What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

Secca is a fresh and versatile typeface series. With its workhorse qualities, Secca is perfectly suited for a wide range of applications - especially where legibility and economy are important factors. Secca is rooted in the tradition of early German Grotesk typefaces, but is tailored for the needs of today, with a wide language support and many typographic features and extras. » pdf specimen « The core family comes in nine weights from Thin to Ultra Black plus another three Hairline weights - each with italics, small caps and italic small caps. While the weights from Light to Bold perform well in text sizes, the more extreme styles give extra freedom for Headlines & Signage. For setting tables and charts, Secca offers tabular figures, fractions, currency signs and mathematic operators which share the same fixed width throughout the entire range of weights. This special feature is called “weight duplexing” and is a time saver for designers of annual reports and other figure-heavy texts.

The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.

The original Swift (1985) proved its worth in corporate identities, magazines and newspapers and occasionally in books. It is a versatile type and can be used in a wide range of circumstances. It is a striking type, with large serifs, large counters and letters that produce a particularly strong horizontal impression. This means that words and lines in Neue Swift are easily distinguished, even where there are large spaces between words, as can occur in newsprint. Neue Swift's large, robust counters were designed to improve legibility particularly in newspapers. It was designed in the early eighties, when papers were less well printed than they are today, and its special features help it survive on grey, rough paper printed on fast rotary presses. Today it is used more often outside newspapers than in them. Neue Swift (2009) is the newest version of the Swift concept. It has been improved by technical and aesthetic enhancements, and has been expanded into a family of twelve variants. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for PowerPoints

Arzachel is a humanistic sanserif with a big x-height and a specific organic look. Its design is scientifically sharp and efficient in small type sizes as well as rugged and dramatic in headlines. Arzachel’s essential feeling comes from several features: all the letters are slightly sloped, stem terminations are flared at the top, and the terminals in letters a, c, e, f… are widening with the inside parts completely flat. The stroke contrast is low in the regular weight while it increases in the black; finally the capitals have an inscriptional flavor. Despite being a sanserif (thus a product of recent typography) Arzachel’s roots stretch back to the Renaissance tradition: Olocco took inspiration from some of the early and rather weird types cut in Venice in the 15th century. Arzachel was conceived during Olocco’s MA in Reading to provide a companion for his Zenon for use in small type sizes. But instead of expanding the Zenon family with optical sizes, the designer decided on a sans with its own personality rather than a sanserif version of Zenon with chopped-off serifs.

The early Twentieth Century was a golden age for cinema, and for the artists who lettered the iconic title sequences. Stanffords Family evokes the soul of this vintage brush lettering with a modern twist. Its main characteristics are bouncy baseline, round forms. These qualities give Stanffords its casual, friendly and handmade looks. The font family is characterized by excellent legibility in both - web & print design areas, well-finished calligraphic designs, optimized kerning etc. Stanffords Family include 5 fonts: Stanffords, Stanffords Bright, Stanffords Sans and Stanffords Ornaments and Stanffords Bright Ornaments (sets of 86 ornaments) to combine and give options to your typographic elements and designs. Stanffords is a very versatile script font: it includes initial forms, and a generous complement of alternate characters, ligatures and ornaments, creating a genuine connecting hand-painted look in dynamic OpenType format. You have a lot of options to customize it and that makes it perfect for logos, packages, titles, food packaging, t-shirts, blogs, photo books, wedding and invitation stationery and for everything you think necessary ... You get the idea!

Magnat is a contrasting sans drawing inspiration from designs from the early twenties century and expands them into an elegant and distinctive contemporary design. Playful elements such as the curvy ear on the lowercase g or the long tail on the uppercase Q break the strictness and add character. The combination of closed apertures with the contrasting strokes create an elegant and distinctive overall appearance. The Magnat family is available in 36 weights including matching italics, divided into 3 subfamilies: Poster, Head and Text. Each has been designed for its individual range of text sizes. The Poster and Head styles with their tight spacing and luxurious shapes are made for impactful headlines and short paragraphs, whereas the text weights are either a great addition for small text sizes or, when set in large sizes, perfectly work as a robust standalone font with a lot of character. Each font style is equipped with many opentype features such as alternate characters, different number sets or case sensitive shapes making it a perfect choice for professional type setting in branding, editorial or digital design.

