Handy Andy Andy Lethbridge had only just completed his graphic design BA at the University of Portsmouth when he was spotted by Jason, who’d seen Andy’s exquisite hand lettering at his degree show and on Instagram. Keen to push the handwritten theme further, having recently launched a digitally-created, chalky script font (FS Sammy), Jason offered Andy a job and the chance to develop a suite of more stylised, truly hand-drawn fonts. Andy duly got out his pads, pencils and pens, and started experimenting with styles and textures. Magic followed. Imperfection perfected Most ‘handwritten’ typefaces are created entirely digitally. Not FS Shepton. From the start, the intention was to create a collection of alphabets of similar character but different texture and style – 100% hand-drawn and purposely imperfect, with the kind of inconsistent, organic shapes and textures of market stall signs, dashed off in chalk or paint. FS Shepton Regular, drawn with a wet brush pen, is solid with a rough outer edge and a casual but controlled feel. The dry brush used to create FS Shepton Light gives it more inner texture and a more formal, slanted, calligraphic style. FS Shepton Bold, drawn using a wider, looser dry brush pen, has a woody grain in the middle of its broad strokes and greater solidity where the brush moves more slowly. Fresh as a daisy Think of FS Shepton not as a family of three weights of the same font so much as a collection of three fonts penned by the same author. All of them – the light, regular and bold – were created independently as display fonts that offer something different to labelling, packaging, point-of-sale and advertising. Lovingly crafted by hand, they’re a good match for products and settings that share the same artisinal qualities: organic foods, drinks and healthcare products, as well as premium chocolate, coffee and condiments.

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.

A 1766 specimen by Isaac Moore, former manager of Joseph Fry’s foundry in Bristol, England, shows many types inspired by John Baskerville’s. But a century later, standardization had foisted inept lining figures and shortened descenders upon these designs. Matthew Carter remedies the tragedy with Big Moore, restoring oldstyle figures, full-length descenders, and historic swashes to this regal serif in two styles.

British type designers Darren Raven and John Critchley created this display FontFont in 1997. The family has 5 weights, and is ideally suited for editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries, music and nightlife as well as poster and billboards. FF Bokka provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, alternate characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with proportional lining figures.

For best results, use of OpenType features is strongly recommend. This font is inspired by Johannes Janssonius, well know as Jan Janszoon o Jan Janssonius (Arnhem, 1588 – Amsterdam, 1664), was a Dutch cartographer, publisher and engraver. Married to Hondius's daughter. He was the author of many masterpieces of cartography of the 1700s like Willem Blaeu and Hondius, famous maps with heavy use of decorations in the letterig to fill the spaces of oceans, seas, lakes and scrolls. Now you can easily recreate not just ancient maps without effort, but you can use this font creatively, to make unique, modern logos, product names, fresh packaging, hip fashion outfits, refined labels, signs, coordinated images ... Hundreds of alternatives to choose from and maybe to combine with other fonts in an original way. One extra font with 27 castles in Janszoon style are also usefull for map, of course, but also for many different creative artworks. Warning: Jannson Map having oversized swashes compared to the normal standards cannot be used with Windows Word because Word does not give the possibility to manage the line spacing professionally. Jannson Map works great with applications like Illustrator, In Design, quark Xpress, mac Text etc ...

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

1776 Independence was designed inspired mainly from the Caslon typeface used by John Dunlap in the night of 1776 July 4th in Philadelphia to print the first 200 sheets of the Congress' Declaration of Independence establishing the United States of America. I just added accented letters and a few others, with respect for the original design. A render sheet,enclosed with font file, help to identify them on keyboard. It can be used as web-site titles, posters and fliers, editing ancient texts, menus or greeting cards as a very decorative font... This font supports as easily enlargement or small size, remaining clear and easy to read from 8 or 9 points to 72 and over. It gives a smart look especially to prints.

