TT Travels Next Update 1100. We've expanded the range of stylistic alternates and added a calmer version for lowercase letters t f, uppercase Q, and ligatures fi ffi fj ffj. Thanks to the calmer alternative characters, TT Travels Next can be used in more conservative layouts or in designs that require a certain austerity. TT Travels Next in numbers: • 21 styles: 9 upright, 9 italics, 1 variable font and 2 outline styles • 757 glyphs in each style • Support for more than 190+ languages: extended Latin, Cyrillic and many other languages • 26 OpenType features in each style: stylistic alternates, ligatures, old-style figures, numbers in circles, arrows and other useful features • Amazing Manual TrueType Hinting TT Travels Next useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org About TT Travels Next: The idea to create an alternative version of the TT Travels font family emerged at the “Mail.ru Design Conf x Dribbble Meetup” that took place in August 2020 in Moscow. All conference branding was designed using the TT Travels font family, and, even though the set was very beautiful, we found that if the typeface were more radical and display, it would have complemented the event's graphics even better. Thus, was born the idea for the TT Travels Next typeface, which was to create a very trendy and modern wide display sans serif for use in different sets, be they print or web. TT Travels Next is an experiment answering the "what-if" question of what would happen if the original TT Travels looked different, less compromising and more radical. The typeface has very wide proportions and characters that almost do not get narrower as you move from the bold styles to a light one. TT Travels Next has an exaggerated closed aperture, low contrast, noticeable visual compensators, and a harmonic combination of soft and sharp shapes. In inclined styles, we have purposefully increased the slant up to 14 degrees so that you can type slashing dynamic inscriptions. In addition, the TT Travels Next typeface has two great outline styles which match the upright styles perfectly and complement them, and also work well as display styles. The TT Travels Next typeface consists of 21 fonts: 9 upright and 9 corresponding italics, two outline styles, and one variable font with two variability axes (weight and slant). Each style consists of 757 characters and supports over 190+ languages. The typeface has 26 useful OpenType features, such as stylistic alternates that change the design of characters responsible for the style, ligatures, pointers, circled figures, and many other useful features. TT Travels Next OpenType features list: aalt, ccmp, ordn, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, case, dlig, liga, calt, salt, ss01 (Alt. Latin & Cyrillic), ss02 (Romanian Comma Accent), ss03 (Dutch IJ), ss04 (Catalan Ldot), ss05 (Turkish i), ss06 (White Circled Numbers), ss07 (Black Circled Numbers). TT Travels Next language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian+, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian+, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani +, Banjar, Basque +, Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama+, Boholano+, Bosnian (lat), Breton +, Catalan+, Cebuano+, Chamorro+, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian+, Cornish, Corsican +, Cree, Croatian, Czech+, Danish, Dutch+, Embu, English+, Esperanto, Estonian+, Faroese+, Fijian, Filipino+, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian+, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician+, Ganda, German+, Gikuyu, Guarani, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian+, Icelandic+, Ilocano, Indonesian+, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian+, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Leonese, Lithuanian+, Livvi-Karelian, Luba-Kasai, Ludic, Luganda+, Luo, Luxembourgish+, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay+, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Meru, Minangkabau+, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish+, Portuguese+, Quechua+, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian +, Romansh+, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (lat)+, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak+, Slovenian+, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho+, Spanish+, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish+, Swiss, German +, Tagalog+, Tahitian, Taita, Talysh (lat), Tatar+, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan+, Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Tsonga, Tswana +, Turkish+, Turkmen (lat), Uyghur, Valencian+, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Walser+, Welsh+, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu+, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Erzya, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Macedonian, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Nogai, Russian+, Rusyn, Serbian (cyr)+, Ukrainian. TT Travels Next font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Presentation QuarterBraille (Abbreviated as "QB" thereafter) is a decorative, steganographic and lattice font. Its core design concept is that Braille dots are represented as "quarters of a square"[1]. This is illustrated by posters 1 and 2 (NB: these glyph parts will be called "QB dots" thereafter). The other glyph parts (see poster 3) are purely decorative and meaningless in terms of Braille dots encoding[2]. All glyph parts are meant to generate a wide variety of patterns from horizontal and vertical combinations of glyphs. There is also a graphic convention to differentiate uppercase from lowercase letters with the presence or absence of shape subparts (in the "endings", "quarter of a circle with a ring" and "quarter of a diamond with a small square in the middle") like shown by poster 4. This font is suitable for very short texts (e.g. logos, acronyms, quotes, ambigrams, pangrams, palindromes, etc...) but on the other hand it may be used for steganographic purpose like geocaching as well as fictive alphabets (e.g. Alien/SciFi/Fantasy/Antique civilizations). Posters 1. Font Logo: the displayed text is " Quarter " followed by " Braille". There's a rainbow layer above the text to highlight the "QB dots", this is achieved by A..Z glyphs with "only QB dots" (codes 230..255) 2. Anatomy of a Glyph (L) and "QB Dots" (quarters of a square) 3. Glyphs Parts: Square and Cross (Inverted square), Circle and Inverted Circle (with or without the small circle in the middle), Diamond (with or without the small square in the middle), Inverted Square and Circle, Shape combos, Ending 4. Uppercase vs Lowercase (tiny shape subparts are shown in red) 5. Sample 1: Bathroom sink with QB tiles on the credence 6. Sample 2: Hands knuckle tatoos: "LOVE/HATE"[4] 7. Sample 3: Poker Hand: pocket Aces. It's an Ace of Hearts (Ah) on the left and an Ace of Spades (As) on the right. Like in regular cards, the card value (e.g. Ah) is displayed twice: at the top and rotated by 180 degrees at the bottom. This poster also illustrates that QB could be used to print embossed playing cards with tactile and visual display of card values. 8. Sample 4: Pangram: "Adept quick jog over frozen blue whisky mix" 9. Sample 5: Latin Magic Square: "SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS" (NB: for compensation of the 2/3 glyph ratio, letters on each line are separated by a space: "S A T O R", ...). 10. Sample 6: Quote of Mahatma Gandhi: "Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.". This is also a demonstration of border glyphs combinations. 11. Sample 7: Steganography use case: the text is a sequence of 64 aminoacids (1 Letter notation), this protein was described in a research paper "The complete Aminoacid sequence of an amyloid fibril protein AA of unusual size (64 residues) 1975". 12. Sample 8: Border Glyphs with the provided styles and mixed styles. The words are the same than in poster 9 ("SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS"). Despite the 2/3 glyph ratio, the "TENET cross" was achieved by both inserting spaces in horizontally ("T ENE T") and by using the "thin borders glyphs". Notes a. Border glyphs[3] are meant to enhance the esthetics of text samples displayed with QB b. Special characters (e.g. *$()[].,;:&@# ...) are provided and follow the NABCC (North American Braille Computer Code) convention. c. A..Z Glyphs with only the "QB dots" are provided as demonstrated by posters 1 and 2 (A/N: this was very useful to create them). d. Glyph Map: 32..64: Special characters - 161..187: "Thin variant" of Border glyphs, 192..229: Border glyphs, 230..255: A..Z with only the "QB dots" - Codes 176 an 181 are "regular SPACE" (empty glyph). Footnotes 1. There is indeed two shapes which represent the braille dot: the "quarter of a square" and the "quarter of a cross". It's because a cross may be considered as an "inverted square" because the square corners are merged in the center. 2. That's why the SPACE glyph is only made of decorative/meaningless glyph parts (i.e. no "QB dots"). 3. For other fonts with border glyphs, please take a look at my other "decorative Braille fonts" (GoBraille, HexBraille, KernigBraille, StackBraille, MaBraille, DiamondBraille, LorraineBraille). 4. LOVE/HATE knuckle tatoos are inspired by the anthology scene from "The Night of the Hunter" movie (Charles Laughton 1955), it also appearead in "Do The Right Thing" movie (Spike Lee 1989). Disclaimer This font is not appropriate and not meant to print text documents in Braille for the blind readers audience.

