A very expanded sans serif font in capital letters inspired by the inscription on a bank note Old bank notes tend to have a very typical typography. Usually they carry decorative and elaborately designed markings. For one thing, they must be practically impossible to forge and for another, they should make a respectable and legitimate impression. And in the days of copper and steel engravings, that meant nothing less than creating ornate, shaded or otherwise complicated scripts. Designing the appropriate script was literally in the hands of the engraver. That’s why I noticed this bank note from 1948. It is the first 20 mark bill in the then newly created currency ”Deutsche Mark.“ All other bank notes of the 1948 series show daintier forms of typography with an obvious tendency toward modern face. The 1949 series which followed shortly thereafter reveals the more complicated script as well. For whatever reason, only this 20 mark bill displays this extremely expanded sans serif variation of the otherwise Roman form applied. This peculiarity led me in the year 2010 to create a complete font from the single word ”Banknote.“ Back to those days in the 40’s, the initial edition of DM bank notes was carried out by a special US-American printer who was under pressure of completing on time and whose engravers not only engraved but also designed. So that’s why the bank notes resemble dollars and don’t even look like European currency. That also explains some of the uniquely designed characters when looked at in detail. Especially the almost serif type form on the letters C, G, S and Z, but also L and T owe their look to the ”American touch.“ The ingoFont Banknote 1948 comprises all characters of the Latin typeface according to ISO 8859 for all European languages including Turkish and Baltic languages. In order to maintain the character of the original, the ”creation“ of lower case letters was waived. This factor doesn’t contribute to legibility, but this kind of type is not intended for long texts anyway; rather, it unfolds its entire attraction when used as a display font, for example on posters. Banknote 1948 is also very suitable for distortion and other alien techniques, without too much harm being done to the characteristic forms. With Banknote 1948 ingoFonts discloses a font like scripts which were used in advertising of the 1940’s and 50’s and were popular around the world. But even today the use of this kind of font can be expedient, especially considering how Banknote 1948, for its time of origin, impresses with amazingly modern detail.

Maison Luxe is a revival of a very old font designed in France in or around the year 1820. You may have seen this font in the past under the names of Circus, Roma, Madame and Gillé Classic. As of November 2016 we have changed the name of this font from Gillé Classic to Maison Luxe which means Luxury House in French. For many years Joseph Gillé was credited as the original designer of this font however we've recently been contacted by a type historian in France reporting that he could not find any evidence supporting Joseph Gillé as the designer and to the best of his knowledge an artist by the name of Sylvestre may be the true designer. If you love this classic font then you're sure to enjoy the alternate version also with a matching lowercase available from FontMesa under the name of Home Style. This version of the classic with its squared off shadow is true to the original design where Home Style has diagonal lines creating a cast shadow. New in 2016 for Maison Luxe is a new matching lowercase, an uppercase German Double S (versal eszett), Greek character set, opentype features including case sensitive forms and old style numerals. We know you'll enjoy the new additions to this timeless classic design.

Religions are filled with signs and symbols. Some of them, like the the star of David and the Swastika-Rune received other significance during the third Reich. The superimposition of these two shapes creates the basis for this font. Matchwerk is a font, that critically questions and recalls the darkest chapter of our history.

The pattern for this typeface was suggested by a poster for beer, designed by German artist Ludwig Hohlwein around 1920. The plump curvy serifs suggested a great complement to beer, hot dogs, and thus the name translates roughly to “weiner wagon.” Prosit! Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

'HU Retroround' is a font that captures the feel of the retro typefaces used on signboards during Korea's modernization era. This font has a variable function, allowing users to fine-tune the thickness they want. (Available only in Adobe programs.) Six basic weights are provided so that they can be used even in programs that do not apply the variable function.

