FF Kievit Slab is an industrial strength, do anything, go anywhere, kind of design. Its exceptional legibility and straightforward strength contrasts with a friendly humanistic underpinning. Michael Abbink and Paul van der Laan carefully revised character shapes and stroke contrast of FF Kievit, when they adapted them to FF Kievit Slab. The result is that the striking and powerful FF Kievit Slab easily complements the other members of the FF Kievit super family, that also includes FF Kievit and FF Kievit Serif, and stands on its own in as a multi-talented design. Though created from the sans, FF Kievit Slab is not FF Kievit with slabs serifs tacked on. The family is the fruit of a four-year collaboration between Abbink and Van der Laan, to make the perfect companion to the FF Kievit family. Each glyph was painstakingly adjusted and to achieve proper density, contrast, and balance, while remaining a perfect companion to its sans serif and oldstyle cousins. Its nine weights and italics also harmonize perfectly with the original FF Kievit design. Each of the FF Kievit styles is a typographical all-rounder that is equally at home in headlines as it is in text copy. Together, the three designs of the FF Kievit super family span a wide and deep typographic universe in which they support one another perfectly. These fonts will help you achieve your typographic goals, no matter how lofty. Featured in: Best Fonts for Websites

The Jazayeri Kufic Shoushtar font is a beautiful typographic implementation of the decorative Kufic calligraphy inscribed on the walls of the historic Grand Mosque of Shoushtar in southwestern Iran. This mosque contains many other inscriptions added over time for documentary purposes but its four monumental Kufic inscriptions which are revived in this font are the most essential ones to understand its design and meaning. Built in the ninth century CE, this mosque is one of the earliest hypostyle mosques in Iran. It was built in “the city of scholars” when its residents included two great Sufis, Sahl Ibn Abdullah Tostari and Mansur Hallaj. The designer and producer of the font is Seyed Mohammad Vahid Mousavi Jazayeri, a well-known Iranian master calligrapher, designer, scholar, and author. Mousavi Jazayeri has taken a personal interest in the Kufic script and devoted years to independent research, visiting archaeological locations, historic buildings and cemeteries, mosques, libraries and museums to study the script through direct contact. He has developed a systematic research methodology and published his findings in several books. His professional interest in script and calligraphy stimulated his discovery of the historic method for cutting the Kufic pen, which has had a direct impact on his own work, as seen in several well-received exhibitions and workshops. The historical research and achievements of Mousavi Jazayeri brought together the first international group dedicated to the study and revival of the historic Kufic script operation through kuficpedia.com.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. This version of Bodoni was done by Morris Fuller Benton for American Typefounders between 1907 and 1911. Although some of the finer details of the original Bodoni types are missing, this family has the high contrast and vertical stress typical of modern types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising, and text."

Ready for the designs of today, the Sancoale superfamily takes a softer turn with a rounded slab serif. Crafted from Sancoale’s simple geometry, new softened slab serifs provide a lively typeface that conveniently enhances its cousins: Sancoale Softened--a sans with blunted terminals; Sancoale Slab; and, certainly, the first Sancoale. The weights of each and every member are balanced diligently to be compatible with one another. When used alongside one another, the combination makes for robust and tight design. With weights starting with the slender thin ranging to the juicy black, Slab Soft opens the doorway to the vary of uses. Its design is legible and neutral enough for bodies of copy--both in print and on your website. The web font also stands out perfectly as a headline or a display face. Slab Soft carefully places a foot ahead, and doesn't overpower like many slabs. This font’s the choice to seize the day and get the job done. All insigne™ fonts are absolutely loaded with OpenType options. Sancoale Slab is geared up for pro typography, together with alternates with stems, compact caps and lots of alts, together with “normalized” capitals and lowercase letters. The font features many numeral sets, with fractions, old-style and lining figures with superiors and inferiors. OpenType-capable programs like Quark or the Adobe suite allow you to quickly change ligatures and alternates. You can see these options shown in the .pdf brochure. Bundled are compact caps, fractions, old-style and lining quantities, scientific superior/inferior figures, entire ordinal and inferior alphabet. The Sancoale superfamily also features the glyphs to aid a variety of languages, together with Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Sancoale Slab supports around forty languages that utilize the Latin script, earning Sancoale the pick for for multi-lingual publications and packaging.

