Years ago, I developed an interest in the Japanese art of dwarfed potted trees, bonsai. I bought some books on the subject from Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In one -- Handbook on Bonsai: Special Techniques (seventh printing, February 1976) -- the type was bad. Old worn lead type, I suspect, spread wide in the tops of characters and disappearing on the bottoms. Two decades later, I came across my Brooklyn Botanic Garden collection and was struck again by this interesting type. Inspired, I made a typeface. Didn't take me long to decide on a name for it, either: a name with a double-meaning, based both on its look and its inspiration. Bonsai, the typeface, has two styles, a roman and a true italic.

Portmeirion No.6 started life as an experiment by our designer, who was exploring the possibilities of a completely 'over-the-top' display Roman face, bringing in elements of Tuscan and 'Circus' design, along with anything else he felt like. He's instilled a little more discipline in the finished result...but just ever so little. We have Fred Stevens, a regular reader of our website to thank for the name. He's comment on seeing a preview of the design was 'Over the top, Italianesque decorative and intriguing. add some 60's TV and voila Portmeirion.' Why No.6-well you'd need to know a bit about 1960s television to understand that, but we'll give you a hint..."Where am I?"..."In the village".

Prospera was designed without reference to existing roman faces. In its initial form, development was partially supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (Design Project Grant), as a design for use on 'low-res' digital output devices. Early releases had simplified detail in cross-bars and serifs, and hand-tuned bitmaps. As an original design, Prospera draws on principles of letterform developed during my studies of lettercarving (in Wales with Ieuan Rees) and Roman proportion. The design is idiosyncratic, perhaps more akin to Gill's Perpetua than to the monotonous corporate flavors so prevalent today.

For nearly 90 years, Paul Renner’s Futura has been as popular as it is versatile—from children’s books to fashion magazines to the plaque on the Moon. Futura is a typographic icon. Futura Now offers designers a chance to see Futura with fresh eyes. It’s more truly Futura-like than any digital version you’ve ever worked with. “It brings some much-needed humanity back to the world of geometric sans serifs,” says Steve Matteson, Monotype’s Creative Type Director who led the design team. “Despite its reputation as the ultimate modern typeface, Futura Now is surprisingly warm,” he explains. “It’s just as at home set next to a leafy tree as it is next to a stainless-steel table, because it skillfully navigates the border between super-clean geometry and humanist warmth.” Futura Now—the definitive Futura—contains 102 styles, including: new Headline and Text weights; new Script and Display weights and styles; and new decorative variants (outlines, inlines, shadows, and fill). Its contemporary alignment of names and weights makes the family easier to understand and use, and its comfortable Text and judicious Headline subfamilies provide instantly refined spacing. With a large Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic character-set, Futura Now serves a wider international creative community. Futura Now is available both as individual OpenType fonts and as a set of Variable fonts, delivering limitless styles in a tidy digital footprint.

For nearly 90 years, Paul Renner’s Futura has been as popular as it is versatile—from children’s books to fashion magazines to the plaque on the Moon. Futura is a typographic icon. Futura Now offers designers a chance to see Futura with fresh eyes. It’s more truly Futura-like than any digital version you’ve ever worked with. “It brings some much-needed humanity back to the world of geometric sans serifs,” says Steve Matteson, Monotype’s Creative Type Director who led the design team. “Despite its reputation as the ultimate modern typeface, Futura Now is surprisingly warm,” he explains. “It’s just as at home set next to a leafy tree as it is next to a stainless-steel table, because it skillfully navigates the border between super-clean geometry and humanist warmth.” Futura Now—the definitive Futura—contains 102 styles, including: new Headline and Text weights; new Script and Display weights and styles; and new decorative variants (outlines, inlines, shadows, and fill). Its contemporary alignment of names and weights makes the family easier to understand and use, and its comfortable Text and judicious Headline subfamilies provide instantly refined spacing. With a large Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic character-set, Futura Now serves a wider international creative community. Futura Now is available both as individual OpenType fonts and as a set of Variable fonts, delivering limitless styles in a tidy digital footprint.

