ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.

It's been said that creativity requires ten parts to perspiration to one part inspiration. But not always. According to its creator, Mira Vucko, ITC Needlescript was designed in one breath." An accomplished lettering artist, Vucko was sketching letters one afternoon. "I was using a calligraphy nib and was drawing the alphabet without much thought," she recalls. "When I allowed the down strokes of a couple of letters to fall below the baseline, I realized that I had created the impression of movement. I kept drawing letters in this fashion and did the same with horizontal lines. I added a firm ending to the descenders. Instead of dots above the 'i' and 'j,' I placed strokes in the opposite direction." In this way, the first characters that were to become ITC Needlescript emerged. The finished design is a lively, distinctive alphabet that produces a striking texture on the page. Letters intertwine and overlap to create a sense of movement and graphic intensity, especially when reversed out of a dark background. Vucko lives, works and was educated in Zagreb, Croatia. She lived in France and Sweden while in her twenties, but then returned to Croatia to work as a graphic designer for the country's largest newspaper. It was here that her passion for type and typography was born. Vucko has since gone on to become one of Croatia's leading graphic designers, and has won many awards for her advertising and packaging design. Vucko recommends that ITC Needlescript be used for "titling, lively but 'thorny' content, and anywhere that a little typographic drama is called for.""

Aure Brash speaks with the cheeky inuendo of a sassy parrot. The quirky forms of this unique outline font engage the reader with a subtext of whimsy. Designed for its visual impact, Brash stands out as a title font and offers delightful possibilities for graphic imagery. Brash is an original design developed by Aurora Isaac. After more than a decade in development, 2018 marks the first release of the CJ and KB glyphsets. The CJ glyphset is a full text font with an extended set of lowercase and uppercase glyphs supporting a variety of European languages. Additional glyphs include standard ligatures, four variations of the ampersand, and check-mark and happy-face with their companions x-mark and grumpy-face. Numbers are available in lining and oldstyle versions, with numerators and denominators for forming fractions. Companion glyphs include Roman numerals, specialized glyphs for indicating ordinals, and a variety of mathematical symbols and operators. The CJ glyphset also includes an extended set of glyphs for typesetting Western Astrology. These glyphs are also available separately in the KB glyphset: a symbol font re-coded to allow easy keyboard access for the most commonly used glyphs. Brash is not designed for use in extended text. It shows its strength paired with strong text fonts such as Aure Jane or Aure Teddy. Used sparingly, Brash will add witty highlights to catch the reader's eye. Give Aure Brash a trial run! You may discover a permanent place for this font family in your typographic palette. AureFontDesign.com

Now available as Opentype font with extended character set, Coranto 2. It is originally based on Unger’s typeface Paradox, and arose from a desire to transfer the elegance and refinement of that type to newsprint. Coranto 2 has a larger x-height and in many places has been made more robust. Over the past 25 years newspaper production has seen spectacular improvements in paper and print quality, the introduction of colour printing, and vastly better register. Newspaper production still demands a lot of letter forms, but advanced printing brings out details better and makes typography more appealing to readers. For text type the newspaper is no longer an environment in which survival is the chief assignment. Today, newspapers are not merely a matter of cheap grey paper, thin ink and super-fast rotary printing, and type design no longer has to focus on surviving the mechanical technology and providing elementary legibility. Now there is also room to create an ambience, to give a paper a clearer identity of its own; there is scope for precision and refinement. One consequence of this is that newspaper designers can now look beyond the traditional group of newsfaces. Conversely, a newsface can be used outside the newspaper — not an uncommon occurrence. The update to this beautiful font family, Coranto 2, includes the addition of over 250 glyphs featuring full Latin A language support, new ligatures, 4 sets of numerals, arbitrary fractions and superiors/inferiors. Furthermore, kerning was added and fine tuned for better performance.

Jürgen Weltin's Mantika Informal is pretty difficult to categorize, but very easy to like. This particularly reader-friendly typeface in regular and bold weights, brings to the table the informal fluidity of a script, the consistency of an inclined italic, and the open and airy forms and contrast of a humanist sans. The result is a warm, approachable, and very legible typeface that is never static and staid, but rather invites an attentive, reading eye. The original idea behind Mantika Informal lay in the challenge to create a typeface for setting children's books. German designer Jürgen Weltin aimed to create a reading typeface for those just starting to learn how to read. On the one hand, it should help create clear word-images; on the other, its letterforms should remain uncomplicated but resist mechanical and industrial sterility. Mantika?s subtle cursive lines stress the printed word's connection with handwriting, in addition to making the transition from school writing exercises to printed texts seamless and effortless. The resulting slightly organic and cursive forms that developed during the design process are so captivating that Mantika Informal may be used for a multitude of unintended applications - anywhere a friendly and informal yet sophisticated character could lend a helping hand, Mantika is there, giving a fresh accent to anything from packaging design to food products. With a broad character set encompassing support for Cyrillic and Green, Mantika Informal's two fonts make for a versatile and dynamic typeface that surely will find its place in a broad range of applications.

