Dave West’s Italiano is a smooth and sensuous typographic dish with a few extra savory dashes. The silky semi-serif combines ingredients from eighteenth-century engraved italics and nineteenth-century Italian Modern, softened by fine stroke endings and plump dolloped terminals. Preserve Italiano’s subtle flavors by maximizing its size in headlines, advertising captions, and identity campaigns, or capitalize on its swash characters to sweeten package and poster designs. However you use it, Plinc Italiano is a tasty typographic treat—non ci piove! Drawn in the late 1960s for Photo-Lettering, Inc., Italiano was digitized by Steve Ross with Ken Barber in 2015. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

The land of beauteous angels, Andalucia, connects different cultures with a curved arch. Almond trees bloom there in February, and orange trees grow in the heavenly courtyards of Gothic churches. A Catholic cathedral stands in a mosque, Moorish fountains gush with water, and ornate arcades are reflected in the mirrors of the Alhambra pools. Fishing villages have long been busy with tourism, but there are remote pubs where only locals go for fresh fish. Beer is served in wine glasses, and with each one you get a piece of cheese, shrimp, or a few slices of specially smoked ham, sitting on the bar counter. Here, in the off-season, it is possible to gaze into the distance towards the African shores and sketch watercolors for the diary completely undisturbed.

DF Pigtail is the result of a curious marriage of the 'free'-form of writing with the fixed (mono) space for each character of the typewriter typeface. In the early sixties of the last century, typewriter typography became popular as a Fluxus vocabulary. The Fluxus art movement (in fact a Dada like follow up) which encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity and anti commercialism over the conventional market-driven approach. I was educated in the mid seventies when this form of typography was still very popular and was even applied in corporate design. This particular letter has been used by my teacher Jan Begeer to compose his design assignments. Recently I rediscovered this type and was struck by its pigtail similarity and drew it my way.

He's rough around the edges, but he's an outlaw from the Old West, what did you expect? He's Saratoga Slim, a playful shaken up dust devil of a typeface. With a shaken appearance and rough hewn letters, he steps onto the scene, yet is clearly legible to read. He's alot like a one of those ruffigans that is crude around the edges, but when he looks at you and says, "Get what I'm saying partner?", you know exactly what he means. Put some rough and tumble type into your designs with Saratoga Slim. He's been through the ringer a few times but keeps coming back for more. Isn't that what you look for when you create a design...durability...? Here it is, Saratoga Slim, looking at you! Get it today!

Electrostatic JNL was inspired by the 1930s lettering for radio station WMCA in New York City. It was found as part of an ad for the station in a 1932 radio broadcasting trade magazine. WMCA went on the air Feb. 6, 1925. According to Wikipedia, the "MCA" call letters stood for the Hotel McAlpin, where the station's original studio and transmitter were located. "W" is the call sign prefix for all broadcast stations East of the Mississippi River; with the exception of KDKA (Pittsburgh), which was the nation's first commercial radio station. This bold novelty typeface with lightning bolds intersecting the characters can be used to represent anything from electricity to stormy days; power generators to brute force and so forth. Electrostatic JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Jet is an assertive italic sans that anticipates the return of the simpler, optimistic times when progress was considered positive and forward seemed to be the only way to go. It may have felt right at home in the mid-1970s, the time of Sc-Fi, synthetics and disco, yet it unmistakably belongs to the present. Its dynamic sturdy forms and angular tapering of some horizontal forms convey movement and edgy impatience for change, with a few re-imagined details, like the reversed slant on top of the lowercase t and the atypical round counter of the lowercase a, showing a new hope for the bygone optimism. Available in five weights in Latin and Cyrillic, supporting many languages, with stylistic alternates and two sets of figures. Designed by Gayaneh Bagdasaryan and Vyacheslav Kirilenko, 2020

In today's typographic landscape, few would still consider Bodoni to have a "modern" feel, but there was once a time when it's vertical axis and thinned horizontal strokes were considered radical. Volterra—inspired by the forms of Bodoni—finishes what Bodoni started and eliminates the horizontal stroke altogether, breathing an elegant new energy into a 200-year-old classic. Named for the artist hired to paint loincloths over Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" when nudity in religious art was condemned, Volterra acknowledges that it is no easy feat picking up where a master left off. Volterra takes what has grown to feel traditional and transforms it into a delicate mixture of classic and modern, with razor-edged serifs and ultra-sharp strokes. Strictly a display face, the larger Volterra is used, the better it looks.

