Though there are many thousands of digital typefaces available, none seem to be made exclusively of letters that tessellate, a complete tessellating alphabet. This void is now filled with not one typeface, but a group of typefaces, the Tescellations kinship group. Even though I am aware of only one use for this typeface--writing about tessellations--that does not mean there are not hundreds or perhaps thousands of other uses. These typefaces are a byproduct of two maze books I designed, Puzzling Typography and Puzzling Typography A Sequel. I found the challenge of making mazes from tessellations, including letter tessellations, intriguing and these typefaces are a byproduct that endeavor. There are seven members of this typeface kinship group. I tried to select the the glyphs that fit together best to form Tescellations; it is the most readable of the lot. The reason for an Italics version is that I needed one for the maze project. In constructing it, I tried to include as many different lower-case glyphs as I could rather than just skew the regular version. A purist might insist that the tessellation deal with the counters. My approach was to worry only about the exterior of any letter that has an interior, but for anyone who who might object to the counters, versions with filled counters are included. What did not fit into Tescellations was dumped into Tescellations Two, which is somewhat of a ransom-note type of face. It comes in two styles, a regular version and a version in which the counters are removed. TescellationPatterns shows how many of the characters in these typefaces tessellate. It has over 100 tessellation patterns, each on only one character. Simply type several lines with any character and make sure the leading is the same as the font size, and you have an instant tessellation pattern of a letter.

Harri Text is more than an extension of Harri. It shares its origin, a certain flavour and a great deal of its idiosyncrasies, but while Harri is an uppercase-only typeface intended for display uses, Harri Text is conceived as a text type family, including a new extra-light weight, italics, small caps and other additions that make it suitable for editorial purposes. As its predecessor Harri Text addresses several concerns regarding the dualism neutrality vs. idiosyncrasy, or in other words, how local features meet global design in the context of a modern society (as is the case in the Basque Country in recent times). The origin of Harri Text —vernacular Basque lettering for the most part— is full of idiosyncrasies and peculiarities that, while giving them its special character, may hinder readability in some cases. The default set in Harri Text tones its essence down a little bit. It is still present, although less obstrusive. Stylistic sets 1, 2 and 3 are a chance to recover gradually this essence modifying some characters —specially the characteristic design of letter A– for those who seek a more local flavour. Stylistic set 4, on the other hand, does the opposite job, this is, removes asymmetrical serifs and other small details in order to create a more neutral atmosphere. Any traces to its origin are this way diluted resulting in a crisp and clean incise variant. Stylistic set 6 is available in the italic styles. It provides a more fluid and cursive flavour to some letters in case a calligraphic mood is desired. Harri Text comes with 1054 glyphs in its character set (1078 in the italics) with support for more than 220 languages.

Eyadish is an entertaining, comic, and childish font. The name of this font is originally derived from two main syllables. The first one is "Eyad-" which refers to my first name and the second syllables is "-ish" which means characteristics of or relating to. Hence, "Eyadish" refers to the characteristics that "Eyad", the typographer, himself has and had during his childhood. I do like this font for its childish and comic shapes. I have decided to design this font trying to leave a humble and personal imprint regarding the magic and innocent world of all children. Frankly, it is my most favorable designed font. This font comes in two different weights with facilities for writing and publishing in different alphabets included in various Latin and Cyrillic texts and scripts. "Eyadish" is primarily designed to be fit with all prints of kids, children, and juveniles' products. It is major usage is in advertisements and publications. It is suitable for T-shirts, books' covers of children such as fairy tales and comic stories, advertisement light boards in malls, and titles in parental, childish, comic, and other related magazines. "Eyadish" also can be printed in many children's products such as garments, towels, shoes, socks, toys, pacifiers, diapers, exhibitions, festivals, books titles and contents, medicines' packages, kindergartens' signs, buses, comic and TV series, kids and children organizations and charities names, images, software, foods including milk cans, candies, chocolates, and other related products. The font is extremely and distinguishably attractive when it is used with various, and vivid colorful letters and words in posters, cards, and placards. "Eyadish" is specifically designed for commercial, educational, cultural, and social purposes related to infants, babies, kids, and children. The main characteristic of "Eyadish" Typeface is in its childish look that remains when anyone reads or types or even deals visually with its characters.

