MARIAMNE is an original design by Alex Kaczun. It is an elegant, modern and traditional interpretation based on and modeled after his successful "Contax Pro" and "New Age Gothic" typeface series. As such, it has generous proportions with clean, crisp lines—ideally suited for easy reading and long lines of copy. Alex felt that the skeleton for "Contax" was perfectly suited to transform the design into a modern version of 'old-style', somewhat reminiscent of German Black Letter. Numerous modifications where made to the body proportions, stems and shapes. True 'old-style' serifs and unusual 'cross-strokes' where added for a touch of distinction. The 'cross-strokes' where added at exactly visual mid-point on the overall heights. This gives the typeface a romantic, female-like quality to the overall design. Strong, yet delicate. Visually stimulating in appearance and function. The result is a truly unique transitional and modern design. Unlike other typefaces, MARIAMNE incorporates uniform stems throughout the capitals, lower case and figures. This gives the design a uniform appearance in overall color and strength. There is a perfect visual balance between inter-letter spacing, stem weights and proportions. The accents are equally large, bold and command attention. This font includes a large 'Pro' character set, which supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. As a result, the design is ideally suited for display copy as well as text composition. In the near future, Alex plans to expand the typeface series to include a light and heavy weight, along with true italics.

Really No. 2 is a redesign and update of Linotype Really, a typeface that Gary Munch first designed in 1999. The new Really No. 2 offers seven weights (Light to Extra Bold), each with an Italic companion. Additionally, Really No. 2 offers significantly expanded language support possibilities. Customers may choose the Really No. 2 W1G fonts, which support a character set that will cover Greek and Cyrillic in addition to virtually all European languages. These are true pan-European fonts, capable of setting texts that will travel between Ireland and Russia, and from Norway to Turkey. Customers who do not require this level of language support may choose from the Really No. 2 Pro fonts (just the Latin script), the Really No. 2 Greek Pro fonts (which include both Latin and Greek), or the Really No. 2 Cyrillic Pro fonts (Latin and Cyrillic). Each weight in the Really No. 2 family includes small capitals and optional oldstyle figures, as well as several other OpenType features. Really No. 2's vertical measurements are slightly different than the old Linotype Really's; customers should not mix fonts from the two families together. As to the design of Really No. 2's letters, like Linotype Really, the characters' moderate-to-strong contrast of its strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni. A subtly oblique axis recalls the old-style faces of Caslon. Finally, sturdy serifs complete the typeface's realist sensibility: a clear, readable, no-nonsense text face, whose clean details offer the designer a high-impact selection.

Vala™ dances across printed pages and shines on screen. This is a high-energy design that blends the grace of an English Roundhand script with the gravitas of an extra bold Bodoni. There is even a bit of romance in the design. Vala speaks with a resonant voice – and knows few bounds. The typeface enhances print headlines, subheads, cover art and packaging. The design also brings its distinctive melding of verve and poise to banners, headings, navigational links and branding in web sites, blog posts, games and apps. Oscar Guerrero found inspiration for Vala in shop window lettering near his home in Bogotá, Colombia. “The capital A, R and V caught my attention and I photographed the window for future reference,” he explains. “Later I started to draw more letters inspired by the ones in the window.” Guerrero admits that he has always admired the work of Giambattista Bodoni and allowed his classic Didone designs to infuse Vala. Striking contrast in stroke weights, lively ball-terminals and a large x-height give Vala the grace and force of a Waikiki wave. Not satisfied with just a basic character set, Guerrero also took advantage of OpenType’s capabilities and drew a complete set of swash capitals, a bevy of fancy ligatures, and a suite of lowercase alternative designs. The result is that Vala easily emulates custom lettering in posters, headlines and logotypes. The “romantic” part of Vala? Guerrero dedicated the design to his girlfriend, Valentina, and named it after her.