Gill Sans is a humanistic sans serif family that, while is considered by many to be quintessentially British in tone and concept, has been used in virtually every country and in nearly every application imaginable. Gill Sans has reached this level of near-ubiquity for one simple—and very good—reason: it is an exceptionally distinctive design with a potential range of use that is almost limitless. This toolkit family includes a wide range of styles including the standards such as Light—which is open and elegant—and a Regular that, with its flat-bottomed d, flat-topped p and q and triangular-topped t, has a more compact and muscular appearance. Its Bold styles tend to echo the softer, more open style of the light while the extra bold and ultra bold have their own vivid personalities, but each of them would make for an eye-catching headline. Take into account the family’s many weights, including condensed and extra condensed designs, and extended language support and you have yourself a tool you’ll be thrilled to return to, time and again. Gill Sans was designed by Eric Gill: a versatile, brilliant, and prolifically successful designer of the early part of the last century. One of the main reasons for the enduring success of his namesake design is that it is based on Roman character shapes and proportions, making it unlike virtually any other sans serif out there. Gill also worked his own warmth and humanity into his design, resulting in a typeface in which each weight retains a distinct personality of its own. Pair with serif fonts like Gill's own Joanna; or more modern offerings like Frutiger® Serif, Malabar™, Syntax® Serif, FF Scala®, or DIN Next™ Slab.

Aure Teddy emanates the trusting tenderness of a favorite teddy bear. The hand-penned look of these forms engages the reader with a subtext of comfort. Teddy is delightfully legible as a text font and works well where a more organic look is wanted. It brings an unassuming charm to text and titles and a welcome empathy to astrological expressions and chartwheels. Its engaging charcter serves well in labeling diagrams and personalizing nametags. Teddy 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. Aure Teddy fills a unique niche, being a modestly decorative font as well as a competant text font. Like Aure Jane, Aure Teddy serves well paired with the decorative touches of Aure Brash and Aure Sable. Give Aure Teddy a trial run! You may discover a permanent place for this font family in your typographic palette. AureFontDesign.com

This font has a charming mix of the organic forms of the Art Nouveau style and the geometric forms of the Art Deco style - and it makes it work! Nick Curtis says: "A general-purpose Art Nouveau font that has been kicking around for a while under various names. As usual, redrawn for consistency and economy of line. Named, for no good reason, after the river that flows near Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello." 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.

Like many cities in the Midlands and North of England, Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history linked to making and industry. In Stoke’s case it was pottery. In the early 1900s bottle kilns could be seen covering the landscape of the six towns making up Stoke-on-Trent with hundreds of factories producing some of the best ceramics in the world. But by the 1990s most of these had gone. Torn down for development of housing or just left to rot. During the next few decades Stoke continued to change. The industry was in a decline and Stoke itself was seen as another poor midlands city with a dwindling industry. Then in 2008, Spode, one of the largest and most famousceramics factories in Stoke entered into administration. Pens cast aside, drawings left half finished, designs left in the turned-off kilns; Spode factory was abandoned. This was a real shock and the way everything was getting thrown into skips to be put on the tip was heartbreaking. Thankfully people salvaged some of the technical drawings, sketch design, old sample pieces and ceramics that people hard worked so hard on. Potbank has been in development over a number of years taking inspiration from the heritage and designs from the ceramics industry. It has a mixed Clarendon and Antiqua style structure with its main purpose to be used as a printed type.