The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <

Historical Background Old South Arabian Script (OSA) was used before the Islamic era not only in the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, but actually in the entire Peninsula. In addition, samples of OSA have been found as far as Uruk in Mesopotamia, Delos in Greece, and Giza in Egypt. Archaeological finds show that as far back as the 8th century BCE, OSA was used in trade, religious writing, and in civil records. Following the spread of Islam in Yemen, the decline of OSA began in the 7th century CE as it was gradually supplanted by Arabic script. OSA was typically known by the name of the then-dominant peoples in the Southern Peninsula. At various times, it was known as Sabaean, Qatabani, or Hadramite, among others. Although it was used for a variety of languages, OSA is most strongly associated with Sabaean. Many Peninsular languages borrowed OSA before introducing further changes of their own. Prime examples are the Thamudic, Safaitic, and Lihyanite scripts which eventually developed into independent scripts. The westward migration of the Sabaean people into the Horn of Africa introduced the South Arabian consonantal alphabet into the region. The transplanted script formed the roots of the Geez script of Ethiopia, which, in time and under presumably external influences, developed into a rich syllabary unlike any other Semitic script in history. Even a cursory examination of the letter forms of Modern Ethiopic writing reveal a striking similarity to South Arabian Script. OSA inscriptions typically reveal a dominant right-to-left directionality, although there are also many cases of alternating directions, known as boustrophedon writing. Figure 1 is a fine example of this style of writing. OSA inscriptions were discovered early in the 19th century. Soon thereafter, two orientalists, Gesenius and Rödiger, made great strides towards deciphering the script. Styles of Writing Old South Arabian inscriptions have survived primarily on stone, ceramic, and metallic surfaces. Hundreds of artifacts have been found and, to this day, continue to be discovered. Some of the best examples number of inscriptions on softer materials, such as wood and leather, have also been discovered. Although there is a significant difference between the styles of letters on the hard surfaces and those on the soft. Old South Arabian (Musnad) is composed of 29 letters , that is one letter more than the Arabic alphabet, which is between “S” and “Sh”, and names “Samekh”. Aspects of difference between Musnad and the present Arabic writing is that Musnad is written in separate letters, and the shape of the letters do not change according to its place in the word. However, some letters change according to the beginning of the writing. Musnad is either prominent, or deep. Prominent writings are for important writings and deep writings are for ordinary. The material on which the Musnad was written were stones, rocks, wood, and metal. In the course of its development the Musnad use appeared in the “Lehyanite’, “Thamudic”, “Safaitic”, pen to which many changes and amendments were made. And from it “Habashi’ writing was born. As regards his place among the Arabs of the Peninsula , when we look at the internet and its role in cultural dialogue , the Arabs of the Peninsula considered Musnad inscription which was indisputably their national writing until the dawn of Islam. It was used by people in all parts of Arabia in their homeland and abroad . It was their means of chronology and record of their glories and history.2- Features of Musnad Script: 1. It is written from right to left and vice versa. 2. Its letters are not joined. 3. Shape of letters are uniform despite their positions in the word. 4. Words are separated by vertical lines. 5. A letter is doubled in case of assertion. 6. No points and punctuations. 7. Easy to be learned by beginners. My OSA Musnad Font My design and technical work is only a treatment of the OSA Musnad as a symbol of writing. And it is possible to use in computer.. My design is not aimed at demonstrating the linguistic and intellectual structure of the Old South Arabian (Musnad). It is so simple that it could be easy to learn by learners and those who are interested in the OSA Musnad letters in computer. The basis of such importance is that it spares a lot of time and effort for researchers and students in this field. Formerly they used to write the Musnad texts either by handwriting or scan them , But now they can easily write its texts in OSA Musnad by using keyboard directly, so that they can change , amend and fulfill easily and accurately . So, we made use of speed, easiness and accuracy. And anyone interested in the South Arabian history in any part of the world can due to this design read and write OSA Musnad letters most easily. This design will also be used by historians and archeologists. , as well as specialist linguistics . The design also demonstrates the aesthetics of the Himyarit writing. About this font family Old South Arabian is An Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin typeface for desktop applications ,for websites, and for digital ads. Old South Arabian font family contains two types: Old South Arabian and Old South Arabian serif. The font includes a design that supports Arabic, Old South Arabian and Latin languages. Old South Arabian typeface comes with many opentype features.