The Kelson font family is a Armasen project completed for a graphic design agency in Brazil. The agency had a typeface, but the kerning, spacing, and related features were corrupted or otherwise not working very well. The Armasen team improved the qualities, refined the shapes, and enhanced the font features. Armasen is a group of hard-working, young Brazilian students and type designers focused on creating and developing professional quality typefaces with a distinctive and unique personality. The team is very pleased with the final result and is happy to share the efforts of their work as a FREE FONT for you to enjoy! [edited by John Alexander (jga30328 at gmail dot com) a very appreciative user and admirer of the Armasen team]

Based on the hit album by Glen Campbell, Southern Nights is the font with a style that’s “free as a breeze,” as the song says. It’s fun and casual, yet it has a flair for fashion and elegance. It also has an art nouveau look which lends itself to greeting cards as well as the branding of perfume, clothing, retailing, dining, and other luxury/high-end uses. This font includes alternate characters for the upper R, S, and T, the lower g and z, plus ligatures that include a double lower t and double lower l (L). As the song might say, I apologize to anyone who can truly say that they have found a better font! Digitized by John Bomparte.

Inspirited as much by nature and the elements as it was by the decorative and ornate alphabets of early sign-painting and lettering books, Alchemist aspires to become the next surefire, go-to staple in the display type community. This semi-condensed, high contrast, and stylish take on classic Roman forms is certain to stand out in your arsenal.Alchemist lends itself adeptly to signage, headlines, cinematic and gaming titles, packaging design and much more. This protean display face can shift and adapt to your every need with over 100 alternate characters and more than 40 ligatures. Explore this massive 500+ character font today and see what you can create with it. 100+ Stylistic Alternates Standard & Discretionary Ligatures Uppercase & Lowercase Numerals & Punctuation 500+ glyphs Supports 75+ Latin based languages OTF file Design by Jason Carne

Because Contenu is designed for text use, it is spaced for body copy in the 9-12 point range. That is far too much spacing for heads, subheads, and the like. So I made the display version of Contenu Book to use for headers. In the process of tightening the spacing at the very large sizes, I also made some minor modifications to the glyph shapes to make this version a little more elegant. Contenu Opentype has two Opentype families for print design. Contenu Book has five fonts: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, and Display. Contenu has Medium, Medium Italic, Black, and Black Italic. The name is French for content and this is what the family is designed for: text, body copy, and book layout. If it has a style, it is a modern take on oldstyle serif font using Jenson as a mask. There are no plans for display versions of the bolder weights or the italics. If you want them, use Contenu Medium, Book Bold, Contenu Black, or any of the four italics and tighten the tracking.

Because Contenu is designed for text use, it is spaced for body copy in the 9-12 point range. That is far too much spacing for heads, subheads, and the like. So I made the display version of Contenu Book to use for headers. In the process of tightening the spacing at the very large sizes, I also made some minor modifications to the glyph shapes to make this version a little more elegant. Contenu Opentype has two Opentype families for print design. Contenu Book has five fonts: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, and Display. Contenu has Medium, Medium Italic, Black, and Black Italic. The name is French for content and this is what the family is designed for: text, body copy, and book layout. If it has a style, it is a modern take on oldstyle serif font using Jenson as a mask. There are no plans for display versions of the bolder weights or the italics. If you want them, use Contenu Medium, Book Bold, Contenu Black, or any of the four italics and tighten the tracking.

Bank of England is loosely based on the blackletter lettering from Series F English twenty pound banknotes introduced in 2007. The font takes inspiration from German Kanzlei (Chancery) typefaces and the English calligraphers John Ayres and George Bickham. For designers using OpenType-aware applications, Bank of England includes Swash versions of all uppercase letters and ampersand, Alternates for nine lowercase letters and capital Z, and sixteen ornamental flourishes. Western European accented characters are included, and also a simplified St. Edward’s Crown (Elizabeth II’s coronation crown) at the Section (§) and PlusMinus (±) keystrokes (Windows Alt-0167 and Alt-0177).