Although ITC Styleboy has a retro feel, it isn't based on any earlier typeface. As far as inspiration goes," says designer Chester Wajda, "I'd have to say comic strips of the '20s and '30s, and silent-film marquee lettering from the '20s - with a hint of a Chinese brush?" He originally created the typeface for a children's book he was working on. "I wanted it to be fun, but still somewhat formal in its underlying structure," he says. "It's largely based on right and 45-degree angles, with slight tucks inward on the stems and bowls, and a few flourishes here and there." Styleboy's top-heavy look is most noticeable in the caps, but it's exaggerated too in the "8" and the lowercase "g." Styleboy is Wajda's first typeface design."

While watching the 1947 holiday classic “Miracle on 34th Street”, one scene in particular presented a chance to develop a retro type design. ‘Kris Kringle’ suggests to a mother visiting with her child in the Macy’s toy department to try Gimbel’s for a toy she couldn’t find at the store. The news of this behavior reaches Mr. Macy himself, who embraces the practice as a brilliant marketing strategy. A number of departments are then presented with reference books containing competitor ads, and the visual of the cover stating “R.H. Macy & Co. Shopping Guide for the Convenience of Our Customers” shows on screen. The thin, Art Deco sans serif monoline with a few serif-like hooks added onto some characters became the basis for Shopping Guide JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Created with headline, logo and other short display work in mind, Duende comes in two weights with alternates for the upper and lowercase, consecutive characters are controlled with the OpenType Ligature feature. Display bigger lowercase crossbars as the surrounding characters allow with OpenType Contextual Alternates on, or create your own custom lowercase f or t with a non-crossbar character and one of the included crossbar options Other features include case-sensitive quotes and smart apostrophes. Duende has an alternate for every capital letter and multiple alternate options for the lowercase including swashy terminal characters and non-connecting alternates. Also included are a few clip-on swash elements that can be used to create initial and terminal forms. Duende uses smart crossbars for common situations, unifying Af, Aft, At, Att, Aff, tt and ff with a single crossbar when the OpenType Ligature feature in on. The Ligature feature also ensures subtle baseline variation when two lowercase characters are keyed twice in a row. Enable Contextual Alternates in your OpenType menu and Duende uses bigger f and t crossbars as the surrounding characters allow. Enable Discretionary Ligatures for lowercase o connections. You can also make your own lowercase f and t to fit any situation combining one of the included crossbars and non-crossbar f or t characters (available as ‘Alternates for Current Selection’ when f or t is selected). Just select the crossbar you want from the glyph table as a separate text element and move it anywhere. Also included are ten tt ligatures with crossbars and one without. Duende also has a few other swashy things that can be used to cross the lowercase f and t. Customize alternate capitals U, V, W, X and Y with any one of the swash options available in the glyph table for those characters.

FF Sizmo™ is available in two flavors. One is an honest, industrial strength, somewhat condensed, sans serif family. The other builds on the first, and is a display design with horizontally connecting baseline strokes. The five weights of basic the FF Sizmo typefaces are ideal for print and digital projects. Character spacing is generous, counters are open and apertures are wide and clear. Banners, navigational links, sub heads, and short blocks of contextual copy are natural on-screen uses for the design. Print projects from branding to way-finding also fall easily into FF Sizmo’s range of applications. The “line” versions of FF Sizmo can be arresting stand-alone typefaces – or distinctive complements to the basic roman and italic designs. In either instance, the line designs make powerful statements in headlines, subheads, posters and cover art. OpenType® fonts automatically insert beginning, middle or ending line element characters into the copy. Drawn by Verena Gerlach, both designs were inspired by the same source, a commercial signage system that enabled quick and easy copy changes. “The idea for the typeface,” explains Gerlach, “is a housing complex index board, on which movable white plastic capital letters were fixed by a thick line to the wooden board. This line is an important part of the font’s appearance.”

