Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

Burgues Script is an ode to the late 19th century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz, whose legendary pen has inspired schools of penmanship for over 100 years. His talent has caused some people to call him “the most skillful penman the world has ever known.” I use the word ‘ode’ in a colloquially ambitious manner. If I was an actual poet, my words would be about things I desire but cannot attain, objects of utter beauty that make me wallow in humility, or people of enormous talent who look down at me from the clouds of genius. But I don’t write poems. My work consists of letters drawn to fit together, that become an element of someone’s visual poetry. I am the poet’s assistant, so to speak. Once in a while, the assistant persists on what the subject of the poem will be. And occasionally, the poet gives in to the persistence. I hope you, visual poet, find my persistence justified in this case. The two main sources for Burgues were the calligraphy examples shown in Zaner Bloser’s The Secret of the Skill of Madarasz: His Philosophy and Penmanship Masterpieces, and C. W. Jones’s Lessons in Advanced Engraver’s Script Penmanship by L. Madarasz. These two references were the cornerstone for the concept I was trying to work with. I did have to change many of the letters in order to be able to produce digital calligraphy that can flow flexibly and offered the user a variety of options, while maintaining its attractive appearance. To this end, many ligatures and swashes were made, as well as full flourished sets of letters for use at the beginnings or endings of words and sentences. All of this has been tied together with OpenType and tested thoroughly within today’s standard design and desktop publishing software. After working with digital scripts for so long, at one point I thought that Burgues Script would become a bit of a chore to complete. I also thought that, like with most other scripts, the process would regularize itself after a while and be reduced to a mechanical habit. Surprisingly, and fortunately for me, this did not happen. The past holds as many surprises as the future. Madarasz’s method of penmanship was fascinating and challenging to translate into the strict, mathematically oriented language of the computer. It seems that the extremely high contrast of the forms, coupled with the required flow and connectivity of such lettering, will always be hard work for any visual artist to produce, even with the aide of a powerful machine. I can only imagine what steady nerves and discipline Madarasz must have had to be able to produce fully flourished and sublimely connected words and sentences on a whim. When I think of Madarasz producing a flourished calligraphic logotype in a few seconds, and try to reconcile that with the timelines of my or my colleagues’ work in identity and packaging design, the mind reels. Such blinding talent from over a hundred years ago. Burgues is the Spanish word for Bourgeois. In the end, I hope Burgues Script will serve you well when a flourished word or sentence is required for a design project. One of the wonders of the computer age is the ability to visually conjure up the past, serving both the present and the future. With Burgues, you have a piece of “the most skillful penman the world has ever known,” at your service. Burgues received important awards such as a Certificate of Excellence TDC2 2008 and a Certificate of Excellence at the Bienal Tipos Latinos 2008.

Balboa is a display design combining elements of early sans serif and grotesque types with contemporary types. It evolved from ATF Headline Gothic, Banner (a headline typeface I drew for the San Francisco Chronicle), and Newsweek No.9, a Stephenson Blake-like grotesque I designed for Roger Black's 1980 redesign of Newsweek Magazine. There are nine styles, including the three new styles that have been added in 2014: Medium, Light and Ultra Light.

The curves are vintage and the serifs are big. They're so big that for years I never had the courage to tackle this intimidating font. But when fellow signmaker Frank Smith laid the groundwork for this intriguing typeface by Frank H. Atkinson, I couldn't pass on the opportunity to take it from paper to keyboard. After all, at over 100 years old, I felt this alphabet had never been given a proper, digital treatment. So how did this face survive the last century? Well, for those who don't know the history, it survived in Atkinson's ubiquitous book, Sign Painting, published first in 1908, the generational standard for anyone interested in sign-related type design. The layouts and lettering treatments in this book have influenced countless designers for more than a hundred years, but most haunting to me was this strange face with the big serifs. Well, I'm haunted no more. The work is done, the kerning is complete, and nothing but a mouse-click separates a very old idea from the modern world. It's wide, it's big, and with those crazy serifs, it is definitely eccentric-!!!