Fast Food is a font based on the former (and now revived) logo of a hamburger chain. It has that look of the 1970s & 1980s, yet also has a futuristic, alienesque, sci-fi look about it. It can be used for projects aimed at consumers waxing nostalgic for their good old days, or for movie posters or books about the great final frontier, and much more. There’s an alternate uppercase E & F, both of which are really stylin'! You may even develop such an appetite that you'll want to supersize your order! Digitized by John Bomparte.

As Titans Clash in The Final Battle of Good versus Evil, Man versus Machine, God versus Mortal and Coke versus Pepsi, ace lettering artist, Ferran Delgado from Spain teams up with our very own John ‘JG’ Roshell for one last attack on the assembled Cover Lettering Styles of Yore. Fill your lungs and prepare for... BATTTTTTLECRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYY! See the families related to Battle Cry: Battle Scarred & Battle Damaged .

In 1994, John Benson designed Alexa, Caliban and Balzano, three typefaces with a similar style. Characteristic of all of them is their calligraphic touch and the likeness to handwriting. Alexa shows a hint of a broad tipped pen style and its legible figures are reserved yet lively. Alexa is best for short and midsized texts as well as headlines and gives texts a personal, classic look.

This family was inspired by the well-known Caslon typeface created by William Caslon, the English font designer, who was, with John Baskerville, the progenitor of English Transitional typeface classification in the mid-18th century (See also our 1776 Independence). We were inspired by a Caslon style set used by an unknown Flemish printer from Bruges, in the beginning of 1800s, a little before the revival of Caslon style in the 1840s. Our font covers all Western, Eastern and Central European languages (including Celtic diacritics) and the Turkish alphabet, with a complete small-caps set in each of the two styles. (Please note: The complete character set is available only in TTF and OTF “Pro” version.)

Dewi is a modern neo-grotesque multi-typeface family with closed forms. It includes 4 versions: condensed, normal, extended, expanded. In each version there are 16 font styles: 8 regulars and 8 italics (64 styles in total). The family contains weights from thin to black. Everything is ready to solve absolutely any graphic tasks. Dewi helps to create a unique and vibrant design consonant with the spirit of our days. Сontours remains neutral in a small size but when you work with large sizes Dewi shows his strong and confident character. Ideally suited for web design, logos and branding, navigation, printing, advertising and packaging, infographic, poster design, music covers and so many more. This typeface will be a real workhorse for you. Opentype features: old-style figures, tabular and tabular old-style, slashed zero, ligatures, fractions and automatic frations, circuled numbers, arrows and stylistic alternates for arrows, superscript and subscript. Multilingual support: Latin, latin extended, cyrillic and cyrillic extended (more than 70+ languages)

Right on the heels of the tremendous popularity wave that made Hollandse Mediaeval the most used Dutch typeface during the Great War years, Sjoerd H. de Roos was asked to design a 15 point type for De Zilverdistel, Jean François van Royen’s publishing company. So between 1914 and 1916, de Roos and van Royen collaborated on the typeface eventually known as Zilvertype, and which both parties viewed as an improved version of Hollandse Mediaeveal. Like Hollandse Mediaeval, Zilvertype was based on the Jenson model, but it is simpler, with more traditional metrics, lighter and more classic in color. This Pro digital version of Zilvertype comes expanded in all directions. It contains a roman, a bold and an italic. Each font contains over 685 glyphs, including small caps, eight different sets of figures, plenty of ligatures, some Dutch ornaments, and extended language support covering most Latin languages. Zilvertype Initials is also there to round out this distinctively Dutch text family and make it ideal for immersive text design.