SchmalfetteCP is the result of another collaboration between designers Jason Walcott and Rob King. King suggested that Walcott revive this wonderful and somewhat forgotten sans serif typeface from the mid 1950s. Originally designed by Walter Haettenschweiler in 1954, Schmalfette Grotesk was used for many years in the German magazine "Twen". The typeface was notoriously hard to acquire at the time and graphic designers in the USA often resorted to cutting letters from the Twen magazines and reusing them in their own designs. Later, when digital type came along several typefaces very similar were created that claimed to be digital revivals of Schmalfette Grotesk. However, they are actually only loosely based on the original. The proportions are different and in some cases a lower case was added. The original font was all caps. At Rob King's suggestion, Jason Walcott has strived to recreate the most faithful digital revival possible of the original Schmalfette Grotesk with the new version of SchmalfetteCP. In some cases small changes were made to accommodate today's digital needs (e.g. web fonts), but anyone who has ever searched for this typeface now has a version available that most closely resembles Haettenschweiler's original work. Schmalfette CP comes in OpenType format in both .ttf and .otf files and offers support for all Latin based and Eastern European languages.

This font is based on an alphabet published by Luca Pacioli in his 1509 mathematical treatise De divina proportione. In this book, Pacioli describes how to build the Roman alphabet geometrically using lines, squares and circles. Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes. I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Introducing Gyoza - Font Family (4 Fonts) Gyoza - was designed in late 2022 and published on January 2023. The Typeface was inspired by the 90’s playful cartoons and comic books. This font comes with 4 weights; Regular, Semibold, Bold, and Black. Gyoza - available with the variable fonts in weights and the Ink Trap. With the regular style, you'll have the correct anatomy of the fonts. with the Ink Trap style, it added more extreme space on the Ink Trap. Gyoza - contains everything you need to create stunning typography – from headline fonts to body text fonts - all in one place. Whether you're starting out or you've been designing for years, Gyoza has everything you need. Can be used for modern and vintage designs, and also can be easily paired with some graphic elements (Illustration, Photography) this font is perfect for, Logotype, Branding, Title, and Packaging. So take your design skills up a notch and get started on some fresh new projects with Gyoza today! Similar Item: Gunydrops : LINK HERE Kelpo : LINK HERE Swipe : LINK HERE Replay : LINK HERE What you get : Gyoza Regular Gyoza Semibold Gyoza Bold Gyoza Black Features : Ligatures Instructions ( Access special characters, even in circuit design ) Letters, numbers, symbols, and punctuation No special software is required to use this typeface even work in Canva Multilingual Support Language Support: Danish, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Luxembourgish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Portuguese, Romansh, Rombo, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss-German, Uzbek (Latin) Please contact us if you have any questions. Enjoy crafting and thanks for supporting us! Come and say hello over on Instagram! https://www.instagram.com/dharmas.studio/ Regards, Dharmas Studio

Italiano Fushion is part of an expanding project on which we have been working for several years and is the colors ersion of ITALIANO FUSHION. Starts from the study of the great Futurist adventure of the early 1900s by great artists such as DEPERO and MARINETTI, who twisted the world of typography with shapes and colors. Italian Fushion is made up of almost 2,000 glyphs for each weight and in addition to hundreds of alternatives mainly, such as initials and endings of each word but also different alternatives for the letters I, J, Y. Thanks to the characteristics of Open Type, you can change them in automatic many of the alternatives, use it as a simple text font by changing only the I's and J's that have the typical capital dot, and giving the text a more fun breath to the composition. Italiano Fushion is suitable for large texts and to get the most out of it it is compulsory to transform the text into UPPERCASE text using the tabs of graphic applications such as Illustrator, or activate the Alternavive tabs and the various options of SS. You just need do a sandwitch between the 1 ( on the top ) and the 2 ( on the bottom ), choose the 2 different color and you hae finished. by transforming them into traces you can enrich the interaction between the two levels with nuances of pleasure. If you would like to be above layer 2, you can make the text parts transparent without swashes. Ideal for creating Logos, Head Lines, Web Titles, Posters, Epub Covers, Tatoo Projects, T-Shirts, Drink Labels ...