Smart Sans is a personal tribute to Leslie (Sam) Smart, the first type director to be hired by a major typesetting house in Canada. Smart was a twentieth century design pioneer who raised the standards of Canadian typography. Together with three of his peers, he established the first Type Directors Club in Toronto. After Smart's death in 1998, type designer Rod McDonald decided that something should be done to commemorate Smart's life and achievements. I had first thought of establishing a scholarship in Sam's name, but a typeface design soon replaced this idea," says McDonald. "Once I decided to design a typeface, however, it became a foregone conclusion that it would be a sans serif - for no other reason than that I loved the name Smart Sans." Two typefaces served as inspiration for McDonald's work. "Like thousands of designers, I'm keen on Matthew Carter's Helvetica Compressed series. And, when I was younger, I also loved Fred Lambert's Compacta," says McDonald. "I thought there might be a place for a small range that could take over from these 'old workhorses' and, in the process, bring a fresher look to the genre." McDonald drew three weights for the Smart Sans family, all ideally suited for setting attention-getting headlines and powerful display copy. The two-storied 'g' contributes to the design's lively personality, and the short 'r' helps maintain tight, even spacing. Smart Sans is the perfect homage to a great typographer, because it raises the bar on what to expect from condensed sans serif typefaces. Sam Smart would be pleased."

DESCRIPTION Now my feelings about didones are more than evident. After some years of roman-abstinence (1) I present Heroe, an interesting combination of elegance and sensuality. Heroe, spanish for hero, takes some aspects of roman typefaces to the extreme like my main inspiration, the great Herb Lubalin, did in the majority of his works: Thins turned into hairlines, altered proportions (for display purposes), unique ball terminals, poetic curves and a graceful way of placing them together on a layout. Its classy style makes the font perfect for a wide range of uses. Imagine Heroe Inline (my favorite) dancing over a bottle of perfume; printed on the cover of a fashion magazine; lighting wedding invitations up. Its partner, Heroe Monoline, may help you to make more elaborated pieces of design. Just combine it with Heroe, or Heroe Inline and see how perfect they match. TECHNICAL The difference between Pro and Std styles is the quantity of glyphs. While Pro styles have all the decorative characters available, Standard ones have only the basic set of them. Heroe Monoline Big and Heroe Monoline Small were made for better printing purposes. If you need to print the font in small sizes, then your choice should be Small. Heroe Monoline has the same alternates (and open-type code) as Heroe Pro and Inline, plus some decorative ligatures. NOTES (1) After fonts like Breathe , Aire , and the award winning Reina , I started experimenting with scripts a little more. Erotica , Bird Script and Dream Script are examples of that.

Almoneda: Sale at public auction of movable goods, generally used. And also: private and voluntary sale of jewelry and junk that is made without the intervention of justice. Formerly, it was nothing more than the market or sale of things and spoils won from the enemy in war. Nowadays, the almoneda is practically associated with spaces where the sale of "old things" takes place and, in Madrid, they are usually concentrated in the area of El Rastro, an open-air market that is set up on Sundays and some holidays in the center of Madrid. There, you can find everything and, if you walk around a lot and look hard enough, great typographic finds. It is there where I find a large number of elements (usually from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) such as boxes, posters, books, etc.. in which appear uppercase letters with a variety of shapes, letters embedded, rare ligatures ... In addition, many elements extracted from street signs, tiles from bars and commemorative elements of Madrid have been used to complete this font design made with care and patience. Thus was born Almoneda, a modern typeface with a marked axis and great contrast, and an uppercase with several sets of characters to play with and enjoy. It also includes a large number of ligatures and discretionary ligatures. A Variable font is included with the full package license. Almoneda, a typeface that will not leave you indifferent. They take it out of my hands, hey!