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

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

Runway is the font that will satisfy the need for speed in your design. Simple lines and curves, a commanding slant, and big sturdy shapes made to cruise at any speed or altitude, through summer breeze or horrible snowstorms. Runway was designed to be tight like an engine chain, powerful like the hum of the engine itself, and simply the best choice when it comes to strength and velocity in design. Initially Runway was meant to be a single font. But during the spacing and kerning stages, Patrick noticed that most of the letters, especially the vowels and the s, can clasp stylishly with the L or the T to make some really funky combinations. That's how the Alternates font was born. After building a few alternates and about 40 "clasped" combinations around the L and the T, the decision was made to take Runway to the next level: OpenType. The OpenType version of Runway is a single font that contains some serious font magic. Some of the many features the font includes: Over 430 characters for that great character map utility you have, automatic to-and-fro small-capping, discretionary ligatures that call up some pretty funky combinations automatically as you type, and a lot of stylistic and contextual alternates for many characters, ligatures and composites. If your design program of choice supports the features of OpenType fonts (Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS, InDesign CS), then you're in for a lot of enjoyment playing with Runway. For those who don't fancy OpenType or can't handle it, Runway is also available (in Regular, Caps and Alt styles) in the usual font formats for both Mac and PC.

Good Karma (its namesake) will be extended to you as you use this new relaxed script family. Originally, produced from hand and the sumi brush of Neil Summerour, Good Karma Smooth is a smooth digitization of the original exemplars in Good Karma. Good Karma Smooth is filled with a lot of heart, reliable and genuine movements, and a wide range of letter options to befit any project needing an honest hand-lettered look. And on top of that, proceeds form the sale of this typeface will be distributed to charities and organizations intent on combatting the Covid-19 global pandemic. Each typeface comes with an additional set of stylistic alternates (upper AND lowercase) that harmonize wonderfully when you have the Opentype Ligature feature active. Additionally, special double-letter ligatures have been produced for specific combinations in need of more expressive flair, as well as a few swashes that work with the economical strokes originally produced from the sumi brush. To further expand the usefulness of this peaceful script, a separate Caps/Small Caps font has been added that provides the simple contrast needed to bring the script fonts forward. Rather than limit the personality of this script, various styles have been produced to complement the original Regular—Upright, Wide, Wide Upright, and the aforementioned Caps fonts are included in hopes of helping you find the perfect variation needed for your composition.

Unarmed began life as a series of rectangles in Fireworks. The task was designing my own business card for the first time in years, and the perfect lettering couldn't be found in either free or commercial fonts. While there were some good choices, none of them really communicated who I was. Initially only the lowercase letters in my name were created, with each being designed around a 7 x 4 grid of squares. I liked the result so much that I wanted to use the same typeface in different projects - and to save time in future, I decided to create this font. In creating DM Unarmed, the intention was to avoid diagonal lines, and to keep all the lines horizontal, vertical and grid-like. This made creating some of the characters - particularly the rounded ones and the letters X and Z - challenging. Coming from both worlds, I wanted to achieve a blend of technicality and creativeness, without trying to pretend one was the other. For best results this font should be used for large and prominent text, although it works at smaller sizes up to 12pt. I've spent a lot of time trying to hint a few characters that wouldn't play ball, such as 2, 7 and 8. In case you're wondering: DM Unarmed got its name from my philosophy of facing challenges without reliance on tools and weapons.