Back when OpenType hadn't yet opened and Apple was developing the Line Layout Manager called GX Typography I created a test font that I name after my stepdaughter, Kristen (now ITC Kristen). Not wanting to offend my wife I started on a font project and gave her name to this new set of glyphs, Roberta. Unfortunately, the name was already in use so I needed to find another name for the fonts. After September 11th I decided that there were people I'd met during my life who were truly cut from the cloth of the hero. Master Sargent McLemore of the 75th Ranger Battalion was one of these people. I met the Sarge when I was in basic training at Fort Gordon. I saw him 2 weeks before he died in 1970. All of the heroes we see on the silver screen pale in comparison to this man. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood both have played the type well, both could have taken lessons from the Sarge.

British type designer John Critchley created this script FontFont in 1993. The family has 7 weights, and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, editorial and publishing as well as poster and billboards. FF Child's Play provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures and alternate characters. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Sagebrush John, your bank robbin' days are over. I'm throwin' you in the hoosegow! Hoosegow JNL isn't a small town jailhouse, but it is Jeff Levine's take on a classic wood type that brings out the Old West in any design layout. The beauty of many of these vintage wood type alphabets is their "imperfect" letter forms - giving your work a touch of the old days of letterpress printing.

This swoopy, loopy script was inspired by an “American roundhand” presented by John M. Bergling in his Art Alphabets and Lettering, first published in 1914. Bergling’s unique talent crafted uppercase letters which manage, at the same time, to be both elegant and ostentatious. The PC Postscript, Truetype and Opentype versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.

ALERT: Comicraft's Mad Font Scientist John Roshell and Lead Lab Assistant Drewes McFarling have applied an Unstoppable Force to our Immovable Font ULTIMATUM, successfully splitting it into a family of three fonts! Here’s the secret formula: ULTIMATUM MASS retains the dynamic details of the original with flat, angled corners; ULTIMATUM FORCE cooperates with your demands for a vertical slice of the action; and ULTIMATUM VELOCITY got tired of waiting for a compromise and cut across its horizontals. The complete family features three styles of eight weights for a total of 24 fonts, each with support for 221 languages including Western & Central Europe, Vietnamese & Cyrillic. Three Variable Fonts provide precise control of Weight & Italic slant. ULTIMATUM MASS FORCE VELOCITY is ideal for high performance car & truck branding, sports uniforms, video game graphics, college & university apparel, and any time you want to convey industrial strength and technological innovation.

Attention Space Rangers -- the Race into Space is on again! Science Fiction long ago became Science Fact and scientists are looking Beyond Earth, Beyond the Moon to Mars, Infinity -- and BEYOND! Comicraft’s Ace Rocket Scientist and Secret Weapon, John “Buzz” Roshell has spent years in our Underground Laboratory developing Accelerated Font Technology for the Space Age in which we live. SPACE RACE has curved contours and a sleek fuselage that will ensure our Rangers will be the FIRST WOMEN (and MEN) on planets in this Solar System and those of other stars! Now available for less than the cost of powdered astronaut ice cream. Space Race has been expanded into Hyperspace Race, a forty-weight family with a variable font.

Okay, we admit it! Comicraft's latest offering -- wrenched heavy-handedly from the pages of CHARLEY LOVES ROBOTS – is definitely a little awkward, maybe even loose-limbed and goofy. Those (usually) awfully nice chaps in the Comicraft studio are perhaps best known for their dexterity, their lightness of touch and nimbleness of finger rather than the kind of bungling, graceless, clumsy work evident in their latest digital alphabet. So, yes, MALADROIT is probably the most inept, cack-handed, undiplomatic addition to our catalogue ever submitted by freewheelin' John Roshell (formerly GAUCHE-ell) but might just possibly be the perfectly wrong font choice for your more bungling, inept, incompetent and hamfisted characters.

