Linotype Bengali, a revival This project by Neelakash Kshetriymayum and Fiona Ross commissioned by Monotype is at heart a revival of the now ubiquitous original Linotype Bengali typeface designed by Tim Holloway and Fiona Ross (1978-1982) based on Ross’s research for her doctoral studies in Indian Palaeography. The new Linotype Bengali is informed by more recent research by Ross and Kshetrimayum resulting in additional glyphs that serve contemporary needs in a variety of genres – the original had been specifically designed for newspaper composition and in now outdated digital formats. The new design makes use of OpenType features with the employment of contextual vowel signs for Bengali – a feature that Ross and Holloway had first introduced in Indian scripts for the Adobe Devanagari typeface – and has sophisticated contextual mark positioning. Furthermore, whereas the original design had existed in only two typestyles, extensive work has been undertaken to produce this new design in 5 weights: Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black. It has been an important aspect of this project to remain true to the original design concepts, and so to achieve optimal readability for sustained reading at small type-sizes, but the additional weights enable differentiation in document design, and afford users scope to produce textural variety in their outputs. This revival design is intended to widen the hitherto very limited palette of typographic choices in the field of textual communication in Bengali, Assamese and other languages that make use of the Bengali script.

Alex Kaczun, originally designed BottleKaps for Linotype-Hell, in 1992, as a QuickDraw GX multi-master font series. A few new GX applications, like 'Unicorn', where able to utilize these unique fonts. The GX application allowed the user to adjust weight and proportions, on the fly, including glyph substitution for small capitals, old style figures, swash and alternate endings. The technology was never successfully deployed by Apple, so the individual fonts, 21 styles and variations in all, where sold in the Linotype Font Library as separate Truetype fonts up until 1998. Unfortunately, the fonts collected dust for many years thereafter, but now have been reworked and rejuvenated by Alex in OpenType format for both Mac and PC. 'BottleKaps' is a 'unique', 'playful' and 'decorative' font series. Use it for those bold headlines to stimulate interest and show off your 'unique' individual style.

With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed. The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable. The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima nova works for just about anything from book text to signage. Optima Nova® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Why Baka Expert? There’s actually a simple answer. The original Baka was done as an experiment of sorts. I wanted to quickly capture a rough, frenetic handwriting style that broke normal conventions. Commercially, it was successful, received some accolades ... but I wasn’t completely satisfied, so I went back to the master art and the lettering explorations and produced Baka Too. This addressed some of the line items I wanted to refine in Baka. I liked it. Each font has been out for a few years now, and I have seen them in use. I’m very critical of my work, and I could still see things—modulations of strokes, angle of the nib, ink swell, and so on—that I wanted to change, refine, and reorder. For me, it is typographic indulgence, but I wanted to take this handwriting ‘font’ and turn it into a robust ‘typeface.’ So I did just that and a bit more by adding back more of my initial flourish concepts; attaining tighter, consistent control of the modulation; optimizing points; adding titling options; and expanding the character language set. Baka and Baka Too had to exist to produce this entirely new re-envisioning of an old friend ... and they all play well together :)

Released by the Monotype Corporation around 1932, Inflex Bold is a Scotch Roman fat face design similar to many others popular in the nineteenth century. A high-contrast bold roman, Inflex Bold is good for informal display work when used sparingly.

From 1958 to 1964, one of ABC-TV’s popular shows was the detective series “77 Sunset Strip”. Based in Los Angeles, the fictional detective agency was located next door to Dino’s Lodge, (partly owned by Dean Martin and actually located at 8532 Sunset). It was originally known as the Alpine Lodge. The adjacent building where Stuart Bailey and Jeff Spencer’s private detective service was located in fact housed a popular modeling agency. The ‘77’ address did not exist outside of the realm of the series. However, a wonderful sign with Art Deco-influenced lettering graced the set (on the wall of the office foyer) saying “Bailey & Spencer Private Investigators Suites 101-102”. A screen capture of this sign served as the working model for Private Eye JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Shell Shock was inspired by stencil typefaces used on military tanks and ammunition boxes. It can be enhanced with a separate set of bombs and warning signs for the typographer in power. Shell Shock Cloak is the ultimate add-on for Shell Shock. This 3-layered 'Cloaking Device' enhances the existing Shell Shock. Put the 3 Cloak layers on top of Shell Shock and suddenly it's camouflaged and you will hardly be able to find it. Use only one extra Cloak layer to give Shell Shock that cool distorted look, like those damaged warsigns on military vehicles. If you only use the Cloak layers you can create background patterns and structures. Try using different color combinations and you'll be surprised by the possibilities of Shell Shock Cloak. It's preferably seen on clothing, skateboards, party flyers, posters or other daring design.

Let us introduce you the official big update of Intro type family with essential upgrades to this contemporary sans serif. The weight distributions completely revised has brought 8 new weights and matching italics resulting in 72-fonts family with 22 fonts extra. Intro’s refined playfulness is further emphasized with additions of multiple ingredients, such as carefully adjusted Oblique alternatives next to the existing upright alternatives. All these styles are now available as a Condensed version. On top of that, there are 3 inline fonts. The glyph case was expanded to cover Extended Latin and Cyrillic with adequate language localization. The OpenType features rewritten and improved now allow case-sensitive forms and contextual alternates, and plenty of stylistic alternates. The standard numerals set includes as well tabular figures and symbols, superiors and inferiors, numerators and denominators, plus fractions.