Why Baka Expert? There’s actually a simple answer. The original Baka was done as an experiment of sorts. I wanted to quickly capture a rough, frenetic handwriting style that broke normal conventions. Commercially, it was successful, received some accolades ... but I wasn’t completely satisfied, so I went back to the master art and the lettering explorations and produced Baka Too. This addressed some of the line items I wanted to refine in Baka. I liked it. Each font has been out for a few years now, and I have seen them in use. I’m very critical of my work, and I could still see things—modulations of strokes, angle of the nib, ink swell, and so on—that I wanted to change, refine, and reorder. For me, it is typographic indulgence, but I wanted to take this handwriting ‘font’ and turn it into a robust ‘typeface.’ So I did just that and a bit more by adding back more of my initial flourish concepts; attaining tighter, consistent control of the modulation; optimizing points; adding titling options; and expanding the character language set. Baka and Baka Too had to exist to produce this entirely new re-envisioning of an old friend ... and they all play well together :)

A complete figurative alphabet was published by one Peter Flotner (ca. 1485-1546) in 1534. In Flotner’s alphabet, naked or nearly-naked figures are posed singly or disposed in pairs to form the various letters. Unlike de Grassi’s alphabet, we find only human figures here, no other animals. And unlike Tory’s illustrations, these letters seem an end in themselves, rather than the means of demonstrating a design strategy. Flotner’s alphabet was imitated by other engravers. The letters G and N are reproduced from an alphabet published by one Martin Weygel in Bavaria in 1560. Peter Flötner , c.1485-1546, German medalist and artisan, possibly Swiss by birth. He was active in decorative sculpture, wood carving, and other crafts, making medals and plaques and furnishing designs of classical motifs for silversmiths. He was in Nuremberg by 1522 and did most of his work there, although he made two trips to Italy. Flötner is now regarded as a pioneer of the German Renaissance. His Kunstbuch was published in 1549. In the Metropolitan Museum are five of his bronze plaques illustrating biblical episodes. A stylistical tip : Use this caps with SchneiderBuchDeutsch, as shown in the banners above, to create a perfect historiated layout.

"I digitized and to revitalize NurnbergSchwabacher by the extinct Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei, a German/Swiss foundry established in 1790 and based in Basel/Münchenstein. Many of its shares were acquired by D. Stempel in 1927. On the Luc Devroye site this foundry is listed on the Extinct Foundries of the 18th century page. This design is very similar to another Intellecta best seller: Hostetler Fette Ultfraktur Ornamental, both drawn from the classical type specimen book from Hostetler. The ornamental frame that completes the font is a fantastic baroque ornament that I found in another old book, unfortunately lost now. Luc Devroye, whose book is the source for all of my fonts, writes this about Rudolf Hostettler: He was a Swiss type designer, author of “The Printer’s Terms” designed by Jan Tschichold, of "Technical Terms of the Printing Industry" (5th edition was printed in 1995), and of "Type: eine Auswahl guter Drucktypen; 80 Alphabete klassischer und moderner Schriften" (Teufen, Ausser-Rhoden: Niggli, 1958). He also wrote "Type: A Selection of Types" (1949, fgm books, R. Hostettler, E. Kopley, H. Strehler Publ., St. Gallen and London) in which he highlights type made by European houses such as Haas, Enschedé, Deberny and Nebiolo. Jost Hochuli wrote his biography.

Bambusa Pro is a sturdy expressive modern calligraphy family of 4 fonts: Regular, Bold, Basic and Ornaments. It owes its name to the bamboo pen that was used to draw all of the characters and swashes. The typical ink-strokes of the bamboo pen give Bambusa Pro a distinctively different appearance than dip pen calligraphy fonts like Salt & Spices Pro. Similarities between the two are a wide variety of long swashes that connect to the first and last letter of a sentence or name. But with Bambusa Pro this even goes for accented characters, and all upper and lower case letters. Together with five different connecting spaces you can create phrases that look as if the pen was never lifted from the paper. Like Stylist Pro all characters of Bambusa Pro connect to each other, both lower case and upper case letters and vice versa. Bambusa Pro Basic also is hand-lettered with a bamboo pen, but is a lot more straight forward. It combines beautifully with the connected styles Regular and Bold. On top of that Bambusa Pro Ornaments offers 100+ glyphs for additional designs possibilities. Enjoy! You will need an opentype savvy application to get the most out of Bambusa Pro.