This is a modern font inspired in Avant Garde Gothic Latin font. There are 8 ligatures and You can type the Nekudot in them This font is for logos, covers and small texts This font has the modern Hebrew punctuation: Shevana, Kamatz Katan, Dagesh Hazak, and Cholam Chaser.

is a font from the sans serif family that is bold and bold and has character, an update from the previous “Akira Monoletter” font. This font was made to support the languages ​​of countries that require a dialogue arrangement of letters that have special marks. thus forming this special font. thank you

Tom Lincoln's award-winning type design work since the 1960s has been one way or another of expressing his fascination for the Roman majuscules inscribed at the base of the Trajan Column in Rome. This time he has really outdone himself by bringing us Roma, a definitive, contemporary, mature sans serif expression of those majuscules. With Roma, Lincoln is not satisfied with simply creating a proper "Trajan Sans". He goes on to make it a family of four weights, with built-in small caps and oldstyle figures, then he really goes to town with the options he makes available for shading and multi-color settings. Precise renderings of the Roma capitals are provided in different fonts that can function individually or be layered atop each other for two- or three-color treatments. The Roma family comes with extended language support that spans the majority of Latin-based languages. For more information on the design, complete character sets, technological features, and print tests, consult the accompanying PDF.

I have seen my share of badly stuffed animals. Most of them via pictures, but also on vacations here and there. They all had this really bad handcraft vibe, but at the same time some really ordinary and kind of cute looks. I did my best to capture this look and feeling in my Badly Stuffed Animal font: clumsy letters made with a blobbly pen, with naive and irregular lines - and the conclusion is something super useful for a project that needs an organic handmade look!

This sans serif font carries the flair and mood our Schneidler Latein font family. The calligraphic appearance and the human sound are evident thanks to the preservation of some significant broad edged pen elements. The forms are reduced to the subtle level where they are simplified, but the essence still remains. The expressive and artistic expression of the Schneidler Latein continues to work like a background melody. Together they build a superfamily that works perfectly in combination with each other. More weights will follow soon.

HWT Etta is a fun display typeface that has two styles: East and West! Its two variations ensure you have maximum wood type swagger in every display size that you might want. This fresh design takes a cue from the wild design experimentation that was happening in the heyday of mid 19th Century wood type—but filtered through 1960s photo-type sensibilities and served up for today’s design needs. Etta West is a decorative inline style and the Etta East is a whimsical reverse contrast style. They live together harmoniously, with their own specific flavors. Practically speaking, both styles are intended for display use, so use them big and use them proudly! Set your XXL size titles in West and your L to XL size types in East. As different as they might look at first, both fonts share a common DNA—Don’t be shy about using them together. The HWT Etta font is part of the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum’s Type Legacy Project. In keeping with the project, Etta is named after Etta Shove Hamilton, who was J.E. Hamilton’s wife and the company’s first bookkeeper.

We are proud to present the futuristic Excelancer font. This font was inspired by passion for space stories. The uniqueness of this font lies in the rare combination of a wibrant style of decorative capital letters and perfectly balanced lowercase charachters that read well in any massive text. Thus, you get a universal font kit with which all the tasks of futuristic design are solved. However, this font will become a decoration not only for fantastic stories, but also for everything related to technology, development, progress and even sports. In short, this is the pure energy of the future!

Banco was the first typeface work of French designer Roger Excoffon and was released in 1952. The strong forms look as though they were rolled out of sheet metal and feature upright, tapering strokes. The slight slant, the varying heights of stroke ends, and the relationships between line and curve give Banco font its sense of liveliness and dynamism. Excoffon did not design a matching lower case alphabet for his capitals, but this was accomplished later by Phill Grimshaw, who also designed the light weight. He deliberately 'underdesigned' the lower case forms, producing a more reserved alphabet based on the design ideas of the original.

Very close thematically and in style to the rest of our “whimbats” (the Absurdies, Bizarries, Illustries, Genteta and Whimsies series), the Ombres contain a number of peculiar silhouettes and illustrations of people that range from cute to scary, with everything in between. Ombres offers152 pictures in 3 files. These imaginary characters were produced with different techniques: quick pencil sketches, ink, watercolour, though once digitized and simplified to bring them into the font files there is little apparent difference. The silhouettes, rather than flat shadows are more dimensional in their look, because they have been digitized retaining the original brushwork or pencil strokes of their source drawings. Some of them remind of the venerable tradition of metal stock cuts from vintage type foundries. The digitized results are quite different, but the energetic nature of the subjects has been mantained. Their vectorial file format means you can use them at any size with no loss of quality. Every Ombres dingbat offers ready-made images for a variety of creative projects. They can be used as they come or easily customized in any graphics program. At small sizes they are ideal spot illustrations with a whimsical touch; at large sizes they can bring a whole page, a spread or even a big poster to live.