For nearly 90 years, Paul Renner’s Futura has been as popular as it is versatile—from children’s books to fashion magazines to the plaque on the Moon. Futura is a typographic icon. Futura Now offers designers a chance to see Futura with fresh eyes. It’s more truly Futura-like than any digital version you’ve ever worked with. “It brings some much-needed humanity back to the world of geometric sans serifs,” says Steve Matteson, Monotype’s Creative Type Director who led the design team. “Despite its reputation as the ultimate modern typeface, Futura Now is surprisingly warm,” he explains. “It’s just as at home set next to a leafy tree as it is next to a stainless-steel table, because it skillfully navigates the border between super-clean geometry and humanist warmth.” Futura Now—the definitive Futura—contains 102 styles, including: new Headline and Text weights; new Script and Display weights and styles; and new decorative variants (outlines, inlines, shadows, and fill). Its contemporary alignment of names and weights makes the family easier to understand and use, and its comfortable Text and judicious Headline subfamilies provide instantly refined spacing. With a large Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic character-set, Futura Now serves a wider international creative community. Futura Now is available both as individual OpenType fonts and as a set of Variable fonts, delivering limitless styles in a tidy digital footprint.

We are very happy to announce the release of our first collaboration with master calligrapher, designer and illustrator Gabriel Martínez Meave from México. The first in the series of new designs is Wordless Script, an emotional calligraphic typeface published by Sudtipos. Speechless. Breathless. Wordless. There are letters that transcend simple functionality and sheer legibility, to be recognized instead by their style, their charm, their emotion. It’s like when we don’t remember the exact sentences, but we recall the tone of the voice of a loved one: it just doesn’t matter WHAT he or she said, but HOW he or she said it. Wordless Script is the font of choice for writing those things that go beyond words. Based on the connected-scripts of late 18th-century England, this typeface preserves the irregular finish and gestural strokes of the pointed nib. It is, so to speak, a personal rendition of the English roundhand as originally executed with the bird’s quill. Imbued with a Rococo, neoclassical, romantic spirit, Wordless radiates the gallantry of a time when the celebrated «douceur de vivre» that Talleyrand was so fond of was still alive and well; echoes of which still haunt us in our eclectic 21st-century, which has once again come to appreciate these magnificent styles of old. Wordless features alternate variants of most letters, ligatures and multiple calligraphic endings, ideal for elegant labels, high-end packaging and personalized stationery, as well as compositions for selected brands, exquisite titlings, verses, letters and short texts, like those meant to be read with the eyes only or intended for whispering into someone’s ear.

Plumage is somewhat unusual in that it has elements of calligraphy as well as script in a semi-loose form that gives it a pleasing appearance for both large and small sizes, and interesting flare finish strokes add to its unique character. As I read a dictionary description of "plumage", I realized that in many ways there is a parallel between a bird's plumage and how it is utilized in the context of writing: Plumage varies in pattern and arrangement for different purposes; what it expresses can of course be even more interesting. Plumage is disposable after a season, as new ones become available... imagine, a self-sustaining quill! - I guess that's equivalent to a refill or disposable pen. Historically, quill pens were made from feathers of a variety of birds, each chosen for its special characteristics. The sturdiest and most reliable feathers, however, come from turkeys, swans and geese. Feathers used to make pens are the stiff-spined flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird's wing. Pens for right-handed writers come from the left wing, and pens for left-handers, from the right! Each bird yields 10-12 good quills, and sometimes only 2 or 3 - so small a yield that the geese reared in England could not furnish nearly enough for local demand, and quills were imported from the Continent in large quantities. At one point St Petersburg in Russia was sending 27 million quills a year to the UK. It is said that geese were specially bred by US President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) to supply his own vast need for quills - in his lifetime he wrote almost 20,000 letters. The name "Plumage" was selected to pay homage to the noble birds that supplied countless quills for centuries of literary works. Plumage is recommended for any formal or informal invitation, decorations, awards, poetry, plaques, etc. We hope you will have the pleasure of using Plumage.

