The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. Caslon Antique was designed by Berne Nadall and brought out by the American type foundry Barnhart Bros & Spindler in 1896 to 1898. It doesn't bear any resemblance to Caslon, but has the quaint crudeness of what people imagine type looked like in the eighteenth century. Use Caslon Antique for that old-timey" effect in graphic designs. It looks best in large sizes for titles or initials. Caslon Black was designed by David Farey in the 1990s, and consists of one relatively narrow and very black weight. It is intended exclusively for titles or headlines. Caslon Black has a hint of the original Caslon lurking in the shadows of its shapes, but has taken on its own robust expression. Caslon Graphique was designed by Leslie Usherwood in the 1980s. The basic forms are close to the original Caslon, but this version has wide heavy forms with very high contrast between the hairline thin strokes and the fat main strokes. This precisely drawn and stylized Caslon has verve; it's ideal for headlines or initials in large sizes."

Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, and in two widths each with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. There are two additions to the core 28-weight family: a three-weight stencil set, and a four weight text family. The text weights have been adjusted for use at small point sizes, and feature more open character shapes, looser inter-letter spacing for improved readability, and lining numerals for use in listings and tables. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. A perennial Device bestseller.

Well lookee here: an authentically distressed "rough" version of our best-selling Cornhusker font! Standing tall as an Illinois cornfield in September, Cornhusker Rough is a faux-printed, condensed sans designed by a champion cornhusker. Inspired by 1940s Midwestern signage, it's warm & inky characters are perfectly at home in logos, beverage bottles and food packaging, restaurant menus, travel advertisements, websites, stationery, handmade product packaging and so much more. If you're looking for a hand-crafted typeface with punch (who can fit into tight spaces!) then Cornhusker Rough is the font for you. This inspired revival excels in both retro & modern designs. Cornhusker Rough includes capital letters, small caps, and alternate cuts (with diacritics) of A, E, F, J, X, Y, ᴀ, ᴇ, ғ, ᴊ, x, ʏ, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and a sharp German double s in both cap and smallcap. Please note: Cornhusker Rough features a highly detailed, realistic inkplate texture. This font may render slowly in some applications. This font is not affiliated with or endorsed by the University of Nebraska. WHAT'S INCLUDED Cornhusker Regular includes an installable digital Opentype Font file in a single weight. This file contains a basic Latin character set with a full set of uppercase and small caps, multilingual diacritics, numbers, international currency figures, punctuation and pagination symbols. The font also includes alternate cuts for select uppercase and smallcap letters (located in stylistic sets). It is compatible with Adobe CS and CC, Microsoft Word and other type editing apps. SUPPORTED LANGUAGES Afrikaans, Alsatian, Basque, Bislama, Breton, Catalan, Chamorro, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Finnish, Flemish, Franco-Provencal, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Ladin, Latin, Luxembourgish, Malay, Manx Gaelic, Northern Sotho, Norwegian (Bokmål), Norwegian (Nynorsk), Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Romansh, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Sami (Northern), Sami (Skolt), Sami (Southern), Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Walloon and Welsh.

Cinema Macabre: Horror Fonts Torn from the Pages of Giallo A Hand-drawn Display Font for Creating the Most Diabolical Horror Titles This loose and inky brush font takes its inspiration from the classic Giallo film posters of the 1960s to 1980s - a cult cinematic subgenre beloved for its stylish visuals, haunting soundtracks and exploitation led marketing. It's a devilishly drawn design that aims to capture the feeling of vintage horror, preserving analogue details of old print while remaining versatile enough to work across a variety of digital designs. The Cinema Macabre font family boasts six fonts, each containing a unique set of uppercase and lowercase characters, as well as numerals, punctuation and language support. Add to this a host of custom ligatures, underlines and graphic elements and you have an essential toolbox for creating truly hand-made looking title designs. Cinema Macabre if a font that rewards experimentation by mixing all the various upper and lowercase alternatives, with interesting combinations waiting to be found and inspire terror across your own movie posters, book covers, albums and editorials. Few other fonts offer the versatility to create such diabolical designs! A Brief Introduction to Giallo: In popular cinema, Giallo is a genre of mystery fiction and thrillers often containing slasher, psychological horror, exploitation, supernatural and erotic elements. The term giallo (meaning yellow) derives from a series of pulp novels published by Mondadori from 1929 taking the name from its trademark yellow covers. The series consisted of Italian translations of mystery novels by well-known authors such as Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler. The popularity of these cheap paperbacks eventually established the word Giallo as a synonym in Italian for a mystery novel. The cinematic Giallo subgenre developed during the 1960-80s and are noted for their vivid cinematography, memorable soundtracks and inventive gore-filled scenarios. Key examples include Dario Argento's Suspiria, Tenebrae and Deep Red - stylish films that at once influenced the American slasher (see Black Christmas and Friday 13th) up to todays horror in Censor and Last Night In Soho.

Coolvetica is a sans-serif typeface, inspired by logotypes from the 1970s. This was an era where everyone was modifying Helvetica—not only logo designers but even font designers were into outlandish Helvetica mods. Phototype catalogs were loaded with playful variations of the already ubiquitous typeface. Coolvetica recreates that retro custom display lettering style with extra-tight kerning and funky curls. But don’t let the vintage feel fool you—Coolvetica is a true display typeface that’s ready to make a statement. Condensed, compressed, and crammed styles all use a flat-sided approach, an old-school strategy that’s rarely seen today. And with mathematical symbols, OpenType fractions, and numeric ordinals, this typeface is as versatile as it is stylish. So why settle for a dull typeface when you can stand out with Coolvetica? Try it out for your next project and see the difference a little typographical flair can make. Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.

Louisa Fröhlich’s Lisbeth is the charming all-italic trailblazer that handles branding and text with internal vividness. With no roman style, it’s an italic-only family whose creation was guided by imagination instead of restrictive writing tools. Some type families aren’t sure what they want. Lisbeth proceeds with the utmost confidence on its own terms — it’s a feisty three-dimensional thespian amidst the cast of strait-laced characters you’re used to. With branding and magazine usage in mind, Lisbeth addresses the distinct challenges of text and display in a characterful way. The curves of the text weights show a soft angularity, emphasising the handwritten quality and the subtle twist inside the letters. The stroke’s carefully balanced contrast is more pronounced in the vibrant heavier weights but almost absent in the graceful structure of the thin weight. The angle of the letters is almost upright and the x-height is relatively large, so longer texts can be read comfortably and without effort. Lisbeth is slightly condensed and so uses a smaller area to efficiently impart much information. So if a type design can be thought of as the clothing letters wear, then Lisbeth is an energetic, freely flowing stroke wrapped around practical and efficient letter proportions. Another highlight of the family is the quirky high-contrast display style, easily catching every eye. The design concept of the twisted stroke shows at the extreme here and makes the letters dance a little on the page. Even though the shapes behave wildly, every letter is carefully balanced in itself so that the rhythmic repetition of the lettershapes results in an even and harmonic total picture. Lisbeth’s five text weights (from thin to bold) perform excellently in text settings, and its funky display style amps up the internal shimmer within each glyph. It supports numerous languages (Latin-A extended) and comes with ligatures and contextual alternates to produce beautiful typography. The character set contains proportional lining and oldstyle figures, tabular figures, subscripts, superscripts, and fractions. The complete Lisbeth family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.