In the course of the re-vitalization of its Typoart typeface inventory, Elsner+Flake decided in 2006 to offer the “Kis Antiqua” by Hildegard Korger, in a re-worked form and with an extended sortiment, as an OpenType Pro-version. After consultation with Hildegard Korger, Elsner+Flake tasked the Leipzig type designer Erhard Kaiser with the execution of the re-design and expansion of the sortiment. Detlef Schäfer writes in “Fotosatzschriften Type-Design+Schrifthersteller”, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 1989: No other printing type has ever generated as far-reaching a controversy as this typeface which Jan Tschichold called the most beautiful of all the old Antiqua types. For a long time, it was thought to have been designed by Anton Janson. In 1720 a large number of the original types were displayed in the catalog of the „Ehrhardische Gycery“ (Ehrhardt Typefoundry) in Leipzig. Recently, thanks to the research performed by Beatrice Warde and especially György Haimann, it has been proven unambiguously that the originator of this typeface was Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (pronounced „Kisch“) who was born in 1650 in the Hungarian town of Tótfal. His calvinistic church had sent him to the Netherlands to oversee the printing of a Hungarian language bible. He studied printing and punch cutting and earned special recognition for his Armenian and Hebrew types. Upon his return to Hungary, an emergency situation forced him to sell several of his matrice sets to the Ehrhardt Typefoundry in Leipzig. In Hungary he printed from his own typefaces, but religious tensions arose between him and one of his church elders. He died at an early age in 1702. The significant characteristics of the “Dutch Antiqua” by Kis are the larger body size, relatively small lower case letters and strong upper case letters, which show clearly defined contrasts in the stroke widths. The “Kis Antiqua” is less elegant than the Garamond, rather somewhat austere in a calvinistic way, but its expression is unique and full of tension. The upper and lower case serifs are only slightly concave, and the upper case O as well as the lower case o have, for the first time, a vertical axis. In the replica, sensitively and respectfully (responsibly) drawn by Hildegard Korger, these characteristics of this pleasantly readable and beautiful face have been well met. For Typoart it was clear that this typeface has to appear under its only true name “Kis Antiqua.” It will be used primarily in book design. Elsner+Flake added two headline weights, which are available as a separate font family Kis Antiqua Now TH Pro Designer: Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis, 1686 Hildegard Korger, 1986-1988 Erhard Kaiser, 2008

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

Milan-based Leftloft studio developed LFT Iro Sans, an expansive family that solves the significant, wide-ranging challenges of branding, wayfinding, pictographic language, and complex editorial use. LFT Iro Sans began as the clear and welcoming wayfinding project of San Siro stadium in Milan. Over time many other styles and weights have been added. LFT Iro Sans never finds itself outmatched by the task at hand. The primary aim was to design a technical typeface that was readable in any low visibility condition, for instance in a poorly lit area with awkward wall shapes and overhangs. This worked well for stadium and large lettering use, but other problems also needed to be addressed, such as complementary iconography. A location developer was left mixing — clashing, really — one type family with a different family of icons, resulting in a cobbled-together look which diluted the brand and the experience. They set out to radically simplify and clarify each shape and its meaning, accepting uniqueness as part of the final visual language. LFT Iro Sans pictograms answers the need for having a consistent and large group of icons, perfectly suited to the text typeface. As it concerns public spaces, this didn’t exist before. LFT Iro Sans incorporated a branding project too, so they decided to let LFT Iro Sans go out on a limb and created a unicase style that demands attention. Each unicase letter is a combination of the lowercase and capital form, quite noticeable in the ‘i’, ‘m’, ‘t’, and unique ‘d’ and ‘b’, balanced by more restrained forms of ‘a’, ‘s’, ‘c’, and ‘e’. LFT Iro Sans is not only a technical typeface, but, thanks to letters’ proportions, can also be used for editorial purposes. Assertive and economical in stature, the text weights are clear and assured. And a display version for headlines in Ultralight and Heavy (with italics) was developed for stunning headlines. For enthusiasts of every stripe, LFT Iro Sans can be a brand’s rallying cry with its arresting unicase, be a developer’s go-to pictogram choice, or set the most demanding editorial text in digital or print. With its many OpenType features, simplified pictogram commands (even available in Apple’s Pages and Microsoft Word), and a total of 30 targeted family members, LFT Iro Sans is a brilliant, easy choice. As with the rest of the TypeTogether catalogue, the complete LFT Iro Sans family, designed by Lefloft and developed by Octavio Pardo, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