Update November 2022: ULGA Grid now features an oblique variant. It’s also been expanded into a family of different but related designs with the addition of ULGA Grid Solid and ULGA Grid Rounded typeface families. All variants and new designs are monospaced, sharing the same width as the original ULGA Grid font and matching character sets. The character set has also been enlarged and now supports Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian. ULGA Grid is a modular, monospaced typeface reminiscent of the old Letraset LCD & Quartz typefaces from the 1970/80s with lots of alternative characters and ornaments to bring a fresh twist to the genre. The idea’s seed germinated while I was going through a phase of binge watching my favourite 1980/90s sci-fi movies (classics such as Terminator, Total Recall and RoboCop). However, perception and reality don’t always align. Thirty years later, when compared to today’s technology, some visual elements look kind of outdated, almost Retro Futuristic. The initial design process started out in Adobe Illustrator when I constructed letters from a few geometric shapes within a square block. Just playing around with different shapes was so engrossing that it wasn’t long before there were enough characters for a basic typeface. The project grew again as I experimented with designs within the shapes and set paragraphs of text in patterns, resulting in over a hundred alternative characters and ornaments, some of which double up as border designs. This typeface may be square but it’s anything but boring. What it lacks in legibility ULGA Grid makes up for in style and the end result is a surprisingly versatile typeface that you'll have fun using for a wide range of display purposes including CD covers, posters, packaging, advertising, brochures and film titles. Ironically, the fixed grid structure frees the characters to create patterns of text not possible with variable widths.

It all started with a simple idea back in 1998: do a digital version of a "lost" 70's typeface, and make up the missing letters that were not present in the only available example Jeff Levine had to work with. Jeff wasn't yet doing his own digital font creation, so he hooked up with Brad Nelson who owns a small foundry called Brain Eaters Fonts. Together, they collaborated on "Action Is"- a freeware font named after the source of the type example. This was a title page for a commemorative photo album of images from the 60's TV music show "Where the Action Is", formerly hosted by Jeff's employer at the time, singer-writer-producer Steve Alaimo. The free font took off like a rocket, being released just at the peak of the 60’s/70’s retro craze in the late 1990’s, and it was EVERYWHERE! It showed up on TV shows, packaging and web design -- and was even spotted on signage used on the side of a major amusement resort’s retro-themed hotel. From that point on, Jeff kept getting requests for a version with a lower case. Although they shared the copyright in the freeware version, Brad Nelson gave Jeff his blessing to re-work and take Action Is into the realm of commercial type. Newly improved and re-released as Groovy Happening JNL, it became one of Jeff's better selling type designs. A simplified, yet similar font was issued called Groovy Summer JNL. Now, after about a decade, Jeff had decided to clean up the 3-D (drop shadow) version that was originally freeware with many minute design flaws and re-release it commercially. Groovy 3D Caps JNL is an all-caps, limited character set font which ties in well with the previous releases, yet retains itís 1960s-1970s era charm. The font flag art is courtesy of Barbara D. Berney and is used by permission.

Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Step back in time to the opulent 1980s with Reagan, the typeface that embodies the spirit of the era. With its textured, vintage tee shirt aesthetic, Reagan is the perfect font to transport you back to a time of excess and extravagance. But Reagan is not just any typeface. It channels the hunger of t-shirt wearers from the era, who demanded a fanciness only Pretorian could provide. This late seventies Victorian revival burned like a chichi wildfire, spreading its flowery flame across the low-end design world for a solid decade. Now, Reagan reigns supreme as the ultimate vintage t-shirt font. Its letter pair ligatures help break up the monotony of plain repeating characters, making it a must-have. But Reagan is more than just a typeface. It’s a gateway to the past, a portal to a time when fashion was brave and uncompromising. So embrace the spirit of the 1980s and make Reagan your go-to typeface for all your vintage tee shirt needs. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

