ALS Direct is an open and dynamic typeface with clear-cut letterforms that make it instantly readable. It lends text a neutral, yet agreeable and modern feel. Direct has nine font styles convenient for the purposes of navigation signage. Regular-style letterforms are rather wide, because direction signs are likely to appear before readers at an angle, so the type needs to withstand perspective distortions. And as signs and boards may vary in size, Direct was developed to include several width variations. Condensed fonts can be used where horizontal space is limited, allowing you to keep proper height and readability of the characters. A signage typeface must be easily readable from some distance away and have simple letterfoms with clear-cut features to quickly identify characters. Designing a type for a potentially wide range of purposes calls for a universal approach. If not destined to be used for navigation in a particular building, it shouldn’t incorporate any peculiar elements to agree with certain design or architecture. All of the above determined our choice of a sans serif with large apertures and definite features allowing readers to instantly recognize letters. Descenders are made compact not to interfere with the line below. And the low contrast between thick and thin strokes renders all elements equally perceptible. The x-height is significant, close to the cap height, which inhances readability of the lowercase type. There are two reasons why directions must not be set in all caps. Firstly, lowercase letters are more diverse and include ascenders and descenders identifying some of the letters in the line. And secondly, having learned to read, people recognize word shapes rather than individual letters, which makes lowercase text more readable. With Direct being a signage typeface, first to be developed were its width variations, and different weight styles and italics were added later. Another thing to be kept in mind was that signs often use dark background colors, and black type on a white background appears smaller than white type on a black background. Direct is the first Cyrillic typeface created for navigation purposes. Before that, designers could use the Cyrillic version of Frutiger (Freeset) developed by Adrian Frutiger for the Paris Charles de Gaulle International Airport, and a number of other, mostly body copy, neutral sans serif types. However, signs and boards were dominated by Arial, which Direct would be glad to replace offering elegance and lucidity of form instead of type bluntess. Direct was designed as a signage typeface, but its neutral style and clear-cut letterforms suggest various other ways of application.

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.

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.

Remora is an extensive new humanist sans serif which comes in 2 style variations, the effervescent Remora Sans and its corporate business partner Remora Corp . Both styles include 5 individual width sets ranging from the condensed W1 to the extra-wide W5. Furthermore, with an impressive 7 weights (Thin to Ultra) and true matching italics in each pack Remora is an ultra versatile super family comprising 140 individual fonts, perfect for any typographic assignment or design brief. Remora was designed by G-Type founder Nick Cooke. Both the Sans and Corp families share the same proportions, with the exception of certain key characters that change the overall appearance. Remora Sans is an exuberant and characterful typeface while Remora Corp, as its name suggests, is a businesslike typeface more suited to corporate typography. Quite early on in the design process Nick decided to give Remora Corp equal billing instead of incorporating these glyphs as alternates or a stylistic set that may get overlooked. “I created two separate families after learning a valuable lesson with one of my earlier typefaces, Houschka”, says Nick. “Houschka contained distinctive rounded A’s W’s and w’s, with ‘straight’ styles as character alternates. Even though style sets and alternates are easy to activate they are rarely used, so after many requests for customised versions of the fonts with the straight characters as defaults it was decided to create the separate ‘Alt’ family. So I cut straight to the chase with the two Remora variants and created two complementary families.” Both sets contain many shared letterforms, but it is the alternate characters that significantly alter the appearance of each font. Remora has been carefully designed for optimum legibility at large and very small sizes. Although fairly monolinear in appearance, especially in the lighter weights, particular attention has been paid to optical correction like the overshoots of the curved characters. Open counters and painstaking attention to detail (e.g. weight contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes, junctions of shoulders and stems etc) all boost readability and make Remora a great choice across all media. Remora Sans and Corp are ‘humanist’ rather than ‘geometric’ in style, meaning they’re not strictly based on rectangles and circles, resulting in a warm and friendlier feel. The slightly ’super-elliptical’ rounded forms create generously attractive curves. Remora has very distinctive italics in that they are only inclined by 8 degrees, but are not just based on slanted uprights. The italic styles are very alluring when used for display at large sizes and the good news is they come bundled free with their respective uprights. Each family also contains many OpenType features including proportional and tabular numbers, small caps, discretionary ligatures, plus five stylistic sets for ultra versatile typography.

Remora is an extensive new humanist sans serif which comes in 2 style variations, the effervescent Remora Sans and its corporate business partner Remora Corp. Both styles include 5 individual width sets ranging from the condensed W1 to the extra-wide W5. Furthermore, with an impressive 7 weights (Thin to Ultra) and true matching italics in each pack Remora is an ultra versatile super family comprising 140 individual fonts, perfect for any typographic assignment or design brief. Remora was designed by G-Type founder Nick Cooke. Both the Sans and Corp families share the same proportions, with the exception of certain key characters that change the overall appearance. Remora Sans is an exuberant and characterful typeface while Remora Corp, as its name suggests, is a businesslike typeface more suited to corporate typography. Quite early on in the design process Nick decided to give Remora Corp equal billing instead of incorporating these glyphs as alternates or a stylistic set that may get overlooked. “I created two separate families after learning a valuable lesson with one of my earlier typefaces, Houschka”, says Nick. “Houschka contained distinctive rounded A’s W’s and w’s, with ‘straight’ styles as character alternates. Even though style sets and alternates are easy to activate they are rarely used, so after many requests for customised versions of the fonts with the straight characters as defaults it was decided to create the separate ‘Alt’ family. So I cut straight to the chase with the two Remora variants and created two complementary families.” Both sets contain many shared letterforms, but it is the alternate characters that significantly alter the appearance of each font. Remora has been carefully designed for optimum legibility at large and very small sizes. Although fairly monolinear in appearance, especially in the lighter weights, particular attention has been paid to optical correction like the overshoots of the curved characters. Open counters and painstaking attention to detail (e.g. weight contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes, junctions of shoulders and stems etc) all boost readability and make Remora a great choice across all media. Remora Sans and Corp are ‘humanist’ rather than ‘geometric’ in style, meaning they’re not strictly based on rectangles and circles, resulting in a warm and friendlier feel. The slightly ’super-elliptical’ rounded forms create generously attractive curves. Remora has very distinctive italics in that they are only inclined by 8 degrees, but are not just based on slanted uprights. The italic styles are very alluring when used for display at large sizes and the good news is they come bundled free with their respective uprights. Each family also contains many OpenType features including proportional and tabular numbers, small caps, discretionary ligatures, plus five stylistic sets for ultra versatile typography.