PRISMATIC SPIRALS FONT! The Prismatic Spirals Font is a decorative type-system and ‘Assembling Game’, itself. Settled in squared pieces modules or tiles, embedded by unprecedented Intertwined Prismatic Structures Design, or intricate interlaced bars that may seem quite “impossible” to shape. Although it originated from the ‘Penrose Square’, it may not look totally as an Impossible Figures Type of Optical Illusions. More an “improbable” Effect in its intertwined Design, that even static can seem like a source of Kinetical Sculptures, or drive eyes into a kind of hypnosis. Prismatic Spirals has two related families, its “bold” braided version Prismatic Interlaces and the Pro version. While the default is simpler or easier to use, as all piece’s spin in same way, PRO provides a more complex intricate Design which requires typing alternating caps. Instructions: Use the Map Font Reference PDF as a guide to learn the 'tiles' position on the keyboard, then easily type and compose puzzle designs with this font! All alphanumeric keys are intuitive or easy to induce, you may easily memorize it all! Plus, often also need to consult it! *Find the Prismatic Spirals Font Map Reference Interactive PDF Here! (!) Is recommended to Print it to have the Reference in handy or just open the PDF while composing a design with this typeface to also copy and paste, when consulting is required or when it may be difficult to access, depending on the keyboard script or language. As a Tiles Type-System, the line gap space value is 0, this means that tiles line gaps are invisibly grouted, so the user can compose designs, row by row, descending to each following row by clicking Enter, same as line break, while advances on assembling characters. Background History: The first sketches of my Prismatic Knots or Spirals Designs dates back then from 2010, while started developing hand-drawn Celtic Knots and Geometric Drawings in grid paper, while engage to Typography, Sacred Geometry and the “Impossible Figures” genre… I started doing modulation tests from 2013, until around 2018, I got to unravel it in square modules or tiles from the grid, then idealized it as fonts, along with other Type projects. This took 13 years to come out since the first sketches and 6 months in edition. During the production process some additional tiles or missing pieces were thought of and added to the basic set, which firstly had only the borders, corners, crossings, nets, Trivets connectors or T parts and ends, then added with nets and borders integrations. Usage Suggestions: This type-system enables the user to ornate and generate endless decorative patterns, borders, labyrinthine designs, Mosaics, motifs, etc. It can seem just like a puzzle, but a much greater tool instead for higher purposes as to compose Enigmas and use seriously. As like also to write Real Text by assembling the key characters or pieces, this way you can literarily reproduce any Pixel Design or font to its Prismatic Spirals correspondent form, as Kufic Arabic script and further languages and compose messages easily… This Typeface was made to be contemplated, applied, and manufactured on Infinite Decorative Designs as Pavements, Tapestry, Frames, Prints, Fabrics, Bookplates, Coloring Books, Cards, covers or architectonic frontispieces, storefronts, and Jewelry, for example. Usage Tips: Notice that the line-height must be fixed to 100% or 1,0. In some cases, as on Microsoft Word for example, the line-height default is set to 1,15. So you’ll need to change to 1,0 plus remove space after paragraph, in the same dropdown menu on Paragraph section. Considering Word files too, since the text used for mapping the Designs, won't make any literal orthographical sense, the user must select to ignore the Spellcheck underlined in red, by clicking over each misspelled error or in revision, so it can be better appreciated. Also unfolding environments as Adobe Software’s, the Designer will use the character menu to set body size and line gap to same value, as a calculator to fit a layout for example of 1,000 pts high with 9 tiles high, both body size and line gap will be 111.1111 pts. Further Tips: Whenever an architect picks this decorative system to design pavements floor or walls, a printed instruction version of the layout using the ‘map’ font may be helpful and required to the masons that will lay the tiles, to place the pieces and its directions in the right way. Regarding to export PNGs images in Software’s for layered Typesetting as Adobe Illustrator a final procedure may be required, once the designs are done and can be backup it, expanding and applying merge filter, will remove a few possible line glitches and be perfected. Technical Specifications: With 8 styles and 4 subfamilies with 2 complementary weights each (Regular and Bold) therefore, Original Contour, Filled, Decor, with reticle’s decorations and 2 Map fonts with key captions. *All fonts match perfectly when central pasted for layered typesetting. All fonts have 106 glyphs, in which 48 are different keys repeated twice in both caps and shift, plus few more that were repeated for facilitating. It was settled this way in order for exchanging with Prismatic Spirals Pro font which has 96 different keys or 2 versions of each. Concerning tiles manufacturing and Printed Products as stickers or Stencils, any of its repeated pieces was measured and just rotated in different directions in each key, so when sided by other pieces in any direction will fit perfectly without mispatching errors. Copyright Disclaimer: The Font Software’s are protected by Copyright and its licenses grant the user the right to design, apply contours, plus print and manufacture in flat 2D planes only. In case of the advent of the same structures and set of pieces built in 3D Solid form, Font licenses will not be valid or authorized for casting it. © 2023 André T. A. Corrêa “Dr. Andréground” & MMC-TypEngine.