About Garino: Garino is a modern sans-serif typeface family. It gains its expressive character from a dynamic sweep in the curves and high-contrast transitions. The thinner and thicker weights are particularly suitable for strong headlines, while the middle weights can be used for typographic challenges and body text. As a result, it can be used in a reserved as well as an expressive way. Thanks to an extensive character collection, it becomes a real workhorse. A versatile allrounder that is up to all challenges – for Corporate Identity, Editorial, Branding, Orientation and Guidance systems and much more. Variable Font The Variable font contains 2 axes: weight and oblique – all in just one file. Features: With over 1165 characters, it covers over 200 Latin-based languages. It has an extended set of currency symbols and a whole range of Open Type Features. There are alternative characters as stylistic sets, small caps, automatic fractions – just to name a few. Arrows and numbers: In particular, the extensive range of arrows and numbers should be highlighted, which are perfectly suited for use in orientation and guidance systems. Thanks to Open Type Features and an easy system, the various designs of arrows and numbers can also be simply "written" without first having to select them in a glyph palette. Get the static version of the Garino family here: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/julien-fincker/garino/

Sultan is a revival and expansion of a 1954 Matrin Kausche typeface called Mosaik. This design highlights the unmistakable Arabic/Moorish calligraphy influence on Celtic lettering, by way of the highly active Andalusian culture from the ninth century until the crusades in the early eleventh century. Although Celtic lettering evolved on its own and prompted different calligraphic styles after the crusades, elements of the Arabic influence survived with it, its appeal remaining evident to this very day. For instance, this kind of lettering is very similar to the one Louis Tiffany used to make the most recognizable athletic insignia in North America - the New York Yankees logo, which is now over 110 years old, and has inspired hundreds of spin-offs in many athletic and non-athletic fields all over the world. The original character set made by Kausche was quite minimal, consisting of only numerals and uppercase letters along with a few alternates. But in this digital version the set has been considerably expanded into uppercase, lowercase, numerals, punctuation, a complete set of accented characters, and more than 15 alternate letters built into the font. Sultan is a great font choice particularly for design contexts of fantasy, middle ages legend, mystical and new age content, pirate literature, and Irish history. But it is also an excellent all-purpose display and poster font in general.

- Unique Modernist Look - 590+ characters per font - Standard & Discretionary Ligatures - Multiple Stylistic Sets - Old Style Figures - Case-Sensitive Punctuation - Multilingual - Cyrillic Included - Uppercase + Lowercase Porte is an elegant sans serif font inspired by stone carving and modernist typefaces of early 20th century. While at its core Porte is a display font, it can also be used for larger bodies of text and in a variety of projects. Thanks to its unique proportions and feel Porte is reminiscent of early 20th century type, wherein aesthetic qualities often overweighed matters of practicality and applicability. Porte is at once delicate and sturdy, subtle and unyielding. Porte is very OpenType friendly, boasting an awesome selection of useful OpenType features, precise and exhaustive kerning (around 1000 pairs) and lots of discretionary ligatures to make your designs look amazing. A selection of wider and narrower alternate glyphs allow the designer to modify the rhythm of the typeface, extending its application and impact. With 590+ characters on board, Porte supports all major Latin based languages as well as a number of Cyrillic languages. Porte received its first major update in fall 2022. Not only was the character set expanded considerably, but also some glyphs were re-drawn to fix visual inconsistencies, and a large number of stylistic alternates was added. The kerning, too, was re-done to accommodate new letterforms. Trials available upon request.

