Monotype Bembo is generally regarded as one of the most handsome revivals of Aldus Manutius' 15th century roman type, but the original had no italic counterpart. The story is told that Stanley Morison commissioned Alfred Fairbank, a renowned calligrapher, to create the first italic for Bembo, which was released as metal fonts in 1929. Alfred Fairbank, however, claimed that he drew the design as an independent project and then sold his drawings to Monotype. According to him, the statement has been made that I was asked to design an italic for the Bembo roman. This is not so. Had the request been made, the italic type produced would have been different." Whichever version you believe, it was obvious that Fairbank's design - while undeniably beautiful - was not harmonious with Bembo roman. A second, more conventional italic was eventually drawn and added to the Bembo family. Fairbank's first design, which was based on the work of sixteenth-century writing master Ludovico degli Arrighi, managed to have a modest life of its own as a standalone font of metal type. It never made the leap into phototype fonts, however, and the face could have been lost, were it not for Robin Nicholas, Monotype Imaging's Head of Typography in the United Kingdom, and Carl Crossgrove, a senior designer for Monotype Imaging in the US. Nicholas and Crossgrove used the original drawings for Fairbank as the starting point for a new digital design, but this was only the beginning. They improved spacing, added subtle kerning and optimized the design for digital imaging. In addition, Nicholas created an alternative set of lowercase letters, fancy and swash capitals and enough alternate characters to personalize virtually any design project. By the time his work was complete, Nicholas and Crossgrove had created a small type family that included Fairbank, a revived version of the earlier metal font, and Fairbank Chancery, a more calligraphic rendition of the design. An additional suite of ornate caps, elegant ligatures, and beginning and ending letters accompanies both fonts, as does a full complement of lowercase swash characters. Now, instead of a failed Bembo italic, Fairbank emerges in its true glory: a sumptuous, elegant design that will lend a note of grace to holiday greetings, invitations, and any application where its Italianate beauty is called for."

The Dewani font is a font of original Arabic fonts and is specialized in writing in the offices of the Sultan and the kings of the Arabs. It is also one of the most beautiful Arabic fonts as it has the flexibility to write official graduation certificates, certificates of appreciation, scientific progress and decorations. It is also commonly used in writing posters and sequences for serials, films, medals and decorations on clothes. The Dewani font has its aesthetics derived from its round and interlocking letters.

Designed over three years after the second World War, and published in 1949 by the Nebiolo foundry, Normandia was Alessandro Butti’s take on the fat face. As it usually was with Butti’s designs, this face effectively injected a catchy yet expertly calculated calligraphic spin into its source of inspiration — which was the essentially geometric/deco, thicker model of Bodoni’s very popular aesthetic. The metal Normandia saw some widespread use for a handful of years after its publication, not least because of the multitude of sizes in which it was available. It stepped out of the limelight by the mid-1950s, due to a combination of the popularity of cold type and Nebiolo’s refusal to retool its faces for new technologies. It was copied by a few small film typesetting outfits on both sides of the Atlantic, but never really found its way back to the mainstream. By the time computer type became the norm, Normandia was pretty much relegated to a type historian’s collection of anecdotes. This digital update of the classic series revives and refines the three original metal designs (Tonda/Regular, Corsiva/Italic, and Contornata/Outline) and expands the character set to more than 600 glyphs per font, including small caps, six types of figures, fractions and nut fractions, a full set of f-ligatures, some stylistic alternates, and other fine typography niceties.

Banco was the first typeface work of French designer Roger Excoffon and was released in 1952. The strong forms look as though they were rolled out of sheet metal and feature upright, tapering strokes. The slight slant, the varying heights of stroke ends, and the relationships between line and curve give Banco font its sense of liveliness and dynamism. Excoffon did not design a matching lower case alphabet for his capitals, but this was accomplished later by Phill Grimshaw, who also designed the light weight. He deliberately 'underdesigned' the lower case forms, producing a more reserved alphabet based on the design ideas of the original.

Inversion is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

Rough and ready, bold and urgent. Or playful and fun in bright colours. The original letters were cut from actual potatoes, then scanned in and converted to vector outlines. Lighter and more heavily inked versions were used for the three variants. Using Opentype character-substitution technology, Salvation rotates through three versions of each letter to create a naturally uneven printed effect. Unlike hot metal type, the potatoes were cut the right way around. This produced reversed prints, which were then flipped back in Photoshop. Originally produced for Hughes' Get Lettering activity book, the font was then extended to cover numbers, punctuation and full European language support.