The ITC Nova Lineta™ design is the first commercial typeface from Slobodan Jelesijevic. As with many typeface designs, it began as simple sketches. “I was working on a packaging design project,” recalls Jelesijevic, “and wanted an informal, slightly cursive design for the type. I could not find anything that matched my need, so I began sketching.” The preliminary design had an elegant yet fresh quality that, once developed, turned out to be perfect for Jelesijevic’s project. After its first use, however, Nova Lineta lay dormant for over a year. Other projects came and went, and new typeface ideas filled Jelesijevic’s notebook. Although Nova Lineta continued to tickle the creative crevices of his mind, no more work was done on the face. Then, in a period between projects, Jelesijevic began to polish the design – and, in the process, created extended and condensed versions to complement the normally-proportioned original. Born in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia in 1951, Jelesijevic graduated with a degree in graphic communication and lettering from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. These days, Jelesijevic is sought out not only as a typeface designer, but also as a graphic designer and illustrator. When not working on design projects, he teaches graphic communication at the Faculty of Art in Niš, Serbia. Although it is a casual and inviting design, Nova Lineta has been carefully constructed and refined. As a result, it performs exceptionally well within a wide range of sizes and in a wealth of applications. An ample x-height, open counters and distinctive character shapes also ensure a high level of legibility. And, although at first glance Nova Lineta may appear to be a sans serif design, subtle serifs make their presence known at large sizes. Nova Lineta emanates warmth when used for extensive text, and it has a fresh quality at display sizes. The small family’s range of proportions also provides added flexibility. The result is a friendly yet powerful communication tool in a remarkably modestly-sized package.

Type designers have been integrating the design of sans serifs with serifed forms since the 1920s. Early examples are Edward Johnston's design for the London Underground, and Eric Gill's Gill Sans. These were followed by Jan van Krimpen's Romulus Sans, Frederic Goudy's ITC Goudy Sans, Hermann Zapf's Optima, Hans Meier's Syntax and Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger. Now, ITC Stone Humanist joins this tradition. It is a careful blend of traditional sans serif shapes and classical serifed letterforms. ITC Stone Humanist grew out an experiment with the medium weight of ITC Stone Sans, a design that already showed a relationship to these sans serif-serif hybrids. ITC Stone Sans has proportions based on those of ITC Stone Serif, and its thick-and-thin stroke contrast suggests the bloodline of humanistic sans serif typefaces. But other aspects of ITC Stone Sans are more closely aligned to the gothics and grotesques, a tradition that accounts for the largest portion of sans serif designs. Enter ITC Stone Humanist. During his experiments with the earlier design, Sumner Stone recalls, I was actually quite surprised at how seemingly subtle changes transformed the face," moving the design firmly into the humanist tradition. "The form of the 'g,' 'l,' 'M,' 'W,' and more subtly the 'a' and 'e' are part of the restructuring of the family," he explains. The top endings of vertical lower case strokes have been cropped on an angle, as have the ascender and descender stroke endings. ITC Stone Humanist is a full-fledged member of the ITC Stone family. It has been produced with the same complement of weights, and the x-heights, proportions, and underlying character shapes are completely compatible with the three original designs. The original ITC Stone Sans is a popular typeface, in part because of its notable versatility. ITC Stone Humanist shares this virtue, and can be used successfully at very small sizes, in long passages of text copy, and even as billboard-sized display type."

Padraig Nua is a font conceptualized and designed by Tony Fahy. It is a European Celtic font, contemporary to many languages, not just of Europe but of the world. It’s origin is influenced by events in Ireland in the 1960s when it was decided that the uncial letterform should not be used further in Irish schools for the Irish language—Gaelic—and that it should be replaced by the Roman letterform—the Cló Romhanach as it was called afterwards. This happened overnight without any apparent discussion. It probably had a lot to do with Ireland joining the EEC, as the EU was called then. It had a massive effect on the Irish language and culture, in that the distinguishing factor that gave the language it’s identity—the half uncial/uncial fonts that were in use in all school, government and society documentation and merchandise—were lost overnight. No one said how or why. It was just done. To this day, all documentation is bi-lingual in government and Gaelic is taught in schools and universities—and decreed so by the European Union—but the presentation for both languages is the Roman letterform. Throughout the world, there are millions of Irish Americans and Irish Canadians, Irish Europeans, Australian Irish, African Irish and many living in the Middle East and Asia—and this new font—Padraig Nua, will appeal to many of them, visually recalling their roots. No one had thought, in those days, of commissioning a design that might update the Gaelic language to a more contemporary appearance that would keep the cultural nature of it intact with a revised and updated font—at one with Europe, the US and the world. Tony Fahy designed Padraig Nua (New Patrick) to address the problem. It keeps an appearance that lends towards the Gaelic language but steers it in the direction of Roman fonts. Some characters reflect letterforms from the Irish/Gaelic manuscripts and uncial fonts.