As a spinoff to his Tagesstempel™ design, Georg John created Johnstemp™ in 2008. The Johnstemp family has four weights, as well as a special Mix" variant. Each of the basic fonts (Light, Medium, Bold, and Heavy) contain many alternate glyphs, allowing users to set text that realistically simulates stamped impressions. For even faster design, Johnstemp Mix is the perfect choice; it contains letters with far more stylistic and weight variation out-of-the-box, and was developed to create even livelier impressions. Here as well, many alternates are included in the character set to prevent too much repetition of the same glyphs. "

This set of decorated initial letters was inspired by those used in 1510 in Nancy (France, Lorraine) for printing of "Recueil ou croniques des hystoires des royaulmes d'Austrasie ou France orientale[...]" Author Symphorien Champion, unknown printer. There were three sorts of initials family, but only one complete and clear, except a very few characters. The printer used some letters to represent others, as V, turned over to make a A, D to make a Q, M for E, So, the reconstruction was a little less difficult. Thorn, Eth, L slash and O slash were also added. The original font's letters was only drawn in white on a black background only, but it was tempting to propose a negative version in black on white. A few letters have multiple appearance, but only the A was clear enough to be reproduced. It can be used as variously as web-site titles, posters and flyer design, publishing texts looking like ancient ones, or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, as a very decorative, elegant and luxurious additional font... This font supports strong enlargements revealing its fine details and remaining very smart. Its original medieval height is about one inch equivalent to about three to four lines of characters. This font may be used with all our blackletter fonts, but as well with "1543 Humane Jenson", "1557 Italic" and "1742 Civilite", without any fear about anachronism.

Adrian Frutiger came up with this unusually purposeful and strong design in 1981 for Linotype. Early humanistic typefaces of the sixteenth century, especially Jenson, served as models for Breughel. The right sides of the stems are vertical and at right angles to the baseline while the left sides of the stem curve into the serifs, making the typeface look as though it slants to the right, and giving it a sense of movement and liveliness. The ductus of the broad-edged pen is reflected in the flow, rhythm, and texture of text set in Breughel, but at the same time this design has a regularity of form that is typographically solid. Breughel is an ideal typeface for the designer with skill and vision. Use it to create innovative publications, posters, and advertisements.

Arpona Sans is a contemporary sans serif family inspired by the work of Edward Johnston and Eric Gill for London Underground. As well as its serif companion Arpona it is a symbiosis of different design concepts. Arpona Sans combines the esthetics of a geometric Sans with the usefulness of the humanist concept and the calm of the modernist proportions. Arpona Sans is a good choice for editorial design, branding, app design and web design – a workhorse well readable even in running text on screen. The family has nine weights, ranging from Thin to Black plus corresponding italics. Each style includes 590 glyphs supporting all western-, eastern- and central-european languages including four sets of figures and various currency symbols. If you want to go into details visit the microsite: https://www.floodfonts.com/arponasans

Houschka Rounded Alt is a carbon copy of the Houschka Rounded family with one key difference: the rounded signature glyphs A & W on the default positions swap places with their straight alternates. Houschka was named after Georg Houschka, a sadly defunct confectioner’s shop in Salzburg, Austria, which had a wonderful 1930s frontage and distinctively rounded letterforms in the sign above the door. OpenType features include CE, Baltic, Turkish & Cyrillic language support plus small caps, 3 stylistic sets, contextual alternates, ligatures and 4 sets of numerals. Houschka Rounded Alt is a clean and legible modern sans serif typeface which shares the humanist qualities of Gill Sans and Johnston but retains a uniquely charming character of its own. The monolinear structure, rounded terminals and rolling curves give Houschka Rounded Alt a soft and friendly appearance.