ITC Astro is the typeface that proves you can get your work done while watching cartoons. “It all started as a series of doodles while I was watching The Jetsons,” recalls Sasa Petricic. “The show's impossibly simplistic vision of the twenty-first century cried out for a font that fit into that world -- a world where everyday objects can carry far more fun and personality than they should.” ITC Astro is the first commercial typeface design from Petricic, whose “day job” is working as a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Petricic has filed stories from across Canada and around the world for CBC's flagship evening newscast, The National. His reports have also appeared on CNN and BBC Television. Petricic's work as a correspondent and video journalist have taken him to six continents, covering everything from famine and genocide in Africa to the war in Iraq. With such serious matters filling the hours of Petricic's day as a journalist, it's not hard to see why he conceived Astro as a welcome blast of whimsy. “As I began to draw the design,” he says, “I decided that every part of Astro should be a cartoon character unto itself.” Each character has its own baseline shadow (or coaster, or circular antigravity generator, depending on how you look at things). The angular caps dance jauntily, rocking from left to right, while a suite of companion small caps provide backup. The end result is a design quite unlike any other, with surprising charm and versatility. ITC Astro comes in a two-weight family of White and Black.

Mimix is designed especially for comic fans and all typographers who like to play. It’s ideal to express spontaneity and the joy of life. Where Mimix is used, there’s life. The characters are lined in a row, a face looks out from the page. Big ears surround an oval head. A mouse moves without haste, but dynamic and modern through the lines. Mimix skillfully combines the elegance of a modern roman with the spontaneity of a casual handwriting. The mouse shows its versatile character in its broad range of use. Without exaggeration, it’s always delicate and elegant. The quiet form and good readability is a result of its moderate inclination. Well developed, Mimix includes ten weights from Ultrathin through Black. The free trial pack includes two weights with a reduced number of glyphs. If you like it you will be then be able to buy the fonts itself complete with ligatures, special characters for Eastern European languages, uppercase, lining and old style figures as well as fractions and different Opentype features. Declare war on desert lead – with Mimix, those with charm. Download a free trial version of Mimix with a reduced character set. Check it out!

It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting. Conveniently, my mother then still volunteered at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. She made copies of the letters of a few famous Texans -- Houston, Austin, Travis, Burnet, Rusk. Thomas J. Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. I hadn't realized at the time what a challenge it'd be to render a realistic-looking script face, but the result has, in fact, filled a niche.

P22 Victorian is a font set created in conjunction with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's exhibition of Victorian-era French artist James Tissot. The fonts developed for the P22 Victorian set are based on historic typefaces dating from the late 19th century. Victorian Gothic was based on a type style called ‘Atlanta’, a simple, expanded width, quirky, yet elegant face similar to ‘Copperplate’. Victorian Swash was inspired by the willowy, delicate face ‘Columbian’, which has also been known in recent years as ‘Glorietta’. The P22 version includes ‘snap-on’ flourishes based on the original 'Columbian' ornamental embellishment designs. Victorian Ornaments features over 150 decorative embellishments.

Manhattan was designed in 1970 for ITC by Tom Carnase, who also created Avant Garde Gothic. The distinguishing characteristic of this designer's work is found in the emphasis on the thick-thin constrast. In this case, Carnase approached the border of the impossible. The heavy vertical strokes stand opposite the finest of lines and the thick columns dominate the overall look. The basic forms are strictly constructed, as are those of Morris F. Benton's Broadway of 1925, to which many parallels can be found. Manhattan is best used for applications which will not be placed too far from the viewer, as at too great a distance the fine lines can no longer be seen. It should be used exclusively for headlines in medium point sizes.

Martin Wilke’s underrated yet influential deco classic from 1932 has both feet firmly planted in the high traditions of Western European calligraphy while carefully and subtly introducing some traits from the sweeping geometric/minimalist vision of the time. In a way, it was one of the representatives of the European anti-type typefaces of that era, when print media was searching for the elusive aesthetic balance between humanism and geometry. This typeface enjoyed some popularity in Germany for a few years, and went on to influence further type designs in Holland and Italy. After the second World War, the black hole that swallowed a big chunk of Europe’s print culture, new influences and technologies overtook the scene, and selective historical emphasis ensued, highlighting some of the era’s designs and overlooking others. Further selective picking in the digital era all but buried Wilke’s body of work - unfairly so, because he was just as important in German type history as Bernhard, Post, Schneidler, Tiemann and Trump. The original metal Wilke Kursiv came in one weight. This digital version goes a long way in expanding on that original offering. Now Wilke’s masterpiece comes in three weights, and with a full Pro treatment including swash caps, small capitals, five types of figures, automatic fractions, and plenty of other OpenType niceties. Each of the Wilke Kursiv Pro fonts comes with over 700 characters, and contains support for most Latin-based languages. Also available are three non-Pro fonts in each weight.