The Tazugane Gothic typeface family is the first original Japanese typeface created by Monotype. Designed by Akira Kobayashi, Kazuhiro Yamada and Ryota Doi of the Monotype Studio, the Tazugane Gothic typeface offers ten weights and was developed to complement the classic Latin typeface, Neue Frutiger. The design of the Tazugane Gothic typeface balances an original, humanistic style with elements of traditional Japanese handwriting. The two typefaces work together in a natural, seamless and adaptable manner so that Japanese and Latin texts can be used side-by-side for a wide range of applications, including in magazines, books and other print media; on digital devices; in branding and corporate identity systems; and in signage for buildings, highways and mass transit. Tazugane Gothic was updated to support the “Reiwa” new era symbol. Reiwa can be written as two kanji: 令和. This update to Tazugane Gothic includes Reiwa designed as a single ligature and is encoded as U+32FF. The inspiration for the Tazugane Gothic typeface is as elegant as its design. Since antiquity, cranes have been regarded in East Asia as auspicious birds for their noble appearance and elegance in flight. The typeface is named Tazugane Gothic in honor of the longevity of the crane, with the goal that it will be used for many years to come. The combination of the Tazugane Gothic typefaces’ traditional and humanistic elements, along with its intended ability to complement popular Latin typefaces, makes it one of the most uniquely flexible designs for applications where Japanese and Latin texts can be used together. The typeface family was created to have wide appeal, with a pleasing and consistent experience for readers, for use on screen, in print, in signage, packaging and advertising. Tazugane Gothic has 10 weights. The Light, Book, Regular, Medium and Bold weights are considered best for text sizes. The Ultra Light, Thin, Heavy, Black and Extra Black weights are recommended for headline sizes.

Characterized by generous unstressed curves, subtley waisted stems and asymmetric serifs, Fielding is a great choice for sure-footed stylish text and elegant headlines. Its warm classical forms resolve into highly readable text at any size both on paper and on screen. Six weights and corresponding italics provide a choice of styles while small capitals, superscript, subscript, fractions, a range of ligatures and cameo capitals will add refinement to the most demanding of layouts. Default numerals are of uniform height, a little smaller than capitals and are proportional: not 'old style' in the traditional sense, they nevertheless sit comfortably in general text. Tabular numerals and lining numerals are also available. Italic styles are lighter in weight and freer in form, skipping alongside their upright counterparts to provide pleasing emphasis or variation. The comprehensive latin character set includes eastern European, Baltic and Turkish languages. First designed for a quarterly magazine, Fielding can be used wherever a modern interpretation of tradition is required including branding and packaging, websites, news media, books, general publicity and smart documentation.

Halloween lends itself to graphic images: witches, ghosts, bats, jack-o'lanterns and haunted houses. When we think of a haunted house, we generally think of a large, abandoned, derelict Victorian wood-frame house. The style is usually Second Empire or Queen Anne. There tends to be a lot of decoration. There is usually a porch or two with decorative spindle work. There is probably a tower, either square with a mansard roof such as one might see in Paris or round with a conical roof borrowed from a Loire Valley chateau. These houses were generally built in the United States between 1860 and 1900, products of the exuberance of a time before income tax. It took at least three servants to maintain such a house and was very expensive. Few can afford them today. That is why so many were converted to professional offices, multi-family dwellings or simply abandoned. HAUNTED HOUSE is our typographical contribution to Halloween. Based on our font PETRARKA ML, it features decorative capitol letters that utilize the silhouette of a Second Empire style house complete with a dead tree and a full moon. The font includes 8 ornaments suitable for flyers and party invitations. Revision 2.000 eliminates dual encoding, harmonizes metrics, adds new glyphs, and adds open type features. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Мир is Mir. The Russian word Мир (Mir) means both World and Peace. The rendezvous of the two terms seems quite unique and utopistic today, but it is comforting to see that it was natural at some time deep down in Russian history. Bits of both meanings were going through my mind while I was designing this typeface. Mir’s character set is multiscript – Latin, Cyrillic and Greek – and extends to many parts of the linguistic world. In fact it covers more than 100 languages. Stylistic consistency between the language systems make typographic border crossings painless even where national borders are still closely guarded. And in regions where mathematics, physics or chemistry are to be expressed, a rich set of OpenType features lets Mir master also these situations. Serious things are best be said in a relaxed, unpretentious way. So Mir doesn’t put on a show. Mir has authority without being authoritarian, it is serious but not stern. It can explain difficult things and stay calm and down to earth at the same time. Mir Medium has another useful feature: It can be freely downloaded and used by anybody anywhere. You can test the Mir Family with free Mir Medium and get more styles when you need them. @juliasys

