The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

“More is better” may have been the motto of Richard Austin of Austin and Son’s Imperial Letter-Foundry on Worship Street at Finsbury Square in London when he designed and cut his Antique typeface. The year it was created is uncertain, but it is known to have appeared in a specimen book produced in 1827. At first glance, the upper case letters of Austin Antique look very much like Figgins Antique. But, upon examination, one will note that the Austin face is much darker. In general, the letters designed and cut by Richard Austin have fatter strokes, larger serifs and smaller counters -- more metal and less daylight. The premise was that the darker the letter, the more attention an ad using the typeface would receive. In old pictures of London and Paris one may see walls crowded with posters and “bills” -- competing for the attention of the passerby. Morris and Updike aside, the early nineteenth century marked the beginning of a commercial as well as industrial revolution. Patterns of commerce were changing. With new methods of marketing came the need for new typefaces to support the new methods. Foundries found the display types were very profitable and competed most energetically and creatively for the trade. There was a lot of trial-and-error. Some ideas faded away. Others, like the Antiques or Egyptians, were refined and developed. From them came the Clarendons that were to prove both popular and long lasting -- because they worked. Their job was to sell goods, not please the aesthetic sensibilities of the critics. They did their job well. Austin Antique has a full Western European character set, plus the following ligatures: ct, st, fi, fl, ff, ffi and ffl. Tabular numbers. Surprisingly readable.

HS Masrawy is an Arabic display typeface. It is useful for titles and graphic projects where a contemporary, streamlined look is desired. The font is based on the simple lines of Kufi calligraphy. The font has a new modern idea where the vertical strokes have a constant value in all of its five weights. It has (5) weights and supported Arabic, Persian and Urdu compatible with Unicode (6.2). HS Masrawy is the first released typeface of collaboration between Hasan Abu Afash and Egyptian designer Abdulsamie Rajab Salem.

Maybe I should have named this font “Communist Block”. But it also works well for Colonial-style tavern signs. It’s square, geometric and rigid, and is the perfect thing for totalitarian themes. The family consists of three fonts: Kolega (“Comrade” in Polish), Kolega Tall, and Kolega Podrobska (Fake Comrade). Kolega and Kolega Tall are fully charactered with U.S., European, Greek and Cyrillic glyphs. The latter font is meant to use in English only; although it contains many accents and character variations, they mean nothing. It’s a joke.

Inspired by a set of vintage alphabet game tile pieces, Newark JNL has similar traits to other slab serif Romans, but enough 'quirky' letter widths to break the rules and have it stand out on its own merits. The name derives from font work files in progress, often saved as 'new work' until a fitting name is decided upon. It seemed only right that this phrase be turned around into a font name itself. Newark JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Notes From Home is a serif and ornaments font family made using hand-carved linoleum. This collection has a quirky handmade look, but can also be used in retro and vintage designs, such as collages. The fonts have a realistic ink stamp texture that will look great in logos, notes and quotes, social media posts, and branding and packaging. Notes From Home includes: Notes From Home serif font in three variations: regular, dirty and faded An ornaments font, with 62 glyphs, including doodles, swashes, smudges and frames

My son Sam’s birthday is coming up and we need to think of a cake. He’s old enough not to want a themed cake, but I suddenly remembered that we gave him a dinosaur cake for his second birthday! Dinosaur Cake? That’s a totally cool name for a font! So here it is: Dinosaur Cake - The Font. It’s a cute little handmade font, which looks like it was cut out of paper, but I have to disappoint you this time: it was not cut out.

Bad Girl was designed to appeal to the young consumer and the young-at-heart. While clearly feminine, it manages to combine a charming naïveté with in-your-face rebelliousness. The awkward, rather self-involved character shapes have a definite gauche appeal. Bad Girl has a gamine-like insouciance with a touch of wickedness. In contrast to its naive appearance, Bad Girl has been carefully crafted, letterspaced and kerned and contains a full character set of 237 characters. The font comes in two styles, regular and light.