A one-time co-worker of mine sometimes used a fanciful inkpen-style script in display-lettering situations. I liked it a lot. "Phil," I says, "why not do the whole alphabet, maybe a few little dingbats, and I'll make a font." Well, one day he presented me with a stack of posterboard; he'd done some letters, all right -- hundreds of 'em. I managed to boil these down into a typeface called Treefrog, a name that seems to match its organic jumble, its tall x-height, its left- and right-leaning stems, its thick and thin strokes. Full release has many dingbats.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Galaxo Dot is a sister to Galaxo Line. HGB Galaxo is a tribute to Othmar Motter (1927–2010), the Vorarlberg graphic artist and typeface designer, who designed very individual and perfectly crafted typefaces in the 1970's and later. (Motter Ombra, Motter Tectura ...) From a Motter sketch of 5 letters for a logogram, I derived a simplified letterform and developed all the necessary characters. Working on these glyphs and delving deeper into Motter's letterforms, the respect for the accuracy with which he drew his letters (in ink) grew more and more. The spiral resembles the shape of a galaxy, hence the name Galaxo. The font is suitable for retro, poster and logo design.

Tatty is a sans serif, monoline font that is distinguished by the gentle, rounded, backward curves on the ascenders. I created it because I had a picture in my mind of a font that I wanted to use when designing images and logos for clients' websites but I could never find one that was just exactly right. Many years ago I worked for a sign-writing company. My job was to copy and enlarge letter sets from printed copy and then cut masks for airbrushing. One morning I arrived at my desk to find that the airbrush artist had written on a rough, rubbed out, scribbled on drawing of the letter ‘a’ - “make a letter happy, make it beautiful”. That was the brief I set myself in the design of Tatty - to make every letter happy and beautiful. The result is a flowing, elegant yet simple type which I believe works particularly well for poetry.

PIGGY BANK is a casual handwriting font, smoothed and cleaned for cutting and crafting, but also sharp and crisp for print projects! It contains two uppercase sets of letters, so you can mix and match for a hand-written look. It's useful for everything from kids' designs to branding, from book covers to product packaging! The PIGGY BANK family contains two weights - regular and bold - so you have options that will be easy to read no matter how large or small your design will be. Plus, it has my usual 500+ glyphs, including tons of punctuation and over 300 accented characters for language support!

Cassius & Cassius Italic are a postmodern typeface system from the Garaldes family. The main characteristic of this type family is its inverted anatomy and projected terminals. Cassius was meticulously designed with special focus on its structure. With its proposal for a fresh, attractive and rhythmic system, Cassius gives great personality to all kinds of composition. The family consists of 5 weights from regular to black, with respective Italics. Each instance includes; Case sensitives Accents, Ligatures, Fractions, Small Caps, Old Style Figures, Case Sensitives (symbols and punctuation) and more. This font is perfect for books and magazines compositions, and in general for the construction of immersive printed or digital texts.

Accia Moderato is a contemporary serif typeface with moderate contrast and large x-height. It will become a great choice for primary body copy. The font family contains 8 weights from Thin to Extra Bold, with matching true italics. It supports extensive language support including Cyrillic, as well as numerous OpenType features such as small caps, ligatures, several sets of figures, case-sensitive punctuation, ordinals. Accia Moderato is a member of Accia Type System. It encompasses five typefaces ranging from sans-serif to expressive serif, giving you the possibility to create sophisticated cohesive designs. Accia Type system consists of Accia Sans, Accia Flare, Accia Piano, Accia Moderato, and Accia Forte.

Heller Sans JNL is based on the main letterforms of an experimental alphabet designed by Steven Heller; noted author of over 170 books on design and visual culture. Some modifications were made in turning his design into a digital font. In his own words, here is the background to this typeface: “I recently recovered this from the junk heap. It is a yellowing photostat of my first and only typeface design (1969-70). Total folly! At the time I was smitten by Art Moderne lettering. I called it “Klaus Boobala Bold” because I liked the K and B. I’ve lost the letters S through Z, which were made. The letters were drawn with compass, Techno pen (that frequently clogged). as well as a triangle and T-square. The inline and outline made no real logical sense. I based the design, in part, on Kabel, Avant Garde and it was a product of whatever I could accomplish with those tools. The caps-only alphabet was photographed and produced as a film negative that was cut in foot-long strips and spliced to fit on a Typositor reel. Sadly, the negatives made for the font were too brittle and the splice snapped apart in the Typositor. I worked on it for well over a month and used the face only once. I realized with this attempt, like so many other times I attempted different challenges, that type design — indeed mechanical drawing — was not my strong suit.” Heller Sans JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Pesto Fresco Italic is a new version of Pesto Fresco handwritten lettering system, a font family built of 27 styles. Overlapping Pesto Fresco Italic Regular with any of the other decorative styles you will get different graphic effects, so just choose the one that fits best with your layout. This font can be used for different purposes from packaging design to web design.

