weights have lowered contrast and optical corrections to create a warm and gentle appearance. El Fonte Angelia character set incorporates additional symbols, stylistic alternates, unique ligatures and case sensitive punctuation - producing a stable workhorse family ready to tackle projects of any size.The type family melds organic curves and gentle repetition into powerful and harmonious type. At large point sizes you can appreciate the letter shapes, whilst the same restraint and focus creates an even texture for small point sizes and long reading. Its variety of weights provide a range of choices that will help you find the best typographic color for your project. Lighter weights are well-suited for body text while heavier ones are ideal for high impact headlines. The available stylistic alternates offer a number of different characters that give your logo or business card a unique look. Check my other Font here : https://gilarstudio.com/ Thank you Regards, Gilar Studio

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

The name Corpid derives from “Corporate Identity” — which is what this family of low-contrast sans-serifs was made for. Corpid was originally commissioned by Studio Dumbar in the Netherlands as a corporate typeface for the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fishing. The font was designed to replace the existing standard typeface (a well-known business-like sans-serif) to provide the organization with a unique and strong identity. Although it was designed to fit strict technical requirements, Corpid has a personality all of its own. This was in part a result of what Luc(as) calls “creating tension” between the inner and outer curves of each character. “I tend to put a little more diagonal contrast into fonts than is the case in most neutral sans serif fonts. This brings a certain humanistic touch to the typeface. Much more subtle here than in Thesis – but although it is almost invisible, it is still palpable.” Corpid was gradually expanded into a five-weight, three-width family. The new Corpid SemiCondensed has double functionality. It is a no-frills, compact headline font that offers optimum legibility in sizes from small to huge. It is also a great space-saving text typeface for magazines, newsletters or annual reports: economic, versatile, and provided with several different numeral sets. In this OpenType type version, all weights come with Small Caps. With its wealth of numeral styles and complete character sets (including Central European) the Corpid family is now well equipped to tackle the most complex of typographic tasks.

My font Diashapes has been created by the power Point shape Diagonal Stripe and its angles act like curves. It is a unique font that stands out like a building frame work.

Zimple is a very simple blackletter face with few if any curves. The Zimple Extrude Overlay font is spaced so that it can be layered with Zimple Shadow to produce bicolored lettering.

A 1926 travel brochure for a steamship line provided the basis for this darkly sparkly spritely font. Smooth curves and an off-center inline treatment gives this typeface a strong architectural feel.

Smart, legible and elegant, Gravesend Sans is a based on the unique typeface used for the iconic grass-green signage for the Southern Railway. In existence from 1923 to 1948, when the network was nationalised, the Southern Railway linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, the South coast resorts and Kent. The same design was also used for the ‘hawkeye’ signs on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, differentiated by black letters on a yellow background. Reference for each letter was taken from vintage ‘target’ station nameplates and other platform signage. The rarest letters were the Q, seen in Queens Road Battersea, the X, seen in East Brixton, and the Z, used in Maze Hill, site of an infamous train crash in 1958. Being hand-made, the letters often differ in width and thickness. There was no lower case. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, runs over part of the old Southern Railway network and uses a very similar type. The design of the numbers differed considerably, but here have been taken from the Device 112 Hours font Smokebox. As well identifying platforms, they were used on the front of the steam engine’s smokebox, hence the name, and stylistically are more in keeping with the letters than some of the squarer versions that can be seen in old photographs. William Caslon IV is credited with the first Latin sans-serif type, shown in a 1816 Caslon specimen book. ‘Two Lines English Egyptian’, as it was called, was caps-only, and there are several other correlations between that type design and this one. Includes a selection of authentic arrows and manicules, plus abbreviated ligatures such as ‘St.’ (Saint or Street) ‘Rd.’ (Road) and ‘Jn.’ (Junction). The Cameo version includes many graphic banner elements that can be freely combined.

