The new sans-serif Franzi typeface family – as neutral as can be, but at the same time individual and striking. Its unmistakable character lies in the detail, with no effect pushing itself to the fore. As a wide-running typeface with a relatively large x-height, the typeface family is perfectly suited to small text sizes but, with its elegant details, it leaves nothing to be desired in display applications either. Originally designed with constructed, often rectangular elements, Franzi has gradually been rounded during the development process and is now less hard in order to guarantee optimal legibility. Franzi Variable is designed alongside the italic and the weight axes. The italics are softly and elegantly drawn, while the upright characters appear much more severe. The design appeal reveals itself in the two-storey ‘a’ – a tribute to legibility in body copy; however, for those who prefer the geometric in applications, an alternative single-storey ‘a’ is also available. All styles have small caps, superscript and subscript lowercase letters, lining, non-lining and small caps figures, fractions as well as several ligatures, alternative fonts, symbols and arrows. The Latin uppercase letters are also available as discreet swash variants. In addition to the extended Latin alphabet, the typeface family also includes the complete Greek, Cyrillic and International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. Franzi was created as a further development of an order to produce a sign for a therapy practice in Vienna’s Franz-Hochedlinger-Gasse – hence the name, which is more common as an abbreviation for Franziska than as a diminutive for the male name Franz: Franzi is therefore a hybrid typeface name which has female tendencies.

Casagrande Collection has been designed in 2020 by the Italiantype Team (Manuel Alvaro, Valentino Coppi and Mario De Libero), working in close collaboration with Italian lettering artist, illustrator and calligrapher Alberto Casagrande, with help from the Zetafonts Team (Francesco Canovaro, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini). The goal of the project was to use as inspiration Alberto's colorful, vintage themed digital illustration style to develop a suite of closely related typefaces that, used together, would allow designers to replicate the nostalgic charme of Italian poster and product design from the thirties and the forties. Two color overprints, coarse dithering, handmade calligraphy, reminiscences of art deco, hints of modernism and pop culture references: all this and more mixed in a exuberant and playful collection, created with illustrators, poster artists and book cover designers in mind. The final product is 24-font package with six display families with styles varying from the thirties-inspired Antifascista (3 weights + 3 dithering weights) and Deco (3 weights + 3 inline weights), to the modernist Casabau (5 weights), to the geometric Grind (4 widths), to the vintage elegance of the two script families, Reclame and Casatiello. The collection is complemented by a two-color icon set font, Casagrande Ornaments, allowing any designer to easily explore the creative possibilities of this incredibly powerful creative collection. Please Note: Casagrande Antifascista Ombra simulates fine dithering and may be processor intensive for some older computers. Use Casagrande Antifascista if it slows down your system.

This is a cute story about a mother and her son. :) About a decade ago my own mother got very interested in my work. She used to say my letters had so many swirls and dazzling swashes, and suggested my job seemed to be very fun. She wondered if she could ever try to make her own alphabet... Well, she is a civil engineer and a maths teacher, and appeared to be a little tired of exact sciences... I remember answering this, while she was listening with her typical tender look: -"Mamá... While type-design may be a really enjoyable thing to do, it also involves having a great eye and knowledge about the history of letters: nice curves and shapes require a meticulous study and, like it happens in many fields, practice makes perfect"-. Well, she raised her eyebrows at me. -"and so what?"- She didn't have any experience neither in the field of art nor in the field of graphic design so, I told her that if she really wanted to get into this she should borrow some of my calligraphic books from my beloved shelves in my office. So... she did. Some weeks after that, she came to me with many sketches made with pencils and markers: some letters where very nice and unique while others naturally needed some work. I remember she added ball terminals to all of her letters (even if they didn't need them) because that was one of the rules she imposed. After some back and forth, we had the basis for what would be today, ten years later, the seed of this lovely font Girasol. Her proposal was nice, something I was not accustomed to do, that’s why many years later I decided to watch it with fresh new eyes and finished it. While she was in charge of making the lowercase letters, I helped with the uppercase and also added my hallmark in the alternates, already seen in others of my expressive fonts. The result is an upright decorative font that follows the behavior of the copperplate nib with a naive touch that makes it really cute and useful for a wide range of products. Many alternates per glyph make Girasol a very fun to use font which will delight you. Above posters are a proof of that! This font is a gift for my mother, Susana, who, in spite of her exacts academic background, taught me that beauty can also be found in the imperfect. 1 NOTES (1) In my fonts I'm always in seek of the perfect curve. When I designed Erotica and Dream Script, I read about Fibonacci’s spirals!