Grotesques can answer a really wide variety of design problems and go from small sizes to large without missing a beat. Vinila is Flora de Carvalho's take on the genre. The family’s multi-purpose intention comes from having 4 widths - from compressed to extended, each with 6 weights and obliques. Rhythm and music played an important part in the design of this font, which started off as the lettering for a Brazilian Music album. Its distinctiveness comes from having powerful ink traps that go from elegant and supple in the lighter styles to commanding and impactful in the heavier styles. A distinct rhythm is achieved, making it a strong face for editorial design, branding projects and so much more. Vinila is the ideal companion to expressive display faces, where it serves a supporting role with a marked presence. We use Vinila every day in our own brand identity. We've had some of the best designers use it and test it in many different environments, printed, digital, mobile and more (they really like it!). Also in the package, Vinila Variable is an experimental version of Vinila, where you can have a virtually infinite mix of weights, widths and slant, all from a single font file. Available when you license the complete family. Vinila pairs happily with our cheerful Manteiga , elegantly with our organic didone Tenez and mechanically with our monospaced Odisseia . What other matches can you think of?

The origins of Bembo go back to one of the most famous printers of the Italian Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496, he used a new roman typeface to print the book de Aetna, a travelogue by the popular writer Pietro Bembo. This type was designed by Francesco Griffo, a prolific punchcutter who was one of the first to depart from the heavier pen-drawn look of humanist calligraphy to develop the more stylized look we associate with roman types today. In 1929, Stanley Morison and the design staff at the Monotype Corporation used Griffo's roman as the model for a revival type design named Bembo. They made a number of changes to the fifteenth-century letters to make the font more adaptable to machine composition. The italic is based on letters cut by the Renaissance scribe Giovanni Tagliente. Because of their quiet presence and graceful stability, the lighter weights of Bembo are popular for book typography. The heavier weights impart a look of conservative dependability to advertising and packaging projects. With 31 weights, including small caps, Old style figures, expert characters, and an alternate cap R, Bembo makes an excellent all-purpose font family. Bembo® Book font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Once, Blackletter was a calligraphy style. Full of ligatures, with letters bumping into each other to create an unapologetic picket-fence pattern. Some even claimed that the regularity improved legibility! But then Blackletter was cast into metal, and only a handful of established ligatures survived, while most interletter connections were disentangled. Everyone since followed suit, and hundreds of years later, digital Blackletter fonts were modelled mostly on the metal fonts that prevailed rather than the original handwriting. Up until now! AJ Quadrata is an authentic revival of the textura quadrata hand, and its major inspiration is a 15th-century Latin manuscript of the Bible from Zwolle, the Netherlands. The typeface is delivered in two flavors. The default cut is a modern take on textura quadrata that can be useful for today and tomorrow. The standard ligatures feature employs nearly all letters. The tittle of i retains its original, hasty squiggle form (except for the Turkish localization). Discretionary ligatures include medieval ligatures da, de, do, pa, pe, po (and their mixed-case counterparts!). Stylistic sets allow to use historic letter variants such as long s and rotunda r, closed-counter a, and alternate capitals. AJ Quadrata Medieval is perfect for setting Latin. Default forms of capital F, H and O are swapped with the alternates. The squiggles above i only appear for disamibiguation nearby m, n or u, as in original manuscripts. Discretionary ligatures and historic variants are promoted to the standard ligatures feature to make room in the discretionary ligatures feature for a variety of scribal abbreviations. Dedicated stylistic sets include medieval punctuation and justification alternates — glyphs with elongated terminals used for lengthening lines that end up too short. The Rubrum styles can be layered and colored to create the illuminated effect on the capital letters. Besides a faithful rendition of extended Latin including Vietnamese, numerous synthetic additions are included: polytonic Greek, Armenian, and Cyrillic (with Bulgarian and Serbian/Macedonian localizations). Both flavors of the typeface can be considered a starting point that can be further customized using OpenType features, including Stylistic Sets (some features differ between AJ Quadrata and AJ Quadrata Medieval): ss01 Alt E ss02 Descending F / Roman F ss03 Uncial H / Roman H ss04 Angular O / Round O ss05 Contextual closed-counter a ss06 Diamond-dot i j / Always dotted i, j ss07 Contextual rotunda r / No r rotunda ss08 Contextual long s / No long s ss09 Dotless y ss10 Serbian Cyrillic ss11 Alt Cyrillic de ss12 Alt Cyrillic zhe ss13 Alt Cyrillic sha ss14-ss17 [reserved for future use] ss18 Scribal punctuation ss19 Alt linking hyphen ss20 Justification alternates