Really No. 2 is a redesign and update of Linotype Really, a typeface that Gary Munch first designed in 1999. The new Really No. 2 offers seven weights (Light to Extra Bold), each with an Italic companion. Additionally, Really No. 2 offers significantly expanded language support possibilities. Customers may choose the Really No. 2 W1G fonts, which support a character set that will cover Greek and Cyrillic in addition to virtually all European languages. These are true pan-European fonts, capable of setting texts that will travel between Ireland and Russia, and from Norway to Turkey. Customers who do not require this level of language support may choose from the Really No. 2 Pro fonts (just the Latin script), the Really No. 2 Greek Pro fonts (which include both Latin and Greek), or the Really No. 2 Cyrillic Pro fonts (Latin and Cyrillic). Each weight in the Really No. 2 family includes small capitals and optional oldstyle figures, as well as several other OpenType features. Really No. 2's vertical measurements are slightly different than the old Linotype Really's; customers should not mix fonts from the two families together. As to the design of Really No. 2's letters, like Linotype Really, the characters' moderate-to-strong contrast of its strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni. A subtly oblique axis recalls the old-style faces of Caslon. Finally, sturdy serifs complete the typeface's realist sensibility: a clear, readable, no-nonsense text face, whose clean details offer the designer a high-impact selection.

Really No. 2 is a redesign and update of Linotype Really, a typeface that Gary Munch first designed in 1999. The new Really No. 2 offers seven weights (Light to Extra Bold), each with an Italic companion. Additionally, Really No. 2 offers significantly expanded language support possibilities. Customers may choose the Really No. 2 W1G fonts, which support a character set that will cover Greek and Cyrillic in addition to virtually all European languages. These are true pan-European fonts, capable of setting texts that will travel between Ireland and Russia, and from Norway to Turkey. Customers who do not require this level of language support may choose from the Really No. 2 Pro fonts (just the Latin script), the Really No. 2 Greek Pro fonts (which include both Latin and Greek), or the Really No. 2 Cyrillic Pro fonts (Latin and Cyrillic). Each weight in the Really No. 2 family includes small capitals and optional oldstyle figures, as well as several other OpenType features. Really No. 2's vertical measurements are slightly different than the old Linotype Really's; customers should not mix fonts from the two families together. As to the design of Really No. 2's letters, like Linotype Really, the characters' moderate-to-strong contrast of its strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni. A subtly oblique axis recalls the old-style faces of Caslon. Finally, sturdy serifs complete the typeface's realist sensibility: a clear, readable, no-nonsense text face, whose clean details offer the designer a high-impact selection.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

A Belle Époque humanist serif in two styles: crisp, high-contrast Haut-Monde and soft, low-contrast Demimonde… When you design a lot of display pieces, you’re often in need of tall, slim type. Liaisons provides that, in a distinct fin-de-siècle style inspired by the great posters of the Gilded Age from Sweden, Denmark, France, and Scotland. (The ampersand alone is a bit of a love letter to Charles Rennie Mackintosh!) Both styles use the same slim skeleton, and are named after the stratum of society where one might find… a “dancing partner.” HAUT-MONDE is a high contrast face of the sort that says “High Society.” Elegant and sleek, it speaks to the refinement of the moneyed classes of a bygone era. Great for high-end products, too! DEMIMONDE is soft and low-contrast — more reminiscent of hand-lettering on Art Nouveau/Jugendstil/Wiener Werkstätte advertisements and posters. A comfortably chic display face all around! Both typefaces feature full Western and Eastern Latin character sets, as well as full Cyrillic/Slavic ones. And, perhaps best of all, both typefaces feature capitals with high, middle, and low waists, so you can change up the look as you see fit! Part of The Ampersand Forest's Sondheim Series

Bovary is an elegant, stylized and expressive script font inspired by those beautiful calligraphies of yesteryear, but in a modern point of view. Bovary is full of personality! When I designed it, I started from the Clauques Script. Therefore, Bovary can be perfectly combined with Clauques Sans. Bovary includes almost 900 glyphs with many stylistic variations, swashes, ending and initial forms, catchwords and ligatures for both uppercase and lowercase, assuring almost infinite combination possibilities. In addition, the font includes a set of very useful ornaments to combine and give an ornamental aspect to the calligraphic text. All our fonts are carefully controlled and tested in both aspects: readability and technical aspects. We deal with the kerning pairs, optimization of hinting information to avoid pixel grid, and the precise programming of the OpenType features; as well as drawing smooth curves points and the final touch of each glyph. Remember that to access to all additional characters, you must use software that is truly compatible with OpenType, such as Adobe CS applications, or we recommend using the Glyphs palette.
 This family font is perfect for logos, magazines and book covers, fashion, headlines and short phrases, cards, posters, websites, and packaging. Bovary is the brand new modern script, designed by Carine de Wandeleer and published by Eurotypo.