DrivEddie was an attempt to create a rough, hand-drawn typeface that was quirky but easily readable. It has a few serifs so it is almost but not quite san serif. All vertical stems are curved. For almost 25 years DrivEddie was a one-font family and one-font families often have limited applications. In 2020 I returned to this typeface to increase its possible uses by adding five new styles: italic, semibold, semibold-italic, bold, and bold-italic. I also corrected mistakes and added characters.

Eleven out of ten typographers have confirmed that Tabac Big Slab can be used both on the facades of majestic villas and on the most ordinary typesetting of labels and medication package inserts, where it saves both space and tired eyes. Even width compression doesn’t take away from the typeface’s well-distinguished characters, while its huge x-height optically enlarges typesetting in small sizes. Aside from the lightest weights, we can recommend Tabac Big Slab for all applications where there is a lack of space or paper.

Fiesole was inspired by calligraphic models; it is a bookface font family to be used for text, display and caption. Fiesole has three different lengths of items (ascenders-descenders). Old style figures have been included in the fonts. Spacing of Small Caps has been adjusted to obtain good legibility and integrity with Capitals and lower cases. Fiesole Text: Two weights. Fiesole Display: Two weights. Fiesole Caption: Five weights. They include also CE languages, swashes, small caps, ligatures, discretionary ligatures, alternates, old style figures and case sensitive forms.

Smalkis This beautiful script is for those who need elegance and style for their designs and is perfect for wedding invitations, save the date cards and feminine branding. Smalkis includes a full set of Basic Uppercase and Lowercase Characters, Numbers and Punctuation. Also contains ligatures and many stylistic alternatives to perfectly recreate natural calligraphy (check the preview to see all of them) What will you get? Smalkis (OTF) If you have any questions about my products, feel free to write a message on the side.

- Heptal is a typeface family with five weights including true italics. The geometry of the characters is neo-gothic and the serifs are polygonal concave or inverted Tuscan. - Heptal fonts offer a complete set of lowercase alternatives and advanced open type functions. - The proportions, the metrics and the Kerning are meticulously configured so that the texts are shown fluid and the graphic stain is compensated. - These fonts have a wide table of characters (530 glyphs) with support for all the languages derived from Latin.

The Aspasia is a decorative low contrast sans serif type family suited both for editorial and corporate design, available in five weights, ranging from Thin to Black. It was designed by Mikus Vanags in 2009 influenced by art-deco geometric typefaces and mastered for the needs of today. The Aspasia OpenType fonts have and extended character set to support Central/Eastern European languages like Polish, Czech and Latvian. The font includes old style and lining figures, regular and discretionary ligatures and multiple stylistic alternates.

Hebrew alphabets contain 22 Hebrew letters along with five final letters. These final letters are automatically activated when used in Applications such as Apple Pages® and MicroSoft Word®. Some alternate hebrew letters have been added. Pageantry Hebrew letters do not contain cantillation marks very much used in everyday modern Hebrew accompanied with the complete latin alphabet. View my other Hebrew fonts, Newmark Hebrew, Hebron Hebrew, Hanah Hebrew and Komunidad Hebrew which is a handwritten (script font). Pageantry Hebrew requires OpenType-aware software.

Not to be confused with the prolific, 1980s British super-star graphic and type designer Neville Brody, this brush script typeface was designed in 1953 by the American type designer Harold Broderson. Broderson worked for ATF (the American Type Founders), who were the original publishers of this design. Body is a brush script face that mimics the show card style of lettering, which was very popular throughout the United States during the first half of the 20th Century. The letters appear as if they were drawn quickly and spontaneously with a wide, flat lettering brush. The lowercase letters connect to each other, cursive script style. Brody is the perfect display face to provoke a nostalgic feeling for the 1950s. Anything having to do with apple pie, home cooking, or last minute sales would look great in this face. You could outfit a whole supermarket signage system in a snap with Brody. If you need the original version with more lettered characters then Brophy Script is a good alternate,

