Some time ago, I read an article about the Kennedy assassination. In that article, a person dubbed ‘the umbrella man’ played a rather bizarre role: apparently an innocent bystander with an opened umbrella was thought to be in cahoots with Kennedy’s killer. I immediately thought that the name ‘Umbrella Man’ was a good title for a horror movie, so when I created this rough brush font, I named it Umbrella Man.

Atonement is a splattery, scratchy font. I made it with a steel nibbed pen, a brush and some Chinese ink. I based it on my fonts Ravenheart, Qilin and American Grunge - mostly because I really like them. Of course, all of these fonts are influenced by the work of the great Ralph Steadman - someone I greatly admire. Atonement comes with ligatures for double letter combinations and a stash of diacritics.

This month I seem to be stuck in the ‘Baked Goods’ section. I released Bloomer earlier and now I present Cookie Supply! Cookie Supply is a handmade display font. It is a bit uneven, a bit rough, yet very friendly, cute and useful. I guess it works best with products or books for children. Or oatmeal cookies by the dozen. Or organic apple juice. Or…

Skeleton Slab brings a new elegance to a classic form. I was thinking of calling it Ozymanidias, after Shelley’s poem, because it evokes memories of ancient runic inscriptions, but then I thought that was maybe a bit pretentious, and I decided I'd keep it simple and descriptive. Besides, I wasn't sure how to spell Ozymandias! Skeleton Slab has small caps in place of lower case.

Bouteilles is French for bottles. No fancy name this time, just bottles. You’re probably wondering why I chose this name… Well, I was taking out the glass (in Holland we recycle just about everything, glass, paper, plastic, metal, garden and kitchen waste, etc.), which included a number of French wine bottles. As I was throwing them into the underground container one block from where I live, I realised that the word Bouteilles actually sounds great and it would be a nice name for a font! Yes, it is that simple! Bouteilles is a nice brush font I made with my trusted Chinese ink and a really worn brush I found. It comes with all the diacritics you need plus two sets of alternates, which you can play with!

Yuge, apparently, is how New Yorkers pronounce huge. I have never been to New York, so I can’t tell if this is a fact. But I often hear a certain New Yorker pronounce it that way, so I guess it’s sort of true. Yuge is a handwritten font - made with a Sharpie pen. Believe me, it is a good font. It is fantastic. It is the best font ever. It is YUGE! ;-)

Technically a crowbar is a straight metal rod used for digging. The tool I had in mind when I named this font is called a jemmy or pry bar, but I guess I liked the name crowbar better. Crowbar font, like its namesake, is a very useful tool: its brush-like appearance fits any design, especially if you are aiming for the ‘scary’ look. Comes with a toolbox full of diacritics too!

QuickType is a typeface I designed for demonstration purposes. I used it to illustrate my first book about type design. It has crooked slab serifs and looks very much like a typewriter font. But in order to make things clear I had to overdo some curves and so QuickType turned out a very distinct typewriter typeface. Since those days I worked on the shapes from time to time, so it got better and I extended it to include several neccessary cuts. Now it is a full fledged very usable font. Yours very quick Gert Wiescher.

Natural Blues is my laid back handwriting font, and it is also the name of a song by Moby. Maybe I was inspired by that song … I can’t tell. But what I can tell is that having the blues is a natural thing!

I remember that my auntie once made a dish called ‘Macaroni and Smac’. It consisted of little ‘elbow’ macaroni, Spam (which in Holland was called Smac), cheese and ketchup. I am sure it didn’t contain on of your five a day, but it was delicious. As far as I know, I have eaten it only once, but it did make a lasting impression! Biscuits & Spam is a handmade ‘Western’ style font, which I found in my ‘unfinished fonts’ folder. It comes with multilingual support, a full set of alternates for the lower case letters and a really happy vibe.

In searching for a Roman to use, I found there were bits of Bembo, Times, Garamond, etc., that I liked and bits that I did not. So I set out to take the best bits of all my favorite Romans and tried to create the ultimate Roman Typeface.

I have always had a keen interest in forging; I used to be a silversmith, and I love working with metal. Some time ago I forged my first axe (a skeggøx or bearded axe), sharpened it and fitted it with a handmade ash handle. It isn’t perfect, but it is my first ever forged axe and I’m pretty proud of it. All of this went through my head when I started drawing the glyphs for this font. And to be honest, I couldn’t find a more suitable name for it! Bladesmith is a handmade font, forged in fire (haha). It was actually made with an old sharpie. It is a rough and ready font, quite suited for headlines, book covers and posters.

