Pirouette is based on a logo that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 (a shampoo container!). Tateno's logo experimented with complex, overlapped swash letterforms. He continued to develop these outside of the initial packaging project, until they took on a life of their own. Eventually, Tateno designed a full typeface out of the logo, Pirouette, which was the first place display face in Linotype's 2003 International Type Design Contest. The Pirouette typeface contains six different fonts. The basic font is Pirouette Regular. This is an engraver's italic lowercase paired with elaborate swash capitals. The swash capitals have two visual elements in their forms: thick strokes and thin strokes. Pirouette Text includes the same lowercase as Pirouette Regular, but the uppercase letters are much shorter and simpler. This "text" font can be used to set longer amounts of copy. Pirouette Alternate contains different lowercase glyphs and additional ligatures, which can be used as substitutes for the lowercase forms in the Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text fonts. Pirouette Ornaments contains swashes and other knick-knacks that can either be added onto the end of a letter, or used as separate decorative elements or swooshes (accolades) on a page. Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 are two fonts that can be layered over top of one another in software applications that support layering (e.g., most Adobe and Macromedia applications, as well as QuarkXPress). Pirouette Separate 1 contains the thick stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters, as well as the same lowercase glyphs that can be found in Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text. Pirouette Separate 2 contains only the thin stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters. By layering Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 over one another, you can give the uppercase letter's thick and thin stroke elements different colors and create unique, more calligraphic designs. The Pirouette family, Tanteno's first commercial typeface, was greatly influenced by the calligraphic and typographic work of the master German designer, Prof. Hermann Zapf, especially his Zapfino typeface.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

If you create a lot of designs for display, then you know how invaluable a good, solid, geometric face is. Wodehouse is here to deliver. It has both a vintage, between-the-wars look and feel and a geometry with superelliptical rounds that embrace later, more modular designs. It's a little Deco, a little Moderne, a little Industrial and a lotta personality. Wodehouse has style. Wodehouse stands out. Right ho, Woodhouse!

The 1907 Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type specimen catalog called this unique typeface simply "Umbra". Since that name is already taken, it now has another. Due to the highly ornate nature of this face, the font has a limited character set (all accented characters, but no math operators or fractions). The Opentype version of this font supports Unicode 1250 (Central European) languages, as well as Unicode 1252 (Latin) languages.

An unusual handlettered alphabet from the 1922 chapbook Modern Show Card Writing, by Joseph Bertram Jowitt, provided the pattern for this whimsical face. Its letterforms, as well as its name, conjure up visions of faraway places, and is sure to add a unique charm to your next project. This font contains the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

Haettenschweiler™ is a very condensed, very bold alphabet. Haettenschweiler was derived from a more condensed typeface, called Schmalfette Grotesk, first shown in the early 1960s in a splendid book called Lettera by Walter Haettenschweiler and Armin Haab. Haettenschweiler became popularized by the Paris Match magazine. Use this distinguished face in large sizes for headlines. Character Set: Latin-1, WGL Pan-European (Eastern Europe, Cyrillic, Greek and Turkish).

A casual sans that harks back to the very English style of book jacket and poster art of the late 50's and early 60's. The turned-in terminals are reminicent of Stephenson Blake's Grotesque 9, and the italic provides unique cursive versions of the lowercase characters. Available in a "narrow" version as well as two standard weights, this face lends itself to the wider letterspacing that evokes hot metal.

The Techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, a font creation software and some inspiration had been the sources to the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Thomas Nagel and his friends had the demand to create new unusual faces that should be used in the leading german techno magazine Frontpage". Even typeset in 6 point to nearly unreadability it was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt the messages."

JetJaneMono is a large family of sans-serif faces which are monospaced. It is very plain (plain=plane=jet). The font family has two widths and three weights, with each upright style paired with an italics style. These twelve fonts are then duplicated with another set in which small caps replace the lower-case letters. The typeface was created in 1994 and in 2021 the condensed widths were added.

Yefimov Sans is a sans companion for Yefimov Serif . It is one of the last original faces by Vladimir Yefimov. It has contemporary design, squarish shapes of the round letters and legible proportions. Thanks to open aperture, it works well in small point sizes, and its distinctive letterforms make it good also for display purposes. The typeface was completed by Maria Selezeneva and Alexandra Korolkova. Released by ParaType in 2015.

Bingley is a beautifully old-fashioned, proper, and full of class body typeface. The British feel of this face comes from its inspirational source—a tombstone script from Oxford. The characters are squat and nearly square in proportions, even cursive comes with a pronounced breadth. Generous counters and pleasant stroke weight contrast ensure high legibility of any text set in Bingley. Pronounced serifs and drop-shaped terminals further enrich the experience.