There are many script typefaces but there is only one Scripticus. Scripticus is like a chameleon: In whatever surroundings you put it, it adapts itself and looks like it couldn't be anywhere else. Be it a sales advertisement, a music Website, a comic strip or a journal with complex chemical formula – Scripticus always solves the problem in a natural and leisurely way. And it never makes compromises concerning clarity. But where does Scripticus come from? … From the good old high school blackboard! Blackboards have become almost obsolete in teaching, but be it a black or white background – clear, strong characters placed on the board while the facts are explained are still one of the best ways to make and keep things understandable. Scripticus is dedicated to my high school chemistry teacher who was an expert in just this. While the letterforms come from different inspirations, its aim is the same as the pedagogical aim of my teacher: Combining clarity with a strong personality. Scripticus has a special trick to give it its natural look: Four alternates for each letter and each number plus rotation coding make the glyphs appear in lively melodic flow. In this way even mathematic equations look nice! Scripticus has a lot of OT-features that help it do its job. They are: capital spacing, localized forms, subscript, scientific inferiors, superscript, numerators, denominators, fractions, ordinals, tabular figures, historical forms, ligatures, stylistic alternates, stylistic set and ornaments. Finally, as is my general goal in type design – Scripticus supports close to one hundred languages from Latin extended to Cyrillic extended.

Christmas cookies have already slowly crept onto your local supermarket's shelves -- the Linotype Xmas Fonts just can't wait any longer! Ravishingly friendly and universally applicable: Fuenfwerken -- a design studio from Wiesbaden, Germany -- is proud to present its latest Fun Font Family. Bringing variety to the dry Christmas card genre, these fonts can also be used on posters to spread holiday cheer at home. No limits are placed on your creativity here! The family has three different fonts, each with more than 60 symbols inside: Xmas Story includes the whole figure palette necessary for a classical Christmas story. From a cute little Baby Jesus to the Three Wise Men and woolly Aramaic sheep and everything that one needs to add special flair to a letter to grandma, or to set up a Nativity Scene at home for the kids is included. Customers who aren't searching for a biblical font should check out Xmas Essentials. This font contains typical non-denominational end-of-the-year holiday ornaments, such as snowflakes, decorated Christmas trees, nutcrackers, and stars. Last but not least is the Xmas Modern font. Just as global warming poses severe risks to snowmen, this font will make recipients of your holiday and New Year's cards melt. Glyphs such as Santa Claus riding on a Vespa -- complete with iPod -- speed away from normal, stuffy holiday seriousness, and signal that the Fun Generation has arrived! The best choice, of course, is to treat yourself to all three fonts this Christmas. Then you'll be prepared for every situation. Happy Holidays!

Mono-Spec is a monospaced family of sans-serif type. At least in default settings, all characters across the typeface share a common width. That fixed setting is condensed, and the aesthetic style of Mono-Spec’s letterforms is very industrial. A sister family, called Mono-Spec Stencil, is also available. Its design strays away from the mechanical nature of Mono-Spec, and it channels the spirit of resistance and street culture. Mono-Spec ships in two different formats. Depending on your preference, you can install the typeface as a single Variable Font or use the family’s five static OpenType font files instead. Those weights run from Light through Bold. While the static-format fonts offer a good intermediary-step selection, users who install the Variable Font have vastly greater control over their text’s stroke width. The Mono-Spec Variable Font’s weight axis allows users to differentiate between almost 1,000 possible font weights. That enables you to fine-tune your text’s exact appearance on-screen or in print. Whatever format you choose, the Mono-Spec fonts are equipped with several OpenType features. The most striking of these can be activated via a Stylistic Set. That will replace several letters – like “B”, “E”, “F”, “H”, and “I” with double-width alternates. Those alternates take up as much space as two characters placed next to each other otherwise word. The effect of Mono-Spec’s double-width alternates is striking, and their use strikes a strong chord in any display typography applying them.

Aure Nox inspires the chill whimsy of a haunted forest. The roughhewn forms of this decorative, sans-serif font engage the reader with a subtext of rakish charm. Surprisingly legible, Nox adds a bit of rebelious sass to text and titles, and a daring stance to astrological expressions and chartwheels. Nox is an original design developed by Aurora Isaac. After more than a decade in development, 2018 marks the first release of the CJ and KB glyphsets in regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic. The CJ glyphset is a full text font supporting a variety of European languages. A matching set of small-caps complements the extended lowercase and uppercase glyphsets. Supporting glyphs include standard ligatures, four variations of the ampersand, and check-mark and happy-face with their companions x-mark and grumpy-face. Numbers are available in lining, oldstyle, and small versions with numerators and denominators for forming fractions. Companion glyphs include Roman numerals, specialized glyphs for indicating ordinals, and a variety of mathematical symbols and operators. The CJ glyphset also includes an extended set of glyphs for typesetting Western Astrology. These glyphs are also available separately in the KB glyphset: a symbol font re-coded to allow easy keyboard access for the most commonly used glyphs. Though Nox stands well on its own as a text font, the more traditional sans-serif forms of Aure Jane pair well as an innocuous foil to Nox's brazen presence. Give Aure Nox a trial run! You may discover a permanent place for this font family in your typographic palette. AureFontDesign.com