PRISMATIC INTERLACES TYPEFACE! Prismatic Interlaces is a decorative system and ‘Assembling Game’, itself. Settled in squared pieces modules or tiles, embedded by unprecedented Intertwined Prismatic Structures Design, or intricate interlaced bars that may seem quite “impossible” to shape. Although it originated from the ‘Penrose Square’, it may not look totally as an Impossible Figures Type of Optical Illusions. More an “improbable” Effect in its intertwined Design, that even static can seem like a source of Kinetical Sculptures, or drive eyes into a kind of hypnosis. Prismatic Interlaces has two related families, both as a kind of lighter weight versions Prismatic Spirals Default & Pro. While Default is simpler or easier to use, same way as Prismatic Interlaces, Pro provides a more complex intricate Design that requires typing alternating caps. Instructions: Use the Map Font Reference PDF as a guide to learn the 'tiles' position on the keyboard, then easily type and compose puzzle designs with this font! All alphanumeric keys are intuitive or easy to induce, you may easily memorize it all! Plus, often also need to consult it! *Find the Prismatic Interlaces Font Map Reference Interactive PDF Here! (!) Is recommended to Print it to have the Reference in handy or just open the PDF while composing a design with this typeface to also copy and paste, when consulting is required or when it may be difficult to access, depending on the keyboard script or language. As a Tiles Type-System, the line gap space value is 0, this means that tiles line gaps are invisibly grouted, so the user can compose designs, row by row, descending to each following row by clicking Enter, same as line break, while advances on assembling characters. Background History: The first sketches of my Prismatic Knots or Spirals Designs dates back then from 2010, while started developing hand-drawn Celtic Knots and Geometric Drawings in grid paper, while engage to Typography, Sacred Geometry and the “Impossible Figures” genre… I started doing modulation tests from 2013, until around 2018, I got to unravel it in square modules or tiles from the grid, then idealized it as fonts, along with other Type projects. This took 13 years to come out since the first sketches and 6 months in edition. During the production process some additional tiles or missing pieces were thought of and added to the basic set, which firstly had only the borders, corners, crossings, nets, Trivets connectors or T parts and ends, then added with nets and borders integrations. Usage Suggestions: This type-system enables the user to ornate and generate endless decorative patterns, borders, labyrinthine designs, Mosaics, motifs, etc. It can seem just like a puzzle, but a much greater tool instead for higher purposes as to compose Enigmas and use seriously. As like also to write Real Text by assembling the key characters or pieces, this way you can literarily reproduce any Pixel Design or font to its Prismatic Spirals correspondent form, as Kufic Arabic script and further languages and compose messages easily… This Typeface was made to be contemplated, applied, and manufactured on Infinite Decorative Designs as Pavements, Tapestry, Frames, Prints, Fabrics, Bookplates, Coloring Books, Cards, covers or architectonic frontispieces, storefronts, and Jewelry, for example. Usage Tips: Notice that the line-height must be fixed to 100% or 1,0. In some cases, as on Microsoft Word for example, the line-height default is set to 1,15. So you’ll need to change to 1,0 plus remove space after paragraph, in the same dropdown menu on Paragraph section. Considering Word files too, since the text used for mapping the Designs, won't make any literal orthographical sense, the user must select to ignore the Spellcheck underlined in red, by clicking over each misspelled error or in revision, so it can be better appreciated. Also unfolding environments as Adobe Software’s, the Designer will use the character menu to set body size and line gap to same value, as a calculator to fit a layout for