The 2nd installment of the Enchanted Land family takes us on another medieval adventure, opting to completely rebuild instead of refining the legacy script. More emphasis was put into the undulating nature of the Uppercase characters and how they keep your eyes flowing. For this reason, straight lines and right angles are rarely used in favor of flamboyant terminals and wispy swashes. Lowercase characters, by contrast, adhere to a consistent model defined by its straightened edges and sharp corners. This script flirts with several old world styles but seeks only to borrow elements rather than completely emulate them. German Blackletter, Old English, Uncial, Victorian, it’s in there! Enchanted Land DS would work well in a book, video game, or medieval signage. This family is equipped with Basic Latin, Extended Latin, ligatures, punctuation, a few alternates, and kerning.

New Lincoln Gothic is an elegant sanserif, generous in width and x-height. There are twelve weights ranging from Hairline to UltraBold and an italic for each weight. At the stroke ends are gentle flares, and some of the round characters possess an interesting and distinctive asymmetry. The character set supports Central Europe, and there are three figure sets, extended fractions, superior and inferior numbers, and a few alternates, all accessible via OpenType features. Back in 1965, Thomas Lincoln had an idea for a new sanserif typeface, a homage of sorts, to ancient Roman artisans. The Trajan Column in Rome, erected in 113 AD, has an inscription that is considered to be the basis for western European lettering. Lincoln admired these beautiful letterforms and so, being inspired, he set out to design a new sanserif typeface based on the proportions and subtleties of the letters found in the Trajan Inscription. Lincoln accomplished what he set out to do by creating Lincoln Gothic. The typeface consisted only of capital letters. Lincoln intentionally omitted a lowercase to keep true his reference to the Trajan Inscription, which contains only magiscule specimens. The design won him the first Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) National Typeface Competition in 1965. The legendary Herb Lubalin even used it to design a promotional poster! All this was back in the day when typositor film strips and photo type were all the rage in setting headlines. Fast forward now to the next millennium. Thomas Lincoln has had a long, illustrious career as a graphic designer. Still, he has one project that feels incomplete; Lincoln Gothic does not have a lowercase. It is the need to finish the design that drives Lincoln to resurrect his prize winning design and create its digital incarnation. Thus, New Lincoln Gothic was born. Lacking the original drawings, Lincoln had to locate some old typositor strips in order to get started. He had them scanned and imported the data into Freehand where he refined the shapes and sketched out a lowercase. He then imported that data into Fontographer, where he worked the glyphs again and refined the spacing, and started generating additional weights and italics. His enthusiasm went unchecked and he created 14 weights! It was about that time that Lincoln contacted Bitstream about publishing the family. Lincoln worked with Bitstream to narrow down the family (only to twelve weights), interpolate the various weights using three masters, and extend the character set to support CE and some alternate figure sets. Bitstream handled the hinting and all production details and built the final CFF OpenType fonts using FontLab Studio 5.

Allen Zuk has designed this wacky typeface that he calls KOOKY. Each character has three variants that bounce about the baseline. The effect is a randomly casual appearance that is great for headlines. The OpenType version does this automatically by using contextual alternates in applications that recognize this option.

This font is based on real prints made out of a linocut. The glyphs were handprinted, then scanned and then turned into a computer font.

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Animated types like this one have been around for fifty or more years. They certainly add a sense of liveliness to a headline. This one trades upon the "wrong way weights" of the old French Clarendon. Think of it as Barnum with Bounce.