Makika Sun enhances the handwritten expressive possibilities of an architect mom and a graphic designer dad in Bogotá, Colombia. In other words, it is a versatile handwritten font family designed for writing short messages in children's contexts. Makika Sun shines for its conceptualization and logic, combining ideas from the American calligrapher Austin Norman Palmer and the Italian calligrapher Ludovico degli Arrighi. Makika Sun, a creative font family specializing in titles and paragraphs for children's books, emerged in 2009 and has developed over the years. Its essence lies in the simplicity of handwriting. In 2023, Makika Sun was applied in the book "Secret Files Tardigrades 1" for children ages 5-6 on Amazon from MyMicroSchool. The main goal of Makika Sun is to emulate handwriting that is legible and accessible to everyone. Makika Sun stands out for its readability and uncomplicated, artisanal style. It offers four typographic styles that simulate different calibers of markers: thick tip (Makika Sun Black), medium tip (Makika Sun Bold), normal tip (Makika Sun Regular) and Makika Sun Dingbats, a set of arrows and figures perfect to enrich your writing. . In short, Makika Sun's versatility and stylistic uniformity make it easy to create writing in various typographic settings. Its typographic heart communicates harmony in messages meticulously designed for spontaneous contexts that require high readability. Makika Sun offers a dynamic range of styles in 4 fonts notable for their outstanding performance in the field of children's book design and the creation of playful brand identities.

The Roos family is a digitization and expansion of the last typeface designed by Sjoerd Hendrik De Roos, called De Roos Romein (and Cursief). It was designed and produced during the years of the second World War, and unveiled in the summer of 1947 to celebrate De Roos's 70th birthday. In 1948, the first fonts produced were used for a special edition of the Dutch Constitution on which Juliana took the oath during her inauguration as the Queen of the Netherlands. To this day this typeface is widely regarded as De Roos's best design, with one of the most beautiful italics ever drawn. In contrast with all his previous roman faces, which were based on the Jenson model, De Roos's last type recalls the letter forms of the Renaissance, specifically those of Claude Garamont from around 1530, but with a much refined and elegant treatment, with stems sloping towards the ascending, slightly cupped serifs, a tall and distinguished lowercase, and an economic width that really shines in the spectacular italic, which harmonizes extremely well with its roman partner. The Roos family contains romans, italics and small caps in regular, semibold and display weights, as well as a magnificent set of initial caps. All the fonts contain extended language support, surpassing the usual Western Latin codepages to include characters for Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese, and Turkish.

Fushar Arabic is a bold comic color font family which comes in 5 layer-styles easy to compose in a multicolor manner and 3 OpenType-SVG color styles to make the work faster and easier. Character set covers Latin A-Z all caps, Arabic, Persian and Urdu with 230 ligatures, European, Arabic and Persian / Urdu localized digits, punctuation, currencies and other symbols - the total of 729 glyphs. The idea came from a custom logotype I made several years ago for a local charity organisation that helps children. The logotype was based on bold letters with light that make the "balloon" effect visible in "Holes" style. Later I expanded the family with "Cuts" and all the derivative fonts that make the whole color family. The purpose was to create a funny, friendly and playful script that would embrace the beauty of the Arabic alphabet. Solid, Cuts and Holes are classic one-color styles which can be used separately to compose a simple text. With Shadows and Lights they can produce a multicolour design, as shown on the images above. To save the time, there are three already prepared combinations in the new OpenType-SVG color format. The features include required ligatures, discretionary ligatures, proper mark attachment, contextual alternates, case-sensitive forms, ordinals, localised Persian/Urdu numerals, superscript (1, 2, 3) & fractions. Now you can buy Extended Latin character set (uppercase and lowercase) at Fushar font family page on MyFonts. European languages, Vietnamese and Pinyin included.