My first font for 2009 was Aerle. It is a new dark sans serif font in my continuing objective of designing book fonts that I can really use. It made a little ripple in the industry, but more than that I found that I loved it with Aramus and Artimas — my latest book font family with the same proportions. In many ways, Aerle is a very different direction for me built on what I have learned on Aramus and other recent developments in my style. The concept came to me while using Bitstream's Mister Earl on a site online—though there is no direct reference. I wanted a more playful heavy sans with a much smaller x-height than I have been using lately, plus taller ascenders. As I was using Aerle, I constantly needed a light and bold version. The new direction I am taking is a result of a decision that my fonts, though I loved the character shapes, produced an even type color that is too dark or a little dense. Aerle was an attempt to get away from that look even though the letterspacing is quite tight. For Aerle Thin I pushed a little further in that direction and increased the letterspacing. The hand-drawn shapes vary a lot, many pushing the boundaries of the normal character. This gives a little looseness and helps the lightness in feel I am looking for. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. Most new type around the world is far too perfect for my taste. While the shapes are exquisite, the feel is not human but digital mechanical. I find myself wanting to draw fonts that feel human — as if a person crafted them. In most ways this is a normal font for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. These small caps were very small (x-height as is proper). So Aerle's small caps are a little oversize because they plugged up too bad at x-height size. The bold is halfway between. These size variations seem important and work well in the text. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg sh sp st ch ck ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, & small caps; proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures; plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

Inspired by the type elements of 17th century Dutch mapmaking, Boncaire Titling provides you with a historic yet adventurous look for your library. This addition from insigne found its muse in a map of Curacao by Dutch cartographer Gerard Van Keulen, a member of the prosperous Van Keulen family from Amsterdam, who were engaged in the manufacture of maps for seafaring. Much thanks on this project goes to The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, housed at the Boston Public Library. Through the centers kindness, I was able to view a number of period maps in person and to meet with curators, who explained more about the Van Keulen family and the way maps of the period were created. While I studied the maps, I narrowed in on some of the original types unique idiosyncrasies. For instance, the long, exaggerated serifs, which give the forms a sense of stability, aid in the faces legibility--largely a byproduct of the engraving method that was used to create the metal plates for manufacturing these maps. In creating Boncaire Titling, I decided to capture these unique idiosyncrasies, embracing the character of the engravings rather than removing them entirely through over-refining the forms. The result is an elegant family with far more than seafaring potential. This font has a full range of six weights, from thin to black. It also includes a wide variety of OpenType alternates. All insigne fonts are fully loaded with OpenType features. Boncaire Titling is also equipped for complex professional typography, including alternates, smaller titling caps and plenty of alts, including normalized capitals and lowercase letters. There are over 30 autoreplacing ligatures, and the face includes a number of numeral sets, including fractions, old-style and lining figures with superiors and inferiors. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. You can find these features demonstrated in the .pdf brochure. Boncaire Titling also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages, including Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Boncaire Titling supports over 40 languages that use the extended Latin script, making the new addition a great choice for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Maps are fascinating; they come with the promise of treasure to be uncovered. Examining the map itself, too, you can find great wealth in the details so artfully condensed to that single piece of paper--details carried over into this new insigne font. For your next project, explore the imagination potential in Boncaire Titling.

The ITC Stone Sans II typeface family is new from the drawing board up. Sumner Stone, who designed the original faces in 1988, recently collaborated with Delve Withrington and Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging to update the family of faces that bears his name. Sumner was the lead designer and project director for the full-blown reworking – and his own greatest critic. The collaborative design effort began as a relatively simple upgrade to the ITC Stone Sans family. As so often happens, however, the upgrade proved to be not so simple, and grew into a major design undertaking. “My initial intent,” recalls Sumner, “was to provide ITC Stone Sans with even greater versatility. I planned to add an additional weight, maybe two, and to give the family some condensed designs.” As Sumner began to look more closely at his twenty-year-old typeface, he decided that it would benefit from more extensive design improvements. “I found myself making numerous refinements to character shapes and proportions,” says Sumner. “The project scope expanded dramatically, and I’m pleased with the final result. The redesign has improved both the legibility and the overall appearance of the face.” The original ITC Stone Sans is part of the ITC Stone super family, along with ITC Stone Serif and ITC Stone Informal. In 2005 ITC Stone Humanist joined the family. All of these designs have always offered the same three weights: Medium, Semibold, and Bold – each with an italic counterpart. Over time, Stone Sans has emerged as the godfather of the family, a powerful design used for everything from fine books, annual reports and corporate identity programs, to restaurant menus, movie credits and advertising campaigns. ITC Stone Sans, however, lacked one attribute of many sans serif families: a large range of widths and weights. “These fonts had enjoyed great popularity for many years – during which graphic designers repeatedly asked for more weights and condensed designs in the family,” says Sumner. “Their comments were the impetus.” ITC Stone Sans II includes six weights ranging from an elegant Light to a commanding Extra Bold. An italic counterpart and suite of condensed designs complements every weight. In all, the new family encompasses 24 typefaces. The ITC Stone Sans II family is also available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, allowing graphic communicators to pair its versatile design with the capabilities of OpenType. These fonts offer automatic insertion of ligatures, small caps and use-sensitive figure designs; their extended character set also supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. ITC Stone® Sans II font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original