Haarlemmer is a recreation of a never-produced Jan Van Krimpen typeface that goes one step beyond authentic: it shows how he wanted it to be designed in the first place. The original, drawn in the late 1930s, was created for the Dutch Society for the Art of Printing and Books and was to be used to set a new edition of the Bible, using Monotype typesetting. Hence the problem: fonts for metal typesetting machines like the Linotype and Monotype had to be created within a crude system of predetermined character width values. Every letter had to fit within and have its spacing determined by a grid of only 18 units. Often, the italic characters had to share the same widths as those in the roman design. Van Krimpen believed this severely impaired the design process. The invasion of Holland in World War II halted all work on the Bible project, and the original Haarlemmer never went into production. Flash forward about sixty years. Frank E. Blokland, of The Dutch Type Library, wanted to revive the original Haarlemmer, but this time as Van Krimpen would have intended. Blokland reinterpreted the original drawings and created a typeface that matched, as much as possible, Van Krimpen's initial concept. While Van Krimpen's hand could no longer be on the tiller, a thorough study of his work made up for his absence. The result is an exceptional text family of three weights, with complementary italic designs and a full suite of small caps and old style figures. Van Krimpen would be proud.

My brother is an architect, and I have always loved his lettering, you know, the style of writing that can be found on architectural drawings. There is a common thread to it, yet each architect or engineer brings their own personality to it. I have seen a similar style being used by some hand-letterers for invitations, place cards and signage. Inspired, I set out to create my own, and the result is my new typeface, Robard! I wanted something compact, somewhat modular, done quickly but with control, and sourced from hand-lettering. Starting out with a handful of pigment ink pens, I settled on a 0.1mm Copic Multi-Liner, and using a light table with a grid underneath the paper, I cranked out grouping after grouping, letter after letter, numbers, punctuation, accents, just trying to zero in on the feeling and the look I was after. There were some ideas that didn't work, like unicase (there would be no regular lowercase), or swash alternates. Ultimately, I ended up with a decent array of glyphs to choose from, and alternates like oldstyle numbers, and an alternate set of caps for the lowercase slots, and even alternative figures so doubles like 88 would be different. In the font, the OpenType ligature code automatically alternates the cap and lowercase (alternate cap) letters, and numbers as you type, lending Robard that hand-lettered look in a digital typeface that I was hoping for. There are also oldstyle figures, and unlimited fractions, ordinals, and a few alternate letters. I hope you like Robard!

Grafical is a contemporary take on 19th-century sans serifs. In this family, the amount of geometry inherent within the letterforms has been amped up. Many shapes have received further streamlining, too. All the geometric forms you see have been optically corrected, ensuring their delivery of better legibility. Grafical ships in two different formats: depending on your preference, you can install the typeface as two Variable Fonts or use the family’s 16 static OpenType font files instead. The static fonts offer eight weights, running from Extralight through Black. Each weight has an upright and an italic font available. While the static-format fonts offer a good intermediary-step selection, users who install the Variable Fonts have vastly greater control over their text’s stroke width. The Grafical Variable and Grafical Variable Italic font’s weight axes allow users to differentiate between almost 1,000 possible font weights. That enables you to fine-tune your text’s exact appearance on-screen or in print. Grafical is the perfect tool for a range of design uses, including text on the web, text in print, and text in motion graphics. Its fonts are typographic workhorses – not just from their legibility perspective but also because of the amount of OpenType features they include. There are ligatures, for instance, as well as proportional and tabular lining and oldstyle figures, fractions, numbers placed inside circles, and even Roman numerals. Users can also substitute alternate versions of the “a”, “g”, “i”, “j”, “y”, “G”, and “Q” into their work.