Located in the Valencian Community, Spain, Manises is very famous for its pottery. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Manises was the most important production center for Spanish-Moresca ceramics, which was exported throughout Europe. At the beginning of the 16th century, Manises tiles were very commercially successful, especially of the heraldic type. Much appreciated by the Aragonese crown, Manises ceramics was also exported to France, Italy, and especially to Naples. As a big fan of Paterna and Manises ceramics, Naples influenced other Italian courts. Calixto III and Alejandro VI continuously commissioned Valencian pieces and tiles for the halls of the Vatican. The export also extended to Sicily, Venice, Turkey, Cyprus and even Flanders and the Baltic countries. The palaces of all the courts of Europe were enriched with this art. Many painters reproduced it in his paintings. It can be seen in the work of Hubert and Jan Van Eyck, and in the central panel of a triptych by Hugo Van der Goes (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). In this city there are also some frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio in which the Arabic-Valencian earthenware appears. Manises font is inspired by a text written on a 16th century tile, but adapting it to our times and giving it a very modern air. It is characterised by being able to combine uppercase and lowercase letters in a conventional manner, or use only capitals, or only lowercase letters, or, a random combination of both. It comes with an extra of many ligatures, stylistic alternates, and a set of very useful catchwords, to give more modernity to your text. This OpenType features may only be accessible via OpenType-aware applications, or the Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favourite text editor/app. Manises looks lovely on wedding invitations, greeting cards, logos, posters, labels, t-shirt design, logos, children's material, in ink or water-colour based designs, fashion, magazines, food packaging and menus, book covers and whatever your imagination holds!

Get ready to burn rubber with Heavy Heap—the ultimate typeface for fans of hot-rod culture and high-speed thrills! This groovy psychedelic typeface is on fire, with a scorching look that’s sure to turn heads. With three sizzling weights to choose from, you can customize your typography to match your project’s intensity level. And with blistering mathematical symbols, torrid OpenType fractions, and a range of searing hot currency symbols, Heavy Heap is ready to take on any design challenge. But this headliner is more than just a pretty face—it’s a powerhouse of design options. It looks outstanding when used with warp and envelope effects, allowing you to create dynamic, eye-catching layouts that really pop. And with its bold, energetic style, Heavy Heap is perfect for any project that needs a little extra heat. From posters to flyers, from logos to website headers, this font is the ultimate choice for anyone who wants to make a brave statement. So rev up your engines and get ready to hit the road—with Heavy Heap, you’ll be riding in style! Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Conversation Hearts are inspired by the sweethearts and conversation hearts that can be found all over the US and Britain, but not in Germany. A source of endless fun and surprise. As a typographer to me they are also a surprising document of written communication. Most people complain that nowadays the inscriptions are not as sweet as they used to be. While they used to held romantic and promising inscriptions like “Be True” “Sweet Talk”, today they carry “Tweet me” “Ur Hot” and “Party Girl”. So i took this as a motivation to work with conversation sweetheart on a conceptial inspirational and typographical level. The obvious: every letter pressed on the keyboard brings out a conversation heart that starts with the letter - i.e. L = Loverboy, H = Heartless but what to write? Since i didn't want to reproduce the old “Fax me” and “Email me” I had to come up with something new. Something with a personal relation and of course something that I Love - what else could i write in the shape of the heart? So I tried to access my upper subconsciousness and looked for two words for every letter in the alphabet. One for the capital letter pressed and one word for the lowercase letter. Resulting in a Kurt Schwitters worthy assemblage of vocables "Post-office" “Internship” “Zebra” “Answers” etc. It is not easy to read a text set in Conversation Hearts but easier as a text set in Zapf-Dingbats. To sparkle the visual appearance uppercase letters are filled hearts with “carved” inscription, while lowercase letters are an outlined heart with written inscription. Conversations Hearts is a part of the Light Hearted Font Collection that is inspired by a recording of Jean Baudrillard with the title, "Die Macht der Verführung" (The Power of Seduction) from 2006. Further inspiration came from the article, "The shape of the heart: I'm all yours". The heart represents sacred and secular love: a bloodless sacrifice. by British writer Louisa Young printed in EYE magazine (#43) London, 2002.

