I will spare you the long-winded description this time and all of the motivations and witty innuendoes. Quite frankly, I forgot about creating this typeface and it sat on my hard drive for almost a year. Luckily, my daughter Isobel saw the initial drawings one day and ask me about those pretty letters and I remembered… yep, that happened. That said, time made this a better typeface… with fresh eyes and time, much was redrawn, retooled and expanded to something I truly enjoy playing with. Shameless makes extensive use of Contextual alternates to create a proper ebb and flow from letter to letter. Interestingly, there are only a handful of ligatures… instead many special combinations are accounted for solely by relying on Contextual Alts. Mix in Stylistic Alts, Swashes, responsive Titling Alts, numerous Style Sets, etc and you can have a lot of fun. I created 2 versions. A ‘Standard’ version that has 2200+ characters and a ‘Deluxe’ version that has 2400+ characters and an interesting caveat… I plan on expanding the Deluxe version any time I have an idea to add to the typeface… and as such, buyers will receive all of those updates at no charge (with updates going directly to the distributors). You get what you pay for… no insane discounts. Oh, and if you are wondering… Shameless is based on my handwriting using Kuretake Zig CocoIro pens. I love these pens.

Xanthine… is a purine base found in most human body tissues. Yes, you can forget that. I don’t even know what it means, but I suddenly realised that I was running low on fonts with an ‘x’ in the name. Xanthine font is a messy brush: it is all caps, but upper and lower case mingle freely. It comes with a whole bunch of diacritics and some interesting ligatures as well. I have included a very handy shapez pack and a truckload of arrows - anything to make you happy…

Display Hatched is ideal for posters with an industrial theme and is designed as a complement to Greater Albion’s “Singwriter Standard” typeface. All glyphs are diagonally shaded giving just a delicate touch of ‘industrial edge’ which is so ‘on trend’ at the moment. Display Hatched includes small capitals and title forms, as well as three forms of numerals. Bring a little industrial grit to your next project!

I really like Wales; I like the culture, the people and the language. I also like the Welsh legends, especially the ones about King Arthur and Merlin. I am reading a book about Arthur right now, so when I was working on this font, I wanted to give it a Welsh name. Caerphilly is a town in Southern Wales and is home to an immense 13th century castle (Castell Caerffili). Caerphilly font is based on a 16th century manuscript. I kept the glyphs rough, to give it ‘ye olde’ look. Comes with a hoard of diacritics, a bunch of double letter ligatures and some alternate glyphs as well.

Once I had a young, very eager and interested designer in my employ. We got into talking about where our letterforms come from and the habits in perception we are used to. He did not quite believe me. So I said, let's try to design a typeface where everything is just the opposite of what we are used to. We really had a hard time, our habits crept up on us all the time. But after a couple of weeks we finally finished this typeface and wanted to call it crazytype, but my young apprentice ­ who did most of the manual labor ­ said Contype sounded crazier. So it became Contype and it's really crazy, with a small asian touch to it. Yours very crazy Gert Wiescher

After a few months my new typeface "Bankal" is here! To create it, I always tried to keep a 90 degree angle. In French when you say that something is "bancal" it means that it's not right. This is why I choose this as a name because despite the name she is right. And for the K it's just for the style here. Bankal is a sans-serif font with 3 variations (bold, regular, light) Check more on my website : https://www.hugokuder.com/ or my instagram : hugokuderdesign

Fungia is the result of an experiment to remelt loose natural forms to a coherent structure of a typeface. The idea appeared as a kind of joke: what letters look like if based on the shape of mushrooms. In a sense the structure of�mushroom has some affinity to the structure of�a letter: a cap and a stalk remind�a serif and a stem respectively. So it was pretty easy to design such straight letters like I, E, L, F. The captivating challenge was to apply the idea on round letters (O, C, D, G), letters with diagonal (N, M, Z) and signs without serifs (digits, @, &). The result exceeded expectations. The typeface turned sophisticated and vibrant but absolutely consistent. It became capital-only font in one weight. Because of its opulent forms Fungia performs best in large size and short inscriptions. However it provides readability in small size as well. Fungia is more likely thing-in-itself. Initially it wasn't intended to solve specific design challenges. But the alleged scope could include book covers, posters and billboards, street signs, magazin spreads and all situations that demand�expressive typography. Fungia supports extended latin and russian cyrillic script systems.