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

Bo Berndal, the master Swedish typographer, is the eponymous designer of Berndal, a contemporary text family with five different styles. This family represents a new achievement for Bo Berndal, who has spent many years working to optimize text legibility in the printed media. Several small tricks make the Berndal family an interesting milestone in legibility. Berndal's letterforms contain large x-heights. Large x-heights open up the counterforms of letters, making text appear lighter on a page, but their correspondingly shorter ascenders and descenders can hinder legibility. This does not occur in Berndal at all! Coupled with this experiment, Berndal's various font weights display a certain softness and roundness. The letterforms themselves are relatively wide, with an overall consistency in width. The calligraphic nature of the strokes has been minimized, yet a contrast stroke-thickness is still to be noticed within the alphabet. Berndal's five styles offer almost everything that one could want from a good text family. The Regular weight may be paired with Small Caps, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. All styles ship in the OpenType format, and include tabular and old style figures. The two italic weights are made up of true italics, not obliques. The Berndal family is a part of the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH."

Phrygia is the Greek name of an ancient state in western-central Anatolia (modern Turkey), extending from the Eskişehir area east to (perhaps) Boğazköy and Alishar Hüyük within the Halys River bend. The Assyrians, a powerful state in northern Mesopotamia to the south, called the state Mushki; what its own people called it is unknown. We know from their inscriptions that the Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language. Judging from historical records supported by ceramic evidence, settlers migrating from the Balkans in Europe first settled here a hundred or more years following the destruction of the Hittite empire (ca. 1200 B.C.). Most of what is known about Phrygian archaeology and its language derives from excavations at the capital city Gordion, located about 60 miles southwest of the modern Turkish capital of Ankara (also a Phrygian site). Gustav and Alfred Körte first excavated Gordion in 1900. The excavators did not reach Phrygian levels, but they did reveal burials dated to the late eighth century B.C. with Phrygian ceramic, metal, and wooden artifacts. From 1950 to 1973, Rodney S. Young of the University of Pennsylvania led excavations at Gordion. Archaeological work at the site resumed in 1988 and continues to the present.

Ribfest is a new font based on lettering found on old United States currency from the 1800’s. Named after the Ribfest held in Naperville IL over 4th of July weekend each year, this font will be perfect for your next summer barbecue party. Ribfest offers three Fill fonts that can be layered behind the main open faced fonts, the regular Fill font covers the complete opening on the main fonts while the Fill T for top and Fill B for bottom gives you the option to fill with two different colors for top and bottom. The Fill fonts for Ribfest may also be used as stand alone fonts, the Fill T and Fill B fonts when layered together creates a unique look on its own. Expand your summertime fun with Ribfest and save me some of those rib’s, with extra barbecue sauce please. Special Note: When using the Opentype format of Ribfest, if you experience some letters appearing too bold at point sizes of 36 or above please install the truetype version that came with your purchase. Due to the extra detail in this font some graphics drivers may increase the boldness of the Opentype version of this font, the solution is to uninstall the Opentype and install the Truetype version.

In order to give new imput to the art of typeface design in Italy, Nebiolo Company held, in March 1910, an artistic competition for a new alphabet conception, so the best-ranked design would be transformed into a real new typeface. 42 competitors participated and, although the first prize was not technically awarded, "Ancora" resulted as the best typeface, created by the designer-typographer Natale Varetti of Turin. Nonetheless, the new alphabet was transformed into a full-fledged metal typeface in 1924, renamed "Tanagra" in honor of the Greek city in the center of Boeotia. The new font, although not significantly detached from the classical Roman form, introduced decorative elements that allowed its use in both rational and artistic compositions. This font appears very clear and easy to read, with very high ascenders and some decorations that make it distinctly retrò. Finally, after almost 100 years, this peculiar character has been digitized taking it as a model the shapes of the 16 points size (other dimensions have significantly different contrasts and proportions). To adapt it to modern use, some glyphs have been modified, but all the originals are available as Stylistic Alternate OTF, as well as all the swashed variants while the missing ones were added.