Inlow is a font that evokes a sense of retromodernity, aesthetics, and something perfect. When developing it, I wanted to convey a touch of retro design and modern design. It can be used in the design of posters, logos, covers, Instagram, just in the text and many other ideas, all just border on your ideas. I think I can see this font on the covers of books. It's exciting. Inspirations were book covers and cars from the 60s and 80s. I wanted to convey retro and modernism. The use of the font is unlimited, and the support of many European languages and not only gives a huge scope for creativity! Design By Eugene Bunin.

When drawing a new font, there is a time when the final form is found – almost – but the curves are not slick and clean yet, that's what I call the "raw" form. Raw – no sweeteners added! In this family I tried to redefine this moment in type development for the eternally beautiful "Franklin Gothic". I call the design "Franklin Gothic Raw", not to be confounded with "rough". The family can be used like any good normal typeface, you hardly see any difference to a conventionally cut "Franklin Gothic" in small sizes. The charm of the design becomes obvious the bigger it becomes, then it enhances your design with its imperfections in the outline. "Franklin Gothic Raw" is therefore an extremely versatile family. I created the cuts, that I considered necessary for the seasoned designer who knows what he's doing. Enjoy!

My motivation for designing the Lalibela family (which is based on Bodoni) was to pay homage to Ethiopic script. The script has been around for about 3 000 years, but I took artistic licence to deviate from the original model and add personal touches. I chose Bodoni as a historical model because of its display value and not its text size use because the extreme contrast made it difficult to read at small sizes. A Modern typeface characterized by consistently horizontal stress, flat and un-bracketed serifs, and a high contrast between thin and thick strokes, were the final step in typography two-hundred-year journey away from calligraphy. The austerity, simplicity and greater contrast style was perfected.Contrary to all the refinements in Bodoni, I have revisited calligraphy with the font Lalibela that mimics Ethiopic Script. It was drawn with a much larger x height and less geometric than Bodoni for its primary use as a display font. For example, a lot of italic serifs were added to the roman face as well as 16 additional ligatures to obtain more a feel of calligraphy. I made the serifs thicker and bracket one side with straight steps obtaining a reduced contrast to withstand breaking up at smaller sizes.An additional variant, "Lalibela Alternate" was designed to provide an interesting mixing possibilities with the Bold face for more expressive headlines.

Noma is a new wide-set display font with a minimal geometric style. I designed Noma because I wanted a tech-inspired font that has plenty of character while remaining legible. Noma is a great choice for high-impact headings and logotypes. I hope you enjoy, thanks for checking it out!

This font of Moon Type is modelled after Dr. Moon's original poster. He developed this embossed writing system to help those who have lost their sight later in life, and so are familiar with the shapes of English letters. Moon writing is still used, and you can find books written with it. This font only contains the letters and punctuation that are in the Moon Type system.

I was working about 10 years exclusively for a type company. Based on my experiences, I built this superfamily. Schuss™ Sans PCG is a humanistic sans-serif with a little contrast. Small Caps, greek and cyrillic are included. Also tab, prop, lining, old style and small cap figures. It's a typeface with clear and open characters. All complicated shapes are cleaned and simplified with a bit elegance. Schuss™ Slab Pro is a slab serif, based on the Schuss™ Sans. Schuss™ News Pro is the modeled style between Schuss™ Slab Pro and Schuss™ Serif Pro. Schuss™ Serif Pro is the antiqua shape. Additionally all serifs are cleaned up. There is just one-side-serif in the "n" for example. Tab figures (except small caps), mathematical signs and currency symbols have a width system accross all styles and weights.

I was working about 10 years exclusively for a type company. Based on my experiences, I built this superfamily. Schuss™ Sans PCG is a humanistic sans-serif with a little contrast. Small Caps, greek and cyrillic are included. Also tab, prop, lining, old style and small cap figures. It's a typeface with clear and open characters. All complicated shapes are cleaned and simplified with a bit elegance. Schuss™ Slab Pro is a slab serif, based on the Schuss™ Sans. Schuss™ News Pro is the modeled style between Schuss™ Slab Pro and Schuss™ Serif Pro. Schuss™ Serif Pro is the antiqua shape. Additionally all serifs are cleaned up. There is just one-side-serif in the "n" for example. Tab figures (except small caps), mathematical signs and currency symbols have a width system accross all styles and weights.