When Patricia Lillie was growing up, she thought the coolest thing in the world would be finding her own name listed in a library catalog. The fantasy came true in 1986 when her first children's book was published. Five more followed. The thrill of seeing her work on library shelves hasn't abated, but today, Lillie is just as likely to see one of her typefaces on the cover of a book. She has created several display faces and image fonts. My first typeface designs were based on lettering I'd done while working for a library, doing graphics work for the children's section," she explains. "I currently do a lot of web design, but type is my favorite thing." The Tickles (ITC Tickle and ITC Tickle Too) are Lillie's first ITC typeface releases. "I was playing around with a Sharpie marker one day and liked the way the letters looked," she recalls. "I started redoing the letters from scratch in Fontographer to see what developed, and liked those letters too." ITC Tickle is a bi-form font (with both cap and lowercase letters of the same size) that clearly breaks a typographic rule or two. ITC Tickle Too has the same basic lettershapes, but they've grown clusters of stipples that give a three-dimensional quality to the design. The result is a friendly, offbeat display family that's guaranteed to add a giggle to your work."

This typeface finds a perfect balance between technical excellence, careful design of letter forms for extended reading, and a measured dose of charm and personality. Its informal feel allows for successfully typesetting a wide range of applications, from magazines and fiction books to advertising and websites. Calligraphy, be it done with the broad-edge pen, brush, or other tools, has been fundamental in the development of Pollen. Its influence is clearly visible in the construction of the top serifs contrasting the curved bottom serifs and the fluid aspect of terminals and tails, such as on “g” and “r”. The shapes of the diagonal letters are based on a less formal calligraphic model, but still uses the broad edge pen. ­The letters were then subject to a further process of pencil drawing and digital re-interpretation, which gave them the final shape. The designs of “e” and “c” are derived from drawings made with only one continuous line, with the pencil always touching the paper. The letters “g” and “y” express the intention to bring informal elements to a typeface intended for long text reading, usually characteristic of casual writing. Pollen consists of 3 basic styles with an extended OpenType Pro character set and large language support, perfectly serving the most common typographic needs.

In 1905 Berthold released an engraved blackletter font called Prinzess Kupferstichschrift. Based on an old printed remnant, I revived this beautiful open-face fraktur and enriched it with several OpenType features. As usual in my blackletter fonts, the round ‘s’ lies on the number sign key, and a traditional number sign can be accessed via the Discretionary Ligature feature and typing 'N-r-period'. In this font you have also the possibility to turn I, V, X, L, C, D, and M into Roman numerals by activating the Stylistic Alternates feature. And last but not least, various useful ligatures polish up this font.

Got a favourite pair of jeans? I do, and I wear them every Friday when it's time to PAAAARTYYYY! Well, that was 30-something years ago, but the memory of those jeans lives happily in my mind :) The font, Friday Jeans is a happy-go-lucky sans font with inky edges and lively lines. Playful as a Friday night out!

Kewl is the result of being caught in the afterimage of one design project while conceptualizing another one. Just before finishing the final tests on Mrs Blackfort, the first of what became a long series of Charles Bluemlein fonts, some of the letters began morphing differently in my mind. The idea was to go on the heavier and more playful side, but with a South American sign letterer’s twist, rather than just good handwriting. I did some sketching, took some notes, then got busy with other projects. Some of that stuff eventually seeped into Candy Script and, to a lesser extent, the Whomp font. But it was only a matter of time before I got back to the original concept and finished it. Kewl is ideal for food packaging, book and music covers, magazines, and window splashes. Illustrations by Catriel Martinez.