The Heinemann fonts were initially developed by the in-house design team at Heinemann educational publishing out of the necessity to find the perfect font for use in early primary reading books and literacy products. Basic Heinemann is defined by longer ascenders and descenders which help children to distinguish between letters; rounded edges on all letterforms help focus the reader on the individual letter shape; and modified characters (eg. a, g,) ensure instant recognition of letterforms. Heinemann Special offers further modified characters and kerning pairs ideal for dyslexic or special needs use (eg a, d, b). The Heinemann fonts were developed in partnership with children, literacy advisors, teachers of special needs/dyslexia and primary school teachers, and are now released in response to hundreds of requests from publishers, designers and teachers to purchase them. They have been trialled in schools and learning institutions over an 8 year period, and are a favorite for use in both print and electronic product. The modern, clean aesthetic of the fonts ensures that their use can span beyond educational application.

The font Steamfunk is based on Steampunk. A form of science fiction that couples Victorian era style with futuristic devices operated by early industrial age technology. Each Steamfunk letter is constructed in two symbolic parts. A thick stroke, for the machine’s outer shell, and a second, wire-like, stroke for that machine's delicate inner workings. The result is a look that is Steampunk in appearance, without it being exclusively so. Steamfunk has a glyph count of 398 and supports the following languages; Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Zulu.

Gerard Unger developed this newspaper font between 1984 and 1987 for Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH, Kiel. He was mainly influenced by William A. Dwiggins (1880-1956), the typographic consultant of Mergenthaler Linotype, who started to develop more legible, alternative fonts for newspaper printing as early as 1930. Swift was named after the fast flying bird. Austere and concise, firm and original, Swift is suited for almost any purpose. Swift has been specially developed to sustain a maximum of quality and readability when used in unfavorable print and display processes, e.g. newspapers, laser printing and low resolution screens. Its robust, yet elegant serifs and its large x-height provide an undeniable distinction to the typeface, making it suitable for corporate ID and advertising purposes as well. Swift 2.0 family was designed in 1995. It's an improved version with technical and aesthetic enhancements and new family members. The Cyrillic version was developed for ParaType in 2003 by Tagir Safayev. Please note that this family includes only basic latin characters; it does not include accented characters required for western and central Europe.

Another Grotesk is a contemporary typeface that was inspired by the early grotesques. Upon closer inspection you will notice the terminals of some of the characters are slightly turned inwards, this detail gives Another Grotesk its distinctive and friendly personality. Another Grotesk is functional and has been crafted with a great attention to detail. It is available in 9 weights and two optical sizes with matching italics which adds up to 36 styles. Another Grotesk Text family has been carefully redesigned some of the details were removed and simplified, x-height increased, and ink traps added, but preserved the overall look and feel of the display version, to ensure a greater legibility and clarity in running text. The extensive language support allows type setting in more than 200 languages across Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts. Another Grotesk also includes small caps and punctuation, tabular and old-style figures, as well as case sensitive feature and offers stylistic alternates for K, a, g, and y to fulfil any creative need of a designer.

Sam Suliman is a condensed display face supplied in three weights – Regular, Medium and Bold – plus a set of handy italics (obliques). All six fonts are included in the value family pack. The fonts are inspired by lowercase lettering on a Sarah Vaughan album cover designed by Sam Suliman in 1962, a style which contrasts sharp tight outer corners with soft rounded counters. The letters were perhaps influenced by a Solotype font called Herald Square, but without that font’s aversion to diagonals, and adding distinctive perky ascenders/descenders on the lowercase r, a, u, g and n. The Sam Suliman fonts also add the nubs to d, m, p, and q. Suliman was born in Manchester, England in 1927. After working for McCann Erikson in London, he moved to New York where he took on freelance work designing album covers, particularly celebrated are his striking minimalist designs for jazz records. He moved back to England in the early 1960s, designing many book jackets, film titles and fabrics, also working in Spain and India before settling in Oxford in the 1980s.

Kompakt is one of the early typefaces of type designer Hermann Zapf, whose Palatino has long been a standard in almost every area of application. Kompakt consists of a single weight and was designed in 1952, two years after Palatino. It was produced by the foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where Zapf was at the time in the artistic department. The figures of this extremely strong and heavy typeface are decidedly those of a broad tipped pen. When enlarged, the sharp outlines of the characters can be clearly seen. The unique dynamic of the alphabet is a result of its strong serifs, which on the lower case letters almost connect the letters in a line. Together with the slight slant to the right, this gives Kompakt the character of handwriting, making it look like it is always striving to go forward. Kompakt is an excellent choice for advertisements, especially for posters which should display a hint of nostalgia, and should be used only in headlines.