A NEW HOPE! You begged with us..! You pleaded with us..! But we decided to release the official Richard Starkings font anyway! Huh? WHAT? You heard that line before? Where? Hmm... on this very site...? Well, yes, the Hedge Backwards font is all fine and dandy and does resemble the lettering legerdemain of comic book lettering robot, Richard Starkings... but has it been tweaked over the years to better suit the writing stylings of ELEPHANTMEN creator and writer, Richard Starkings? Has it been refurbished and digitally remastered by ELEPHANTMEN designer and Comicraft Secret Weapon, John JG Roshell? Hmm? No? Well then... here it is, retooled, reimagined and reStarkingsed...ah, what the hell, we started from scratch! This ain't no Greedo Shoots First -- you won't have to keep your pasty '70s VHS recordings of previous Richard Starkings Fonts inside a concrete bunker. Because any other font that claimed to be the official Richard Starkings font would have been called The Official Richard Starkings Font, would it not?

In 1994, John Benson designed the typefaces Caliban, Alexa and Balzano, all with similar characteristics. The typefaces are distinguished by their calligraphic style and their closeness to handwritten script. Caliban looks as though it were written with a broad tipped pen, with reserved yet lively figures which retain their legibility. Caliban is a good typefaces to use in short and middle length texts as well as headlines, wherever a personal touch is desired.

Nightshade was my attempt to bring the Old English fonts up to date. The capital letters still contain flourishes, but they look more machined and less calligraphic. I called the font Nightshade after the plant of the same name. Like the plant, it may be considered to be beautiful or poisonous depending on one's outlook. As a result, it can be applied when an attractive, ornate look is required, or it can be used when there is a need to create a more chilling effect. Nightshade has a glyph count of 389 and supports the following languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Zulu

Karim is a traditional-style Arabic text face, designed in response to a demand for a traditional text face adapted to setting Quranic commentaries. Within the constraints of the standard character set and typesetting program, Karim’s design aims to recall the style and fluency of manuscript Naskh without, however, reproducing the idiosyncrasies of any particular calligrapher. The line weight chosen is heavier than usual for a traditional light face in order to benefit the reproduction of small size Tafsir text. A tall kaf, deep descenders and slightly inclined alifs and lams all help to suggest the cursiveness of manuscript. The type-style that emerges is characterized by restraint and clarity; qualities suited to Karim’s original purpose, and ones that recommend it for wider use. Karim ships includes Latin glyphs from Janson Text Roman, allowing the single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. Karim’s code pages incorporate Basic Latin and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The font includes tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

Constant is a meticulously constructed slab serif display typeface of a sturdy lineage. The strong horizontal and vertical rhythm and calculated angles dominate its appearance, yet sweeping broad shapes infuse the design with an overall warm undertone. Constant is best suited for setting short headlines, word marks, posters and other visual communication ephemera. Particular when set in all uppercase the typeface’s squarish and resolute nature commands attention and projects authority. Despite the prominent slab serifs and their angular corner details, these fonts work well also for shorter text passages, especially in the lighter to medium weights. When typesetting Constant in paragraphs spanning several lines the face requires a fair amount of leading to not appear vertically compressed. As customary for Underscore’s catalog the fonts have very extensive support for languages in the Latin script, reaching from Afrikaans to Vietnamese and Zulu. The fonts are carefully spaced, kerned and hinted, and include a variety of typographic glyphs and OpenType features like various ligatures, number features and case alternatives. Constant has been developed and released in 2018 as the proud forth release from the Underscore label. This design by Johannes Neumeier is available from the Underscore webshop as well as selected retailers.

Neon Bugler is a font based on the third logo created by Harry Warren in early 1975 for his sixth grade class newsletter, The Broadwater Bugler, at Broadwater Academy in Exmore, Virginia, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. This font design has these principles as its parameters: The letters generally follow what would be natural stroke directions; no sharp corners, all gentle turns; no lines back up over each other, cross each other, or run into each other. All of this civility between the lines produces an unintentional but welcome neon quality about it. This font can have a variety of vibes depending on its context--it has a certain nostalgia to it, yet it also has a slick, clean, futuristic look. It can even be used in a semi-grunge setting. This is a very versatile font! And if you like this font, check out the new boxy version of it, Neon Bugler Squared! Digitized by John Bomparte.