Laureen zaza is an Arabic typeface that has a very particular appearance. It combines the characteristics of different genres; most notably the contrast of serif faces. While its design is influenced by Kufic and the Naskh style. Laureen zaza consists of two typefaces, text and display, and 4-weights. It’s a perfect choice for bold headlines, oversize typography, fashion logos, branding, identity, website design, album art, covers, posters, advertising, etc.

Frederic Goudy designed this blackletter face based on Gutenberg's 42-line Bible. The Lombardic Caps were designed as an accompaniment to Goudy Text and are offered paired with the lower case as an alternate option. The Goudy Text Shaded is an inline variant that was added later by Lanston Monotype. Both varieties of capitals, as well as an expanded Central European character set, are offered in the Opentype set versions.

Blanc is a functional humanist sans typeface with a marked personality and great style that make it ideal for use in headlines. Blanc is an ode to neutrality: a geometric face characterised by low contrast between thick and thin strokes with calligraphic features that emphasise specific glyphs. 
 Blanc comes with 8 weights and an inline version that make it well-suited for headings and subheadings, corporate designs, advertising, publishing, etc.

Clarinetist Milton ?Mezz? Mezzrow (1899-1972) was a remarkable jazz musician, as becomes evident upon reading his autobiography Really the Blues. His sharp tone and serpentine lines inspired English lettering artist and jazz lover Michael Harvey to create a condensed, oblique display typeface with the look of a chiseled alphabet in the musician's honor. Vertical formats such as book jackets and posters will be invigorated by Mezz as the display face.

This rough-and-ready display face is based on El Greco Antique, released by the Fundición Richard Gans of Madrid in the 1930s. Distressed but not distressing, rough yet charming, ragged around the edges but curiously refined. Named after a village in Greece which is the ancestral home of the forebears of the Curtii. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

A condensed loose brush style. This font has a breezy elegance and casual sophistication, yet in a different context or color, it could be seen as nervous and urban. A weird dichotomy. Set in smallish text blocks, it has a surprisingly even color. This is due to a balace that has been struck between keeping the roughness and idiosyncracies of a hand-drawn face but ensuring an overall regularity.

The six weight Organon Serif typeface is a stylish and feature-laden OpenType family which complements its sister Organon Sans, both components working in tandem to create an elegant, legible and thoughtfully designed suite of fonts which share similar cap & x heights, stem widths and ascender/descender values. Organon Serif mixes slab and calligraphic traits to create a truly impressive modern serif face fully loaded with typographic options.

This book and newspaper font was designed by Francesco Simoncini in 1958. After the Second World War brought type design to a standstill, the years of reconstruction meant a reconsideration of old values in the typographical world as well as in Europe in general. Aster is the result of this movement, displaying instead of Modern Face influence, a tendency toward Transitional characteristics and giving text a light feel.

The pattern for this friendly face was found within the Keystone Type Foundry's 1884 specimen book, under the rather prosaic name of Round Gothic. This version retains all of the original's warmth and charm, while updating it to twenty-first century standards. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, along with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan, Romanian and Turkish.

Thick horizontals reminiscent of certain Egyptian or western-themed display faces warp into stretched-out glyphs and strange elliptical forms in this haphazard, page-filling font. Sure to evoke images of saturday morning cartoons, zany retro advertisements, and various other expressions of mid-20th century whimsy . Comes packaged in both TrueType and OpenType formats with standard complement of alpha-numeric glyphs, punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and European diacritics.

Bolton Commercial revives and updates one of Greater Albion's designer's earliest typeface families, Bolton, which was recently used on the credits of a popular UK television series. The family consists of five faces- Regular and Obliqued, Blocked, Embossed and Engraved. All have a late Victorian/Edwardian feel and are ideal for posters, signage, Book covers...and of course television credits! Bolton Commercial combines the virtues of flair, fun and legibility.

Of the many lettering gurus who published chapbooks on handlettering during its heyday, one of the most prolific was H. C. Martin. This quirky poster face was offered in one of his many Idea Books, and it remains as fresh and frolicsome today, some seventy years later, as when it first appeared. Both versions of this font include the complete Unicode Latin 1252 and Central European 1250 character sets.

Ledbury is a calligraphic display face, inspired by hand lettered specimens and combining Roman and Blackletter elements. It is designed with an extensive range of ligatures and stylistic alternate forms to preserve that hand written look. Use Ledbury for posters and banners, whether you need an Elizabethan touch or a hint of the Victorian Gothic Revival. A typeface Mr Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin would be proud to employ!

