This family was inspired by the beautiful roman font used by Aldus Manutius in Venice (1499) to print for the first time Hypnerotomachia Poliphili..., the well known book attributed to Francesco Colonna. Francesco Griffo was the punchcutter. The present font contains all of the specific latin abbreviations and other ligatures used in the original. The Italic style, carved by Francesco Colonna, the so called "Aldine" style, was inspired from various documents, all printed with this first Italic font. We offer the complete set of ligatures (about 60) we have been able to find, contained in the original font. In the two styles, we have made differences between I and J, V and U, to make easier a modern use. Added are the accented characters and a few others not in use in this early period of printing. The Italic style may be used as a complement to our 1470 Jenson Latin. The font contains all characters for West European (including Celtic), Baltic, East and Central European and Turkish language.

Based on scans of some 1906 newspaper headlines detailing the devastation of the San Francisco earthquake, Newsbreaker JNL is a modern take on vintage typography. With a few letterform characteristics somewhat reminiscent of DeVinne, this typeface was perfect in its day for expressing news headlines - and it holds up just as well today for titling or banner ad copy. Available in regular and oblique versions.

Bebedot originated from doodles and scrabbles in notebooks; irregular forms very well might contain a style for an alphabet. Once used for an intro spread in Wired magazine (#6.04, April 1998): "To keep up you need the right answers. To get ahead you need the right questions". The name was inspired by a women clothing poster at the San Francisco bus stands. The dot is for the com that never came.

Balboa is a display design combining elements of early sans serif and grotesque types with contemporary types. It evolved from ATF Headline Gothic, Banner (a headline typeface I drew for the San Francisco Chronicle), and Newsweek No.9, a Stephenson Blake-like grotesque I designed for Roger Black's 1980 redesign of Newsweek Magazine. There are nine styles, including the three new styles that have been added in 2014: Medium, Light and Ultra Light.

Australis Swash is a new variant that adds to the family of Australis Pro and it brings a touch of whimsy and mannerism to the shape of the cursive letters. Its purpose is purely playful because Australis Swash has some useful Opentype features as standard ligatures, discretionary ligatures and contextual alternates to use them in headlines or as a base for brands and lettering in general. Designed by Francisco Gálvez Pizarro in 2013.

Cresci is a carefully digitized reproduction of an alphabet of Giovan Francesco Cresci, the pre-eminent Renaissance writing master whose lettering virtuosity presaged the exuberance of the Baroque. His published writing book, "Il Perfetto Scrittore" (1570) was the inspiration for the typeface, designed by Garrett Boge in 1996. Cresci is part of the LetterPerfect Baroque Set.

Lysergic is a smoky, swirly, super-psychedelic font that exudes 1960s vibes. This font is a tribute to the work of San Francisco artist Rick Griffin, famous for his psychedelic posters, creative lettering ideas, and especially his Grateful Dead album cover art. Griffin was a master of ink stippling and that particular drawing technique proves to be a great way to embellish this style of lettering. Set your time machine to 1969 and fire up your grooviest designs with Lysergic.

Life is an elegant roman face, designed by W. Bilz and developed by Francesco Simoncini at Ludwig & Mayer in 1964. It is a contemporary design based on the Transitional designs of the eighteenth century. The Life font can be used for almost any kind of copy. Life is especially suitable for newspapers, both in editorial and advertising due to its high degree of legibility.

Zenon is a compact text font in four weights. Zenon is a sum of different styles, from Francesco Griffo to Granjon, from modern typefaces to the first sketches of Times New Roman. Zenon is an apparently Renaissance revival with modernish proportions. A closer look reveals that it is a typographic potpourri. Zenon was design as part of the MATD program at the University of Reading.

Alphaluxe is a distinctive new typeface from Wesley Poole of Hawai’i. This vertical script packs a velvet punch. It compels attention like the best of the futuristic Moderne scripts from the 1930s, (refined by the 1950s) with none of the bulk. The shapes are strong, their rendering light. Fortunately, Mr. Poole can't break his addiction to elegance and sophistication. It's a classy alphabet. but not self-conscious or stereotypical. Contributing mightily to this effort is Rod Cavazos (Psy/Ops, San Francisco). Among today's typefaces, Alphaluxe is a rare achievement.

Amster is an energetic & refined type created by Francisco Gálvez, with a sharp idea on how elegance & legibility can meet harmoniously. Amster can build a text that is highly readable as well as friendly. It has five weights of roman & cursive both with smallcaps and fully-equipped with all OT sorts and even a wonderful set of illuminated initials. Amster is a very versatile typeface, allowing for a wide range of uses: screen to print, small text to display, science to poetry. Amster speaks more than 200 languages.

I was commissioned by the Emporium (now Macys) to digitize Radiant Bold Extra Condensed (originally designed by Robert Middleton in 1940) for use in their Sunday supplement to the San Francisco Examiner. For several years, I stubbornly refused to add the lowercase letters to the font, because I thought it looked best just used with caps, but finally relented, added the lowercase letters and at the same time created two more weights as well: Light and Medium. Used very large and carefully, these faces can be quite elegant.