Guanabara is the third release of Plau Type Foundry. It started from the need of a wayfinding typeface that had personality enough to be the brand typeface for a city. The city of Rio de Janeiro, with its never-ending curves and all year long summer weather provided the constraints and requirements of this typeface. From there, it evolved to be a workhorse, with 8 weights from Thin to Black and matching true italics. It just had to have the features that all us designers have grown to love, such as alternate letters (a, g and r for the romans), tabular and proportional figures in lining and oldstyle set-ups as well as small caps, fractions and all that jazz (I mean, samba). And it needed to be recognizable and distinct. For that, design features like tapered R legs, capitals with classic proportions and calligraphic finishes on the terminals proved crucial. And last, but not least, like Rio, it had to welcome many cultures. We came to think of it as the “Typeface from Ipanema”, with a classic, timeless look, swinging elegance and joyful attitude.

Pliego is a textface designed to offer a comfortable continuous reading, with humanist proportions, an even texture, and informal calligraphic details noticeable only at big sizes, that gives it a contemporary feeling. Pliego has been named after Pliegos de Cordel, the Spanish word for the popular books that were common during the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries. These were rough, cheap books that basically consisted in a folded sheet attached to a string, hence the name. Their content was varied, from popular tales to ballads and songs, but also crimes and mysteries. They were cheaply made, roughly printed and bound. The name Pliego evokes the idea of a rough look, angular edges, informal taste, but classical look. To cover today’s needs, Pliego includes five weights with matching italics. Designed and engineered for continuous reading, the Book, Regular and Medium weights will perform at their best under 14 points. However, don’t be scared to use for headlines and titles: because of its quirky details and calligraphic flavour, Pliego’s personality is accentuated when enlarged. With an extensive Latin character set, Pliego covers a wide amount of Latin-based languages, including Latin Plus encoding and Vietnamese support.

Babylon was a civilisation that stretched from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf. There is an Old and new Babylonia, the era of Babylon civilization and the biblical Babylon. The oldest scriptures to be found since the rise of civilisation are Babylonic. The Christian, the Jewish and the Arabic culture find its origin in the Middle East. And share more or less the same history, the same roots and DNA. One people, but in reality a melting pot of close related cultures whom could not be more far apart, hostile and suspicious towards each other. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. One could say this disagreement is still alive today and has deeply infected all of our systems. Beyond Babylon is sculpted after Hebrew, Arabic character style elements in a European writing. It questions what happened after the great Babylonic confusion. Did the words finally come across? Did they realize the distant and gap was maybe smaller than expected. This typeface is related to my former character Eurabia. As an artist I like to play with contradictions. Use opposite elements and mould them in to one understandable piece and in addition a thought to chew on. Otherwise the experimental ore shape lovin' typeface user could be very happy with an addition feature to the existing characters. One option more to express your selves in writing. Also this typeface is really suitable for theme writing or advertising. ----------- Babylon war eine Zivilisation die sich von Bagdad bis zum Persischen Golf erstreckte. Es gibt das alte und das neue Babylon, die Ära der Babylon Zivilisation und das biblische Babylon. Die ältesten Schriften, welche seit dem Aufstieg der Zivilisation gefunden wurden, sind babylonisch. Die Christen, die Juden und die arabische Kultur finden ihren Ursprung im Mittleren Osten. Sie teilen mehr oder weniger die gleiche Geschichte, die gleichen Wurzeln und DNA: Ein Volk. Aber in Wirklichkeit waren sie ein Schmelztiegel aus eng verwandten Kulturen, welche sich nicht ferner sein könnten: feindselig und misstrauisch zueinander. Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn. Man könnte behaupten, diese Unstimmigkeit bestehe noch heute und hätte all unsere Systeme stark infiziert. Beyond Babylon ist eine europäische Schrift, geformt nach hebräischen und arabischen Stilelementen der Zeichen. Sie hinterfragt die Geschehnisse nach der der Babylonischen Sprachverwirrung. Kamen die Worte endlich an? Haben sie realisiert, dass die Weite des Spalts zwischen ihnen vielleicht geringer war als erwartet. Diese Schrift ist verwandt mit meinen vorigen Zeichen der Eurabia. Als Künstlerin mag ich es mit Widersprüchen zu spielen, gegensätzliche Elemente zu einem vernehmbaren Ganzen zu verschmelzen und einen kniffligen Gedanken zu erzeugen. Andererseits könnte der experimentelle oder formenverliebte Nutzer sehr glücklich über eine zusätzliche Funktion der bestehenden Zeichen sein. Eine weite Möglichkeit sich im Schreiben auszudrücken. Diese Schrift ist auch für Werbung sehr geeignet.