In 1925, at the request of Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, the foundry he worked for, Oswald Bruce Cooper designed a wide selection of "screamers", oversized exclamation points used to grab attention in display advertising. The foundry rushed the screamers into production, much to Cooper's dismay. Cooper was disappointed with the final form of the screamers– they were designed in assorted weights to match the assorted Cooper series of typefaces, as well as in a variety of other formal solutions- squaredoff, incised, wavy, Tuscan, and rounded. Cooper's working design methodology was to re-draw his projects a number of times in order to refine the formal results. However the screamer project was hastily cut by the head of BB&S's matrix engraving room in fourteen sizes from the initial sketches, causing Cooper to fire off a fiery missive stating, "Everything I draw is bum the first half-dozen times I draw it; the trouble with these is that I drew them only once!" This typeface is the result of researching Cooper's original drawings and series of engraved proofs for the screamers, as well as the original Screamer type specimen. Cooper Screamers have never been available before in digital format.

Ice Creamery is a new variation of our Saloon Girl font family complete with italics and fill fonts which may be used to layer different colors into the open parts of each glyph. We don’t recommend using the fill fonts for Ice Creamery as stand alone solid fonts, Ice Creamery Chocolate was designed as a the stand alone solid font for this font family. Fill fonts go back to the 1850's where they would design matched sets of printing blocks and the layering of colors took place on the printing press, they would print a page in black then on a second printing they would print a solid letter in red or blue over the letters with open spaces to fill them in. Most of the time the second printing didn't line up exactly to the open faced font and it created a misprinted look. With the fill fonts in Ice Creamery and other FontMesa fonts you have the option to perfectly align the fill fonts with the open faced fonts or shift it a little to create a misprinted look which looks pretty cool in some projects such as t-shirt designs. I have some ice cream making history in my family, my Grandfather Fred Hagemann was the manager of the ice cream plant for thirty years at Cock Robin Ice Cream and Burgers in Naperville IL. In the images above I've included an old 1960's photo of the Cock Robin Naperville location, the ice cream plant was behind the restaurant as seen by the chimney stack which was part of the plant. If you were to travel 2000 feet directly behind the Cock Robin sign in the photo, that's where I started the FontMesa type foundry at my home in Naperville. My favorite ice cream flavor was their green pistachio ice cream with black cherries, they called it Spumoni even though it wasn't a true Spumoni recipe. Their butter pecan ice cream was also incredibly good, the pecans were super fresh, their Tin Roof Sundae ice cream was chocolate fudge, caramel and peanuts swirled into vanilla ice cream. One unique thing about Cock Robin and Prince Castle was they used a square ice cream scoop for their sundaes.

Orkhon inscriptions (Orkhon inscriptions, Orkhon inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments (also known as Khoshoo Tsaidam, Koshu-Tsaidam or Höshöö Caidam) or Kul Tigin steles (simplified Chinese: 阙特勤碑; traditional Chinese: 闕特勤碑; pinyin: Què tèqín bēi )) They are two monumental installations written by the Göktürks in the Old Turkic alphabet in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia at the beginning of the 8th century. They were erected in honor of two Turkish princes Kül Tigin and his brother Bilge Kagan. Both Chinese and Old Turkish inscriptions describe the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese and their liberation by İlteriş Kağan. According to one source, the inscriptions contain "rhythmic and parallel passages" similar to those of epics. In the Old Turkish Alphabet, 38 letters are accepted academically and this pattern is generally used in the books. But there are more than 38 letters in this alphabet, these special letters are included in this font.

Dorriss girls were the dancing troop at the Moulin Rouge. I had the idea for this font while trying to come up with an alternative to beveling. I thought it would be interesting to create this sort of stepped effect as I've never really seen this treatment on a font before. Then my need to create chaos shows up again with Doriss Girls informal. A hand drawn take on the forms. This seemed like it would appear on an old art nouveau poster by the great Toulouse Lautrec, so there you have the genesis of this font. I've been somewhat compelled by the letterforms so I may expand and create a more normal version of this font someday with a range of weights. That would be the bees knees.