Dez Yinznat Stencil is a condensed stencil sans serif inspired by the industrial city of Pittsburgh, PA USA. Stencil type was often used in the steel mills, scrap metal yards, railroads, warehouses, and other industrial institutions of Pittsburgh and is almost a signature for the City. The name comes from combining two colloquial expressions common to Pittsburgh. “Yinz” is used there like "Y'all" is used in Southern States. "n'at" or sometimes "N@" is used to replace “and that” when ending a phrase. This font is dedicated to the hard-working people who made Pittsburgh what it is, N@. High-tech subjects can also find a friend in Dez Yinz'nat.

Cruller is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

The origin of AM Floriana is already several decades ago. At a time when there was no photo set and the choice of metal type fonts was still very manageable, Alois Menacher received an order to design a custom business logo from a flower shop. He then created a hand-drawn lettering based on the form of leaves and plants. Now Alois Menacher professionally designed and developed AM Floriana on the basis of this lettering. AM Floriana is ideally suited for packaging design, as well as for display design and logo design. AM Floriana is available as a Bold version and will soon be complemented by further cuts.

I used to live in the English Lake District, where I worked in an outdoor gear store. I bought a bright red mountain bike and each day, after work, I cycled up the mountain and hurtled down - heavy metal blasting from my MP3 player. Of course, the bike was a regular MTB, so it got some serious damage after a while, but the adrenaline rush was great! Downhill Dive is a great brush font (made with actual brushes and ink on paper - no tablets involved here!). It is an ode to that wonderful time spent in England. Downhill Dive comes with some really nice ligatures.

I have always had a keen interest in forging; I used to be a silversmith, and I love working with metal. Some time ago I forged my first axe (a skeggøx or bearded axe), sharpened it and fitted it with a handmade ash handle. It isn’t perfect, but it is my first ever forged axe and I’m pretty proud of it. All of this went through my head when I started drawing the glyphs for this font. And to be honest, I couldn’t find a more suitable name for it! Bladesmith is a handmade font, forged in fire (haha). It was actually made with an old sharpie. It is a rough and ready font, quite suited for headlines, book covers and posters.

Longshanks is a condensed serif display font with a low waist, blade-like strokes, and other unusual detailing. This font features a medium-low x-height and works very well at larger display sizes. It's an excellent choice for any headline, banner, or title that would benefit from an old-world, historical, fantasy, magic, or sword & sorcery vibe. It also harks back to the metallic foil stamped type treatments from 1980s – 1990s romance novel book cover design. The offbeat features are subtle enough to leave this font with a very high degree of legibility in spite of its strong and dynamic treatment of certain serifs and finials. The namesake for this typeface is King Edward I of England, whose nickname was Edward the Longshanks.

Porkshop is a font of retro vintage flavor with a hefty dose of immigrant-influenced naive typography. It's fundamentally inspired by an old-but-still-prominent "Pork Shop" sign in Manhattan. I like to think that this font was made by a signmaker's apprentice who didn't yet have a grasp on the subtleties of elegant letterforms, but put his gusto into perfectly sharp serifs. While pointy little serifs are cool, the real shine of this font comes from the imaginative combination of uppercase and lowercase shapes. This unique mixture in the lowercase reminds me of an indeterminate European accent in the big city. Big and strong and easy to understand. Best rendered in 3-foot tall metal type, Porkshop works well in print and on screens, too. The Bolds and Italics are brand new in 2011.

Alcapone, a name based from legendary donuts on some brand, It's crunchy and melty. So, I've created this fonts while eating this meal. The Concept is Groovy, Retro & Psychedelic look. Created with a base on standard Serif fonts, playing with melted on the serif itself giving more weight to represent the grooviness and retro-ish look. Alcapone are good for Display, Header, Headline, Poster, Logos, or etc on a big typography.

In the 1960s it was a popular trend to personalize one’s possessions with your initials. From wallets and handbags to eyeglasses; from luggage to even cars, initial personalization was the fad of the time. The British division of Gulf Oil offered for sale a set of gold metallic stick-on initials for 25 pence, complete with two Gulf logos so the company could get some extra advertising mileage out of the promotion. These extra-wide, bold initials served as the idea model for Personalization JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Macho was designed in 2010 for MAN, Museo d'Arte Provincia di Nuoro, as a part of the corporate identity designed by Sabina Era. Macho is based on the idea of modular widths of the 20th-century typesetting systems, as the Olivetti Margherita and the hot-metal Linotype machine. The basic module is 7,5 percent of the body size (75 upm units) and every letter width is up to 20 modules. Every letter has the same width across different weights. Macho includes a large set of boxes and underlines that can be overlapped on the letters.