Lapture is based on the Leipziger Antiqua by Albert Kapr, released in 1971 by the East German foundry Typoart. It has been extended and carefully redesigned by Tim Ahrens in 2002-05. The strong calligraphic characteristics are a result of the design process: "The size of the counters and the width of individual characters at small optical sizes were analysed with a steel pen while the letter shapes were designed in larger size with a specially trimmed reed pen. Sometimes the hand is more innovative than the head alone," says Kapr. A unique feature of this font is the introduction of gothic shapes into a latin typeface. "The basic concept is to string together narrow white hexagons as counters and inter-letter spaces, defined by vertical stems and triangular serifs. The interior spaces are at least as important as the strokes that make up the characters." Lapture is an ideal choice if a reference to gothic style is desired, as true black letter types are often too eye-catching and not as legible as latin fonts for unfamiliar readers. "The last few years have seen a number of very elegant typefaces based on the mellow and feminine renaissance model. However, sometimes we require a font that is strong and robust, harmonic yet rigid," says designer Tim Ahrens. JAF Lapture is provided in OpenType format. Each font contains more than 600 glyphs, including true small caps, nine sorts of figures, contextual and stylistic alternates and accented characters. This means that you only need to purchase one font whereas in other families you would have to buy two or three fonts in order to get the same. Technically, they follow the Adobe Pro fonts and provide the same glyph set and OpenType functionality. JAF Lapture Basic is provided in OpenType format. Each font contains the standard sets of both MacOS and Windows. In contrast to JAF Lapture they do not provide any advanced OpenType features and no extended glyph set.

For many years I had repeatedly written names on certificates or designed texts for certificates of honor with a pen. I later digitized a font written with a broad pen from 1988 to make it easier to use. After the technical possibilities for this had developed, I made a PostScript font out of this document font. The "HGB-Unik" is a humanistic antiqua that arose from this written type. In 2009 Unik was chosen as the text font for a book. However, the book designers wanted to have an italic and a bold style as well. The cursive was developed from written texts that I also wrote for various occasions in the 1980s. The resulting font family was thoroughly revised several times until a usable text font with four weights was created. Although the Unik looks very idiosyncratic in display size, it shows a surprisingly balanced, pleasant typeface in read size.

A couple of years before the second World War, Marcel Jacno, the popular French graphic designer who in the 1930s designed iconic posters for Gaumont and Paramount and famously illustrated the Gaulish helmet that first adorned the Gauloises cigarette packs in 1936, was asked by Deberny & Peignot to design a calligraphic typeface for the advertising market. Jacno's Scribe design, billed by D&P as a "virile ad writing" typeface, was released to some great fanfare in 1937, enjoyed some time of French spotlight, and was ready to make waves in the rest of Europe before the war broke out and snuffed its chances at international recognition. However, samples of it can still be found in some specialty post-war publications as an example of a trend that lasted a couple of decades, when Western European type manufacturers commissioned famous visual artists to design typefaces in order to capitalize on the artists' fame - the trend that brought us standards like Futura and the long list of Lucien Bernhard and Imre Reiner faces. This exclusive digital version of Jacno's design expands on the original concept with a large character set that includes plenty of alternates, a couple of different ways for seamless lowercase connections, three sets of figures, and extended Latin language support, adding up to over 540 characters in a one big, contextually-programmed font.

Here at Comicraft we have seen the signs on the headline news, we have read the portents of things to come... yes, just as thunder is a sign of storm, just as pumpkins outside Ralph's on November the 1st are sure to be on sale, just as fresh produce becomes rotten, as sure as night turns to day, dark turns to gray, winter turns to spring and milk turns sour if you leave it out on the kitchen table overnight... Yes, here at Comicraft we know there's a signpost up ahead... a sign heading not into the twilight zone, but down a road of hope and hard work, a banner year, a red letter day, we know it's time to knuckle down, soldier on and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Well, we should probably pull ourselves up by our bootstraps BEFORE we soldier on, NEVERTHELESS, here it is -- not a soundbite, not an unfulfilled campaign promise -- SignLanguage is a font that makes the impossible possible, a font that cuts the taxes for 95% of American families, a font that closes down Gitmo and brings our troops home from Iraq. Senator Joe "Six Pack" Biden has described SignLanguage as articulate and bright and clean -- and a nice-looking font. In conclusion, Comicraft recommends you elect Sign Language.