From the depths of an antique civilization is born "Nahual" inspired by my ancestral Prehispanic Culture, with traits that allows it to mimetize itself, hours of painstaking dirty work with the only goal to show all it knows we want to see, to finally give the Jaguar "Serifclaw" attack. This is a display fontface, it comes in two types, "Claw" basically the text font, and "Copete" that are the construction pieces for every single glyph of the entire font, this last also has the negative spaces of some glyphs (a, e, o, A, B, O, for example) I include them but I prefer the font without them. Comments are welcome! rodrigonabo@gmail.com

The Algerian designer Taouffik Semmad created the fonts in 1997. Taouffik Semmad grew up speaking Algerian-Arabic dialect and French, studied Russian, and is now living in Montreal. This could perhaps explain his current passion, to "find a universal writing", which he admits is a Utopian idea. Created with brush and Chinese ink, the characters of ITC Atmosphere came from Semmad's hand but only after they were fully formed in his mind's eye.

Naïve Inline is a layered serif handwritten font designed by Fanny Coulez and Julien Saurin in Paris. Our goal was to draw a font with finely irregular lines that give a human and whimsical feeling. We designed three weights to assure a good readability whatever the size. They can be enhanced with five different interior patterns and three shadows to improve your designs and bring a charming and unusual feeling. To do so, you can simply superimpose the layers with a compatible software like Photoshop, the weight above and the pattern(s) below, then choose a color for each. This font is part of our Naïve superfamily that contains lot of variations: Line, Inline, Serif, Sans Serif, and a special Art Deco one. Just click on our foundry name to see them all! We hope you will enjoy our work. Merci beaucoup!

Karlgeorg Hoefer designed Beneta in 1991, inspired by the Littera beneventana, the script of the Benedictine scribes from the 10th to the 12th century. During this time, scribes began to use wider pens and set them at a 45 degree angle to the paper, which caused their scripts to have radical stroke contrasts. This script was mainly used for books and certificates but disappeared by the end of the 13th century. Beneta revives the characteristics of this historic script, changing a line of text into an almost ornamental space. Beneta should be used in middle to larger point sizes for shorter texts and headlines.

One of my dreams as a type-designer was making a good looking chancery cursive. Full of life, like some of the best calligraphers around the world do on their artworks. With Julian Waters, John Stevens and Denis Brown (just to name a few of them) (1) chancery, or italic script, was transformed into a new, exciting and very fresh style of calligraphy mainly at the end of 20th Century. Dream Script may be that dream named above made true. I have been practicing chancery in the way I learnt from those calligraphers for many years now. Making a font out of my ink-sketches was a tough work, since they were closer of -being art- than of -being type-. However, this font rescues many aspects of handmade calligraphy: You have to look at it really close to notice it is actually a font, and that was one of my goals. The secret of a good looking chancery is on its subtle details: pen angle is constantly changing, even on the strokes which seem straight. Capitals and swashes have to be done a little faster than lowercase letters. The rhythm has to be even, in spite of its playful look. The fact that makes Dream look alive is that it has many alternates per glyph. This makes each word look unique like it happens in calligraphy: you will find alternates for the beginning/ending of a word/phrase, some for the middle of it, some interchangeable. Also, to accompany the script, you will find Dream Caps, which was inspired in the eternally beautiful trajan capitals. Place them like I did on the posters and you will have great results for sure. The font works great in small, middle and big sizes and can be a great selection for magazines, wedding invitations, perfumes, and posters. Close your eyes, and Dream with me... TECHNICAL Dream Script Pro is the most complete style, it contains all the alternates and ligatures (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) If you plan to use the font for text, be sure to activate the less decorative capitals, which are placed in the “salt” group of alternates. Dream Script Standard has less glyphs than the Pro one, it contains just some ligatures for a better legibility. (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) NOTES (1) Not only are they great artists, but also good people, who are always willing to share with their students all what they know. I would also like to thank Ricardo Rousselot, whose work inspired me this time to make “The Dream Script” exlibris; and to Alisara Tareekes, a very talented friend which international calligraphy conferences gave me: She kindly helped me with some tips to make this font better.