First released in 2009, Aviano Didone has been completely remastered and expanded with new weights and optical sizes. Aviano Didone's high contrast forms lend elegant beauty, luxury and romance to your designs and it's extended letterforms provide strength and power. Aviano's foundational classical forms give the face a look that is unique for Didone faces. Aviano Didone is a bold interpretation of vertically contrasted type. Aviano Didone comes in eight different weights and is packed with OpenType features. Want ball terminals for that logotype or headline? Flat serifs? Swash forms? Aviano Didone includes 102 alternate characters. Five style sets are available, and Art Deco inspired alternates, small forms, swash, titling and stylistic alternates. Aviano Didone also includes 40 discretionary ligatures for artistic typographic compositions. The new optical sizes allow Aviano Didone to be used on the web or in print without losing detail. Be sure to check out the rest of the Aviano series which can be used as complementary faces, including Aviano, Aviano Serif, Aviano Sans and Aviano Flare.

Nat Grotesk family consists of 14 styles including 6 narrow ones. It has a half-closed sans serif design with simple and clear lettershapes. Due to compact proportions the face is very space saving, but nevertheless it is rather legible even in small sizes. The bold weights demonstrate increased contrast. The font is recommended for text and display typography as well as for headlines and advertising. It was designed by Natalia Vasilyeva and released by ParaType in 2007. The upgraded version with extended character set was released in 2009.

An early drawing tablet was largely responsible for the LeakorLeach typefaces. They resemble hand lettering using cake icing or done with an ink pen that leaves lots of ink blobs or ink blots. The family has two widths, plain and condensed, and in addition to each having an oblique style, each also has a leftward-inclined style. There may not be many uses for a leftward-inclined typeface, but for those needing one, the LeakorLeach family offers two. The LeakorLeach typefaces are unlike any other faces from IngrimayneType.

AFISH was born out of the need to create a variable serif display typeface – so that any headline on the poster would easily fit. The form of the letters comes naturally from Didone style typefaces, while many of the characters have an experimental form that will not leave the audience indifferent. AFISH will be ideal for posters and strong headline and branding use. The entire family consists of one weight and five widths. Karol Mularczyk and Małgorzata Bartosik worked on the project under the creative direction of Mateusz Machalski.

Orgovan is based on calligraphic script models lettered with a flat brush, which have been a mainstay in the sign makers' and display artists' handbooks since the beginning of the 1960s. Careful adjustments to the construction of the character shapes made the glyphs more open. This ensures that the face is well legible in small sizes, making it suitable for more demanding typographic applications. The Punk and Rounded variations of the base model offer an even broader range of possible applications, while the Fat Cap, Flower Power and Hairy cuts are contemporary decorative alternatives.

Deep in the bowels of the earth a tortured creature tries to mimic the writings of mankind. It labors long and hard carving the letter forms on the walls of its cave. Many years later, rubbings where taken of these impressions and fashioned to create this hideous font. All kidding aside, with such a formal training in type design, it was not easy for me to create these ill-shaped letters. I kept wanting to smooth out the outlines. Anyway, it was a good exercise and we now have this antique heavy-weight.

Ingone is a slightly irregular sans-serif face. It was designed to complement PattyDay and HeyPumpkin, but can be used alone if you need an informal, friendly sans-serif font. It has only one weight, but the family includes a shadowed style. In 2018 the inside of the shadowed version was separated out and made a separate typeface. The letters have the shapes of the regular version but the spacing of the shadowed version and can be layered with the shadowed version to easily produce lettering with two colors.

Monster Truck is a dominant looking bold italic font inspired by extreme sports. The 'in your face' presence of this font is ideal for use in designs looking to snatch people's attention especially in serious competitive sports, fitness, bodybuilding, toys and car wrap designs. The non-apologetic sharp edged spoiler like serifs, straight edges and bevel corners have made this one of the foundry's most popular fonts. The font is all caps and fufills MyFonts character requirements that include a large number of characters including numbers, punctuation and Latin international characters.

