Breaking the cycle of homelessness We are partnered with The House of St. Barnabas, a private members club in Soho Square, whose work as a not for profit charity aims to break the cycle of homelessness in London. Each purchase (of the family pack) comes with a one month membership to The House and 100% of the proceeds from sales of fonts go directly to the charity to help their essential work. This unique collection of 7 typefaces is based on the disappearing signs of Soho, at risk of being lost forever due to the ever changing landscape of the area. By re-imaging the signage as complete fonts, we have rescued this rich visual history from the streets and present the typefaces into a contemporary context for a bright optimistic future. FS Berwick Thanks to its humble tiled origins, this Egyptian serif type maintains a uniform character width, creating the irregular letter proportions found in the final alphabet. Broad-shouldered, the bracketed serifs firmly ground the font, whilst its extreme hairlines become a necessity due to the uniform width. Of note is the upside down ‘S’, to be found on the original sign on Berwick Street. Perhaps due to its ceramic origins, there is a surprising ‘slippiness’ to its final appearance. FS Cattle Cattle & Son is best described as a wide, but not overly extended, grotesque-style sans serif, showing a uniform width and carrying a robust strength to its form. Whilst lightly functional overall, the purposeful diagonal legs of the ‘K’, ‘R’ and the tail of the ‘Q’ add an urgency to its appearance. The reduced size of the ampersand gives away Cattle & Son’s hand-painted origins, and the oblique compacted ‘LTD’ found on the original sign is also included in the final set. This beautiful sign is tucked away under an arch in Portland Mews, sheltering from the weather. Perhaps this is why it has lasted so long. FS Century This somewhat elongated set of Roman capitals was originally rendered in paint circa 1940, but its roots trace back to the Trajan Column in Rome. Witness the slightly unbalanced ‘W’ and the painter’s hand is revealed. Century’s flared serif style is extremely short, sharp and bracketed. The ‘M’ is splayed and has no top serifs. Century has a uniform appearance of width, probably due to its sign-written origins. Yet is elegant, classic and exudes sophistication. FS Charity A true Tuscan letterform, the original is located on The House of St. Barnabas in ceramic tiles and was revealed in all its broken glory in 2014. FS Charity retains the option of using these incorrect characters (try typing lowercase in the test drive above and compare with the more uniform uppercase characters). FS Charity features fishtailed terminals on its strokes, a curious branched ‘T’ and the ‘S’ displays tear-drop ends to its serifs. Almost uniform in width, the ‘A’, ‘M’ and ‘W’ are the widest characters in this set. FS Marlborough The elongated Marlborough features diagonal terminals to some characters and numerals. Also retained is the space-saving contracted ‘T’ glyph from the original sign, while the ‘R’ features a distinctive wedge-shaped leg. Highly individual in this form, similar signage appears around Soho, but featuring a variety of widths in their design. FS Portland The sister type to Cattle & Son, Portland is oblique rather than italic. The serifs are not overly long, yet still enhance its rather rigid cap height and baseline appearance. Its ‘A’ has a top serif, the ‘M’ is square and the ‘G’ foregoes any spur. Particularly delightful is the open ampersand. Numerals align to encourage the horizontal flavour of the oblique style. Overall, Portland is both confident and graceful. FS St James A lineal Continental style, St James also displays a true sense of ‘Londoness’ in its titling form, perhaps influenced by early Underground signage. Irregular letterforms display a continental flavour, particularly evident in its Deco style ‘W’, ampersand and numerals. The rather high cross bar in the ‘A’ is also reflected in the raised middle strokes of the ‘M’. Noteworthy are the distinctive unions found on all of the characters and the additional small caps. The original lettering is still located on Greek St.

As a late work the “Meier Kapitalis” forms an arch within the typographic creations of the Swiss type designer Hans Meier who died in 2014. The first sketches of this typeface can be found in the teaching manual “The Development of Script and Type” (German: “Die Schriftentwicklung”; French “Le développement des caractères”) which was published in 1994, however, under the title “Roman Lapidary, 1st Century”. The booklet was first published by the Syntax Press, Cham, Switzerland and contains an introduction by Max Caflisch in which he writes: „The present work, „The Development of Script and Type“ is a concise, authoritative textbook, concentrating on the essentials in a wide survey from ancient Greek inscriptions to the printer’s typefaces of the present day. His (Meier’s) 72 varieties of letterforms enable the student or general reader to understand the history of script and type, while more than 60 of his own calligraphic specimens provide excellent models for all who practice this art.“ Unfortunately, the “Meier Kapitalis” is one of the few typeface families in this publication which has been digitized. It was to be the last type project fully realized by Meier. In cooperation with Elsner+Flake, the typeface family was developed and expanded and now contains the four cuts: Roman, Medium, Demi Bold and Bold with either a complement of characters for 78 Latin-based languages (EL=EuropaPlus) or in West-Layout.

We cannot imagine anyone not liking beer. Especially on a warm summer night there is simply little that can top an ice cold brewski. And with the current wave of home-brewed ales and lagers, Vette Letters decided to not stay behind and brew its own brand. Just so we can design our own beer bottle label using our own font. VLNL Thueringer comes from the drawing board of Jacques Le Bailly (a.k.a. Baron von Fonthausen), the German-French specialist in the fields of both beer and type design. One day Jacques got inspired by Albrecht Dürers 15th century Fraktur (blackletter) alphabet, and decided to design a contemporary rounded version of it. Although the historic context is clearly visible, Thueringer definitely stands its own ground. It's a modern techno-style blackletter with a (beer)truckload of interesting design details. Thueringer contains a number of ligatures and an alternate set of numbers. Apart from the regular uses like logos, posters, flyers and headlines we definitely would like to see our Thueringer used on beer bottle labels and crates, but also cafés and hipster bars would do well with this modern-day blackletter. Hell, even wine or liquor labels, football team jerseys, Oktoberfest flyers, it's just too much to mention. As long as it is accompanied by a cold beer.

Anna Clara can be dressed up or down, as fancy as you wanna be. On its own, it’s an organic script, with the fine hairlines, thick swells, and slightly undulating baseline found in modern casual calligraphy. Add swashes, and Anna Clara becomes a bit more playful and festive. Each capital letter has a flourished alternate—great for displays or headings, or to add emphasis to a particular section of text. For OpenType-aware software users, Anna Clara also features ten pairs of swashes that can be added to the beginning or end of any lowercase letter, for a custom flourished look. Illustrator and InDesign users can access extra swashes and banners by using the glyph panel. Photoshop users: These characters can be accessed via the “Ornaments” feature in your OpenType panel - try non-numeric punctuation marks and accents for swashes. For banners, type catchwords followed by an asterisk. “Asterisk asterisk” will produce a blank banner that you can use to create your own. Included catchwords are “and”, “at”, “by”, “for”, “from”, “of”, “the”, “to”, “with”, "l'", “le”, “la”, “el”, “et”, and “y”. Roman numerals can be used in the “Ornaments” feature by typing their respective keyboard characters “I”, “II”, “III”, etc. - followed by an asterisk. An ampersand (&) followed by one or two asterisks produces two special “and” characters.