I was working about 10 years exclusively for a type company. Based on my experiences, I built this superfamily. Schuss™ Sans PCG is a humanistic sans-serif with a little contrast. Small Caps, greek and cyrillic are included. Also tab, prop, lining, old style and small cap figures. It's a typeface with clear and open characters. All complicated shapes are cleaned and simplified with a bit elegance. Schuss™ Slab Pro is a slab serif, based on the Schuss™ Sans. Schuss™ News Pro is the modeled style between Schuss™ Slab Pro and Schuss™ Serif Pro. Schuss™ Serif Pro is the antiqua shape. Additionally all serifs are cleaned up. There is just one-side-serif in the "n" for example. Tab figures (except small caps), mathematical signs and currency symbols have a width system accross all styles and weights.

I was working about 10 years exclusively for a type company. Based on my experiences, I built this superfamily. Schuss™ Sans PCG is a humanistic sans-serif with a little contrast. Small Caps, greek and cyrillic are included. Also tab, prop, lining, old style and small cap figures. It's a typeface with clear and open characters. All complicated shapes are cleaned and simplified with a bit elegance. Schuss™ Slab Pro is a slab serif, based on the Schuss™ Sans. Schuss™ News Pro is the modeled style between Schuss™ Slab Pro and Schuss™ Serif Pro. Schuss™ Serif Pro is the antiqua shape. Additionally all serifs are cleaned up. There is just one-side-serif in the "n" for example. Tab figures (except small caps), mathematical signs and currency symbols have a width system accross all styles and weights.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City with Rob Roy Kelly and his fabulous collection of wood type. In the 1970s tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black. Again for Roger, in the 1980s I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so when I did Version 2 for Open Type, I changed it around a little, making it a much nicer Sutro.

Germania is a Sans font based on classic roman proportions and forms based on my Imperia font. But I added that distinct, rigid, no-nonsense German touch. This monoline font with its classic proportions and personality is good for lots of occasions. And – I designed three »real« italic typefaces – not just slanting the straight ones. I corrected the stroke thicknesses and changed the lowercase a, e, f, g and q. I put in a collection of very interesting uppercase ligatures for free. Your classical type designer - Gert Wiescher

There were several motivations for this font. It was a font in my style, a left-handed designer. But also, I wanted a script designed to work with ePUBs. This means fancy bullets in place of some of the ASCII characters—since ePUB readers do not support OpenType at all. Basically, I just had fun with it. The heifer for the mu figure cracks me up. What can I say?

The design for the font "Viktor" is based on original woodcut letters I purchased on a Flea Market. I handprinted the letters and converted the result into a font. The font preserves the rough and handmade character of the printed letters. To make the font more useful especially for packaging I designed in addition to the original font an outline version, a shadowed version and a striped font.

Cagey - The Bold Retro Font I named this font cagey. Another picture of the ingenuity of the ancients when they found a masterpiece. Through this font, I want to reminisce and reminisce about the past. This font is synonymous with 70s or 80s style design visuals, Bold and strong. I hope you enjoy using this font and can come up with clever and brilliant ideas in your designs. Thanks Graphicfresh

»Artis« is the name for my latest art-project-font. Obviously I just chopped off the last »t«. Then I looked it up on Wikipedia and what do you know, it is of latin descent. »Ars Gratia Artis« which means »art for arts sake« or in French »l’art pour l’art«, a perfect font name. If I would cut off the »s« as well it would mean disambiguation and that in turn is, what I just did here. Enough disambiguation! »Artis« is a modern classical beauty with extreme contrast between up- and downstrokes that make it unique with a touch of art deco and showing Renaissance roots. But – »Artis« is a twin-font that has an elegantly decorated twin sister »Artis-Swing«. Between the 2 fonts you have endless possibilities for combination. I love these twins! It is a great everyday workhorse with seven weights from ExtraLight to Bold and all the necessary weights in between. Great for short copy and elegant headlines! With 879 Glyphs it is a truly European font designed for all Central European and Latin using countries. »Artis« has a set of Cyrillic that is – besides Russia – also good for Serbia, Macedonia and Ukraine. It has oldstyle- and lining-, tabular- and tabular-oldstyle-figures and many ligatures. »Artis« comes in Sans and Swing and is an elegant, playful and friendly font. Enjoy!