Jürgen Weltin's Mantika Informal is pretty difficult to categorize, but very easy to like. This particularly reader-friendly typeface in regular and bold weights, brings to the table the informal fluidity of a script, the consistency of an inclined italic, and the open and airy forms and contrast of a humanist sans. The result is a warm, approachable, and very legible typeface that is never static and staid, but rather invites an attentive, reading eye. The original idea behind Mantika Informal lay in the challenge to create a typeface for setting children's books. German designer Jürgen Weltin aimed to create a reading typeface for those just starting to learn how to read. On the one hand, it should help create clear word-images; on the other, its letterforms should remain uncomplicated but resist mechanical and industrial sterility. Mantika?s subtle cursive lines stress the printed word's connection with handwriting, in addition to making the transition from school writing exercises to printed texts seamless and effortless. The resulting slightly organic and cursive forms that developed during the design process are so captivating that Mantika Informal may be used for a multitude of unintended applications - anywhere a friendly and informal yet sophisticated character could lend a helping hand, Mantika is there, giving a fresh accent to anything from packaging design to food products. With a broad character set encompassing support for Cyrillic and Green, Mantika Informal's two fonts make for a versatile and dynamic typeface that surely will find its place in a broad range of applications.

Imagine a font that is easier to read the smaller it is – or the further away the text is. There are already many line screen fonts, I wanted to take it to the extreme and use as few lines as possible, while keeping the grid of the fonts metrics. The result is a typeface that lives up to its name. Each individual line makes no sense on its own; individual letters are only recognisable in the context of all associated lines, individual letters are most likely to be recognised in the context of whole words. Attached to a building wall, text would be readable from a great distance and become increasingly difficult to decipher the closer you get to the building. Placed on the ground or on a large flat roof, text would only be readable from an aeroplane or - depending on the size - in Google Earth. Kontext has old style figures, superscript numerals, case-sensitive questiondown and exclamdown and an alternative ampersand, 390 glyphs at all. Use the same value for font size and line spacing to keep the lines in the grid, or change the line spacing in 10% steps. Change the spacing in 100-unit or 25-percent increments increments to keep the grid. The »H« in the font name stands for horizontal (lines). The numbers in the font name refer to the brightness of the background and letters themselves, with the first number describing the background and the second the letters. Starting with »00« (white) to »200« (dark) See also my Family Kontext Dot

The ideal typeface for cartography The Swiss designer/typographer Felix Arnold designed Cisalpin during the late 1990s, after he had challenged himself to create a contemporary typeface that could be used for cartographic uses. Arnold came to the subject of cartographic typefaces after analyzing many maps and atlases, and discovering that there was no standard typeface for these types of documents. Like any good cartographic type, Cisalpin is very legible at small sizes. While he was drawing this typeface on his computer, Arnold used a reduction glass to refine his design, making it work in these situations. Cisalpin is a linear sans serif face, with slight resemblance to renaissance serif types. The various weights are all clearly differentiated from one another. And because space is often a premium on maps, Cisalpin runs narrow. Words close in around themselves to help them become more identifiable. The letterforms in Cisalpin are durable, and can maintain their readability when placed over complex backgrounds. They have open interior forms, flattened curves, tall x-heights, and a capital height that almost reaches the tops of the ascenders. Cisalpin also has pronounced Italics, with a very clear angle of inclination. Each letterform in the family has been optimized so that they cannot be easily mistaken for another. This again helps minimize the misunderstandings that often occur because of illegibility. Although Cisalpin was developed for use in cartography, it may be used for countless other purposes; any font that can work well in small sizes on a map could be used almost anywhere else!

Designed by Malou Verlomme of the Monotype Studio, Macklin is a superfamily, which brings together several attention-grabbing styles. Macklin is an elegant, high contrast typeface that demands its own attention and has been designed purposely to enable brands to appeal more emotionally to modern consumers. Macklin comprises four sub-families —Sans, Slab, Text and Display— as well as a variable. The full superfamily includes 54 fonts with 9 weights ranging from hairline to black. The concept for Macklin began with research on historical material from Britain and Europe in the beginning of the 19th century, specifically the work of Vincent Figgins. This was a period of intense social change--the beginning of the industrial revolution. A time when manufacturers and advertisers were suddenly replacing traditional handwriting or calligraphy models and demanding bold, attention-grabbing typography. Typographers experimented with innovative new styles, like fat faces and Italians, and developed many styles that brands and designers continue to use today, such as slabs, serifs, and sans serifs. Verlomme pays respect to Figgins’s work with Macklin, but pushes the family to a more contemporary place. Each sub family has been designed from the same skeleton, giving designers a broad palette for visual representation and the ability to create with contrast without worrying about awkward pairings. With Macklin, Verlomme shows us it’s possible to create a superfamily that allows for complete visual expression without compromising fluidity. Macklin™ font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives. Featured in: Best Fonts for Websites

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. MyFonts is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Loraine was born in London. She was an ordinary, hardworking family person, with nothing to worry about beyond paying the rent at the end of the month or keeping the fridge full. Until in 2009 she came to Barcelona on holiday. Soon after she arrived her passport was stolen from her and she had a series of problems with the British embassy. Somebody had made illegal use of her passport. So Loraine found herself in a strange place, unable to get home. She didn’t know anyone there and her circumstances meant she couldn’t ask for help from England, either. She had to sell all her possessions and, in time, learn to speak Spanish. “Living in the street is a wonderful adventure,” she says. In the street she discovered a new city, a new country and a new culture. “There are lots of people who prefer to sleep under the stars.” She also made lots of friends who helped her in a completely unfamiliar world.