Graphite was designed by David Siegel, who began thinking about the typeface in 1982, looking for an architect's handwriting with a chiselled pencil" look. The handwriting of San Francisco architect Anthony Celis LaRosa became Siegel's choice. With the assistance of David Berlow and Tom Rickner, Graphite was designed and released as a multiple master typeface with weight and width axes that allow for its use in a dynamic range from light condensed to black extended. Graphite is an upright script with simple lines, and is usable in a large variety of informal copysetting situations."

The Teapot Dome scandal was a 1920s bribery scandal involving Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall. Fall leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming [along with some California reserves] at low rates with no competitive bidding. The San Francisco Examiner for Feb. 20, 1924 ran the two line headline “U.S. Senator Named as Oil Stock Speculator; Whitney to Face Quiz Today on Slush Fund”. The headline was set in a condensed, slightly squared sans serif typeface. This is now available as Special Edition JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

This book and newspaper font was designed by Francesco Simoncini in 1958. After the Second World War brought type design to a standstill, the years of reconstruction meant a reconsideration of old values in the typographical world as well as in Europe in general. Aster is the result of this movement, displaying instead of Modern Face influence, a tendency toward Transitional characteristics and giving text a light feel.

After Marcovaldo, here comes Visconte: a new singularity variant expanding the Calvino typeface family by Andrea Tartarelli with Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Francesco Canovaro as a branding font for the Desina Graphic Design Festival in 2023. It takes the design of the original Calvino typeface in the "brutal serif" territory, expanding spiky serifs and creating unexpected distortions and connections while keeping the original calligraphic old style structure of the Calvino Family.

In the 1990s I drew a text face for the San Francisco Chronicle. It was based on W. A. Dwiggins’ Electra and incorporated many features of the Linotype Legibility Series: More compact, with a taller lowercase X-height, etc. That type was called Electric and it was the Chronicle’s text face for nearly a decade, surviving several redesigns. From that, I made Azuza, a more detailed and sensitive style. Azuza was recognized in the TDC2 type competition in 2001. Then it went into hibernation as a Type 1 font family. Today it is back. Six fonts. Open Type.

The concept of a bold connected script with a hand lettered feel has been on my bucket list for decades. I imagined a pretentious, ornate, swashy look, a variety of word-end embellishments, heaps of ligatures and underscores. It took a weekend workshop on Python Scripting at Type@Cooper in San Francisco reinforcing the smarts of Opentype to make it happen. Hand drawn on paper using broad pen strokes for reference, the design was the easy part. The real work was in the back-end and self-imposed rigorous testing. Download a comprehensive pdf User Guide at this link.

The name of this typeface is a hymn to the Stadio Olimpico in Rome. The home arena to the World's most beautiful football club – AS ROMA. A club with many great players through the years. The biggest of them all, is already a living legend… Francesco Totti. The design is a 2-weight family perfect for elegant display work. The regular weight is more even in blackness while the bold weight carry more contrast.

Kanna Aoki drew the letters for MVB Emmascript while on a picnic near the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Mark van Bronkhorst adapted the writing as a font that maintains a very natural scrawl. Later a bold weight was added. MVB Emmascript has been used to add a lighthearted, human touch to everything from fiction paperbacks to potato chip packaging. The typeface is named for Aoki's 1968 Volkswagen, Emma.

Calligraphic Griffo comes from my personal interpretation of Francesco Griffo works. He was one Italian's type founder, punch cutter and type designer and the first who drawn and realize the typographical's punch of the italics around the 1500. His dedication to works and incredible perfection make me fall in love with his typefaces. Here my font: a readable and classical Serif with well-proportioned letterforms, a lot of ligatures combination and initial Swash Letters. Hope you like it, enjoy!

The Brush Strike Family is an exercise in dynamic, gestural brush type design by Francesco Canovaro. The typeface contains no lowercase set, but it doubles the uppercase with a strikethrough alternate set to be used for dynamic logo design and unusual word highlighting. Two weights are available with consistent design: the light weight (Brushstrike Light aka Lightstrike) can work together with the heavier regular weight but can also be used in white on dark background for light effects.

Aliens and Cows is an ultra condensed sans serif display typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro. Inspired by the title cards of 1980's science fiction movies, it features thin letterforms with a ultra wide spacing - perfect for minimal logo design and editorial display use. It features sci-fi themed alternates as well a set of lined small caps and word ligatures, and covers over forty languages using the Latin alphabet as well as Greek and Cyrillic.

Hleba Soli Ziamli Voli typeface is a graphic discovery on title type that combines traditional poster shapes with Humanist notes from Renaissance. Hleba Soli Ziamli Voli is named after Belarus poem by Yanka Kupala and inherits some original glyph designs from Renaissance printings by Francisk Skoryna. Hleba Soli Ziamli Voli due to wide variety of weights is great for titles and posters. Cyrillic and Latin support makes the type sutable for multilingual communications.