Engria is a type family of four weights with corresponding italics that treads the fine line between sans and serif. There are serifs, of a sort, inspired by the brush. Not the marks made by a brush, but the actual splayed shape the bristles make when clamped together. Wedge-like chunks that resemble engraved forms, as the name Engria hints at. But it also has the appearance of a stressed, flared sans. This mixed approach lends a unique voice. Highly legible at text sizes, as indeed it is optimized for, Engria does however shine at display sizes thanks to its characteristic details – flared stems, angular counterforms, rugged ink traps and fluid curves. (I would recommend tracking it a little tighter at larger sizes.) Engria started life way back in 2014, and has been worked and reworked tirelessly to get to this finished product. My intent was to really push the idea of the white shapes being as important, if not more so, than the black. Engria is equipped for typographically demanding applications, boasting as it does an array of OpenType features, including small caps, automatic fractions, stylistic sets, various figure styles, arrows, case sensitive forms and more. It will make a very useful addition to your typographic arsenal, with a flare (ahem) for editorial work, but the individuality for packaging, branding, and logo work.

ION B is a part of the ION superfamily, which consists of 3 families: condensed (ION A), normal (ION B) and wide (ION C), each having a compelling range of 10 weights. Styles Thin to Black have 436 glyphs supporting more than 70 Latin-based languages and the three heaviest weights, named U1, U2 and U3 have 94 basic glyphs. ION glyphs are based on the classic 7-segment display, but for readability and aesthetic reasons, some alphabetic characters don't follow this matrix strictly. In case you like things in order, don't worry, there’s a stylistic set that replaces all characters with their strict alternatives. The special characters, such as #, @ or % are composed of special segments, but are designed to fit seamlessly within the whole character set. ION was designed with the needs of contemporary graphic design in mind. There are alternative characters, discretionary ligatures, slashed zero, superior & inferior numbers, fractions, ordinals and three handy stylistic sets. The ten styles of ION B are accompanied with a special 11th style called Cells, allowing you to design a special underlying layer of black or outlined cells. This way you can create various containers and boxes for your text, highlight what’s important or go wild and draw a space invader, using the cells as building blocks. Learn more about the OpenType features and Cells at www.urtd.net/ion.

Max Joseph Gradl designed Art Nouveau jewelry in Germany. At least some of his designs were produced by Theodor Fahrner of Pforzheim, Germany -- one of the leading manufacturers of fine art jewelry on the Continent from 1855 to 1979. I don't know if he designed for Fahrner exclusively, but every example I found was produced by that firm. I assume it was also the same M.J, who edited a book, Authentic Art Nouveau Stained Glass which was reissued by Dover and is still available. For an artist as accomplished as Gradl was, he is very tough to research. There just does not seem to have been much written about him. The jeweler is visible in most of his typeface designs. They exhibit a sculptural quality as if they were modeled in clay (or gold) rather than drawn on paper. His monograms, especially, reflect that quality. Those shown in plates 112 through 116 in Petzendorfer actually appear to have been designed specifically for fabricating in the form of gold or silver pendents. Of the initial letters that came out of Germany during this period, these by Gradl seem unusually open and lyrical. They seem to be dancing on the page, rather than sitting. Please note that Gradl designed only the decorated initials. All other characters supplied were extrapolated by HiH, including the accented initials. Orn.1 (unicode E004) is based on a jeweled gold clasp designed by Gradl (please check out Gallery Image on Myfonts.com). Also included are an art nouveau girl’s face, a swan and the face from Munch’s “Scream”, from scans of old printer’s ornaments. Gradl Initialen M represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 341 glyphs. Both upper & lower case provided with appropriate accents. 2. 558 Kerning Pairs. 3. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: salt, dlig, ornm and kern. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Refined various glyph outlines. 6. Alternative characters: 16 upper case letters (with gaps in surrounding decorations for accents above letter). 8. Four Ornaments: face1, face2, swan and orn1 (silhouette of Gradl clasp) The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.