We named this font Scholz Secession. Fin-de-siecle Vienna, Austria is the source of this Jugendstil design from Schriftgiesserei Eduard Scholz. The original release was under the name Reklameschrift Secession. Most of the curve strokes look like commas to me. The letters are as soft and plump as the comforter on the bed I slept on in a Salzburg B&B many years ago. I was traveling with a college buddy and our next stop was Vienna. There a kind, young student named Hanna and her boyfriend took us under their wing. One of the places Hanna proudly showed us was Otto Wagner’s Majolika Haus, built in 1898, and only about 8 blocks from Secession Hall. Hanna explained to us that the style was called Jugendstil and represented Art Nouveau as interpreted within the framework of their culture. I even took a picture. After all, memories are part of who we are. Figures are old-style for text use. This font would not be my first choice for a spread sheet. Included are German ligatures ch (alt-0123) & ck (125), two period ornaments (135, 175) and lower case o and u with Hungarian long umlaut (215, 247)). A very likeable and easy-to-use font.

Nuit, a delightfully handwritten family font with strong character designed by Carine de Wandeleer. Its slight bounce and intentional irregularity, gives your words a wonderful flow. The fatness and thinness of their strokes give an impressive harmony. This new font family includes Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. It has OpenType features such as Stylistics alternates, Swashes, Ligatures, up to four Stylistic sets by letter, initial and terminal forms in upper and lower, ornaments that allow you to mix and match pairs of letters and a Central European language support to fit your design. This OpenType features may only be accessible via OpenType-aware applications, or the Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favorite text editor/app. This will help your creativity and make it easier to make expressive and elegant your typographic work. Also with Nuit it is possible to write all in capitals. Nuit looks lovely on wedding invitations, greeting cards, logos, posters, labels, t-shirt design, logos, business-cards and is perfect for using in ink or watercolor based designs, fashion, magazines, food packaging and menus, book covers and whatever your imagination holds! Nuit was made to make your project more beautiful and attractive.

Article to appear on the font family page: According to the Catholic faith, a well known náhuatl story called "Nican Mopohua" (translated as "Here it's narrate") about the Marianas apparitions on the Tepeyac's hill, to the north of the actual Mexico City. After four apparitions, La Virgen de Guadalupe (LVG) told Juan Diego (JD) that he must introduce himself to the first Bishop of Mexico. JD took in his "ayate" some roses (that aren't natives to Mexico's barren territories) and when he dropped them in front of the bishop, the image of LVG appeared in front of him with indigenous features. I’ve worked a lot in this font that appears to came out of nowhere, just like the image of LVG itself, the fact is that I started first sketching some flowers, because I wanted to do something related to this mexican story, so, taking some features from this flowers I started sketching some letters, for example “r” and “i” and the counter forms for some letters like “a” and “o” (that I didn’t use by the way) and the punctuation marks, all inspired by this leaf forms. Lighter weight coming soon! Hope you like it. Any comments: rodrigonabo@gmail.com

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

The origins of Bembo go back to one of the most famous printers of the Italian Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496, he used a new roman typeface to print the book de Aetna, a travelogue by the popular writer Pietro Bembo. This type was designed by Francesco Griffo, a prolific punchcutter who was one of the first to depart from the heavier pen-drawn look of humanist calligraphy to develop the more stylized look we associate with roman types today. In 1929, Stanley Morison and the design staff at the Monotype Corporation used Griffo's roman as the model for a revival type design named Bembo. They made a number of changes to the fifteenth-century letters to make the font more adaptable to machine composition. The italic is based on letters cut by the Renaissance scribe Giovanni Tagliente. Because of their quiet presence and graceful stability, the lighter weights of Bembo are popular for book typography. The heavier weights impart a look of conservative dependability to advertising and packaging projects. With 31 weights, including small caps, Old style figures, expert characters, and an alternate cap R, Bembo makes an excellent all-purpose font family. Bembo® Book font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.