The design of the first "Fat Face" is credited to Robert Thorne just after 1800 in England. It is considered to be the first type style designed specifically for display or jobbing, rather than for book work. The first instance of Fat Face in wood type is found in the first wood type specimen book ever produced: Darius Wells, Letter Cutter 1828. This style was produced by all early wood type manufacturers. The style is derived from the high contrast, thick and thin Modern style of Bodoni and Didot developed only decades previously. The extended variation makes the face even more of a display type and not at all suitable for text. This type of display type was used to compete with the new Lithographic process which allowed for the development of the poster as an artform unto itself. This new digitization by Jim Lyles most closely follows the Wm Page cut. The crisp outlines hold up at the largest point sizes you can imagine. This font contains a full CE character set.

The early Twentieth Century was a golden age for cinema, and for the artists who lettered the iconic title sequences. Cinema Script is inspired by this lettering style, but has departed substantially from the source material in an effort to be less retro and more in tune with today’s designers' needs. The font will work admirably ‘out of the box’ but to really shine use the advanced OpenType features. Contextual alternates and ligatures should be on by default for the best results. Discretionary ligatures are a little more out there, so use them, ahem, at your discretion. Cinema Script also boasts swash characters, optional oldstyle numerals, plenty of stylistic sets and a nice ordinal feature for 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. For greater detail, check out the user guide in the gallery section. This is a versatile brush script style font. It seems familiar, with a similar vibe to other brush fonts but without the staid ubiquity. Cinema Script will look great on the big screen, or on your screen, on food packaging, t-shirts, blogs, photobooks, wedding stationery... You get the idea!

Chancery Lane is a condensed cursive with a breezy, flowing feel. Many of the lowercase characters join up, some uppercase ones too, and the two fonts are slantier than many other chancery-inspired faces, inclined at almost 20°. Each glyph has slightly rounded corners to bestow softness and warmth. The typeface emerged from a study of pen lettering, italic scripts and chancery hands – down a rabbit hole and along the Chancery Lane. The research ranged from early cancellaresca manuscripts to contemporary fonts, and also calligraphic work, most notably that of Indian artist Mayank Baranwal whose lowercase letters inspired many of the Chancery Lane glyphs. Uppercase characters have been designed to harmonise with the lowercase rather than providing overly ornamental openers, true to origins that were functional rather than fancy. Both the capitals and the uppercase alternates are unfussy and relatively simple, and the lowercase swash characters are similarly understated, only modestly flourished. Stylistic alternates and lowercase swash characters can be accessed using OpenType-aware applications or font management software.

Brazilian designer Eduardo Omine designed his Beret family of typefaces in an attempt to create a warm counterpart to the clean, minimalist sans serif of the 20th Century. The most individual characteristics of Beret are the terminals at the ends of its vertical strokes. They are slightly bent", simulating a subtle flare. Like many classic sans-serif typefaces (e.g., the original Syntax and Univers), this family does not include true (calligraphic) italics. Instead, a masterful set of obliques has been created. As Stanley Morison articulated in the early 1920s and 30s, these slanted versions of the regular "roman" faces may even work better when one wishes to emphasize certain words or passages within a text. The Beret family of typefaces is suitable for numerous applications, in both text and display sizes. The following nine fonts make up the family's design: Beret Light, Beret Light Italic, Beret Book, Beret Book Italic, Beret Regular, Beret Medium, Beret Medium Italic, Beret Bold, and Beret Bold Italic. Beret was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by the Linotype GmbH."

In the early 1970s Ed Benguiat drew the International Typeface Corporation's logo, a flowing script that many have hoped would one day be expanded into a complete font. From 2008, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging - with Benguiat's blessing - took up the challenge. After two challenging years, Elegy™ was completed. I knew that developing the typeface would present many challenges, but I felt strongly that Ed Benguiat's lettering deserved to be preserved as a font that graphic designers could take creative advantage of." - Jim Wasco Elegy makes good use of modern OpenType features to really make this script shine, and introduces some of the spontaneity of Ed Benguiat's original logotype. And what did Ed Benguiat have to say about the completed typeface?"WOW! It's absolutely beautiful. Jim Wasco has done a magnificent job of turning my logo into a great typeface design."A glowing tribute for a very fine typeface. Do take a closer look at this elegant and very accomplished script." Featured in: Best Fonts for Tattoos