Bronzion is a blackletter typeface rooted in medieval aesthetics. With its dark ages inspiration, Bronzion is a captivating blend of calligraphy and heavy metal undertones. The typeface captures the ornamental beauty of middle ages manuscripts while catering to modern design needs. Its heavy, intricate design makes it perfect for projects that require a touch of medieval grandeur. Use characters 🌲🌳🎠🐂🐅🐆🐈🐉🐎🐕🐦🐯🐲🐺👑👸🗡🤴🦁🦅🦇🦌🦎🦓🦖 to create heraldry-like logos and symbols. Example: Magic🐉Empire

The vast resource of hand lettered vintage sheet music titles offers many interesting and unique variations on even the simplest styles of lettering. A simple thick-and-thin serif design circa the 1920s-1930s evokes a reminiscence of the Art Nouveau period combined with a touch of what was to come during the Art Deco era. Most charming is the fact this lettering is free of the formal rules and constraints of metal type, where designers are generally forced into conformity with uniform stroke widths, serif placements and character shapes.

Metalet Modern JNL was based on the letters found within the Metalet Movie Titling Set manufactured by the Modern Display Advertising Company of Hollywood, California circa the 1940s. Each stamped metal letter would be affixed to the background surface via the use of miniature magnets. Once in place, titles for home movies or slides could be photographed, the letters then returned to their storage area in their box. The character shapes show unusual stroke movement, which means the original models used for these letters were most likely hand-drawn.

Foundry Fabriek was inspired by the concepts behind industrial fabrication, where and how parts of materials or structures are united. The systematic grid, formed by stencil shapes, is indicative of the work of Wim Crouwel, consultant on the development of this typeface. The compact character widths of Foundry Fabriek are consistent over the five weight progression, giving flexibility for a variety of applications. The characteristic letterforms have an extra dynamic in large scale, perhaps in cast concrete or laser cut metal, to form integrated components in architectural or signage projects.

This family was inspired from a lot of 1848-1850 French engraved documents reproducing handwritten texts talking about the Paris' insurrection days in June 1848 (described by Victor Hugo in Les misérables) . It seems that all were first written using quill pens, as the strokes are too much heavy and bold for metal pens and even though the engraver work is very fine. We have added only a few characters, most of them were present in the originals. The TTF and OTF versions are enriched with more than 50 ligatures or alternate characters.

Bold mutant typography. Retro-futuristic. Sixties meets 1990’s comic book inspired, superfast for your superhero? The pencil tissue was dragged out from the very back of the file cabinet, stuck in the metal rail, it was lost then found- to bring a unique look to your project. A companion font to astroluxtype’s Spacepod, both fine ways to mark and identify your spacecraft. Note the lowercase letterforms that make connectors such as g, j, y, b, d and g. See the posters at myfonts.com for examples of how to you might use this feature. Redrail Superfast is a minimal glyph set which can be used at various sizes, we consider it a headline/display font and best applied larger than 36 points in size.

Takox is a display typeface based on a synthesis of righteousness extreme, futuristic spirit leads us to a way of plotting the words in a new way and in line with trends and technology synthesis century. Extreme music. Takox is provided with style forms to small caps, in both Regular and Italic. What was the inspiration for designing the font? Takox is the result of my own research in finding straight shapes of great simplicity. What are its main characteristics and features? Display font witn straight shapes of great simplicity. Usage recommendations: This letter design is ideal for use 3D extrusions, ideal to represent natural forms of cristals, metal or mechanical things. Fits indiustriales representations and aerospace, also for extreme music and avant garde.

Grange Rough is an inky, distressed version of Grange that mimics the effects of vintage hot-metal type on rougher paper. Grange is the Device interpretation of the classic “Grot” thick/thin sans style. Unlike the traditional models on which it is based, Grange takes a rational, consistent approach across wide range of weights and widths for contemporary use. The font includes alternative curved and straighter versions of key characters, most obviously the lower-case ‘g' and capital ‘R', allowing the font to take on either a sharper or warmer, more playful appearance. These can be toggled on or off using the ‘Alts' feature in Illustrator, or ‘Stylistc Sets’ in Indesign. Contains proportional, lining and tabular numerals. Perfect for both headline and text.