Imagine a font that is easier to read the smaller it is – or the further away the text is. There are already many line screen fonts, I wanted to take it to the extreme and use as few lines as possible, while keeping the grid of the fonts metrics. The result is a typeface that lives up to its name. Each individual line makes no sense on its own; individual letters are only recognisable in the context of all associated lines, individual letters are most likely to be recognised in the context of whole words. Attached to a building wall, text would be readable from a great distance and become increasingly difficult to decipher the closer you get to the building. Placed on the ground or on a large flat roof, text would only be readable from an aeroplane or - depending on the size - in Google Earth. Kontext has old style figures, superscript numerals, case-sensitive questiondown and exclamdown and an alternative ampersand, 390 glyphs at all. Use the same value for font size and line spacing to keep the lines in the grid, or change the line spacing in 10% steps. Change the spacing in 50-unit or 25-percent increments to keep the grid. The »V« in the font name stands for vertical (lines). The numbers in the font name refer to the brightness of the background and letters themselves, with the first number describing the background and the second the letters. Starting with »00« (white) to »200« (dark) See also my family Kontext Dot

IngrimayneType has put letters inside a variety of objects, including bowling pins, book covers, coffee mugs, teapots, pumpkins, Christmas ornaments, train cars, tombstones, old bottles, circles, and rectangles. In each case the letters were placed on a single shape. The use of the Opentype feature of contextual alternatives makes it easy to use two different but alternating shapes. ButterflyWingz puts its letters on the right and left wings of a butterfly. The wings provide a large surface for drawing letters, but they have a odd shape so letters must be distorted to fit. The wings are symmetrical but some letters are not, so the right and left wing versions of the same letter are sometimes quite different. Without the contextual alternative feature one could design a typeface like ButterflyWingz but the user would have to alternate upper and lower case keys. With contextual alternatives turned on, the computer automatically alternates the letters creating a line of complete butterflies. Turning on the Opentype feature stylistic styles one (ss01) replaces the empty spaces with empty wings. However, sometimes an empty wing at the end of a line is unwanted and it can be removed by changing the typeface or by turning off the stylistic style for that character. The family contains two styles, a filled style and an outline style. They can be used separately or together in layers to add color. (Empty wings are on the logicalnot and registered characters.) ButterflyWingz is hard to read and should be used in small doses for decorative effects.

Aure Westra embodies the liquid look of a broad-nibbed ink pen. These bold forms engage the reader with a subtext of exotic wisdom. Westra’s entrancing flow brings a dramatic intrigue to text and titles and an esoteric savor to astrological expressions and chartwheels. Westra is an original design developed by Aurora Isaac, first released in the LP glyphset in 2011. After more than a decade in development, 2018 marks the release of the CJ and KB glyphsets. The CJ glyphset is a full text font with an extended set of lowercase and uppercase glyphs supporting a variety of European languages. Additional glyphs include standard ligatures, four variations of the ampersand, and check-mark and happy-face with their companions x-mark and grumpy-face. Numbers are available in lining and oldstyle versions, with numerators and denominators for forming fractions. Companion glyphs include Roman numerals, specialized glyphs for indicating ordinals, and a variety of mathematical symbols and operators. The CJ glyphset also includes an extended set of glyphs for typesetting Western Astrology. These glyphs are also available separately in the KB glyphset: a symbol font re-coded to allow easy keyboard access for the most commonly used glyphs. The unique look of Aure Westra stands on its own as a text font. Where needed, use the clean lines of Aure Jane to provide contrasting text that will showcase Westra’s exotic nature. Give Aure Westra a trial run! You may discover a permanent place for this font family in your typographic palette. AureFontDesign.com

Rameau for classic elegance The type family Rameau™ was designed by Sarah Lazarevic She started with the italics; these she derived from the manuscript of the opera Les fêtes de l´hymen et de l´amour", the music for which was composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1747. In the 18th century, musical compositions were published in the form of impressions from copper plates that had been hand-engraved in contrast with books and other texts, which were printed from moveable lead type. The italic letters of Rameau include many ligatures and are thus typical of the engraving style of the period. Rameau exhibits much of the harmonious rhythm associated with genuine manuscript. The marked Antiqua contrasts make the pages on which the font is used quite literally sparkle. This effect is enhanced by the excessively sharp terminals and the prominent serifs of the upper case letters. This highly legible and stylish type family can be used for printing high quality books, invitations, menus and all kinds of texts - anywhere the grace and elegance of France in the 18th century is to be invoked."