Camijo is a contemporary serif typeface with characteristic and defined features. This font was inspired by the idea of mixing different types of terminals in order to give the font a singular appearance. Its design is composed of diverse styles such as Didone and contemporary faces. Camijo comes with a set of 352 characters. This font was specially designed for branding, advertising, editorial design, and use on Tv and social media.

Odyssey Pro is an elegant and majestic face well suited for display work in books, magazines, posters, invitations, and more. Featuring an abundance of ligatures and alternates, as well as swash capitals. Its design was inspired by the letterforms of classical Roman inscriptions in stone but also strongly influenced by later calligraphic forms. The result is a chiseled authority and dignity tempered by a refined warmth and flow.

Schmallfette Binder-Style, designed by Joseph Binder and released by D. Stempel AG in 1959 provided the template for this upright, set-tight display face. Its rather unconventional placement of the crossbars on the f and t is a subtle attention-grabber, and true to Binder's original design. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, as well as localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

Library Book Initials JNL was modeled from examples of Sidney Gaunt's Publicity Initials; originally sold in metal type by Barnhart Brothers and Spindler as a companion to the Publicity Gothic typeface. The smoothed-down lines of the original characters allow for these initials to balace better when set against complementary type faces. A regular version is on the upper case keys, with an oblique version on the lower case keys.

This unusual display face is another in a series of works based on the work of lettering artist Samuel Welo. The sinewy curves and radiant inline decoration give this typeface a cozy, warm and inviting charm. Named after the informal radio addresses popularized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s. Both versions of this font include the complete Latin 1252 and CE 1250 character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

One of the text fonts showcased within the pages of the John Ryan Foundry (Baltimore, MD) specimen book from 1894 is a squared type face with rounded corners called “Geometric”. The original design has been updated slightly by substituting straight lines for the inner corner curves to add a small contemporary touch to a classic alphabet from the 19th century. Business Letter JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Garstang Engraved is the latest in Greater Albion's series of ‘wood type’ inspired fonts. Garstang Engraved is a hand-cut Roman, suggesting the late Victorian era, but the type of thing that continued in use well into the twentieth century. If you want a title face that has versatility and suggests a past history, as well as the art of finely cut wood type, then this is it!

Pusekatt means Pussycat in Norwegian. It was finished on a rather gloomy monday, which reminded me of Norway and I just like cats. There you have it: the naming of fonts explained. It ain't rocket science for sure! There is nothing gloomy about Pusekatt font: it is a very lively, happy and useful poster face. It comes with extensive language support, one alternative (yes, one) and a lot of feline grace.

This sans-serif type family of two weights plus matching italics. 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. Vitage has a functional look with a warm touch. It is manually hinted and optimized for screens, so it will be a good choice for Websites, eBooks or Apps.

Designed at ParaType (ParaGraph) in 1997 by Tagir Safayev. Based on a condensed style of DIN type family (Linotype Staff designers). That is a group of sans serif faces made to conform to the German Industrial Standard. Based on geometric style, they vary in width but not in weight. Light style was added in 2014 by Manvel Schmavonyan. Demi Bold style was added in 2020 by Isabella Chaeva.

Originally designed for American Type Founders, Goudy drew inspiration from the classical old style faces for Goudy Old Style. Round characters have a strong diagonal stress, ascenders are fairly long but descenders are very short. Goudy bold was introduced in 1920; this was designed by Morris Fuller Benton. This typeface has been particularly popular in America where it is extensively used in advertising, book jackets, for labels and packaging.

The Submarine family is based on a custom designed typeface for website navigation and headlining purposes, hence its geometric structure. In contrast to most other typefaces, where increase of boldness of the lighter weights expands externally in the width, the Submarine heavier weights expand internally, leaving the length of words and texts pretty much the same. The open structure of the lighter weights make it reasonable text face as well.

This elegant and somewhat edgy typeface is a faithful revival of Numantina, designed by Carl Winkow amd released by Madrid's Fundición Tipográfica Nacional in the 1940s. The lowercase letters take their design cues from medieval Spanish uncial lettering, making this face a natural choice for intriguing headlines and subheads. Both versions feature the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turskish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

The Techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, a font creation software and some inspiration had been the sources to the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Thomas Nagel and his friends had the demand to create new unusual faces that should be used in the leading german techno magazine Frontpage". Even typeset in 6 point to nearly unreadability it was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt the messages."