It took me a long time, but I think I now understand why people of my generation and older feel the need to frame current events in an historical context or precedents, while most of the young couldn't care less about what happened ten years ago, let alone centuries back. After living for a few decades, you get to a point when time seems to be moving quite fast, and it’s humbling to see that your entire existence so far can be summed up in a paragraph or two which may or may not be useful to whoever ends up reading the stuff anyhow. I suppose one way to cope with the serenity of aging is trying to convince yourself that your life and work are really an extension of millenia of a species striving to accept, adapt to, and improve the human condition through advancing the many facets of civilization -- basically making things more understandable and comfortable for ourselves and each other while we go about doing whatever it is we are trying to do. And when you do finally convince yourself of that, history becomes a source of much solace and even a little premonition, so you end up spending more time there. Going far back into the history of what I do, one can easily see that for the most part it was ruled by the quill. Western civilization’s writing was done with quill pens for more than thirteen centuries and with newer instruments for about two. By the mid-18th century, the height of the quill experience, various calligraphy techniques could be discerned and writing styles were arranged in distinct categories. There are many old books that showcase the history of it all. I recommend looking at some whenever the urge comes calling and you have to get away from backlit worlds. Multiple sources usually help me get a better perspective on the range of a specific script genre, so many books served as reference to this quill font of mine. Late 17th century French and Spanish professional calligraphy guides were great aides in understanding the ornamental scope of what the scribes were doing back then. The French books, with their showings of the Ronde, Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets, were the ones I referenced the most. So I decided to name the font Auberge, a French word for hotel or inn, because I really felt like a guest in different French locales (and times) when I going through all that stuff. Because it is multi-sourced, Auberge does not strictly fit in a distinct quill pen category. Instead, it shows strong hints of both Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets. And like most of my fonts, it is an exercise in going overboard with alternates, swashes, and ornamental devices. Having worked with it for a while, I find it most suitable for display calligraphic setting in general, but it works especially well for things like wine labels and event invitations. It also shines in the original quill pen application purpose, which of course was stationery. Also, as it just occurred to me, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to describe your entire life in 50 words or less, you may as well make it look good and swashy, so Auberge would probably be a good fit there as well. This is one quill script that no large bird had to die for. A few technical notes The Auberge Script Pro version includes 1800 glyphs, everything is included there. Also latin language support. We recommend you to use the latest design application to have full access to alternates, swashes, small caps, ornaments, etc. The images from the gallery uses this version. For better results use the fonts with “liga” feature on. Awards During 2014 the early develop of Auberge Script was chosen to be part of Tipos Latinos, the most important type exhibition in South America.

The simple song title "May I", found on the sheet music from the 1934 Bing Crosby-Carole Lombard film "We're Not Dressing" was hand lettered in a blocky, ultra-bold Art Deco design that foreshadowed the techno look of the 1970s and 1980s. This became the basis for Art Techno JNL.

The Greek font started from an experiment with designing fonts based on a geometric grid. I joined the points on the grid with straight lines to form the various characters and found that this resulted in a font that closely resembled Greek writing (derived from inscriptions carved in stone) of ancient times. I continued to develop this theme but I now accentuated the look and feel of Greek writing. The three styles shown are the results of this development. I did not kern or letterspace the individual letters since this would have been out of character with the orignal Greek writing. This means that the font is mono-spaced. At a later stage I may produce more refined and "modern" versions of these fonts. Surprisingly, the Greek SCF styles are very readable. The font is fully professional in terms of its character set. It contains over 235 characters - (upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals, symbols and accented characters are present). In fact, it has all the accented characters used in the major European languages.

“In some way I was Mr Mamoulian, and someone else was writing and drawing this stuff. He kept sending me these pages. I had to sign my name and pass them off as my own. I had no choice. He was holding my aged mother hostage, you see. I told him when the pages were due and he somehow got them to me. Sometimes he left them in secret locations. I don't remember them at all.” -- Brian Bolland Mr. Mamoulian has four weights with automatic alternating uppercase letters, Crossbar I Technology, and European, Vietnamese & Cyrillic language support.

Is there such a thing as an easy answer, or is it just because you know the question? Anyway, as a kindergarten teacher I like to make these quizzes with the kids. The object of the game is not to answer right, but to get a feeling of knowing a lot. I thought of these questions as being logical and really easy, but I also found out that it is a great way for the kids to remember and recall their knowledge! This font is easy to read, even if you use some of the many choices of swashes!

Minimal, modular, modern—at first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of the »future«. Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the egdes – like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »egdy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentation all on information in a nonconfomist way. Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-set-principle. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects or highlighting within the letters. For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch – Lithos, designed by Koma Amok, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

This typeface was inspired in my dragon drawings, I like dragons and I thought in designing a special font with that inspiration. As the picture tells it, I gave a beveled shape to its terminals, looking like brush traces. Some characters are intentionally opened to give it a distinctive appearance. The number "3" has a different form, combining a wide angle and an opened circle, variating the way to make it. This font is special for some titles and it can even be used in comic dialogues.