We love sports – like billions of fans all over the world – but in Argentina, we really love fútbol (soccer). Fútbol is part of our culture: it makes our hearts’ race and our pulses quicken, it inspires screams of joy and screams of anguish, and it has been the cause of more than a few heated conversations amongst friends. So you can imagine our delight when, in recent years, a local team’s fútbol jersey used a Sudtipos font; it got us thinking about designing a font that explicitly had sports in mind yet still had the versatility to work for other types of projects. Sporty has a geometric and modular structure with many potential applications that far exceed jerseys, score boards and stadium wayfinding. Its flexibility is evident when examining its four style – from a square style to a rounded one – as well as the Shadow and Inline options. Each of the styles also comes with a set of miscellaneous shapes including modular banners, plates and arrows. Sporty comes in 3 widths – Condensed, Regular and Expanded – and 7 weights that equate to a total of 39 fonts.

Sweet Gothic is a 2009 addition to the Sweet Collection of engraved lettering styles from the 20th Century.  Sweet Gothic Light is closely based on lettering from an engravers pattern from the early 1900s that was used for tracing letterforms with the engraving machine (pantograph) to make steel engraving plates. The design is related to many similar engravers gothics developed in the early 1900s, but as each engraving house created by hand their own patterns for popular styles of the time, there is variation among the models. Sweet Gothic offers contrast in stroke weight and its unique personality. The bolder weights are new designs, based on the characteristics of the Light. A serif variant (Sweet Gothic Serif) has also been developed to expand the usefulness of the family, offering an alternative to Copperplate Gothic. As such, most of the fonts are new designs, yet may seem familiar and ubiquitous given their model. The fonts offer two sizes of figures and monetary symbols: one set is intended for use with upper- and lowercase settings; the second set is the same height as the small caps.

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, a solid style that must have different colors when used and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. To see how patterns can be constructed, see the “Samples” file here. TessieOddsNEnds contains shapes that did not fit into the other Tessie fonts: TessieStandingBirds, TessieFlyingBirds, TessieMoreBirds, TessieXtraBirds, TessieSpinners, TessiePuzzlePieces, TessieAnimals, TessieBugs, TessieMiscellaneous, and TessieMoreStuff. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns. The addition of a solid style that must be colored makes these new fonts a bit more difficult to use but offers far greater possibilities in getting visually interesting results.)

Fer is a sans-serif font for body text, not lacking in its own distinctive voice. The aftertaste of reading the text set in Fer is like reading the letters on old rusty plates somewhere in Southern Europe, hence the name (Fer means iron in French). Being a modern system that includes a variable font with weight and optical size axes, Fer combines the features of geometriс sans serifs and old sans serifs with closed apertures. The typeface contains three sets of styles: for captions, text and headings, — with the weight ranging from regular to black. Fer was created with the idea to unite nations. The Latin character set supports all European languages, most African languages and Vietnamese. Cyrillic has support for all living Cyrillic languages and some obsolete characters too. The font also supports the Greek language. Additionally, the character set includes currency signs of all supported languages’ countries, old style, lining, tabular and proportional figures as well as numbers in squares and circles. Lastly, the font has lots of localized letterforms and stylistic sets. Fer was designed by Dmitry Goloub for Paratype in 2020–2023.

Sweet Gothic Serif is a 2009 addition to the Sweet Collection of engraved lettering styles from the 20th Century. It is a serif variant of Sweet Gothic. Sweet Gothic Light (without serifs) is closely based on lettering from an engravers pattern from the early 1900s that was used for tracing letterforms with the engraving machine (pantograph) to make steel engraving plates. The design is related to many similar engravers gothics developed in the early 1900s, but as each engraving house created by hand their own patterns for popular styles of the time, there is variation among the models. Sweet Gothic offers contrast in stroke weight and its unique personality. The bolder weights are new designs, based on the characteristics of the Light. Sweet Gothic Serif has been developed to expand the usefulness of the Sweet Gothics, offering an alternative to Copperplate Gothic. As such, most of the fonts are new designs, yet may seem familiar and ubiquitous given their model. The fonts offer two sizes of figures and monetary symbols: one set is intended for use with upper- and lowercase settings; the second set is the same height as the small caps.