Foundry Context is a sans serif family designed to be universal in many contexts – hence the name. A ‘no-nonsense’ typeface, reminiscent of 19th century sans serif faces, Foundry Context has very round, pure letterforms, crafted without being over refined, and having minimal stroke contrast in the neo-grotesque style. A hint of personality has emerged from the very drawing of the proportions, strokes, and terminals, yet Foundry Context is still neutral enough to compete in the grotesk arena, and at the same time has something new to say.

Hello! Presenting an originally designed, decorative font, named Bryzhi. The main goal of this font is a flowing liquid reflection of characters. Most of the letters have five variations that switch automatically to create a seamless effect. Check out that the "Context Alternates" OpenType feature is activated to achieve the necessery result. Also simple letters without reflection effect are available using the "Stylistic Alternates" feature. Bryzhi font supports most of the European languages, please check out all the available characters on the screenshots. Thank you and wish you a peaceful sky!

For Monumental Gothic, we delved into the archives and found some old rubbings and photos of monumental brasses from British tombs of the 12th and 13th centuries. The sources included famous monuments like the tomb of Richard II and less well known inscriptions with similar style lettering. The rubbings were made by Dave Nalle in the 1970s (when they still let you have access to the the brasses). Monumental Gothic includes some alternate characters, plus upper and lower case characters, numbers and a selection of very interesting decorative emblems to complement the text.

Tiemann Antiqua was designed by Walter Tiemann in 1923 and appeared with the Klingspor font foundry. It is one of the modern book typefaces created in the first half of the 20th century, but differed from most in its Modern Face forms. It displays the same strong stroke contrast and flat serifs but its proportions have more in common with those of neorenaissance fonts. Tiemann Antiqua is an elegant, legible font suitable for books and longer texts, but also found in headlines, newspapers and magazines due to its classic yet unusual appearance.

Every day we are faced with designing on small screens and new formats; This is where condensed fonts have great potential, as they make the most of tight spaces in big headlines. Manchester Condensed is a typeface family designed by Vástago to be applied in large headlines in different formats, such as web, editorial or packaging. Just to mention a few. Different Manchester weights enhance performance at large type sizes, providing hierarchy and imposing style with its elongated shapes. Its use in capital letters is remarkable and fits perfectly into very precise diagramming spaces.

Evocative of paint on weathered wood, Nelson’s engraved capital letters are as rustic and confident as the Old West. Combine the engraved face with bold and rough versions to create handsome wordmarks, or use Nelson to captivate customers of food packaging, restaurant menus, and roadside attractions. See what’s included! Engraved • Ornaments • Rugged • Bold *NOTE* Basic versions DO NOT include swashes, alternates or ornaments These fonts have been specially coded for access of all the swashes, alternates and ornaments without the need for professional design software! Info and instructions here: http://lauraworthingtontype.com/faqs/

Foundry Fabriek was inspired by the concepts behind industrial fabrication, where and how parts of materials or structures are united. The systematic grid, formed by stencil shapes, is indicative of the work of Wim Crouwel, consultant on the development of this typeface. The compact character widths of Foundry Fabriek are consistent over the five weight progression, giving flexibility for a variety of applications. The characteristic letterforms have an extra dynamic in large scale, perhaps in cast concrete or laser cut metal, to form integrated components in architectural or signage projects.

The English roundhand has always occupied the central position in the group of faces appropriate to the social printing handled by engravers, and their contemporary imitators, thermographers. At the end of the nineteenth century when engraving was mechanised by the pantographic engraving machine, the traditional roundhands found their way onto pantographic pattern plates. Embassy is a traditional roundhand of vigorous contrast with straightforward capitals with ball terminals; it was transferred from such an engravers’ pattern plate to the Fotosetter at Intertype about 1955. Alphatype’s Yorktown is similar, but appears to have less contrast.

I‘d like to introduce “Charlonka“ to you. When my daughter finished high school, she wanted to get rid of her entire school stuff. So I saved a few sheets of her beautiful handwriting and promised her to create a typeface out of it. That‘s how the idea of Charlonka was born, a typeface family out of Charlotte‘s handwriting (by the way: that‘s her name). Some characters of Charlonka have extended crossbars, like in upper case A or H, and reduced descenders, like in lower case g or y.