Amorie is a tall and skinny hand drawn font. It comes in various weight and styles, and with an array of opentype options. Built to appear completely hand crafted, different designers could produce completely different results, selecting either Modella (classic and chic), Nova (fun and fancy) or SC (Small Caps and all business.) Each style comes in light, medium and bold and has an accompanying italics version. Opentype for this font includes Contextual Alternatives, which produces three versions of each character, making sure no two identical letters appear next to each other thus giving your design a fully authentic look. There are also stylistic alternatives, which offer different style to a select few characters, including capital letters: A, K, R, Q, Y and lowercase letters: a, e, k, t, y. Lastly, is a large set of swashes, 3 for each letter they accompany. For the most part this includes the whole uppercase alphabet as well as lower case letters with an ascender or descender. Amorie includes a large set of graphic extras, including stylish frames, arrows, line breaks, corners, flourishes and more. The complete package gives you one unbeatable font family. If you do not use Opentype but are using a program that includes a full glyph panel, you will be able to access each of the style variations you want.

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

Fazeta Sans is a perfect companion to serif typeface Fazeta. Two light weights were added, so the complete typeface consist of 14 fonts (7 weights + matching italics). The fine gradation lets you choose perfect weight for any type of project. Every font have 1140 glyphs – just like the serif version and contains the same features, so use and combining of whole typeface is very comfortable. Also fixed kerning allows better comfort for eyes by reading and shortens the length of the text. I tried to preserve sharp and cold impression from serif version, but some straight lines had to be curved due to the natural limitation of sans typefaces (for example the upper arch of “f” is shaped more smooth). However it keeps extremely open form. A little playfulness was left at the end of letters “k, K, and R”, but if you want, this can be eliminated by using a rigorous SS01 feature. Serifs were here transformed into a small yaw from main stroke and so enlive the monotony of sans kind of types. Also slight cutting the top of the letters helping to surprisingly vivid final impression. Fazeta Sans is therefore suitable for wide range of type sizes – from small marginalies to huge poster sizes. To see more please check the PDF specimen.

A classical proportioned text font - with a Celtic twist! Perfect for that oldstyle look, but still very readable. I have cleaned up the outlines, improved the spacing and kerning, modified a few letterforms - and then expanded the character set by 440%! A bolder weight has now also been created, and a rough version for a more antique look. 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.

Schorel commands the room and sets the audience at ease. This new Scotch Roman typeface from insigne is a confident personality with a tasteful amount of contrast. Cool, sharp, balanced, and contemporary, Schorel not only delivers well in longer texts, but can use its mass to meet the needs of subheadlines, callouts, and other similar projects. Scotch typefaces initially come from Scottish foundries, popular in the United States in the late 18th century. This beautiful genre of type grew in popularity through the Victorian era and most of the 20th century to make regular appearance in books, magazines, newspapers, and advertisements. Schorel itself, with its moderate contrast and organic design, features short ascenders and descenders and calligraphic italics. The design features a few ball terminals, but mostly touts its bracket serifs, which come to a sharp point. The typeface, ideal for medium to large sizes, is useful for both headlines and text, carefully created for both print and screen. This OpenType font supports most Latin-based languages. Schorel has nine weights and a true italic, and many special features such as small caps, fractions, old-style figures, and numerous extras complete each font. It’s every bit a delight to your reader’s eye.

The name suggests it: the Chiq is based on a well-known system font from Apple's classic Mac OS operating system. By revamping and expanding good old “Chicago“, I want to make that 90s tech charm available for the future. The model consisted of just a single style and inspired me to create “Chiq Bold,” which later became the starting point for the entire font family. The shapes of the Chiq are constructed according to a very simple principle. The contrast of stems and hairlines becomes more pronounced towards the bolder cuts. A few basic shapes form the framework for all characters. The shapes are very regular and sometimes form somewhat unusual figures, which has a negative effect on readability and makes the font rather unsuitable for long passages of text, but results in a very even typeface. This is particularly true for the extra-wide “UltraExpanded,” which is so wide that you can no longer recognize word images but literally have to spell them out. In this way, words are turned into letter bands with a great decorative effect. With variants from “Light” to “Black”, from “Normal” to “Ultra Expanded” and the italics, Chiq reaches beyond its archetype. This opens up a wide range of uses. It is even clearer, even more sober, and to a certain extent speaks an even more modern formal language. Chiq is also a variable font!