The softening of edges in the Shabby Chic aesthetic are markers of age, warmth, authenticity and use. The charming style popular with Bohemians and artisans has a soft, relaxed and romantic feeling. Resistenza used their highly successful monolinear script Mina as the basis to explore how to recreate the spirit and charm of the Shabby Chic design style in a typeface. Drawn by hand with dry brush pen for rustic warmth and distressed edges. Shabby Chic has long connections between letters creating a visual rhythm that echoes the form and pace of gentle waves lapping at a seashore. Each character has an expressive touch, OpenType enabled alternates, for character combinations, initial and final forms allow effortless customisation, flair and a realistic handwritten-sign appearance. (The alternates are accessible by turning on 'Stylistic Alternates' and 'Ligatures' buttons on in Photoshop's Character panel, or via any software with a glyphs panel, e.g. Adobe, Quark...etc) Introduce some rustic romance to your font library. Shabby Chic is perfect for cards, invitations, labels and logos where you want to convey intimate, friendly, warm and genuine sentiment.

Blackbow is a font that takes its inspiration from three enticing subjects. Firstly, it’s sheer, lace-like construction captures the allure of lingerie. Secondly, it possesses and projects the sometimes dour but always POEtic trappings of Goth culture. And lastly, it conveys the stylish, provocative accoutrements of Steampunk. When blended together, Blackbow is a font that suggests the rapture of dark temptation in the sultriest of ways. Blackbow has a glyph count of 389 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

A free-flowing brush script with only uppercase letters. Now with a professional and multilingual character set! Vic Fieger says: "The letters in Edo were hand-drawn using a thick black permanent marker with a flat head. The head was chopped up using a box cutter to create a "brush" effect. The entire font was made while watching Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Edo has been used by video game-makers UbiSoft in their game adaptation of the 2007 animated film Surf's Up, as well as ads for the Fuse 2006 Warped Tour. More recently, it has turned up in such places as the cover for the US release of the manga Teru Teru x Shonen, and the logo for A&E's program, "The Cleaner." ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Imagine a font that is easier to read the smaller it is – or the further away the text is. There are already many rasterised fonts, I wanted to take it to the extreme and use as few dots as possible. The result is a typeface that lives up to its name. Each individual circle makes no sense on its own; individual letters are only recognisable in the context of all associated circles, individual letters are most likely to be recognised in the context of whole words. Attached to a building wall, text would be readable from a great distance and become increasingly difficult to decipher the closer you get to the building. Placed on the ground or on a large flat roof, text would only be readable from a higher building, an aeroplane or - depending on the size - in Google Earth. Kontext has old style figures, superscript numerals, case-sensitive questiondown and exclamdown and an alternative ampersand, 390 glyphs at all. Use the same value for font size and line spacing to keep the lines in the grid, or change the line spacing in 10% steps. Change the spacing in 100-unit increments to keep the grid. The numbers in the family- and style-names refer to the (ca.) grey value of the respective background and the font itself. Kontext Dot 00-33 has e.g. a white background (0%) and 33% grey value. Kontext Dot 66-33 has a 66% background and 33% grey value. »Positive« styles (first number smaller than the second number) have kerning, »negative« styles (first number bigger than the second number) can have none.

Archemy is a restricted and obscure branch of Alchemy that deals specifically with the life, generation and transmutation of Metals. The Archemy font is primarily a magical and alchemical alphabet. It was created on initiative of Senior Zadith, in order to properly quote older alchemical manuscripts, without the need to insert handwritten symbols. The font combines a unique and elegant Roman alphabet with a set of the most frequently used planetary and alchemical symbols that are common in the Western Mystery Tradition, and as used by those involved in the Royal Art. The Archemy font contains a selection of symbols that are still used by practitioners of the Art today, and for the sake of completeness, a selection of less used and more arcane symbols that can be found in older alchemical texts. In addition a Hebrew Alphabet is included, which will supply practitioners of the Art with the glyphs related to Cabalistic studies. The Hebrew Alphabet in this font does not include vowel points, since they have no place in ancient Hebrew, nor in the Western Mystery Tradition. A selection of the most distinct glyphs as used in the Antediluvian font family - the Alphabet of the Ancients - is included for those that wish to include the archetypal and arcane quality of these glyphs from the dawn of history. By our knowledge there exists at this time no font that includes a selection of Alchemical symbols, let alone combines all of the above mentioned archetypal symbols of occult language in a single package. In that respect Archemy can be considered to be an “Arch” font.