Enamela (rhymes with Pamela) is a monoline square sans that is available in normal width and condensed versions. Although rooted in the early years of sans serif type, the Enamela fonts have a timeless quality that is practical and unpretentious. The letterforms derive from vitreous enamel signage dating from the Victorian era and widely used in Britain for street nameplates, Post Office signs, the plates on James Ludlow wall postboxes, railway signs and direction signs, as well as for circular Automobile Association wayfinding plaques throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The quirky terminals, stemming from the compression of geometric type, invite comparison with the Charles Wright fonts used for UK vehicle registration plates. Enamela and Enamela Condensed are both available in three weights – regular, medium and bold – and as italics (optically corrected obliques). A commonly used alternative M with a vertex that touches the baseline is provided at the Alt-M (µ) keystroke on a Mac, or Alt-0181 on Windows. A commonly used G with a plain vertical throat, no crosspiece, is assigned Unicode FF27 (full width capital G).

The Heinemann fonts were initially developed by the in-house design team at Heinemann educational publishing out of the necessity to find the perfect font for use in early primary reading books and literacy products. Basic Heinemann is defined by longer ascenders and descenders, which help children to distinguish between letters; rounded edges on all letterforms, which help the reader focus on the individual letter shape; and modified characters (eg., a and g), which ensure instant recognition of letterforms. Heinemann Special offers further modified characters and kerning pairs ideal for dyslexic or special-needs use (eg., a, d, and b). The Heinemann fonts were developed in partnership with children, literacy advisors, teachers of special needs/dyslexia, and primary-school teachers and are now available in response to hundreds of requests from publishers, designers, and teachers to purchase them. They have been tested in schools and learning institutions over an 8-year period, and they are a favorite for use in both print and electronic products. The modern, clean aesthetic of the fonts ensures that their use can spread beyond educational applications.

I generally refer to our typefaces as ‘graphic’ rather than typographic. By that I mean their starting points are usually ways of constructing shapes and systems of shapes. As with other Alias typefaces, Sabre has stone and wood cut letterforms as a starting point. What is interesting about lettercutting is the connection between shape and material. These beautifully crafted letterforms have a particular sharpness which reflects, of course, how they were made. The idea of constructing letters from a kit of parts we first explored in early fonts Elephant and Factory. These are different in that they were very much grid-based, with a geometric structure. For Sabre I also had Fred Smeijers’ stencil construction drawings in mind. These show how a set of components can be the basis for a crafted, elegant typeface. Sabre is quite a loose interpretation of this idea. Sabre’s graphic shape means it works well at large sizes, with a dramatic, angular impact. Its aim is to be typographic enough to function for blocks of small-size text too.

The Rocaie fonts are base on antique Rococo letters from an gilding workshop. I was very lucky to acquire this set of metal letters in early 2018. Each of the letters has ornaments engraved by hand into its cast brass shapes. When drawing the digital outlines, I tried to preserve the handmade look of the original leaf engravings. Each of the letters uses a slightly different ornament pattern: no pattern is repeated identically. I expanded the very limited character set of the original, adding all the missing characters that today’s commercial fonts are expected to contain. I made additional font styles to easily add colour layers, outlines, and 3D shadows to the typeface. It’s up to you to decide how to “build” your colour font! You can combine the predefined font styles Regular, Pearl, Solid, Outline, and Magnum with each other, or with the Fill font styles. But you don't need to use all font styles to compose something nice! Have as much fun as I did with this Baroque beauty and enjoy the vintage.

Lepontic is an ancient Alpine Celtic language that was spoken in parts of Rhaetia and Cisalpine Gaul (now Northern Italy) between 550 and 100 BC. Lepontic is attested in inscriptions found in an area centered on Lugano, Switzerland, and including the Lake Como and Lake Maggiore areas of Italy. While some recent scholarship (e.g. Eska 1998) has tended to consider Lepontic simply as an early outlying form of Gaulish and closely akin to other, later attestations of Gaulish in Italy (Cisalpine Gaulish), some scholars (notably Lejeune 1971) continue to view it as a distinct Continental Celtic language. In this latter view, the earlier inscriptions found within a 50 km radius of Lugano are considered Lepontic, while the later ones, to the immediate south of this area, are considered Cisalpine Gaulish. Lepontic was assimilated first by Gaulish, with the settlement of Gallic tribes north of the River Po, and then by Latin, after the Roman Republic gained control over Gallia Cisalpina during the late 2nd and 1st century BC