I really like creating script fonts. Why, I hear you say? Well, creating script fonts lets me be me. I am not trying to create classy, connected fonts for you to write love letters with: there are already too many of those available and quite frankly, I just don't like them. I prefer the messy script fonts - uneven, no real baseline and with a bit of splatter or rough edges for good measure. Daft script is one of these messy script fonts: it was handmade and it comes with two alternates for the lower case glyphs that cycle as you type. This is an all-caps font, so that means you have 4 options per letter! I also love languages (I speak 6), so Daft Script comes with fantastic language support, including Vietnamese and Sami.

Personally I think a brush font should have the word ‘Brush’ in its name. It’s not that easy finding a name - you need some magic to come up with a good one! Magical Brush is a completely handmade font. I used a small brush (a number 3 to be precise) and Chinese Ink. I wanted just a little ‘erosion’, so I used copier paper rather than my expensive French water color paper (which is quite rough). Magical Brush comes in the normal variant and a chickenpox one. Use it for your posters, your book covers and your Christmas invitations!

Sometimes you need things organised in a neat way. Organic Tuesday has that, but also a will to break free at the same time. Years ago I was at a restaurant where the menu was handwritten with a clumsy, but characteristic and charming, monospaced font. I must have focused so much on these letters that I can’t recall what I actually ate. But what I do remember is that it was a Tuesday, and the restaurant was organic!

I am somewhat of a bargain hunter. Not at all cost, mind you, but I like a discount! Having said that, I guess I am not a true bargain hunter, because I only buy stuff I need; not because it is a bargain. I also refuse to buy fake items or products that are unsustainably produced. Bargain Hunter is a font I made with a cheap pencil (a bargain!) and my trusted Chinese Ink (environment friendly). It comes with a set of alternates and all the accents you need. And at this price, it is a genuine bargain!

Ribbonetter is an experimental font playing with the calt or contextual alternatives feature of OpenType. This feature alternates letters in ovals with letters in hourglass shapes to create a banner. The letters in the ovals will be determined by the start of the line, whether it starts by typing an upper-case or lower-case letter. Using layers, background color can be added (dot accent and ring characters) or the outline color can be changed (sterling and yen characters). The font may also be useful with the contextual alternatives turned off. Different amounts of character spacing may give interesting results. With default character spacing, ovals with will overlap. If you are typing numbers and want the start to be an oval, switch on OpenType style set 2. In at least one word processor (Pages 5 for Macintosh) the carriage return adds the shape assigned to the space character. If you encounter this, try adding a nonbreaking space (option-space on the Macintosh) before the carriage return.

There are a few professions in which being left-handed confers an advantage-think of the great southpaw pitchers in major league baseball, like Sandy Koufax. Now, think of all the great left-handed calligraphers. Not so easy, right? Here's a hint: Luis Siquot. Far from being an advantage, Siquot's lefty orientation proved a hurdle to overcome. When I was young, I had serious problems writing," he recalls. "If there was a lot of text, I almost always soiled the paper with wet ink as my hand followed the pen." Then, a friend told Siquot about a special store in London that catered to left-handed people. It was there that he found an Osmiroid pen specially designed for left-handed calligraphers. ITC Cali is based on Siquot's use of this pen. "Electronic scans of my calligraphy were the foundation of the design," he says. "I was careful to leave in some imperfections to avoid an excessively mechanical look, and added the little notches in the strokes to imitate the texture of writing on a rough cotton paper." ITC Cali works equally well in text and display sizes, but it is a calligraphic script, Siquot warns, "and shouldn't be set in all capitals." That said, ITC Cali is a remarkably versatile design, well-suited to a variety of communication projects."

Rottko is a strong, static grotesque. Round shapes tend to square. The smooth silhouette of the letters contrasts with the clear rhythm of the composition. Diagonal strokes are a bright accent. The font contains a standard set of Latin, mathematical symbols. Rottko is designed for poster slogans and bright headlines. This typeface suit for modern logo and branding. It's clear and memorable. The family set consist 12 style.