Vala™ dances across printed pages and shines on screen. This is a high-energy design that blends the grace of an English Roundhand script with the gravitas of an extra bold Bodoni. There is even a bit of romance in the design. Vala speaks with a resonant voice – and knows few bounds. The typeface enhances print headlines, subheads, cover art and packaging. The design also brings its distinctive melding of verve and poise to banners, headings, navigational links and branding in web sites, blog posts, games and apps. Oscar Guerrero found inspiration for Vala in shop window lettering near his home in Bogotá, Colombia. “The capital A, R and V caught my attention and I photographed the window for future reference,” he explains. “Later I started to draw more letters inspired by the ones in the window.” Guerrero admits that he has always admired the work of Giambattista Bodoni and allowed his classic Didone designs to infuse Vala. Striking contrast in stroke weights, lively ball-terminals and a large x-height give Vala the grace and force of a Waikiki wave. Not satisfied with just a basic character set, Guerrero also took advantage of OpenType’s capabilities and drew a complete set of swash capitals, a bevy of fancy ligatures, and a suite of lowercase alternative designs. The result is that Vala easily emulates custom lettering in posters, headlines and logotypes. The “romantic” part of Vala? Guerrero dedicated the design to his girlfriend, Valentina, and named it after her.

Bauhaus Geometric, economical, functional... The good, wholesome, modernist values that once fired up the tutors and students of the Bauhaus became the inspiration for FS Dillon after an exploration of the work of the pre-war art and design powerhouse in the Fontsmith studio. The font combines simplicity and directness with a characteristic Fontsmith warmth. Letterforms are compact, with a generous x-height, and built for maximum clarity and impact. The Bauhaus sought beauty through function. FS Dillon achieves it. Made for TV The weights of fonts for TV sometimes have to be adjusted so as not to “blow” on-screen. FS Dillon was originally drawn for the on-screen presentation branding of Film Four, whose primary colour was red. Black type on a red background looks heavier than white, so Dillon needed two weights that would allow white and black type to be used together, looking balanced and equal. Type design is an organic process. Years after developing FS Dillon, we revisited it, redrawing elements and adding italics to maintain consistency. Olympic You don’t get a much higher confirmation of the functional fitness of a typeface than to have it selected to guide visitors around an Olympic complex. FS Dillon was selected as the font for signage at some of the key venues at the London 2012 Olympic Park, helping to get spectators, athletes and officials from all over the world to their seats and starting blocks on time.

Lincoln Electric started its life as an in-house experimental film type Thomas Lincoln drew shortly after concluding his work as part of Herb Lubalin’s famed crew in the late 1960s,. The master alphabet was drawn on illustration boards using pen and ink and press-type lines. The typeface was initially made for use in the branding and promotional material of Lincoln’s new design outfit. This alphabet’s forms are a spin on Bifur, the all-cap deco face designed by Adolphe Mouron (known as Cassandre) in 1929, and published by the Deberny & Peignot foundry in France. Lincoln Electric evolves Cassandre’s idea further by constructing new shapes more in line with minimalist principles rather than art deco geometry — something clearly evident in Lincoln’s minuscules, which exhibit a clear connection to Bauhaus ideas More than 50 years after the typeface’s design, Thomas Lincoln found the original film alphabet tucked away in his archives and brought it over to Canada Type for digital retooling. The result is a modern and thoroughly elaborate set of fonts that belonging prominently in a 21st century designer’s toolbox. The following features are included in Lincoln Electric: • Three fonts for chromatic layering. • More than 1900 glyphs in each font. • Expanded Latin and Cyrillic character sets. • Small caps and Caps-to-small-caps. • Six different sets of stylistic alternates. • Ordinals and case-sensitive forms. For a showing of the stylistic set variations and a sample of demonstration of chromatic layering, please consult this PDF.