This font is an orphanage where all the beautiful details of classical grotesque typefaces from the early twentieth century are gathered, and thus living together, are forming a ‘new’, happy family. The aim was to collect my favorite characters in one font. The start was an eclectic collection orientated on British types from the Caslon Doric No. 4, the Monotype Grotesque, the Gill, the Franklin Gothic up to the Transport. In this amalgamation I avoided the narrow apertures in the ‘e’, ‘c’ and in the numerals ‘5’, ‘6’ and ‘9’ and enlarged the x-height dramatically. To the classical slanted form of the italics I added real italic forms for ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘g’ in order to obtain a more distinguished italic style. DF-Dejavu Pro supports all Latin-based languages (Western, Central-European, Eastern-European, Baltic and Turkish) and includes small capitals, ligatures, inferior & superior numerals and letters, fractions, various numeral styles: proportional lining, tabular lining, proportional old-style, tabular old-style and last but not least a slashed zero.

A typeface of grace, power and exceptional versatility, the Slate collection is a truly beautiful design that achieves stellar levels of readability, both in print and on screen. Created by the award winning type designer Rod McDonald, this six-weight sans serif family is a rare example of sublime aesthetics meeting world-class functionality. The typeface’s legible letterforms embody an amalgam of the best traits of both humanistic and grotesque letterforms. “I didn’t want a face with an ‘engineered’ look, or with any noticeable design gimmicks or devices,” admits designer McDonald. “I wanted a pure design. I confess that I was ruthless with any character that wanted to stand out from the rest.” The Slate collection is available in six weights with complementary italics, with slight changes in structure from the light to the black weights. Its light weight is reminiscent of early American sans. Whether for use in display work or in longer-form settings, few typefaces possess the beauty and power of this design, leaving the Slate family an excellent addition to any designer’s typographic quiver.

News Gothic No. 2 is an enhanced version of News Gothic produced by the D. Stempel AG type foundry in 1984. It added more weights to the News Gothic family than were available in other versions, increasing its use in contemporary design and communication. The lighter weights of the original News Gothic were designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1908 for American Typefounders (ATF). News Gothic typeface is quite similar to Benton's other sans serifs from the early twentieth century, including Franklin Gothic and Lightline Gothic. The bold weights were added to the News Gothic scheme in 1958. The capital letters in News Gothic No. 2, just like those found in News Gothic, have a similar visual width to each other. The lowercase is compact and powerful. These design attributes contributed to Benton's strong handle on the sans serif genre, and for years his types have been popular for newspaper headlines and many other uses. Still a popular presence on the font charts, News Gothic has proven its ability to get the job done right.

Is it necessary to tell the Gutenberg story? 1456 Gutenberg Pro is the second Gutenberg typeface produced by GLC foundry (look at our 1456 Gutenberg). This font was created from the so called "B42" character set used for the two Gutenberg Latin Bibles (42 and 36 lines), but with a better and finer design than in our first version, more faithful to the finest original printed books appearance. We offer also now a larger choice of the original ligatures and Latin abbreviations, as complete as possible to be usable with OTF specifications. The complete basic alphabet (with "long s" naturally)is strictly looking like the real one (including the curious twisted "X"). We have only recreated the capitals W and J, who was not existing in the time. The numerals, no more existing in the original type set, were inspired from those in use a few years later by early following printers, but matching with the Gutenberg font's pattern. The font includes West (including Celtic), East, Central European, Baltic and Turkish glyphs.

Binario is a simple and friendly font with three weights and matching obliques. The geometric and modular characteristics of this typeface subtly reference the Art Deco and early modernist periods. It is an ideal choice for achieving a clean, distinctive, and contemporary aesthetic, making it suitable for branding, posters, and screen-based designs. The light weight of Binario is good for body text. The regular weight exudes confidence, making it suitable for both body and heading text. For impactful headlines, the bold weight is superb. The clear weight distinction of this family make it easy to create organized text. Binario was designed in Siena, Italy taking some inspiration from train stations and shop signage. The name Binario means train platform in Italian. Other aspects that informed the design of this font are modularity and efficiency. The interior rounded forms of the letters (counterforms) are based on shape of the Roman arch. Binario has a sibling, Binario Soft. This version has gently rounded stroke ends, which make a softer impression on the page.