Carbon, the brutalist unicase typeface, boasts a refined modularity that is perfect for creating bold headlines. Its capsule forms make for a unique design element that will draw attention to any layout. Since the year 2000, graphic designers have been relying on Carbon to bring a strong visual impact to their work. This typeface is not just visually stunning, but it’s also highly versatile. Carbon comes in seven different weights, making it easy to adapt to any design need. It even includes italics for added variety. But what truly sets Carbon apart are the two special effect styles that allow designers to create truly distinctive designs. Carbon is not just a typeface, but a tool that designers can use to create memorable designs. Whether you’re designing for print or digital media, Carbon is the perfect choice for bringing your vision to life. With its unique features and versatility, it’s no wonder that Carbon has been a mainstay in graphic designers’ toolboxes for decades. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

Are you ready to travel back in time? To a world of neon lights, high-tech logos, and a retro-futuristic style that defined an era? Then you’re ready for Forgotten Futurist. This industrial typeface is the perfect blend of old and new, with a vintage feel that still looks cutting-edge. Its letterforms are inspired by the 1960s and 1970s, when technology was just starting to take off and the world was full of possibilities. But Forgotten Futurist is more than just a tribute to the past. Its rounded technical corners and sleek lines are timeless classics, just as relevant today as they were decades ago. And with ten different styles to choose from, including Ultra-Light, Extra-Light, Light, Book, Regular, Semi-Bold, Bold, Heavy, Black, and italics, you’ll have all the flexibility you need to create a truly unique design. So if you want to add some retro-futuristic flair to your next project, look no further than Forgotten Futurist. It’s the typeface of the future, inspired by the past. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability. Garamond Pemiere Pro was designed by Robert Slimbach, and released in 2005."

DT PaperType has evolved and morphed over time from quite distant origins. I previously created DT Paperside. It was neither Papyrus nor SSI Countryside, but was inspired in some ways by the Papyrus form, although untextured and smoother, and had the more open dimensions and proportions, similar to that of Countryside SSi, with its larger easily readable lowercase body, and more consistent, shorter stems. DT Paperside had an open scripted feel which was pleasing to the eye and easy to read. DT PaperType has since been crafted from of the original Paperside font. The Organic flow and comfortable form of Paperside has been retained, but it has been shifted very much from the feel of a script font, into a quality, extremely readable, organic and friendly, serif font, retaining its clarity, while adding a great deal of pose and class. This font is primarily suited to body text, and as such is extremely readable. It does however also make an excellent Display font, and comes with a full set of over sized Caps that drop below the line to stand out on a headline when required. Paperside can also automatically enhance the first letter of most sentences, and changes other letters to suit their position within words, and the letters they appear beside. Now comes with an italic that curves and softens various letters. For best results, use this ‘smart font’ with Contextual Ligatures turned on. Mulitiple Stylistic Alternatives are included. Inspiration for this fonts predecessor (Paperside) came from two other fonts. Papyrus: designed by Chris Costello and created in 1982, it is a hand-drawn textured typeface, emulating texts written in biblical times. One of the most used (and misused) fonts of all times. Owned by Letraset, and currently published by the Internation Typeface Corporating (ITC). Countryside SSi: The serif font of an unknown designer, currently licensed by Southern Software Inc. Feel free to preview some other Dragon Tongue fonts that are yet to be released, at https://www.dragon-tongue.com/fonts