I love cheese snacks in all kinds of variations. As a kid I even loved having chessy fingers, but as an adult I prefer to wash my hands (instead of licking and sucking each finger "clean") So, as a loving memory of an all time favourite snack, I made this all caps organic looking sans. Obviously handmade, and cleaned up digitally...just a little bit. Furthermore I have made 5 different versions of each letter and made sure that there is plenty of multilingual support!

Noma is a new wide-set display font with a minimal geometric style. I designed Noma because I wanted a tech-inspired font that has plenty of character while remaining legible. Noma is a great choice for high-impact headings and logotypes. I hope you enjoy, thanks for checking it out!

Mandolin is a handmade 'Didone-ish' font with a bit of a rough edge. Mandolin was created using a wonderful (and expensive) pen I found in Canterbury, England. I am aware that this information isn't too relevant, but I thought I'd share it with you nonetheless… Mandolin comes with all diacritics.

I have created the brush font named “ BrushType Michiko” in my unique brush style. This is wider than “BrushType Standard ”. I made it for ad designers. I believe this is the only one brush font in the world, so using it will enable them to get easily satisfied on their work. Brush handwriting in Japan has a long and proud Tradition and History. I tried to interject this feeling of Tradition into my font designs for you to comprehend its true meaning. I trust I have succeeded to convey my feelings to you. In addition, I can say each letter of the “ BrushType Michiko” is truly art. I am a pioneer of Brush Art. You are the first person to see and use it in the world.

I love riding English double decker buses! I haven’t been on one lately, but for some reason I had an image of a red double decker bus in my head when I made this font. Doubledecker is a bold, cartoon-like, handmade font. It comes in regular and dots, plus a bonus doodle font called Doubledecker Stuff. Use it for any design that needs a tad of loud, a pinch of unusual and a wee bit of polka.

Crowd Pleaser is a pleasant, handmade font. I hoped its lively looks, slightly crooked glyphs and overall happy appearance would appeal to many people - so I named it Crowd Pleaser. Well… not entirely true, as I have a list of font names and Crowd Pleaser was the next one up… ;-) I do hope, however, that you will like this font!

New-Yorker-Type was one of the first typefaces I tried my hand at in 1985. I meant it as a revival of the typeface used by the New Yorker magazine. I did not scan it. I just looked at the type and redrew it completely by hand. Only much later did I come to know, that there is a bundle of similar typefaces of that period. Rea Irvin's design for New-Yorker magazine was just one of them, maybe the best. In the next step I repaired some of the mistakes that I made more than thirty years ago. Now on the eve of 2020 I gave the font a complete overhaul and added a set of Swash Initials, Cyrillic and Greek glyphs and many ligatures. The font now has 1075 glyphs and is all set for most latin writing systems. On top of that I made two versions, a Classic one with rounded corners and a pointed Pro version for a more up-to-date look. Take your pick. Yours sincerely, honoring Rea Irvin a great type- and magazine-designer, Gert Wiescher

New-Yorker-Type was one of the first typefaces I tried my hand at in 1985. I meant it as a revival of the typeface used by the New Yorker magazine. I did not scan it. I just looked at the type and redrew it completely by hand. Only much later did I come to know, that there is a bundle of similar typefaces of that period. Rea Irvin's design for New-Yorker magazine was just one of them, maybe the best. In the next step I repaired some of the mistakes that I made more than thirty years ago. Now on the eve of 2020 I gave the font a complete overhaul and added a set of Swash Initials, Cyrillic and Greek glyphs and many ligatures. The font now has 1075 glyphs and is all set for most latin writing systems. On top of that I made two versions, a Classic one with rounded corners and a pointed Pro version for a more up-to-date look. Take your pick. Yours sincerely, honoring Rea Irvin a great type- and magazine-designer, Gert Wiescher

Brainstroke is a collection of twelve variations on a typeface. This release was supposed to be a much larger set, but due to a medical issue, where I recently suffered a stroke, I am releasing only those that I managed to complete. The name is a reminder to me to take care of my health.

I don't know what other typedesigners call those long swirling embellishment, but I call them "Monkeytails". So when I decided on this version of my good old Royal Bavarian, I decided to call the new font "Monkeytails". I just fell in love with this name. Monkeytails and Royal Bavarian should be used together, in order not to have too many embellishments. That's why I offer the two together for a good price. Your swinging typedesigner Gert Wiescher

Abagail Jackson is a wild-looking face that was one of my early designs. I had no particular use in mind when I designed it and I no longer remember what inspired this whimsical font.