Candide Condensed is the complement for Candide and widens greatly the possible applications of the Candide family. Through Its moderately condensed proportions, it also works superbly as a discrete space saving text face. Candide Condensed comes with the same character layout and features as Candide. Candide Condensed consists of 16 styles. It comes in OpenType format and provides an extended language support. All weights contain standard and discretionary ligatures, proportional lining figures, tabular lining figures, proportional old style figures, lining old style figures, matching currency symbols, fraction- and scientific numerals, matching arrows and alternative characters.

IronType (formerly known as Ironman) is an extra bold geometric titling face in the Art Deco poster tradition. A warm sense of strength and playfulness runs throughout this design. Triangular-shaped crossbars are some of its distinguishing characteristics. The face also contains some very amusing alternates. The tails of the alternate cap K and R extend below the line and the alternate cap N has a hump instead of a diagonal stroke. A handy set of lowercase letters with lining and smaller figures are also included. IronType Extra Bold is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. These advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Haul out the holly. Insigne’s font Wreath has hit the shelves just in time for the holidays. Wreath is a script face drawn with a pointed brush. Designed by the elves of the insigne workshop, its unique forms were created to dress up your gift labels and a wide variety of other holiday collateral. With five different weights and five different variants that allow for a distressed appearance, Wreath is no Scrooge. Its numerous alternates help to make your designs happy all the way. They allow for varying the ending characters of the lowercase to give your designs an automatic handwritten appearance. In addition, there are ligatures that extend the handwritten appearance and alternate options, including randomized alternates to create a unique appearance every time the font is used. There’s over six-hundred fifty glyphs in every font.

Konrad Kachelofen was a printer in the city of Leipzig beginning around 1483. He printed many works by contemporary authors and also many of the classics. He acquired an unusually large amount of typefaces for his shop, a place that included a wine bar and book store. This type face is based on Typ.11:340G GfT510 Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke and is similar to Proportional Lime’s “Kachelofen'' font. The major differences are that the whole miniscule set is slimmer and the majuscule set has different style glyphs and this face was used solely for titles and section headings because of its sharper and clearer appearance at large point values. Konrad probably died in 1529 after passing his business on to his son-in-law Melchior Lotter, who also went on to fame as an industrious and illustrious printer.

Brandon Grotesque is a sans serif type family of six weights plus matching italics. It was designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2009/10. Influenced by the geometric-style sans serif faces that were popular during the 1920s and 30s, the fonts are based on geometric forms that have been optically corrected for better legibility. Brandon Grotesque has a functional look with a warm touch. While the thin and the black weights are great performers in display sizes the light, regular and medium weights are well suited to longer texts. The small x-height and the restrained forms lend it a distinctive elegance. Brandon Grotesque is equipped for complex, professional typography. The OpenType fonts have an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European languages. Brandon Grotesque won the TDC2 Award, 2011.

Hellmut G. Bomm first released his Linotype Nautilus typeface in 1999. Ten years later, he updated and expanded the design. Now users have two additional families at their disposal: Nautilus Text and Nautilus Monoline. Nautilus Text bears more similarities to the original Linotype Nautilus. The letters shows a high degree of contrast in their stroke modulation. Bomm's intention was to create a clear, highly legible face. While the even strokes of most sans serif types eventually tire the eyes in long texts, the marked stroke contrast of Nautilus Text lends the face its legibility. The characters were drawn with a broad tipped pen. Like serif typefaces, the forms of Nautilus Text display a variety of elements. Its characters are narrow, with relatively large spaces between them. This helps create an overall open appearance, and allows a large quantity of text to fit into a small space. Nautilus Monoline's letters share the same overall proportions as Nautilus Text's. But as their name implies, they are monolinear. Their strokes do not have the calligraphic modulation that Nautilus Text features. This allows them to set another sort of headline, making Nautilus Monoline a refreshing display type choice to pair with body text set in Nautilus Text.