Drawn by George Ryan and named after Robert Givens, the co-founder and first president of Monotype Imaging, the Givens Antiqua™ typeface speaks with elegance and subtle authority. The design's open proportions, generous x-height and soft serifs lend Givens Antiqua a gracious quality that invites reading. I didn't work from any single design model," Ryan recalls. "The face grew out of my experimenting with several characters from a hand-lettered headline in a magazine. I worked on the shapes and forms for some time before I put the drawings in a drawer." At that point Ryan had finished the basic alphabet in two weights, but had not yet tackled the italics. A new project came along that demanded his full attention, and it was two years before he revisited the drawings. He liked what he saw and decided to finish the job. "The italics were the most problematic designs in the family," says Ryan, "but once I had their basic shapes and proportions, the rest was basically a production project." Another year of sketching, testing, editing and reworking characters ensued before Givens Antiqua was ready for release. The result is a four-weight family of roman designs and small caps, with complementary italics for the lightest three weights and a suite of swash caps for the italic designs. Givens Antiqua and Givens Antiqua Light show a modest stroke weight stress and a light, even text color. Givens Antiqua Bold is an effective emphasizer for text copy and an authoritative communicator at display sizes. The Black weight performs best at large sizes and makes a powerful statement without shouting, while the italic swash capitals possess enough vitality to serve as standalone initial letters."

About the design: Ardena is a modern sans-serif typeface family. While neutral and clear at first glance, it can be characterized as both pleasant and confident due to its open, rounded forms and vertical terminals. It can be used in both a restrained and expressive way. The thinner and thicker weights are particularly suitable for strong headlines, while the middle weights can be used for typographic challenges and body text. Completed with an extensive character collection, it becomes a real workhorse. A versatile allrounder that is up to all challenges – for Corporate Identity, Editorial, Branding, Orientation and Guidance systems and much more. Features: The Ardena family has a total of 20 styles, from thin to heavy with matching italics. With over 1064 characters, it covers over 200 Latin-based languages. It has an extended set of currency symbols and a whole range of Open Type Features. There are alternative characters as stylistic sets, small caps, automatic fractions – just to name a few. Arrows and numbers: In particular, the extensive range of arrows and numbers should be highlighted, which are perfectly suited for use in orientation and guidance systems. Thanks to Open Type Features and an easy system, the various designs of arrows and numbers can also be simply "written" without first having to select them in a glyph palette. The principle is easily explained: If a number is placed in round or square brackets, it will automatically be displayed in an outlined circle or square. If you add a period to the number, it is displayed in a full circle or square. The same principle also applies to the arrows. The arrows themselves are combinations of greater/less symbols with the various slashes or hyphens. Get the Variable Font here: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/julien-fincker/ardena-variable/

It was expected that Joluvian’s third type font would be inspired by the city where he currently resides: Madrid, Spain. His previous creations had originated in Venezuela (Zulia) and The Philippines (Salamat), both, places where he had once lived. Joluvian believes “now is the time to pay tribute and show gratitude towards a city that has bestowed me with so many fortunes.” He considers that Madrid’s people, streets, scents, flavor and sounds are gift enough to awaken the creative urgency in any artist. This time around, it is being expressed through the crafts of the Typographic industry. Since his arrival in Spain, Joluvian has been attached to the city’s central area, specifically to the renowned Atocha Street and its railroad station. It was precisely on that street that Joluvian and Mauco Sosa, his friend and partner, decided to establish the Patera Studio: a charming creative space that birthed the concept for this new font which they proudly named Atocha Script. The artists where still in the final phases of their previous script, Salamat, when the idea for Atocha came about. This dynamic is actually very typical of the artistic process, in which every finished product spawns the need to create its next level offspring. “Working on Atocha and Atocha Caps has been a very pleasant journey. We have given our best efforts, for we wanted to offer a typeface that was both versatile and user-friendly on a number of applications, showing a wide scope of alternatives in our glyphs,” says the artist. The illustrations were created by Mauco, to ensure visual integration that would showcase the work of both members of the Patera Studio and their complementing aesthetic voices.  Atocha, as Salamat and Zulia before, was digitized by Alejandro Paul.

Cooper Black's second coming to American design in the mid-sixties, after almost four decades of slumber, can arguably be credited with (or, depending on design ideology, blamed for) the domino effect that triggered the whole art nouveau pop poster jam of the 1960s and 1970s. By the early 1970s, though Cooper Black still held its popular status (and, for better or for worse, still does), countless so-called hippie and funk faces were competing for packaging and paper space. The American evolution of the genre would trip deeper into psychedelia, drawing on a rich history of flared, flourished and rounded design until it all dwindled and came to a halt a few years into the 1980s. But the European (particularly German) response to that whole display type trend remained for the most part cool and reserved, drawing more on traditional art nouveau and art deco sources rather than the bottomless jug of new ideas being poured on the other side of the pond. One of the humorous responses to the "hamburgering" of typography was Friedrich Poppl's Poppl Heavy, done in 1972, when Cooper Black was celebrating its 50th anniversary. It is presented here in a fresh digitization under the name Gator (a tongue-in-cheek reference to Ray Kroc, the father of the fast food chain). To borrow the title of a classic rock album, Gator is meaty, beaty, big and bouncy. It is one of the finest examples of how expressively animated a thick brush can be, and one of the better substitutes to the much overused Cooper Black. Gator comes in all popular font formats, and sports an extended character set covering the majority of Latin-based languages. Many alternates and ligatures are included in the font.