Cantiqe the rational serif with a circular/ball terminal and strong vertical contrast and fine horizontal hairlines, This makes Cantique a blend of elegant and beautiful. Cantiqe Incredibly versatile is perfect for fashion branding or editorial designs. this font fits a wide pool of designs, elevating them to the highest levels. Add this font to your favourite creative ideas and notice how it makes them come alive! Thank You _xdCreative

Spring has come is a stylish modern handwritten script. It has an unique, striking look which can be used to make any design stand out. Incredibly versatile, this font fits a wide pool of designs, elevating them to the highest levels. Add this font to your favorite creative ideas and notice how it makes them come alive! This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs.

Mesquite is a narrow Tuscan-style typeface designed at Adobe in 1990. Like older Tuscans from the 19th Century, Mesquite has elaborate, creative serif treatments-although the serifs are so unique that it is difficult to call them serifs anymore, they are more like pointy finials. A convex-concave-convex ornamental feature appears on the middle of each vertical and diagonal stroke. Together with the serifs" at the tops and bottoms of each stroke, this feature creates a "tri-band" pattern over text set in Mesquite. Mesquite is not a text face. Aside from its narrowness and decorative qualities, Mesquite has no lowercase. The font's uppercase glyphs have been directly copied and placed in the lowercase range."

Falstaff first appeared with Monotype in 1931, an alphabet in the style of a wide, bold antiqua that was especially popular in the first third of the 19th century. Such typefaces distinguished themselves through their consistent basis in the transitional antiqua style. They are characterized by their extremely fine unflexed serifs with no curve connecting them to the thick strokes. The numerals with their generous curves and ball-like stroke endings and beginnings are particularly decorative. The vertical strokes are dominant and give lines of this typeface a column-like and therefore static look. Falstaff is today often used for book titling, especially for mystery novels. It is best used sparingly in middle and larger point sizes.

Some words from the designer... The bold, playful element is everything in ITC Surfboard. West coast designer Teri Kahan was inspired by California's surfing lifestyle, and the letters of this alphabet dance along the writing line. The vitality of ITC Surfboard comes from the tension between its very free shapes and the precise edges and angles that create them. This all-capital font has deliberately tight spacing and works best in large sizes. Also included are fun, abstract surf/sail graphics.

The origin of this font was a frieze in the RAF Chapel in Westminster Abbey which Michael Harvey was commissioned to design and create. It was comprised of the names of the top brass in wartime Bomber Command, namely Dowding, Harris, Newall, Tedder, Portal and Douglas. The Brief was to cut the letters in bronze and gild them. Instead, they were cut in perspex and gilded. To sit comfortably within the long and narrow vertical space available beneath the chapel’s stained glass window, extended letterforms were used with many vertical serifs omitted and with lengthened horizontal serifs. Some twenty years later, the missing upper-case letters were drawn together with the lowercase letters and Frieze, the font, was born. Subsequently, additional weights and styles were added to create a font family of six styles.

From the standpoint of calligraphy, a font family of capitals and uncials makes perfect sense. The Roman square capitals, the quadrata, are matched by round capitals of older Greek origin; the word "uncus" means hook-shaped like a beak or talon. Interrelated and often interchangeable, these capital letters served as book hands for both the Latin West and the Greek-speaking East before they evolved into minuscule alphabets. The Testament family is based on the few formal capital manuscripts of the Bible, Virgil and Homer that have survived from the ancient world. Throughout the Middle Ages both uncials and square capitals were used, often together, for headings and initial characters. By their nature the Roman capitals are the voice of Caesar and hold the place of authority, while the uncials speak for the Church in a balanced relationship. In ancient times church and state were not as separate as they are now, and the alphabets were not as different as typographic tradition has made them. In this calligraphic rendering it is clear that they are of the same substance and can be written in the same style, conveying even to the modern eye the eternal and classical quality of epic and scripture. Testament comes in all popular font formats, and includes support for a vaster-than-usual range of Latin-based languages.