I never needed to digitize this early design from 1988. I found it in a drawer underneath layers of dozens of other type designs. The drawings were made with ink on paper, about 15 cm high, meticulously executed and retouched separate glyphs for a primitive photo-lettering. I used a photographic magnifier to set words and lines in my darkroom. In 2018 I decided to make a font out of it just for fun...

I love learning new words. I stumbled upon the term Gingerline after I named an older font Gamboge. Like Gamboge, Gingerline is a name for a shade of orange - the color of ripe kumquats to be precise. Didn’t know that! Gingerline font is a handmade calligraphy font; nice and even, thick and thin and quite elegant if I may say so. Comes with an abundance of diacritics as well.

The year 2022 went and 2023 came. I can honestly say that last year was a horrible year and I am happy it ended a couple of days ago. The first week after New Year’s Eve always fills my head with the U2 song ‘New Year’s Day’ - so I named this font after a line from the lyrics. I also happened to watch a fantastic movie called ‘Im Westen Nights Neues’, directed by Edward Berger, but based on a book by Erich Maria Remarque, which, in English, was published as ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’. So there you have it: naming a font in 2 easy steps! ;-) All Is Quiet is a lovely brush font, which I created using my father in law’s Chinese pencil and ink. I can suggest some uses here, but I am convinced you can come up with that yourself.

This typeface came out as a side idea while I was working on one logotype. Suddenly I came up with an idea of creating “tuned” version of the typeface, based on that logo. The “tuning” turned me in a completely different direction and in a few hours of haste I was looking at a completely different typeface. A few days later I made this font available for free, since it wasn't meant to be at all :-). A few months later, I saw my typeface used in the menu in one pizzeria. I was amazed and glad and happy and proud, all at the same time. Oh, by the way: the logo I was working on was of different style and even of another stem’s widths. So, this is truly a font of it’s own design. Naftalin has both Latin and Cyrillic sets, since it was used with both.

When I was a kid, I loved the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. I thought it was pretty stupid of the boy to trick the villagers into believing wolves are attacking his flock of sheep. But I also thought it was a bit sad that the sheep are eaten by a wolf in the end. I didn’t really feel sorry for the boy (he really was stupid), nor the wolf (he just does what he is supposed to do in life), but I did feel sorry for those poor sheep. I guess this is what disinformation leads to in the end. Cry Wolf is a bit of a scary font: it was made with a really old and battered brush, using Chinese ink and some quality French paper. It has a slight tilt to the right and I added some inky splatter for dramatic effect. Use Cry Wolf for your book covers, product packaging and headlines; use if to spice up you invitations and your halloween posters. Comes in a slightly tilted Regular style and an outright Italic style.

Wasty Pudding was made by drawing a lot of letters, over and over again - and not caring so much about the looks, but focusing more on the speed of drawing, because I wanted a font that represented the way I write, when I am taking notes for myself. It’s not pretty, but it’s legible and scribbeliciously beautiful! :) Anyway, I think the purpose of this font is massive amounts of text. Song lyrics, novels, stories, diaries, manuscripts, books, etc. I bet you can fool someone with them thinking that this is not a font, because I have added 6 different versions of each lowercase letter!!!

I like cookies. Especially butter cookies and ginger nuts. The word cookie comes from the Dutch word ‘koekje’ - which means exactly the same. Cookie Crumble is a cute little font that I made on a rainy day. I just needed something that looked and sounded happy and I guess it applies to this font. Cookie Crumble comes with a bunch of alternates, a full set of diacritics and a bit of sunshine to chase away your rainy day.

I like Carrot Juice a lot. I don’t drink it that often (and I should, really), but nothing beats a freshly squeezed glass of cold carrot juice!! Carrot Juice font is a lovely script font: handmade with love (and a rather cheap Chinese brush pen which I bought online). Carrot Juice will come in handy when you need that handmade look - cookbooks, websites and product packaging spring to mind. Comes with a abundant harvest of diacritics.