Clear Sans™ is a… wait for it… rational geometric sans serif. It is intended to fill a niche… to provide an alternative to the somewhat based-on-vernacular signage, somewhat geometric sans. I hear the word vernacular thrown around too much and too loosely. If a typeface is based in the vernacular, based on hand-painted or hand-crafted signage, then it should be based on the movements of the hand, retain that warmth and not on a pretty geometric model. For me, clean, geometric and precise doesn't have to be cold and expressionless. The original skeleton was hand-painted in 2008 to help determine and inform my decisions going forward. The typeface was completed shortly afterwards at the behest of an old friend for their identity. As usual, I expanded it, but considered retiring it since there were so many things similar out there. Years later, I had a chance to rediscover it and came to the conclusion that it could be improved, expanded in a logical and useful way, and introduced. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the rise of webfonts and embedded type in applications influenced many of the decisions I made about reworking Clear Sans™. Completely new Text and Screen fonts were developed that utitlize larger x-heights, space-saving widths, logical (and simplified) weight offerings… to name a few alterations. Even the pricing of each variant was considered to produce a more reasonable and simple solution for the developer, designer, professional and novice. Clear Sans™ is a departure from my previous sans serifs, but the influences of Aaux Next, Akagi Pro and Halogen are evident. Enjoy a light-hearted mini-site devoted to Clear Sans™

Clear Sans™ is a… wait for it… rational geometric sans serif. It is intended to fill a niche… to provide an alternative to the somewhat based-on-vernacular signage, somewhat geometric sans. I hear the word vernacular thrown around too much and too loosely. If a typeface is based in the vernacular, based on hand-painted or hand-crafted signage, then it should be based on the movements of the hand, retain that warmth and not on a pretty geometric model. For me, clean, geometric and precise doesn't have to be cold and expressionless. The original skeleton was hand-painted in 2008 to help determine and inform my decisions going forward. The typeface was completed shortly afterwards at the behest of an old friend for their identity. As usual, I expanded it, but considered retiring it since there were so many things similar out there. Years later, I had a chance to rediscover it and came to the conclusion that it could be improved, expanded in a logical and useful way, and introduced. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the rise of webfonts and embedded type in applications influenced many of the decisions I made about reworking Clear Sans™. Completely new Text and Screen fonts were developed that utitlize larger x-heights, space-saving widths, logical (and simplified) weight offerings… to name a few alterations. Even the pricing of each variant was considered to produce a more reasonable and simple solution for the developer, designer, professional and novice. Clear Sans™ is a departure from my previous sans serifs, but the influences of Aaux Next, Akagi Pro and Halogen are evident. Enjoy a light-hearted mini-site devoted to Clear Sans™

Jana Nikolic was finishing her degree program at the Faculty of Applied Arts, in Belgrade, with a final project that would combine her two majors: type and book design. Three stories from William Saroyan's My Name Is Aram would provide the text for the book, to be set in a typeface that Nikolic would design. Nikolic knew something special was happening the moment she put pen to paper. The letters just emerged," she recalls. "I started to explore a few new pens and found one I loved. I was able to make its tip bend with pressure." Like the family Saroyan writes about, the design flowing from Nikolic's pen would be simple but a little quirky. "When there were a whole bunch of little black letters around me," continues Nikolic, "I saw that this was going to be a very interesting typeface family." Nikolic drew Latin and Cyrillic letters, lowercase and capital letters, wide letters and narrow letters. She was surprised at how quickly and easily the design came. "There were no badly written letters," she says. "I hardly had to rework them and they fit together remarkably well." ITC Aram's standard character complement consists of one set of lowercase letters and two sets of capitals: one narrow and the other wide. The wide caps can be used with the standard lowercase, or mixed with the narrow caps for a variation on "cap and small cap" copy. The ITC Aram create the opportunity to mix and combine the letters into playful typographic expressions. Words and sentences that twinkle; text that seems light and alive - one runs the risk of creating work that is both delightful and charming when setting copy in ITC Aram."