Novel Pro is the humanist Antiqua typeface family within the largely extended award winning Novel Collection, also containing Novel Sans Pro, Novel Sans Hair, Novel Sans Condensed Pro, Novel Display, Novel Display Condensed, Novel Display Extra Condensed, Novel Display Compressed, Novel Display Extra Compressed, Novel Mono Pro, Novel Sans Rounded Pro and Novel Sans Office Pro. Classic proportions of a Renaissance Antiqua combined with modern details let Novel appear as a friendly and elegant but functional typeface. The almost upright letters of the narrow Italics create a vital contrast to the generous construction of the roman. All typeface families of the Novel Collection have a carefully attuned character design and a well balanced weight contrast. The fine gradation of 12 weights enable designers to create fine legible typography and combine the design with other members of the Novel Collection to reach highest quality in typography. Novel Pro [914 glyphs] comes in 12 styles and contains small caps, an extra set of alternate glyphs, many ligatures, lining figures [proportionally spaced and monospaced], hanging figures [proportionally spaced and monospaced], small caps figures [proportionally spaced and monospaced], positive and negative circled figures for upper and lower case, superior and inferior figures, fractions, extensive language support, arrows for uppercase and lowercase and many more OpenType™ features.

Idealista directly responds to its other members, Nudista and Kulturista. It shares the same proportions and the same set of weights, yet it enriches the expression means of the two typefaces with new themes — the character set is smooth, even round, and it boasts a number of special details and perky moves. Most of all, Idealista relishes juicy magazine titles, typographic logotypes and propagandist posters. Unlike cold, technicist typefaces, it has great zest for life, so there's no wonder that in each of the letters, intuition wins over intellect. Owing to this, the text set in Idealista has a special voluptuous quality and unmistakable temperament — in a single typeface Idealista combines the best of sans-serif, slab-serif, as well as geometric and calligraphic construction principles, coming down to one impressive, expressive cocktail. Some letters have serifs, some do not, some are sharp, some are smooth, and all this results in the nice hip-hop beat of the line of text. The typeface has five weights and ten styles in total, so it can easily accommodate to the needs of complex texts, unlike many of its display counterparts. Idealista is valuable partner for the more text-suited Nudista and, if need for tiny sizes arises, to Kulturista as well.

While searching through microfilm of an old, 1932 newspaper, I stumbled on the word "Poultry" written with trapezoidal letters. I did not recall seeing lettering like this and it inspired me to design a typeface that could produce a similar result. Poultry Sign has two widths each with three weights giving the family six styles. It is monoline, monospaced, and all caps. The letters on the lower-case keys reverse the trapezoid of those on the upper-case keys. The designer's expectation is that the most common use for this typeface will alternate upper-case and lower-case keys, and to make this effect easy, included in the font is a contextual alternatives (calt) OpenType feature that automatically produces this result if your word processor supports this feature. To get text with all letters with big bottoms or all letters with with big tops, this feature must be turned off. The spacing of the letters is identical within each width so the styles can be layered to produce bi-colored or tri-colored letters. There is a second set of numbers that can be accessed with an OpenType stylistic alternative. Also accessible with OpenType stylistic alternatives are variations of letters T, N, L, Y, and V.

VetteLetters is proud to bring you the TpKurier-family. It is cooked up by our German chef Martin Lorenz currently living in lovely Barcelona! Chef Lorenz about the TpKurier recipe: “TpKurier is the second redesign we did of Courier. The first redesign in 2000, although based on a five-unit grid, was drawn completely by hand. Six years later we designed another grid version of Courier, and the TpKurier family was born. This version is completely constructed up till its last detail. We didn't want to correct ‘mistakes’ deriving from the use of the grid, but instead make them visible (see “S”). TpKurier is based on a very simple grid, composed a proportion of four units high by two units wide. A series of other links between them make it possible to form a font from this grid. We felt it was important to consistently work within these limitations so that any unexpected asperities would help provide the font with its character. Even though it is a rough constructed typeface it was important to us to design real italic lower case letters and not just a sloped roman (see “a”, “g” or “s”). The first family published contained a serif and sans-serif version of the TpKurier, with italic and bold.”

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. A few of the many interpretations from the early twentieth century were true to the source, as well as strong enough to last into the digital era. Caslon Black was designed by Dave Farey in the ITC library.

Scharf is a sturdy serif of eight weights with matching true italics. Accurate serif details are carefully drawn to allow improvements to readability and further enhance the fonts' fluid and dynamic personality. This extensive type system is purposefully suited for editorial design and complex typographic hierarchy. Details include eight weights with matching true italics, over 950 characters per font with alternative lowercase a, e, g and y, eight variations of numerals, true small caps with accents, discretionary ligatures and language support covering Western, South and Central European and Vietnamese.