example of 1,000 pts high with 9 tiles high, both body size and line gap will be 111.1111 pts. Further Tips: Whenever an architect picks this decorative system to design pavements floor or walls, a printed instruction version of the layout using the ‘map’ font may be helpful and required to the masons that will lay the tiles, to place the pieces and its directions in the right way. Regarding to export PNGs images in Software’s for layered Typesetting as Adobe Illustrator a final procedure may be required, once the designs are done and can be backup it, expanding and applying merge filter, will remove a few possible line glitches and be perfected. Technical Specifications: With 8 styles and 4 subfamilies with 2 complementary weights each (Regular and Bold) therefore, Original Contour, Filled, Decor, with reticle’s decorations and 2 Map fonts with key captions. *All fonts match perfectly when central pasted for layered typesetting. All fonts have 106 glyphs, in which 49 are different keys repeated twice in both caps and shift, plus few more that were repeated for facilitating. It was settled this way in order for exchanging with Prismatic Spirals Pro font which has 96 different keys or 2 versions of each. Concerning tiles manufacturing and Printed Products as stickers or Stencils, any of its repeated pieces was measured and just rotated in different directions in each key, so when sided by other pieces in any direction will fit perfectly without mispatching errors. Copyright Disclaimer: The Font Software’s are protected by Copyright and its licenses grant the user the right to design, apply contours, plus print and manufacture in flat 2D planes only. In case of the advent of the same structures and set of pieces built in 3D Solid form, Font licenses will not be valid or authorized for casting it. © 2023 André T. A. Corrêa “Dr. Andréground” & MMC-TypEngine.

PRISMATIC SPIRALS PRO FONT! The Prismatic Spirals PRO is a Decorative Type-System and ‘Assembling Game’, itself. Settled in squared pieces modules or tiles, embedded by unprecedented Intertwined Prismatic Structures Design, or intricate interlaced bars that may seem quite “impossible” to shape. Although it originated from the ‘Penrose Square’, it may not look totally as an Impossible Figures Type of Optical Illusions. More an “improbable” Effect in its intertwined Design, that even static can seem like a source of Kinetical Sculptures, or drive eyes into a kind of hypnosis. Prismatic Spirals Pro has two related Typefaces both more basic or easier to use versions, the Default Family plus its “bold” braided version Prismatic Interlaces… PRO provides a more advanced, complex, and twisted Design, plus requires to be typed alternating caps. Instructions: Use the Map Font Reference PDF as a guide to learn the 'tiles' position on the keyboard, then easily type and compose puzzle designs with this font! All alphanumeric keys are intuitive or easy to induce, you may easily memorize it all! Plus, often also need to consult it! *Find the Prismatic Spirals Pro Font Map Reference PDF Here! (!) Is recommended Print it to have the Reference or open the PDF to also copy and paste, when consulting is required or when it may be difficult to access, depending on the keyboard script or language. The 2 glyphs sets are separated in colors for facilitating. Also use the Map Font with key captions or switch to it for ensure that the characters are alternating between both uppercase and lowercase letters as other Keys as numbers, marks, and punctuation along the strings, holding Shift one by one or actually two by two. As a Tiles Type-System, the line gap space value is 0, this means that tiles line gaps are invisibly grouted, so the user can compose designs, row by row, descending to each following row by clicking Enter, same as line break, while advances on assembling characters. Background History: The first sketches of my Prismatic Knots or Spirals Designs dates back then from 2010, while started developing hand-drawn Celtic Knots and Geometric Drawings in grid