I hope that you enjoy the "Linden" font. The basis for this new font is my Leaf font. As much as I love the Leaf font, however, I felt (and still feel) the desire to have a larger font, for three reasons: 1. I enjoy customizing my internet browser to show different fonts. The original "Leaf" font was a bit too small for that. The new "Linden" font is perfect for this function. 2. Some of the fonts that I use in writing e-mails look their best at sizes 24 or 36. That’s fine for me, but unless I want to go to the trouble each time of changing the size, then the recipients oft my e-mails get wolloped with an enormous-sized font. When I use "Linden" for my e-mails, it’s automatically a perfect size at 12 or 14, solving this problem. 3. I also enjoy customizing the font in which I read my e-mails. Unfortunately, there are only a few which are legible in the tiny size in which this is configured. Again, "Linden" is configured to be large enough automatically so that it can easily be read by anyone. I am pleased to offer a pleasant font for use in any or all of the scenarios; I love fun solutions and hope that you will enjoy the "Linden" font. (Just a tip: when printing out documents using the "Linden" font, I love it best in font size 11!)

It could be you’ve never heard of Kapsalon and I will forgive you for that. Kapsalon is a Dutch word, meaning ‘hairdresser’s’. Since 2003 it is also a very popular snack food, which consists of french fries, döner kebab, lettuce, sambal, garlic sauce and melted Gouda cheese, served in an aluminium tray. I have to admit that I have never eaten a Kapsalon myself, as I am not too fond of fast food. I named this font package Kapsalon, because, like its namesake, it consists of several unrelated elements that work really well when combined.

Backwash AOE is a typeface I drew up back in 2000 inspired by various graffiti artists. Coming across all of my sketches recently and seeing a trend lately in graffiti inspired styles, I finally came around to finishing it up digitally for release. I love the break the rules, wildchild aspect, of graffiti lettering. And while this typeface is nothing like the wilder inspirations that I spawned this typeface from, it has a more legible direction to it, retaining just the flavor of the originals. I hope you enjoy it.

Rondell was originally designed in 2011 as a reasonably priced variable width and weight font. There were a couple of things about it that I didn't like and so I withdrew it from sale. Since then I have found myself using it for many different projects and have realised how useful and versatile it is. Therefore I have fixed the things I didn't like about it and it is now available again. Rondell is a simple, smart, sans serif font. Rounded corners make it slightly informal and friendly.

Snippity Snap is a font made up of glyphs I cut out from black paper with some household scissors, then pasted onto white paper. When I was cutting out the shapes, my children asked me what I was doing, and when I told them, they thought it was pretty cool and started cutting out shapes from paper themselves. The result is a house filled with paper cuttings, which I keep finding everywhere - even in my bed. Snippity Snap is a very nice font for ads, book covers, packaging and children's books. Enjoy!

Alimentary (adjective): relating to nourishment or sustenance. If you've seen my other fonts, you know I tend to lean into food-based names. This name has to do with food and science combined, so it's double nerdy in the ways I like to be nerdy! I started with Alimentary Medium, which was inspired by my shorter, wider font MacGuffin - I wanted something taller, narrower, with a hip and retro feel. When I finished the Medium weight, I felt like I wanted a Light weight. Then a Heavy weight. Then I figured, "what the heck," and made an outline version of the Medium weight too. In the end, I wound up with four members of the Alimentary family, each with over 700 glyphs! Not only do they all have the basics (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and tons of punctuation), but they also each have 330 characters for European language support, and a limited selection of Greek, Coptic, and Cyrillic characters. Plus a double handful of alternates and ligatures to add a little variety to your designs! And of course, all of the Alimentary fonts are super-smoothed, with reduced nodes and clean curves, so whether you're cutting them out, printing them, engraving them, or using them in a way I haven't even thought of, these fonts will be sharp and crisp!

Squickt was the first script I designed. The name is an atrocity, I don't remember what was on my mind, when I decided on that name, but after 25 years it is to late to change, so I have to stick with it. I have recently gone over the script and changed a little stroke here, a curve there and I added Small-Caps. The font is very useful for all kinds of signs, that have to look spontaneous. You can even condense or extend it without me going berserk; Squickt is very robust. Your scribe Gert Wiescher

A couple of weeks ago, I found my ink well, which I thought I had lost. I decided (there and then) to create a bunch of inky brush fonts, which resulted in Dirrrty and Scrawny Cat. And now, needless to say, Garden Bed. It is named after a strophe from one of my favorite Soundgarden songs: Just Like Suicide. Garden Bed is a hand made didone-ish font, with a very irregular baseline, some interesting glyphs and a secret garden filled with diacritics.