Since their first appearance as Italians on the pages of the 1821 William Caslon type specimens, reverse contrast typefaces have been typography's best loved quirky outcasts. Subverting the traditional relationship between thick verticals and thin horizontals made them perfect for eye-catching advertisements. The unexpected contrasts and the thick slabs produced by reverse-contrast serifs became ubiquitous in period posters, and synonymous with wild west and circus iconography. In designing Stinger, the Zetafonts design team composed by Maria Chiara Fantini, Andrea Tartarelli and Francesco Canovaro and orchestrated by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini decided to marry this subversive tradition with the workhorse approach of modernist sans serif typefaces like Univers, developing a super-family with four widths, each in five different weights, from thin to heavy. This gives the designer a full range of options for type setting, with the Normal and Fit widths providing two different text-sized alternatives, the wide width adding display and titling options and the Slim ready to deal with the space-saving necessities of extremely long texts. True italics have been added developed for all weights and variants, bringing the Stinger family to a total of 40 fonts, with a latin extended + Russian Cyrillic character set covering over 200 languages, and open type features including positional numbers, stylistic sets and alternate forms. In the crowded panorama of contemporary grotesque typefaces, all aiming to stark geometric perfection, Stinger stands out with its bold choices and strong personality. From the calligraphy-inspired terminals in the thin weights to the logo-ready sculptural approach in the heavy weights, each variant manages to look striking without forgetting the readability and flexibility lessons of modern reverse-contrast classics like those designed by Excoffon or Novarese. A variable version is included with the full family, allowing maximum flexibility and control for the designer over the wide range of expression capabilities of the Stinger super family.

Grava is Neil Summerour’s injection of warmth within the geometric sans font category. Historically, geometric sans families have been based on primal shapes — triangle, circle, square — and the more closely they held to those rigid rules, the more internal inconsistencies they showed. Angles won’t match up correctly, letters will lean, overshoots complicate clean typesetting, and idealized circles become grotesque and unwieldy in some weights. Because of issues like these, geometric sans fonts have a reputation of being cold, austere, even a bit “off”. Grava was made to hold a T-square and triangle in one hand while giving a welcoming handshake with the other. The Grava font family comes in two styles (a normal and a Display), each with 20 weights (Thin to Ultra) and paired with italics. Its design allowed the three scripts of Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek to emerge seamlessly, ensuring Grava will find its home in multilingual publications. Even better, each character in the three scripts is spaced with every other character for a beautifully matched fit, and it’s a buy-one-get-all-three deal since they are all packaged together. The normal style’s large x-height won’t let you down in paragraphs, headings, and any call-out text. And have you seen the angles on those numerals? Pairing Grava’s numerals on a jersey is sure to catch some eyes, just sayin'. Grava Display is purposefully quirky and sharp, and made for poster sizes, book and album covers, and those websites with a well-defined character — somewhere between playfully self-aware and overtly vintage. Flat edges are abandoned to make way for sharp points and conspicuousness, for geometrical attitude and respectful expressiveness. Corporate reports use Grava Display to take on a professional and current look. The optional ligatures (N–T, L–L, G–A, C–O, almost anywhere an ‘A’ is placed, and more) in both the normal and Display styles invoke a midcentury modernist and high art feel. Now that introductions are done, you can let go of Grava’s hand and put it to work for you.

Selected as one of “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2013” by Typographica.org, Dark Angel is the first completely new take in decades on the traditional “blackletter” font style. It began its journey towards the light years ago when this style was born as a sketch for a new logo for the California Angels baseball team (renamed shortly thereafter the Anaheim Angels). The Angels logo never happened, but that sketch has risen from the dead and become the basis for this brand new font design—and was also the source for the name. It’s kind of blackletter in feel, but as a display font it’s so much more. It is far more legible than most “Old English” or “Gothic Script” styles, and incorporates many features never before seen in them, such as swashes, tails and a plethora of ligatures. Dark Angel can be purchased in its regular solid form, or as Dark Angel Underlight—a handtooled font. If these two fonts are purchased together, the Family package will contain a third font—Dark Angel Highlight. With this font layered over the basic font, you can achieve two–color typesetting when the highlight and the base font are assigned two different colors. Dark Angel has enough language support to make the builders of Babel envious—its 1,163 glyphs can be used to set copy in 59 different languages. From A to Z: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bemba, Bosnian, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Ganda, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kalaallisut, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Lithuanian, Luo, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romansh, Sango, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Turkish, Welsh, and last (but not least) Zulu. PLEASE NOTE: Dark Angel is a cross-platform font which depends to some extent on certain advanced OpenType features, therefore it can be used to its full potential only with programs that support those features. ADDITIONALLY: When setting Dark Angel one should ALWAYS select the “Standard Ligatures" and “Contextual Alternates” buttons in your OpenType palette. Please see the “Read–Me–First!” file in the Gallery section.