Remember clear summer days as a kid? Remember open fields that you explored? Sun shining? Simple breezes sweeping past your face as you ran far and free? The feeling was uncomplicated and enjoyable. It was natural. That’s Verao, the simple spirit of summer. Alive and vibrant, Verao takes a turn away from the cold structure of today’s rigid creations and embraces the movement back to the value of things handmade. This artisan creation represents the rare, soul-invested fusion of the craftsman’s tools, materials, and hand movements, which shapes the solid--but beautifully defined--parts, pieces that, when put together, breathe a measure of life into everyday paragraphs and other bodies of text. Verao’s hand-written brush script, with its characters’ imperfect elegance and handmade quality, keeps your work looking organic. Write a word in more than a hundred different ways thanks to the large number of extra letters it offers. Two sets of lowercase alternative letters without connectors are included as is a set of swashed endings. Verao contains stylistic substitutions and ligatures, too, that you can combine however you like. Whichever way you design, the elements continue to appear balanced and separate and will undoubtedly add more personality to your design. So stop switching out cogs in your rigid set of fonts. Take time again to play with a natural face that’s both easy and energetic. Verao’s great temperament makes it a joy to design with. Let this spirit of summer take you away from the mundane. There’s a good chance Verao will lead you where you need to go. Production assistance from Lucas Azevedo.

Simplo: the ‘Italian Futura’. Simplo is a geometric sans serif typeface, built in sixteen styles. It is a tribute to the 1930s typeface Semplicità, designed by Nebiolo’s Alessandro Butti. Although many details of Simplo differ from Semplicità, it preserves the spirit of the original. Simplo is ideal for use in display sizes. It is also quite legible in text, and is well suited for graphic design and corporate identity design. Simplo has sixteen styles, extensive language support, eight different kinds of figures, sophisticated OpenType features — so it’s ready for advanced typographic projects. The most notable characteristics of this typeface are the ‘t’ and the ‘f’. The ‘t’ is the culmination of simplicity: a vertical line with just a simple right-side crossbar. The ‘f’ also has just a right-side crossbar, and is really tall: it reaches both the highest and lowest vertical position of the typeface. The top of the distinctive ‘s’, is much narrower than its bottom. The ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘g’, ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘u’ are spurless, and show a family resemblance with Hans Reichel’s 1990s typeface Dax. However, these letters are rounder and more geometric than Dax’s counterparts, because of Dax’s higher x-height and narrower design. In Paul Shaw’s Imprint article about typefaces that have been overlooked and/or underappreciated, “Overlooked Typefaces”, he concluded his discussion of Semplicità as follows: “These idiosyncrasies suggest that Semplicità might find a warm reception today, given the current love affair with Gotham, Neutraface and Proxima—and the resurgence of ITC Avant-Garde Gothic.” Free demo font available. For more information about Simplo, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

The single-named, multi-talented designer Joluvian now lives in Madrid. But he grew up in the “Caribe” of Venezuela, where thick jungles meet endless beaches, and fecund trees bear juicy fruit – a tropical paradise where music and dance vibrate in the humid air. The Tropical pack, designed by Joluvian and digitized by Ale Paul, echoes the spirit of his birthplace. Its three faces are casually stylish – a bold, wet-looking display script, an inky, textured brush script, and hand-penned capitals with a felt-tip look. Like a fruit cocktail, each ingredient is tasty on its own, but they combine even more deliciously. Sprinkle the included catchwords, shapes, and bursts in your layout to complete the easygoing, Carribbean vibe. Each face includes alternates and support for multiple Latin languages.