paper, while engage to Typography, Sacred Geometry and the “Impossible Figures” genre… I started doing modulation tests from 2013, until around 2018, I got to unravel it in square modules or tiles from the grid, then idealized it as fonts, along with other Type projects. This took 13 years to come out since the first sketches and 6 months in edition. During the production process some additional tiles or missing pieces were thought of and added to the basic set, which firstly had only the borders, corners, crossings, nets, Trivets connectors or T parts and ends, then added with nets and borders integrations. Usage Suggestions: This type-system enables the user to ornate and generate endless decorative patterns, borders, labyrinthine designs, Mosaics, motifs, etc. It can seem just like a puzzle, but a much greater tool instead for higher purposes as to compose Enigmas and use seriously. As like also to write Real Text by assembling the key characters or pieces, this way you can literarily reproduce any Pixel Design or font to its Prismatic Spirals correspondent form, as Kufic Arabic script and further languages and compose messages easily… This Typeface was made to be contemplated, applied, and manufactured on Infinite Decorative Designs as Pavements, Tapestry, Frames, Prints, Fabrics, Bookplates, Coloring Books, Cards, covers or architectonic frontispieces, storefronts, and Jewelry, for example. Usage Tips: Notice that the line-height must be fixed to 100% or 1,0. In some cases, as on Microsoft Word for example, the line-height default is set to 1,15. So you’ll need to change to 1,0 plus remove space after paragraph, in the same dropdown menu on Paragraph section. Considering Word files too, since the text used for mapping the Designs, won't make any literal orthographical sense, the user must select to ignore the Spellcheck underlined in red, by clicking over each misspelled error or in revision, so it can be better appreciated. Also unfolding environments as Adobe Software’s, the Designer will use the character menu to set body size and line gap to same value, as a calculator to fit a layout for example of 1,000 pts high with 9 tiles high, both body size and line gap will be 111.1111 pts. Further Tips: Whenever an architect picks this decorative system to design pavements floor or walls, a printed instruction version of the layout using the ‘map’ font may be helpful and required to the masons that will lay the tiles, to place the pieces and its directions in the right way. Regarding to export PNGs images in Software’s for layered Typesetting as Adobe Illustrator a final procedure may be required, once the designs are done and can be backup it, expanding and applying merge filter, will remove a few possible line glitches and be perfected. Technical Specifications: With 8 styles and 4 subfamilies with 2 complementary weights each (Regular and Bold) therefore, Original Contour, Filled, Decor, with reticle’s decorations and 2 Map fonts with key captions. *All fonts match perfectly when central pasted for layered typesetting. All fonts have 106 glyphs, in which 96 are different keys with 2 versions of each of both caps and shift keys, plus a few repeated for facilitating. It was settled this way in order for exchanging with its Prismatic relative fonts which has only 48 different keys repeated twice. Concerning tiles manufacturing and Printed Products as stickers or Stencils, any of its repeated pieces was measured and just rotated in different directions in each key, so when sided by other pieces in any direction will fit perfectly without mispatching errors. Copyright Disclaimer: The Font Software’s are protected by Copyright and its licenses grant the user the right to design, apply contours, plus print and manufacture in flat 2D planes only. In case of the advent of the same structures and set of pieces built in 3D Solid form, Font licenses will not be valid or authorized for casting it. © 2023 André T. A. Corrêa “Dr. Andréground” & MMC-TypEngine.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.