When Hal Taylor saw the 1930 logo for the Stetson Shoe Company of Weymouth, Massachusetts, he didn't run out and buy a pair of loafers. Instead, he seized on this striking example of an Art Deco logotype as the basis for a new typeface design. “I was impressed with the delicate and sophisticated letter forms,” Taylor recalls, “particularly the enlarged cap S -- in any other case it would have seemed unbalanced, but in the context of this logo, it worked perfectly.” All the letters in the original all-caps Stetson Shoe logo were rendered with condensed proportions except the O, which was a perfect circle. While the prominent O added visual interest to the logo, Taylor knew that such a character would limit his typeface to display applications. For versatility's sake, he drew his O for ITC Stepp with the same proportions as the rest of the alphabet. Taylor also gave the logotype's inverted S a more traditional design, but kept the original as an alternate character in the OpenType font. Taylor's toughest challenge during the design process was creating a lowercase. “A good type design tells you what it wants to be,” he says, “and after a little while the Stepp caps began to tell me what the lowercase should look like.” Taylor's lowercase is slightly more conventional than the caps. The jaunty g" and almost upside-down "s" add subtle charm, while the capital letters provide the broader gestures of Stepp's personality. Together, they create a versatile and distinctive typeface design. One of Hal Taylor's first jobs was as a photo-lettering typographer in Philadelphia, setting headlines and creating custom lettering. This was followed by a stint doing finished lettering for John Langdon, whose ambigrams appear in Dan Brown's best-selling novel, Angels & Demons. Today, Taylor works as a graphic designer in the publishing industry, but he still finds time to create an occasional hand-lettered book jacket, and draw handsome typeface designs. ITC Stepp is available in four weights, ranging from Light to Ultra Bold. All four weights have companion italics, and the lightest three weights also offer a suite of small caps."

Type designer Xavier Dupré’s Garalda is a charming 21st century family that renews a legacy of finesse. As paragraphs on a page, Garalda’s overall impression is of a workaday personality, committed to the main purpose of the job: easy long-form reading. But setting it in display sizes proves something different: This reinvented Garamond is anything but basic. The Garalda story begins with the serendipitous finding of a book typeset in a rare Garalde, called Tory-Garamond, with which Dupré was not immediately familiar. This Garamond was used in bibliophile books in the decades surrounding 1920, but after that it became déclassé for an unknown reason. Dupré found the italic styles especially charming and discovered the family was probably the mythical Ollière Garamond cut from 1914. He obtained low resolution scans of the typeface and used them, rather than high resolution scans, as the basis for his new type family. This allowed Dupré the mental freedom to experiment and remix as he saw fit, culminating in a contemporary family with heritage. As seen in the simplistic rectangular serifs, Garalda is a humanist slab serif, but with a mix of angles and curves to give the classic shapes a fresh, unorthodox feeling. While almost invisible in paragraph text, these produce a graphic effect in display work. The set of ligatures in the roman and italics lend themselves to unique display use, such as creating lovely logotypes. In the italics, some swashes inspired by different historic Garamonds are included, sometimes breaking their curves to be more captivating. Just look at how the italic ‘*-s’ ligatures create ‘s’ with a cursive formation rather than merely a flowing slant. And how the roman ‘g’ link swings as wide as a trainer’s whip. These are all balanced by squared serifs in the roman to keep an overall mechanised regularity. The Garalda family comes in eight styles, includes some of the original arrows and ornaments, and speaks multiple languages for all typesetting needs, from pamphlets to fine book printing. The complete Garalda family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Bradley Texting: a clear, friendly and easily legible calligraphy font, also suited to electronic devices With Bradley Texting, Richard Bradley has published another calligraphic typeface that recalls the style of Bradley Hand and Bradley Type. In this case, however, Bradley has advanced the style with clearer forms for display on electronic instruments and on other formats. Two other font families paved the way to the newly introduced Bradley Texting. In the mid-1990s, Bradley published Bradley Hand, with its rough contours. Since these coarse forms do not cut a good figure in the larger font sizes, Bradley Type followed, with smooth letters. During the development of Bradley Type, the idea for a further font came about ? one in the style of the two other calligraphic typefaces, but with simpler, easily legible forms and suited to electronic devices like mobile phones or tablets. The letters for Bradley Texting began with a marker on paper. Looking back, Bradley describes one of the biggest challenges as having the calm required to draw the relaxed-looking letters repeatedly while still making them fit the general style.The somewhat narrow and dynamically designed letters have round line ends, like those left by a felt-tipped pen. As a hand-written print font, the individual letters are not connected to one another. Nonetheless, they demonstrate the influence of a written font, such as the extended ends and the flowing transitions. Clear forms with open counters and a large x-height guarantee Bradley Texting good legibility in the smaller font sizes. Bradley Texting is also effective under more challenging conditions, such as on mobile phones, e-book readers or tablets; the fonts friendly and lively character comes through. With Regular, Semibold and Bold, Bradley Texting is adequately equipped for use as a headline or text font in various sizes. The selection of characters covers the Western European languages and German typographers will be happy to note the presence of the upper-case ß. Use the dynamic and clear forms of Bradley Texting anywhere you need a friendly character with a personal accent. Bradley Texting is persuasive in the print realm, in advertisements or on posters, as well as on electronic devices.

