Smart Sans is a personal tribute to Leslie (Sam) Smart, the first type director to be hired by a major typesetting house in Canada. Smart was a twentieth century design pioneer who raised the standards of Canadian typography. Together with three of his peers, he established the first Type Directors Club in Toronto. After Smart's death in 1998, type designer Rod McDonald decided that something should be done to commemorate Smart's life and achievements. I had first thought of establishing a scholarship in Sam's name, but a typeface design soon replaced this idea," says McDonald. "Once I decided to design a typeface, however, it became a foregone conclusion that it would be a sans serif - for no other reason than that I loved the name Smart Sans." Two typefaces served as inspiration for McDonald's work. "Like thousands of designers, I'm keen on Matthew Carter's Helvetica Compressed series. And, when I was younger, I also loved Fred Lambert's Compacta," says McDonald. "I thought there might be a place for a small range that could take over from these 'old workhorses' and, in the process, bring a fresher look to the genre." McDonald drew three weights for the Smart Sans family, all ideally suited for setting attention-getting headlines and powerful display copy. The two-storied 'g' contributes to the design's lively personality, and the short 'r' helps maintain tight, even spacing. Smart Sans is the perfect homage to a great typographer, because it raises the bar on what to expect from condensed sans serif typefaces. Sam Smart would be pleased."

Very close thematically and in style to the rest of our “whimbats” (the Absurdies, Bizarries, Illustries, Genteta and Whimsies series), the Ombres contain a number of peculiar silhouettes and illustrations of people that range from cute to scary, with everything in between. Ombres offers152 pictures in 3 files. These imaginary characters were produced with different techniques: quick pencil sketches, ink, watercolour, though once digitized and simplified to bring them into the font files there is little apparent difference. The silhouettes, rather than flat shadows are more dimensional in their look, because they have been digitized retaining the original brushwork or pencil strokes of their source drawings. Some of them remind of the venerable tradition of metal stock cuts from vintage type foundries. The digitized results are quite different, but the energetic nature of the subjects has been mantained. Their vectorial file format means you can use them at any size with no loss of quality. Every Ombres dingbat offers ready-made images for a variety of creative projects. They can be used as they come or easily customized in any graphics program. At small sizes they are ideal spot illustrations with a whimsical touch; at large sizes they can bring a whole page, a spread or even a big poster to live.

According to the two most popular statistics companies in England and North America, eight out of every ten people like to dance. Talk about useless information! But with such a market statistic, we thought there would be some collections of dingbats out there with dancers in them. And surprise, surprise; we found not even one! So this was our opportunity to be the first to issue such a collection, and we are very pleased with the results. Dancebats is a font of 75 silhouettes of people dancing. All kinds of dancing. Ballet, techno, slam, rock, swing, aerobic, hip hop, jump, lounge, and much more. Take a close look at the silhouettes and find out why these are shapes that belong on every party design, bar none. The Dancebats outlines were tweaked for use at all sizes, from the very large, as in posters and signs, to the medium height, as in party flyers, invitations and publications, to the very small, as in web banners and pin-on buttons. We are anticipating these silhouettes to be used soon all over posters, signs and web sites everywhere, so get your hands on a copy and give yourself some ammunition for your next party design.