Blackletter typefaces, also known as Gothic, Fraktur, or Old English, have been used in the headings and initial chapters of books. This style of typeface is recognizable by its dramatic thin and thick strokes, and in some fonts, the elaborate swirls on the serifs. Blackletter typefaces are based on early manuscript lettering and evolved in Western Europe from the mid twelfth century. They are best used for headings, logos, posters, and signs, as they are not easy to read in body texts. Blackletter was type that emulated the most common handwritten scripts of the era and was used for books of hours and initial chapters of books Brazilian type designer Paulo W created this font ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries as well as poster and billboards. An elegant and clean typeface, with two harmonic blackletters styles, the bold lowercases with beaufitul ornamented initials. A classic decorative design around an antique theme: The headings of gothic texts, this font works great in display purposes. ENJOY

Wozniak is a workhorse sanserif typeface in 16 styles that includes a 16 styles display font on itself. On its default shapes brings a modern, clear and bright personality to the text and a wide range of possibilities by supporting many OpenType features, such as oldstyle, lining & tabular numbers, small caps, inferiors & superiors, discretionary ligatures, numerators & denominators, extended fractions, case sensitivity forms and more, all carefully crafted and balanced for excellent legibility and optimum performance both on screen and on paper. But that's not all, every style also includes two complete uppercase sets of display alternates and more than 180 stylistic ligatures inspired by the digital revolution and the early 80s aesthetics. All this blend into a flexible and multifunctional set of over 1600 glyphs, support for more than 200 latin script languages and the potentiality of use in long text settings, headlines or branding, travelling from modern to vintage with absolute ease and naturality. Wozniak was named after Steve Wozniak as a tribute to the pioneers of the digital revolution.

Trump Soft Pro is the softer, round-cornered version of Trump Gothic Pro, the popular condensed gothic seen on films, magazines, book covers and frashion brands all over the globe. Trump Soft offers a friendlier grade of the same economic functionality, clear modular aesthetic and extended character sets as Trump Gothic. The sharper Trump Grothic series is a reconception of ideas from Georg Trump’s seminal 1955 Signum typeface and its later reworking (Kamene) by Czech designer Stanislav Marso. Originally cobbled together for a variety of film projects in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Trump Gothic family was made available for the general public in 2005. Shortly thereafter, it became extremely popular. It continues to be used extensively today. In 2013, the typeface was redrawn, refitted, optimized and greatly expanded into a multiscript family of six fonts, each containing over 1020 glyphs and a wealth of OpenType features, including small caps, caps-to-small-caps, stylistic alternates, unicase/monocase alternates, fractions, ordinals, class-based kerning, and support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek locales.

Sailor is the digital rendition of a film type that was popular in the early- to late-1970s. The type was called West Futura Casual at Photo-Lettering by David West. Some of the letter shapes of the original were replaced with more contemporary versions, but the originals remain accessible as alternates from different cells within the font, along with some other alternates and letter combinations. Just as the name implied, this sort of lettering is what happens when someone tries to apply Futura’s geometrical principles with a casual hand brush. This style has been popular for over three decades now, and is still going on strong. Posters with casual attempts at geometry are seen everywhere these days. Sailor’s brush style is now the standard visual expression of fun, cool, and happy atmosphere. It has the kind of versatility that can excite the eyes of children in cinemas, brand a product as happy and hip, turn a sign or banner into a cheerful invitation, or just make a poster or book cover that much more appealing to the eye.

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. 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. 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. These include two from the American Type Founders company, Caslon 540 and the slightly heavier Caslon #3. Both fonts are relatively wide, and come complete with small caps, old style figures, and italics.

This is the digital makeover and major expansion of a one-of-a-kind melting pot experiment done by VGC and released under the name Mardi Gras in the early 1960s. It is an unexpected jambalaya of Art Nouveau, Tuscan, wedge serifs, curlycues, ball endings, wood type spurs and swashes, geometry and ornamental elements that on the surface seem to be completely unrelated. But the totality works in a surprisingly loud and playful way that really defies categorization. Jingo is really five fonts in one: Over 1000 glyphs, four character sets, ornaments, swashes and ligatures. The forms are interchangeable in uppercase, lowercase and unicase settings. There is nothing low-key about this typeface. It is well suited for use on posters and book covers that require happy weirdness. But most of all it's great for those who like to fiddle with their type setting until amazingly conicidental pleasantnesses ensue. If you're that kind of designer and you know what you're doing, get Jingo, start up that glyph palette, and play away.