Inspired in the world of the fast-food, my aim with Burger was to achieve a sexy slab serif font. Since it's not very common to see slabs with swashes I consider this project as an experiment with interesting results. In order to mantain an even weight on the written word, all the glyphs including the swashy ones had to look like compact blocks: This makes the font work much better used with almost no leading, as seen in posters above. Despite the formal look of its genre, this slab serif is also very playful and unique. (Maybe unhealthy food deserves better fonts already, right?) Taste Burger, come on, give it a try! On a more personal note: Why I made this font? Some months ago I started the gym and with it, an strict diet to see some results faster... Maybe my temptation is being, in Lacanian terms, "sublimated" by making delicious and unhealthy fonts.

Basque is a delicate nineteenth-century upright typeface of angular appearance, reminiscent of Black Letter scripts. The letterforms of the Basque font do not flow, but are made up of straight lines joined to form a rigid shape.

Sutro Deluxe is a bold slab serif with a double drop shadow. It was originally conceived as a simple black and white display alphabet. But it seemed unfinished, begging for something more. I decided to try adding a couple layers of fill and detail to try and make it interesting. The result is this five-layer chromatic font family. The Primary Font is the Main Font. The other fonts ( Fill, Inline Fill, Inline and Shaded Inline) only exist to support the Primary Font.There is some color trapping going on.To make sure you are laying the fonts on top of one another in the optimum order, I recommend the free PDF User Manual. The downloadable PDF Sutro Deluxe User Manual is in the Gallery section for this family.

A very legible Renaissance Antiqua This typeface is based on the desire to create an Antiqua like those which might have existed at the beginning of the »printing age« — the basic form oriented on the classical Roman and early Middle Ages models, the ductus defined completely by writing with a wide pen and much individual expression in detail. In the spring of 2005 I had the opportunity to closely examine a few pages in the famous book »Hypnerotomachia Poliphili« from 1499. The script used here from Aldus Manutius is exemplary. Most of the book, however, is not very carefully printed. The characters do not stay on the line; the print is at times too strong and at times much too weak. And on these imperfect pages the true character of the letters is recognizable; that is, that they are cut with lively detail which is a result of the patterns provided by full-time writers. After all, around 1499 script was written as a rule and the printed type was oriented on this pattern. I prefer the typeface on the lightly printed pages. The characters are not placed neatly on the line, but the distinct and emerging lively ductus of the individual characters automatically presents harmonious word formations in the eye of the beholder, with the non-perfect line stepping into the background. Also in Charpentier Renaissance, the strokes of the wide pen are still noticeable. The font has very defined softly bent serifs. The forms are powerful and stand solidly on the baseline. Charpentier Renaissance is very legible and yields a solid and yet still lively line formation. The accompanying italic, like its historical models, has almost no inclination. The lower case characters of Charpentier Renaissance Oblique have such idiosyncratic figures that they can also form a font of their own. Please visit www.ingofonts.com

I'm always experimenting with new ideas for display fonts. I took the inside counter of a capital 'O', divided it into quarters, and applied an outline stroke to all the elements. By removing two quarters of the inside counter I had the beginnings for an interesting new design. Of course, the hard part was getting all the other letters in the alphabet to work well together using this approach. It's often a labor of love trying to shape an idea into a new typeface. I find the entire process stimulating and rewarding.

AlphaBravo was born on a napkin. I was just doodling, playing around with letterforms when the ballpoint glided a little bit too far and suddenly I had my first letter with the dash sticking out on the left of the e’s horizontal line. I quickly checked on how many letters I could let a line stick out! Then I wrote a couple of words that way and letters joined in the most unusual places, creating new closed forms. I gave the font a try and quickly discovered, that I had stumbled onto an interesting new typeface. I didn't know how to call it, so I simply used the first two letters of the alphabet, Alpha and Bravo. Looking forward to Charlie and Delta, your very curious, Gert Wiescher.

This is a series that takes unfinished typefaces that were either previously ideated but not realized or were close to completion but left incomplete due to dissatisfaction with certain aspects, and brings them to completion. "Oorrnnoott" was originally a project named "Petitgothiquemignon" or "Sangoth". In the process of refining "Kropotokin", several ideas were incorporated into the design. Well, I say "incorporated," but it was designed on a whim, as usual. After all, it was started around 2005, and I don't usually leave notes or anything (which isn't the best habit), so I don't remember the emotions or thoughts behind its creation. Please consider this typeface as a very typical sans-serif font, as that is what I was aiming for when I excavated it this time. Please use it for body text, headlines, eye-catching designs, or whatever you like.

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.