Over the past few years, every designer has seen the surprising outbreak of blackletter types in marketing campaigns for major sports clothing manufacturers, a few phone companies, soft drink makers, and more recently on entertainment and music products. In such campaigns, blackletter type combined with photos of usual daily activity simply adds a level of strength and mystique to things we see and do on a regular basis. But we couldn't help noticing that the typography was very odd in such campaigns, where the type overpowers all the other design elements. This is because almost all blackletter fonts ever made express too much strength and time-stamp themselves in a definite manner, thereby eliminating themselves as possible type choices for a variety of common contemporary design approaches, such as minimal, geometric, modular, etc. So extending the idea of using blackletter in modern design was a bit of a wild goose chase for us. But we finally found the face that completes the equation no other blackletter could fit into: Leather is a digitization and major expansion of Imre Reiner's forgotten but excellent 1933 Gotika design, which was very much ahead of its time. In its own time this design saw very little use because it caused problems to printers, where the thin serifs and inner bars were too fragile and broke off too easily when used in metal. But now, more than seventy years later, it seems like it was made for current technologies, and it is nothing short of being the perfect candidate for using blackletter in grid-based settings. Leather has three features usually not found in other blackletter fonts: - Grid-based geometric strokes and curves: In the early 1930s, blackletter design had already begun interacting back with the modern sans serif it birthed at the turn of the century. This design is one of the very few manifestations of such interaction. - Fragile, Boboni-like serifs, sprout from mostly expected places in the minuscules, but are sprinkled very aesthetically on some of the majuscules. The overall result is magnificently modern. - The usual complexity of blackletter uppercase's inner bars is rendered simple, geometric and very visually appealing. The contrast between the inner bars and thick outer strokes creates a surprising circuitry-like effect on some of the letters (D, O, Q), wonderfully plays with the idea of fragile balances on some others (M, N and P), and boldly introduces new concepts on others (B, F, K, L, R). Our research seems to suggest that the original numerals used with this design in the 1930s were adopted from a previous Imre Reiner typeface. They didn't really fit with the idea of this font, so we created brand new numerals for Leather. We also expanded the character set to cover all Western Latin-based languages, and scattered plenty of alternates and ligatures throughout the map. The name, Leather, was derived from a humorous attempt at naming a font. Initially we wanted to call it Black Leather (blackletter...blackleather), but the closer we came to finishing it, the more respect we developed for its attempt to introduce a plausible convergence between two entirely different type categories. Sadly for the art, this idea of convergence didn't go much further back then, due to technological limitations and the eventual war a few years later. We're hoping this revival would encourage people to look at blackletter under a new light in these modern times of multiple design influences.

Buffalo Bill is a revival of an old favorite font that’s been around since 1888, the James Conner’s Sons foundry book of that same year is the oldest source I've seen for this old classic. If you're looking for the font used as the logo for Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel in Cody Wyoming please refer to the FontMesa Rough Riders font. New to the Buffalo Bill font is the lowercase and many other characters that go into making a complete type font by today’s standards. The Type 1 version is limited to the basic Latin and western European character sets while the Truetype and OpenType versions also include central and eastern European charcters. William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody called America’s Greatest Showman was one of the United State’s first big celebrity entertainers known around the world, millions of people learned about the Old West through Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows which traveled throughout the United States and Europe. William Cody, at age eleven, started work on a cattle drive and wagon train crossing the Great Plains many times, he further went on to fur trapping and gold mining then joined the Pony Express in 1860. After the Civil War Cody went on to work for the Army as a scout and hunter where he gained his nickname Buffalo Bill. In 1872 William Cody started his entertainment career on stage in Chicago along with Texas Jack who also worked as a scout, the Scouts of the Prarie was a great success and the following year it expanded to include Wild Bill Hickok and was eventually named The Buffalo Bill Combination. By 1882 Texas Jack and Wild Bill Hickok had left the show and Buffalo Bill conceived the idea for the traveling Wild West Show using real cowboys, cowgirls, sharpshooters and Indians plus live buffalo and elk. The Wild West shows began in 1883 and visited many cities throughout the United States. In 1887 writer Mark Twain convinced Cody to take the show overseas to Europe showing England, Germany and France a wonderful and adventuruos chapter of American history. The shows continued in the United States and in 1908 William Cody combined his show with Pawnees Bill’s, in 1913 the show ran into financial trouble and was seized by the Denver sheriff until a $20,000 debt (borrowed from investor Harry Tammen) could be paid, Bill couldn't pay the debt and the loan could not be extended so the assets were auctioned off. William Cody continued to work off his debt with Harry Tammen by giving performances at the Sell’s-Floto Circus through 1915 then performed for another two years with other Wild West shows. William F. Cody passed away in 1917 while visiting his sister in Denver and is buried on Lookout Mountain joined by his wife four years later. Close friend Johnny Baker, the unofficial foster son of William Cody, began the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum in 1921, over the years millions of people have visited William Cody’s grave and museum making it one of the top visitor attractions in the Denver area. William F. Cody romantisized the West creating the Wild West love affair that many still have for it today through books and cinema.

Neue Haas Unica by Toshi Omagari: The original purpose behind the creation of the typeface Haas Unica was to provide a sympathetic update of Helvetica. But now the font designer Toshi Omagari has decided to make this typeface his own and has thus significantly supplemented and extended it. In the late 1970s, at the same time at which hot metal typesetting was being replaced by phototypesetting, the Haas Type Foundry commissioned a group of specialists known as "Team '77" consists of Andre Gurtler, Christian Mengelt and Erich Gschwind to adapt Max Miedinger's font The characters of Haas Unica are somewhat narrower than those of Helvetica so that the larger bowls, such as those of the "b" and "d", appear more delicate and have a slightly more pleasing effect. In general, the spacing of Haas Unica was increased to provide for improved kerning and thus enhance the legibility of the typeface in smaller point sizes. Major changes were made to the lowercase "a", in that the curve of the upper bowl became rounder and its spur was eliminated. The form of the "k" was additionally modified to remove the offset leg so that both diagonals originate from the main stem. The outstroke of the uppercase "J" was also significantly curtailed. In addition to many minor alterations, such as to the length of the horizontal bars of the "E", "F" and "G" and to the angle of the tail of the "Q", the leg of the "R" was extended and made more diagonal. In the case of the numerals, the upper curve of the "2" was reduced and the lower loops of the "5" and "6" were correspondingly adapted. The sweep of the diagonal of the "7" was also reduced. Several decades later, Toshi Omagari returned to the original sketches with the objective of reinvigorating this almost totally forgotten typeface. First, however, he needed to revise the drafts prepared by Team '77 to adapt them for digital typesetting. So Omagari carefully adjusted the proportions of the glyphs, achieving a more uniform overall effect across all line weights and removed details that had become redundant for contemporary typefaces. It was also apparent from the old drafts that it had been the case that the original plan was to create more than the four weights that were published. Omagari has added five additional styles, giving his Neue Haas Unica? a total of nine weights, from Ultra Light to Extra Black. He has also greatly extended the range of glyphs. Providing as it does typographic support for Central and European languages, Greek and Cyrillic texts, Neue Haas Unica is now ready to be used for major international projects. In addition, it has been supplied with small caps and various sets of numerals. With its resolute clarity and excellent typographic support, Neue Haas Unica is suitable for use in a wide range of new contexts. The light and elegant characters can be employed in the large point sizes to create, for example, titling and logos while the very bold styles come into their own where the typography needs to be powerful and expressive. The medium weights can be used anywhere, for setting block text and headlines.