Looking back on my production to date, neither so little nor so large, it does not come as a surprise to find myself now introducing Lady René. A brief review of my career would read as follows: graphic designer graduated from Buenos Aires University, a 10-year professorship in Typography in the same institution, an illustrator in the making. For almost 15 years now my work has focused on the design of editorial pieces, predominantly books and CD sleeves. Typography proper has always been central to my research projects. All my obsessions eventually embodied as much the search for a perfect, spotless text as for a daring and provoking one. In my view, "how-to-say-something" ranks highest amongst a graphic designer’s responsibilities. It was in this vein that I called in the written word to illustrate, to draw, to narrate. Why not reverse the saying and proclaim that “a word is worth a thousand images”? If so, one single word could trigger endless meanings, associations, ideas, and memories in every reader’s mind. Language, we know, has a strong power and is a living expression of a culture. In my illustrations, letters and drawings reunite in one synergy said and unsaid, the finiteness of the message and the freedom of the free reading. And this is how and when, Lady René, my first born type font sees the light of day conceived out of a love of illustration and a reverence for the written word, recalling the whimsicality of the handmade drawing and reflecting its sensitive, warmth and spontaneity. Enabled by the characteristics of Open Type and the hard, outstanding work of designer Ale Paul, Lady René succeeds in composing texts in a simple, organic way by means of its contextual and stylistic alternates, swash characters, ligatures and connecting words. A bundle of decorative miscellanea completes the set of signs, enabling the user considerable freedom to create new typographic landscapes. Lady René is then prepared, very much like a character in a short story, to come to life in the reader’s mind. I expect you will enjoy her as much as I did creating her. Laura Varsky

“There is just something magical about type design,” says Sebastian Lester. “If you draw a successful typeface it can travel the world, taking a part of you with it.” If this is true, his Soho® Gothic family has taken him far and wide. Understated, modern and exceptionally versatile, the family has been put to good use in just about every application imaginable. A good choice for virtually any type of project, The Soho Gothic family performs equally well as the backbone of a global brand as it would in an edgy fashion magazine. Versatile, extensive, customizable, and multilingual – the Soho Gothic typeface family has it all.With the same proportions as Soho, its slab serif cousin, Soho Gothic ranges across seven weights, from a willowy hairline to a brawny ultra – each with a complementary italic.Lester took care to ensure that the Soho and Soho Gothic designs work in perfect harmony. According to him, “The typefaces were developed alongside each other so that I could consider every aspect of each design and be certain that they would be absolutely compatible.”Soho Gothic is a more understated and more subtle design than Soho. Features that give the design its distinctive tone are the flat, crisp apexes of the diagonal characters like the A and V, and the marked horizontal stress in the a, g and s. “I wanted the family as a whole to radiate effortless modernity,” recalls Lester, “to be a master communicator that works in all conditions and at all sizes.” A collection of alternate and “semi-slab” characters were also part of Lester’s plan. “I like to develop alternate characters for all my type designs,” he says. “I believe they give graphic designers greater flexibility and make a typeface more valuable.” Soho Gothic is available as OpenType® Pro fonts that have an extended character set which supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. If you’re looking to complete your designs, consider pairing it with Bembo® Book,Joanna® Nova,Neue Frutiger®,PMN Caecilia®,or ITC Stone® Serif.