Demetria is a font created in 2012 by Carlos Fabián Camargo and works to form words and headlines with medieval expressiveness. Thus his concept mix uncial, Roman and italic letters resulting serifs some here and there, extended width and high amount of contrast between thick and thin strokes. That way its vigorous ups and downs are higher than its “x” height, highlighting it as a font with regular caliber,outstanding to design headlines with strong proportions and texture. Consequently, typographic and aesthetic possibilities of Demetria are visually appealing by its chaotic forms that are embedded and remain fixed in the minds of its viewers; also, “Demetria Pro” has OpenType features such as “Swash”, “Titling”, “Discretionary Ligatures”, “Standard Ligatures”, Ordinals, Fractions and Superscript that make shine what is written by their abstract shapes resembling elongated paths of black ink diluted in water. This font also works in software without opentype features, so it is recommended to use the remaining files NON-PRO. In short, the expressiveness and mysticism of Demetria is reaffirmed with some capital letters with lower height designed to be interchangeable with similar metrics to lowercase but aesthetically different.Thus the font mimics strong imperfections and splashes that get slim or grow depending on their degree of spontaneity. In that sense Demetria is recommended to compose words, phrases and typographic textures in graphic design projects related to epic, historical or legendary matters.

Inspired by a find a coarse but decorative font was created. "Fundstueck" ist the German term for it. Fonts can be so simple. That is what I was thinking as my attention was turned to this rusty piece of metal. Only a few centimeters in size, I couldn’t imagine which purpose it might truly serve. But my eyes also saw an E, even a well-proportioned E: a width to height ratio of approximately 2/3, black and fine strokes with a 1/2 proportion — could I create more characters on this basis? Thought it, did it. The form is based on a 5mm unit. The strikingly thick middle stroke of E suggests that the emphasis is not necessarily placed on the typical stroke, and likewise with the other characters. But if the font is going to be somewhat legible, then you cannot leave out slanted strokes completely. Eventually I found enough varying solutions for all letters of the alphabet and figures. A font designed in this way doesn’t really have to be extremely legible, which is why I forwent creating lower case letters. Nevertheless, Fundstueck still contains some diverse forms in the layout of upper and lower case letters. Thus, the typeface is a bit richer in variety. By the way — the “lower” letters with accents and umlauts stay between the baseline and cap height. And with that, you get wonderful ribbon-type lines.

A friend once jokingly told me that what I really do is mine extinct arts for parts to use in modern things, like going to the scrapyard to pick up bumpers, quarter-panels and dashboards off of Datsuns and Ponies to build a shiny new Ferrari. I still kind of grin at that, but I certainly do spend a lot of time looking at old things and imagining ways they would work today. This shiny new Ferrari here is called Bibliophile, and it contains scrap heap parts from various pages by Louis Prang, the Prussian-American printer and publisher who inspired my Prangs fonts. This is my second engagement with the late 19th century man, and it’s quite a bit more intricate than just an italic Didone with a connected lowercase. Bibliophile marries Round Hand calligraphy with Italian capitals, two styles not often relayed in the same alphabet, but work together beautifully when combined well. When you combine them well with a few long-practised tricks of the trade, then mix in a few trusted features from my previous work over the years, you get my usual crazy exuberance, like 17 different shapes for the d, 21 different forms for the y, endings, beginnings, swashes, ornaments, and so on. It’s no secret that I can get carried away when I’m so consumed by an idea. — Bibliophile comes in 2 weights, each of them with over 900 glyphs covering all the latin languages. Bibliophile also comes with a bold weight, something I’m always reluctant to do with something as adventurous and complex as the structure of this historical mashup. But I couldn’t chase away the idea of increasing the contrast while maintaining the hairlines in a lowercase this narrow. Part of it was the curiosity about the outcome, and part was the sheer challenge of it. I think it turned out OK. Words set in either weight will show delicateness and elegance, and the more time you spend inside the font and micro-manage the setting, the more ways you will find to magnify either. Bibliophile can be as muted or luxurious as you want it to be. This is the kind of alphabet that fits well in fashion marketing and high-end packaging, from the very subdued to the super-exquisite. Enjoy the gleaming new vehicle made with freshly polished old parts.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™, and Soho®.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.

Originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1925, FontHaus's 1995 revival is based on a design named "Novelty Broadway". Characters were referenced from "Commercial Art of Show Card Lettering" by James Eisenberg, published by D. Van Nostrand Company in 1945. This Broadway is classic Broadway but with some charming differences such as a slanted lower case "f" a remarkable lower case "g" and a high-waisted upper case case "R", as only a few examples. It was named "Novelty" because the alphabet incorporated a concave design feature in the tops and bottoms of each letter. These differences allow this version to possess much more personality than that of all other Broadway designs on the market. It looks almost hand brushed, has soft edges and is no where near as sterile looking as all the other digital versions. It feels very 1925!

The initial inspiration for CA Spotnik was the opening title of an early Andrei Tarkovsky movie. There was this very unconventional hand drawn “s” which drew my attention. Despite its strange shape, it felt totally natural in that context. So we made a few screenshots and started to sketch some more letters in order to catch the spirit that attracted us so much. The result is a grotesque typeface with a slight contrast, the proportions are rather wide with a large x-height. The bolder the weight, the wider it gets. In case you find the swirly “s” uncomfortable, there is a standard s included as well. The general atmosphere of the typeface, which could be described as “nerdy but friendly” doesn’t depend on this detail. It’s rather the sum of details derived from the original inspiration.

The Yasmine Mutamathil type family follows the guidelines of the Mutamathil type style. It has only one glyph for every basic Arabic Unicode character or letter. The Yasmine Mutamathil family includes all required Lam-Alif ligatures and selected marks positioning so it does use limited glyph substitutions or forming. Yasmine Mutamathil employs four fixed x-height values, two above and two below the x-axis. Values are high to give a slight vertical overall look. Its design uses full curves with equally distributed weight. Text strings composed using types of this family are non-cursive with stand- alone isolated glyphs. The Yasmine Mutamathil family includes both Arabic and Arabic-Indic numerals, all required diacritic marks, Allah ligature, in addition to all standard English keyboard punctuations and major currency symbols. It is available in regular, italic, bold, and bold italic styles.

Designed by expert ad artist Herbert Thannhaeuser for East German foundry Typoart in 1955, Lotto was until now one of the long lost gems of European sign and brush lettering faces. Unlike in Kurier (Thannhaeuser’s other brush face digitized by Canada Type as Puma), the forms’ brush construct uses a series of strokes that are mostly sudden, whimsical, and at times even look like great genius being born out of simple afterthought or straight-forward idiosyncracy. For instance, check out the simple brush pause that is the top of the f, the confident yet welcoming serifs on the T, the similarly-themed C/E and O/Q relationship, and much more. Lotto comes with over 400 glyphs, contains a few alternates and ligatures sprinkled throughout the character set, and includes support for the majority of Latin languages.

The 2nd installment of the Enchanted Land family takes us on another medieval adventure, opting to completely rebuild instead of refining the legacy script. More emphasis was put into the undulating nature of the Uppercase characters and how they keep your eyes flowing. For this reason, straight lines and right angles are rarely used in favor of flamboyant terminals and wispy swashes. Lowercase characters, by contrast, adhere to a consistent model defined by its straightened edges and sharp corners. This script flirts with several old world styles but seeks only to borrow elements rather than completely emulate them. German Blackletter, Old English, Uncial, Victorian, it’s in there! Enchanted Land DS would work well in a book, video game, or medieval signage. This family is equipped with Basic Latin, Extended Latin, ligatures, punctuation, a few alternates, and kerning.