One of the most unusual sets of antique stencils spotted for sale online comprises a set of twenty-four classic logos of early 20th Century automobile companies. For whatever purpose that is now lost to time, these stencils represented the logos of many of America's finest auto manufacturers; most now just historical memories. The logos were painstakingly redrawn, maintaining the distinctive look of the hand made cutting, although it was an exacting process - some of the images were taken at an angle, and a bit of artistic license had to be used as a compensatory factor. It is to be noted that any and all of the logos presented in this font are the intellectual property of the companies, successors or assignees that may still hold the rights to these symbols. No endorsements by such corporate entities are either expressed or implied. Additionally, it is advised that any use of these logos be restricted to historical or hobby purposes, and they should not be used in a way that would construe any authorized reproduction of the logos in a commercial fashion.

Pepperwood font is a joint work of the typeface designers K.B. Chansler, C. Crossgrove and C. Twombly. These artists also created the typefaces Rosewood, Zebrawood and Ponderosa together and as the names suggest, all of these typefaces are so-called wood types. The origins of this kind of typeface can be found in the early 19th century. Called Italian or Italienne, these typefaces quickly became very popular. They are distinguished by square serifs whose width is larger than the stroke width of the characters. When the letters are set together, the heavy serifs build dark horizontal bands. Pepperwood font has a couple of unique characteristics of its own. Small squares decorate the middle of the letters and the edges of the serifs are not straight, rather, they have small, fine tips. Pepperwood is reminiscent of the Wild West with its shootouts and heroes, but also suggests the glamor of the 1970s with their platform shoes and wild hair-dos. The different weights allow a large range of design possibilities. Used carefully in headlines, Pepperwood font is sure to draw attention.

Gotta tell ya: think out of the box and this font is addictingly fun to use! Introducing Historic Warehouse, a substantial, yet elegant family, invoking advertising fonts of the early 20th century. Why the name? When asked to design a banner for Tucson’s Historic Warehouse District, I couldn’t find the look I wanted from any known fonts. After drawing what I wanted in Illustrator, there were three (and in the process, four) fonts just waiting to be realized. Happy to oblige. Here’s Historic Warehouse Regular, setting the stage. It’s sturdy, bold, and plays curves against rounded angular shapes. To its left is Historic Warehouse Condensed, trim, elegant and at its best at very large sizes; to the right is Historic Warehouse Wide, with charming style and presence. Finally, there’s Historic Warehouse Extended, extravagant in its proportions, with a beautifully-crafted form like a fine carriage. As the song says, “Everything Old Is New Again,” and this family looks as fresh and clean at the beginning of this century as it might have at the beginning of the last.

Rubber B is a heavy display typeface with very tight open counters & character spacing and non-existent closed counters. It is an amalgam of styles and influences that demands attention. It is comparable with the highly geometric experimental fonts of the '90s and early '00s, but also heavily inspired by decorative fonts of the '60s and the psychedelic poster art of the '70s. Bold and loud, yet delicate, almost calligraphic in some cases. It works with Latin & Extended Latin, Cyrillic & Extended Cyrillic and Greek. It comes with 1,500+ glyphs, with more than half of them being ligatures. It also contains several Stylistic Alternates as well as Localised forms (available through the Open Type Features and also as ligatures). All these features are available in order to not only make sure that it works with as many languages as possible, but also that depending on the specific glyph or ligature one chooses to use, they have the ability to alter the emotional character of the word(s) they’re setting. Ideal for titles and logos, as it works best in medium and large sizes.

Stack brings the spirit of industrial chimney lettering from the early twentieth century to the digital age. The typeface is designed to work both horizontally and vertically. Additionally, the fonts can work together in myriad chromatic expressions—providing limitless design possibilities. The family is true to the spirit of masonry lettering without being a direct lift of any specific lettering style from the industrial age. Like some of its masonry predecessors Stack is built as a typeface of 15 courses (horizontal rows) of ‘bricks.’ Based on several years of research a collection of 150+ photographs and roughly two dozen archival engineering drawings were amassed. The value of the historical references is a type family that is a legitimate reflection of masonry lettering styles of the period. In updating Stack for the digital age, the proportions of the base-unit ‘bricks’ and the thickness of ‘mortar’ joints have been optically adjusted to work in both screen-based and print media. Stack would not have been possible without the research and design input from Craig Welsh and Jenna Flickinger of GoWelsh.