While in the same vein and spirit as Burgues and Compendium, Bellissima began from an entirely different thread from those fonts. It started with Alex Trochut generously showing me a gorgeous lettering book from his grandfather’s library: Bellezas de la Caligrafía, by Ramón Stirling, 1844. Stirling was one of the Latin calligraphy pioneers who introduced a refined version of English calligraphy in Spain and made it popular in the nineteenth century. Some scans from that book served as initial basis for the caps in my Poem Script. But it was always in the back of my mind that I should do a copperplate, and the Stirling model was the perfect source. My intention was to veer away from Stirling’s exuberant ornamentation, and work within simplified forms of his ideas. As it usually is with most of my projects, Bellissima became its own bird and shaped its own flying patterns. Suddenly there were many ligatures, multiple endings and swashed connections, hundreds of alternates for both uppercase and lowercase. Bellissima has an effusive energy that appeals much beyond its sourcing. It’s intended for these modern times of appreciation for old crafty things like stationery and letterpress, where its origins help it shine brightly. Bellissima Script Pro is a complete font with almost 2000 characters full of alternates, swashes, ligatures & ornaments covering a wide palette of latin languages and Bellissima Script Redux is a random sample of glyphs totally usable with a reduced price.

The main inspiration is from Art Nouveau which flourished in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. This design included furniture (Majorelle, Lalique) and architecture (Victor Horta, Henry Van de Velde, Gaudi, Alfons Mucha). But Hector Guimard remains the favorite for all aspects of its art and, of course, its typefaces used on the Parisian Metropolitan posters. In particular, the various kerning of the various letters he used to make the poster a whole design from singular designs, leading to numerous variations. As a designer, I first worked with the individual glyphs Hector Guimard designed and I discovered that they vary constantly from a poster to another, depending on the overall result he was looking for. Another difficulty in transferring his design to printing is that there was no lower case. I was excited to create the whole font from the original designs of Hector Guimard, incorporating its variations and "crazy kerning". After several attempts, it appeared to be impossible to include all variations and I slightly moved to my own new design as a complete font, upper and lower case, with kerning. I voluntarily limited the ascenders and descenders to the usual typography so that it can be used from 10 / 12 points. This version can be used to edit letters and books in the context of Art, specially Art Nouveau and Art Deco of course, posters of any kind.

Mi negra is a funny and hilarious typography designed especially for children, thought and created by Isabel de Gregorio. It could be described as an original combination between a semi-handwright and semi sans-serif font. Thanks to its structure and nice endings "Mi Negra" is recommended for composing short texts (logotypes, packing, posters, etc.). It may similarly be used for illustrations and comics, as well as in printing press works for children from 6 to 13 years old for instance. Mi Negra has been conceived to be a useful support in all kinds of illustrations works (please note that Isabel, the type designer, considers herself primarily an illustrator). The font designer of Mi Negra tells that every time she needed to provide some text data (i.e. in children infographies) and needed to make them more understandable and suitable for children, she used this typography. The former idea was than to create a font who could be a second option to comic sans, but as the project started to reveal its forms, it was clear that it was revealing another connotation and its own character. In this way, Mi Negra went on modifying its forms and the more it developed, the more it was showing its new characteristics and concepts. The family is composed of three weighs: Light, regular and black. It provides also interesting functional ligatures. It also includes a dingbat with nice doggies. It has 434 characters and can work with 208 languages.