Hawkes is an extensive handmade typeface family that comes with a bundle of weights, widths and styles, all designed to work cohesively. Here is a breakdown of the Hawkes family. Hawkes Sans: The primary subfamily is a sans-serif typeface that includes nine fonts: three weights (light, medium and bold) and three widths (narrow, regular and wide). Within this set are an array of stylistic features; including small capitals, character style alternatives, discretionary ligatures and contextual alternatives. See details below for more information on OpenType Features. Hawkes Variable Width Sans: The secondary subfamily is the same base sans-serif fonts but combined in variating widths. Essentially, it takes all three widths of each weight and randomly mixes them together. This creates a funky and creative alternative to the more traditional sans-serif set. The variations are for the uppercase, lowercase, small capitals, ligatures and numbers. Hawkes Script: The last subfamily is the script typeface. It’s a quirky script with variations of its own, including ligatures, swashes and contextual alternatives (again, see below for further details.) The script font works great as a complimentary style to the sans-serif, or on it’s own. FEATURES Alright, let’s get into all the extra goodies this typeface has to offer. Small Capitals: Small caps are short capital letters designed to blend with lowercase text. These aren’t just capital letters just scaled down but designed to fit with the weight of both the lowercase and capitals. With Hawkes, small caps can either sit on the baseline (in line with the base of the capital and lowercase) or to be lifted to match the height of the capital letters by applying the discretionary ligature setting in the OpenType panel. These small capitals have a dot underlining them that sit along the baseline. The feature offers a unique display affect that is great for logos, titles and other headline needs. Discretionary Ligatures: A discretionary ligature is more decorative and unique combination than a standard ligature and can be applied at the users discretion (as the name indicates.) The specific styling for these ligatures varies for different fonts. With Hawkes, they are used as an all capital styling feature, or to lift the small capitals to align with the height of the capitals. In the former setting, both lowercase and uppercase letters are first changed to all capitals, then a specialized set of letter combinations are transitioned so small characters are positioned within a main capital letter. These combinations only happen with main characters that include an applicable stem, such as C F K L R T Y. Some of these combinations include two or three characters. When Small Caps is turned ‘on’, this feature will lift the small caps to the height of the capital letter. For more information, please check out the user guide! Stylistic Alternatives: Stylistic alternates are a secondary form of a character, often used to enhance the look or style of a font. For Hawkes, these alternatives provide a slightly more handmade feel. A - the capital and small capital A will lose its pointed apex and become rounded. Think of it more as an upside-down U than an up-side-down V ;-) Oo, G, Ss, Cc- these characters’ topmost terminal becomes a loop. The O is applied automatically, the G S and C need to be turn on individually. Titling Alternatives: This feature does sort of the opposite of what it intends. Instead of being used for titling purposes, this feature makes the text look better in paragraph text settings. Kk Rr h n m - curved terminals on the are straightened e - the counter stroke also gets straightened from a more looping motion y - the shape of y is changed from a rounded character to a sharper apex (think more like a ‘v’ than ‘u’) Contextual Alternatives: Contextual alternates are glyphs designed to work within context of other adjacent glyphs. With Hawkes Sans, there are three slightly different variations per character. The feature rotates the application of each variation. This helps with organic authenticity, so if you have two e’s next to each other, they won’t look identical (reflecting the natural variations in handwriting and lettering.) With Hawkes Variable width fonts, I have created a contextual pattern that randomizes the widths of each character. So, when the feature is turned ‘on’ in the OpenType panel, the widths would alternate in a pattern such as: Narrow, Wide, Regular, Narrow, Regular Wide, Narrow, etc. It happens automatically so the user doesn’t have to think or worry about getting a random seed. With Hawkes Script, contextual alternates allow strokes to connect properly from one character to the next while maintaining a believable, natural flow. Connecting strokes are present for two letters next to each other but are replaced by a shorter stroke when located at the end of a word or sentence. Some characters have in-strokes when located at the start of a word. When a character is preceded by a capital letter that doesn’t connect, it too needs an in-stroke or altered spacing. This feature is complicated and messy, but luckily you don’t really have to think about it! I’ve done all the coding so all you have to do is turn ‘on’ the feature in the OpenType panel and you are off to the races! I’m just letting you know what’s happening behind the scenes. Swashes: These are just for Hawkes Script and provide tail swashes to the start and ends of letters. There are three different options. You can pick the basic option by turning ‘on’ the swash feature in the OpenType panel, or you can pick using the Glyph panel. Stylistic Sets: This feature work in new versions of Illustrator CC and InDesign CC. You can pick specific styling sets instead of turning on an entire feature. For example, let’s say you want to have a loopy S, but not a loopy C or O, you can just turn on the S in the Style Set. It also helps create the little drop box that pops up when you hover over a character, showing you the alternates associated with that character. This makes it easy to pick and choose specific styles you want in a word or headline. ---------- And there it is folks! That’s all the basic info on Hawkes, I know it’s been a lot and I appreciate you hanging on. If you are like me and need more of a visual reference to accessing all these goodies, I’ve made a user guide to help navigate Hawkes and everything it has to offer. Altogether this extensive family boasts 14 total fonts in a wide array of styles, weights and widths, making it a great addition to any handmade type collection. Enjoy!

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005