Fantini is the revival and elaborate update of a typeface called Fantan, made in-house and released in 1970 by a minor Chicago film type supplier called Custom Headings International. In the most excellent tradition of seriously-planned American film faces back then, CHI released a full complement of swashes and alternates to the curly art nouveau letters. Fantan didn't fare much among the type scene's big players back then, but it did spread like electricity among the smaller ones, the mom-and-pop type shops. But by the late 1980s, when film type was giving up the ghost, most smaller players in the industry were gone, in some cases along with little original libraries that existed nowhere else and became instant rarities on their way to be forgotten and almost impossible to resurrect for future technologies. Fantini is the fun and curly art nouveau font bridging the softness and psychedelia of the 1960s with the flirtatious flare of the 1970s like no other face does. Elements of psychedelia and funk flare out and intermix crazily to create cool, swirly letters packed with a lot of joy and energy. This is the kind of American art nouveau font that made its comeback in the late 20th century and is now a standard visual in the branding drive of almost every consumer product, from coffee labels to book and music covers to your favorite sugar or thirst-crunching fix. Alongside Fantini's enormous main font come small caps and three extra fonts loaded with swashy alternates and variations on plenty of letters. All available in all popular font formats. Fantini Pro, the OpenType version, packs the whole she-bang in a single font of high versatility for those who have applications that support advanced type technologies. In order to make Fantini a reality, Canada Type received original 2" film specimen from Robert Donona, a Clevelander whose enthusiasm about American film type has never faltered, even decades after the technology itself became obsolete. Keep an eye out for that name. Robert, who was computer-reluctant for the longest time, has now come a long way toward mastering digital type design.

Step right up folks and feast your eyes on the most authentic and pure font to ever grace the pages of your ad campaign. Bristles is the name, and it’s a font that speaks volumes of homegrown authenticity with every brushstroke. As you gaze upon this sun-bleached and weathered sans-serif, you’ll notice how the paint barely holds onto the substrate. It’s as if the letters themselves are just barely hanging on, like they were painted decades ago and left to weather the storm. But that’s what makes Bristles so special. Its wispy, textured lettering gives your message a voice of purity that simply can’t be replicated by other fonts. Each letter has its own unique character, telling a story that only a sign painter’s hand could convey. And with its letter pair ligatures, Bristles breaks up the monotony of blatantly repeating characters in OpenType-savvy apps. It’s a font that’s as versatile as it is beautiful, perfect for any project that needs a touch of old-school authenticity. So what are you waiting for? Give your message the voice it deserves with Bristles, the font that speaks volumes of homegrown authenticity. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Albertina was a typeface ahead of its time. It was in the early 1960s when designer Chris Brand, an accomplished calligrapher, aspired to draw a typeface based on the principles of calligraphy. Unfortunately, typesetting machines of that era put many restrictions on designers. Characters had to be drawn within a very coarse grid, which also defined their spacing. Technological limitations meant that italic designs often had to share the same character widths as the romans. Designers were forced to draw italic faces much wider and with more open spacing than what would be typical in calligraphic lettering or hand-set type. Not surprisingly, production of the first Albertina fonts went very slowly. Brand would submit his character drawings, and the Monotype Drawing Office would modify them to be compatible with the company's typesetting equipment. The new drawings would then be sent back to Brand for approval or rework. Most were reworked. The process took so long, in fact, that by the time the face was completed it was once again out of phase with the times: instead of being released as metal type for the Monotype composing machines it had been tailored for, Albertina debuted as phototype fonts for the Monophoto typesetter. The design's first use was for a catalog of the work of Stanley Morison, exhibited at the Albertina Library in Brussels in 1966. Sales of the design were not remarkable. With the advent of digital type technology, Albertina's story took a far happier turn. Frank E. Blokland, of the Dutch Type Library, used Brand's original, uncompromised drawings as the foundation of a digital revival. The Monophoto version had taken a considerable battering from the limitations of Monotype's unit system," recalls Blokland, "but there was no need for me to incorporate these restrictions in the digital version." With the full backing of Monotype and original designer Brand looking over Blokland's shoulder, a new design for Albertina emerged, displaying all the grace and verve of Brand's original drawings. The basic family drawn by Brand also grew into three weights, each with an italic complement and a suite of small caps and old style figures."