The Garamond family tree has many branches. There are probably more different typefaces bearing the name Garamond than the name of any other type designer. Not only did the punchcutter Claude Garamond set a standard for elegance and excellence in type founding in 16th-century Paris, but a successor, Jean Jannon, some eighty years later, cut typefaces inspired by Garamond that later came to bear Garamond’s name. Revivals of both designs have been popular and various over the course of the last 100 years. When ATF Garamond was designed in 1917, it was one of the first revivals of a truly classic typeface. Based on Jannon’s types, which had been preserved in the French Imprimerie Nationale as the “caractères de l’Université,” ATF Garamond brought distinctive elegance and liveliness to text type for books and display type for advertising. It was both the inspiration and the model for many of the later “Garamond” revivals, notably Linotype’s very popular Garamond No. 3. ATF Garamond was released ca. 1918, first in Roman and Italic, drawn by Morris Fuller Benton, the head of the American Type Founders design department. In 1922, Thomas M. Cleland designed a set of swash italics and ornaments for the typeface. The Bold and Bold Italic were released in 1920 and 1923, respectively. The new digital ATF Garamond expands upon this legacy, while bringing back some of the robustness of metal type and letterpress printing that is sometimes lost in digital adaptations. The graceful, almost lacy form of some of the letters is complemented by a solid, sturdy outline that holds up in text even at small sizes. The 18 fonts comprise three optical sizes (Subhead, Text, Micro) and three weights, including a new Medium weight that did not exist in metal. ATF Garamond also includes unusual alternates and swash characters from the original metal typeface. The character of ATF Garamond is lively, reflecting the spirit of the French Renaissance as interpreted in the 1920s. Its Roman has more verve than later old-style faces like Caslon, and its Italic is outright sprightly, yet remarkably readable.

Sukothai is a traditional Thai design based on early metal type. The classic and distinct forms make it excellent for setting text at small sizes or in large passages. Originally released by Linotype for digital photocomposition, now both the Light and Bold weights are available in OpenType format. This makes it possible to dynamically and precisely position the various levels of superscript and subscript vowel signs and tonal marks. In addition to this, the complete Unicode page range for Thai is covered to ensure flawless conversion between other OpenType fonts using Unicode. The accompanying Latin design matches well in scale and texture and supports most Western European languages making it ideal for setting bilingual texts.

Skiltmaler is the typeface that refers to the style of decorative arts during the Victorian era 1837 to 1901, the Victorian era was the period in which fly poster typography emerged. The large amount of colour in combination with large font sizes were created from movable metal type. As well as being made from wood, this was used to create the two-coloured typefaces. You would imagine this would be specific to the '3D' styled type seen on the poster to create the drop shadow. Skiltmaler works well with normal size text, but it works even better for large displays, short words, or even just to incorporate a few or single characters in a design.

Splendor was originally produced and released in 1930 by Schriftgu� AG, Dresden. The typeface was designed by Berlin designer Wilhelm Berg. Ralph M. Unger, who in the last few years has created a whole series of revivals and redesigns from the hot metal era, ?retrieved? this jewel of a typeface design, redesigning, complementing and digitally remastering it for profonts. Splendor is a broad nip, non-connecting handwriting script of timeless elegance, charm and beauty. It needs tight setting with plenty of space around it. The font contains a number of alternate characters: Two uppercase As, Ss (with descender); in addition, two uppercase Ms, Ns and Zs as well as two lowercase zs.

This font was inspired by one of a standard French manual styles in use from the beginning of 1900s to the end of World War II, when people were writing most often with pen holders and metal nibs. This typeface is easily legible as it was used for the lithographic printing of university textbooks. All lower cases from a to z and numerals from 0 to 9 are doubled by a slightly different one to allow a varying manual aspect in texts. We have added a lot of diacritic characters, covering West (including Celtic) and North European, Icelandic, Baltic, Eastern European and Turkish language. A few special glyphs allows to make final loops or underlining.

Splendor was originally produced and released in 1930 by Schriftgu� AG, Dresden. The typeface was designed by Berlin designer Wilhelm Berg. Ralph M. Unger, who in the last few years has created a whole series of revivals and redesigns from the hot metal era, ?retrieved? this jewel of a typeface design, redesigning, complementing and digitally remastering it for profonts. Splendor is a broad nip, non-connecting handwriting script of timeless elegance, charm and beauty. It needs tight setting with plenty of space around it. The font contains a number of alternate characters: Two uppercase As, Ss (with descender); in addition, two uppercase Ms, Ns and Zs as well as two lowercase zs.

Goudy Forum is a revival and dramatic expansion by Tom Rickner, type designer at Ascender Corporation, of Frederic W. Goudy’s 20th typeface design, "Forum Title". The Pro font began twenty years ago while Tom Rickner was a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Tom printed a type specimen using the Forum Title foundry hot metal types. Then in 1993 Tom began to digitize the font from that specimen while working as an independent type designer. Fifteen years passed before Tom dusted off the digital data and began working in earnest on font with a full Latin 1 character set. Steve Matteson, type director at Ascender, encouraged Tom to take this font further still, and soon the glyph repertoire and feature set blossomed to a robust Pro font with a myriad of advanced typographic OpenType features.