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Salvador was born in a small village in the province of Seville, Spain where he lived until 2002. During many years he worked in restaurants, construction, and in the fields, until he decided to go try his luck in Palma de Mallorca. There he worked in hotels and in construction, until the economic crisis erupted and he was left without work or benefits of any kind and he began to live in the street: “The street has few good things, but it teaches you to be more selfless, to share with others what you have, even if it isn’t much.” In 2006, a friend encouraged him to come along to Barcelona and bought his plane ticket. Once there, things did not go much better and he had to continue living in the street. A year ago he left behind that life and now he explains his experience in guided tours to school groups: “I like it because I see that many of them are interested and they ask questions. It is good that they learn.”

How can Teutonia be called “Art Nouveau” with all those straight lines? It seems like a contradiction. In fact, however, Art Nouveau embraces a rather wide variety of stylistic approaches. Five well-known examples in the field of architecture serve to illustrate the range of diversity in Art Nouveau: Saarinen’s Helsinki Railroad Station, Hoffman’s Palais Stocklet in Brussels, Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts on Budapest, Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Only the last fits comfortably within the common perception of Art Nouveau. Whereas Gaudi would avoid the straight line as much as possible, Macintosh seemed to employ it as much as possible. The uniting factor is that they all represent “new art” -- an attempt to look things differently than the previous generation. Even when they draw on the past -- e.g. Lechner in the use of traditional Hungarian folk art -- the totality of the expression in new. Teutonia clearly shows its blackletter roots in the ‘D’ and the ‘M.’ Roos & Junge of Offenbach am Main in Germany produced Teutonia in a "back-to-basics" effort that has seen many quite similar attempts in the field of topography. In 1883, Baltimore Type Foundry released its Geometric series. In 1910, Geza Farago in Budapest used a similar letter design on a Tungsram light bulb poster. In 1919 Theo van Doesburg, a founder with Mondrian and others of the De Stijl movement, designed an alphabet using rectangles only -- no diagonals. In 1923 Joost Schmidt at Bauhaus in Weimer took the same approach for a Constructivist exhibit poster. The 1996 Agfatype Collection catalog lists a Geometric in light, bold and italic that is very close to the old Baltimore version. Even though none of these designs took the world by storm, they all made a contribution to our understanding of letterforms and how we use them. Teutonia is compact and surprisingly readable at 12 points in print, but does not do as well on the screen. Extra leading is suggested. Four ligatures are supplied: ch, ck, sch and tz. The numerals are tabular.

Iza and Paulo W (Intellecta Design) are proud to announce Bradstone-Parker script Script. A free interpretation of the golden age writing style from American classical penmanship. Inspired in Zaner and his contemporaries Bradstone-Parker has evocative (sometimes exaggerated) ligature forms and voluptuous forms. This enhanced OpenType version is a complete solution for producing documents and artworks with a evocative and voluptuous style of calligraphic script: - many stylistic alternates for each letter (upper- and lowercase), accessed with the glyph palette; - ornaments and tails (“rasgos”) in the typical style from the XIX to the first decades of the XX century writing style, all accessed with the glyph palette using the Ornaments feature; - an extensive set of ligatures (100s of contextual alternates ligatures) providing letterform variations that make your designs really special, resembling real handwriting on the page; - a tour-de-force kerning work: over 4600 kerning paris soft adjusted handly. In non-OpenType-savvy applications it works well as an unusual and beautiful script style font. Because of its high number of alternate letters and combinations (almost 700 glyphs), we suggest the use of the glyph palette to find ideal solutions to specific designs. The sample illustrations will give you an idea of the possibilities. You have full access to this amazing stuff using InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. However, we still recommend exploring what this font has to offer using the glyphs palette: principally to get all the power of the Contextual Alternates feature. You can get an idea of the power of this font looking at the “Bradstone-Parker Script Guide”, a pdf brochure in the Gallery section. Take a special look at the Bradstone-Parker Words (ready words). Bradstone-Parker Script has original letters designed by Iza W and overall creative direction plus core programming by Paulo W.