When type historians look back on Jim Rimmer, they will consider him the last type designer who just couldn't let go of metal type, even though he was just as proficient in digital type. Lancelot is one definite case in point: A face designed and produced in digital as late in the game as 1999, only to spring onto the new millenium a couple of years later as a metal type cast in three sizes. That was Jim, a time traveler constantly reminding the craft of its origins. This particular time machine was originally designed as a simple set of attractive caps that emphasize the beauty of the variable conventional dialogue between the drawing tool and the intended final form, and the one exchanged within the totality of the forms themselves. Jim designed two weights, with contrast and counterspace being the main difference between them. In 2013, the Lancelot family was remastered and greatly expanded. Lancelot Pro is now a wonder of over 840 glyphs per font, including smaller versions of the caps in the minuscule slots, and alternates and ligatures that can transform the historic spirit of the original design into anything from half-uncial to outright gothic. Language support goes beyond the extended Latin stuff, to cover Cyrillic and Greek as well. 20% of the Lancelot Pro family's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

PF Stamps covers a wide range of applications which require the stamp effect. This is a form of lettering which was very popular in the mid-twentieth century for product labeling. Special machinery was developed by mainly two companies, one in the United States and the other in Germany. This machinery produced paper die cuts which were later used as a base for the marking with a paintbrush. PF Stamps Paint was developed to simulate this type of lettering. Two other styles, Metal and Flex, have been very popular since its original release. The first one was developed from a metallic stamp imprint, whereas the second one with its slight 3-D look simulates letters stamped on plastic. To insure realistic results, uppercase letters are different from lowercase. This is very useful when two similar letters sit next to each other. There 3 more styles: Solid (the stencil in its regular clean form), Rough and the very interesting Blur. The all new “Pro” version comes to complete this series with what was missing: 93 matching frames and frames parts which will satisfy the most demanding designer. This is a bonus font which is available only with the purchase of the whole family. Use these frames “as is” at any size, or connect the frame parts to each other to create longer frames. Finally, this series supports more than hundred languages which are based on the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic scripts.

The lifetime of Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492) coincides with the rise of metal type as it displaced broad pen calligraphy for the production of books. This revolution marked the end of formal Western calligraphy, as the industry employed metalworkers who designed type according to geometric measurement while calligraphers were forced to become secretaries who practiced handwriting systems. Renaissance Florence should have witnessed the marriage of calligraphy and typography, just as all the other arts and sciences flourished as classical learning was applied to technical advances; but the metalworkers and geometricians measured, dissected and recast the calligraphic letters by crude indirect methods, and in the end took all the life out of them. Here they languished until digital type has made it possible to render the precise motion of the broad pen stroke into type. Lorenzo is a confluence of many strains from the Middle Ages, brought together within the classical harmony of the capitals. It attempts to bypass metal type, using calligraphic means to achieve the precision of type while retaining the life of the stroke: a classical font that would be familiar to Lorenzo himself as well as to the modern eye. The Lorenzo family comes in four weights, ranging from light to bold. Two sets of italics, one with swashed caps and ascenders, complement each weight. The family boasts extensive language support and an offering of over fifty calligraphic ornaments/flourishes included within the character set.

Dante was designed by Giovanni Mardersteig. Mardersteig started work on Dante after the Second World War when printing at the Officina Bodoni returned to full production. He drew on his experience of using Monotype Bembo and Centaur to design a new book face with an italic which worked harmoniously with the roman. Originally hand-cut by Charles Malin, Dante was adapted for mechanical composition by Monotype in 1957. The new digital font version has been re drawn, by Monotype's Ron Carpenter, free from any restrictions imposed by hot metal technology. The Dante font family was issued in 1993 in a range of three weights with a set of titling capitals. Dante is a beautiful book face which can also be used to good effect in magazines, periodicals etc. Dante® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Recreate authentic letterpress typography with Oxford Press, a set of chunky uppercase Serif & Sans fonts designed using real vintage metal letterpress blocks sourced from old printing companies. The Serif & Sans fonts each have two variations, 'Clean' and 'Rough'—with the latter having real, highly detailed hand-made letterpress textures applied to each letter. Each letter of the 'Rough' fonts also has an alternate texture, which can be accessed simply by switching between upper and lowercase characters. The 'Rough' fonts can make a striking impact as bold header text for posters, adverts, prints and packaging, whereas the 'Clean' versions are more suited for smaller accompanying text, cleaner designs or for applying your own textures and styles. Language Support • English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Indonesian, Malay, Hungarian, Polish, Croatian, Turkish, Romanian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Slovenian.