Homage to 70s phototype typography in 3 styles The AW Conqueror typeface family is a nod to the spirit of phototype typefaces and transfer lettering from the early 70’s. Founded by Ed Rondthaler, Photo-lettering catalogs swarmed with more daring typefaces than the others. Both transfer letter and phototitling have liberated the principle of letter-to-letter spacing, previously impossible with metal type. Phototype allowed operators to position millimeters, on the fly, letter after letter: words, sentences according to the specifications of the art director. AW Conqueror superfamily AW Conqueror Didot is part of a larger family, who include 4 others subfamilies with great potential: They’re but based on same structure, with some connection between them (width for example), to offer a great & easy titling toolbox to any designers, from skilful to beginner. Each of the members try their best to be different from the others because of their features. They should work harmoniously in contrast. Club des directeurs artistiques Prix 2010 European Design Awards 2011

Clarence is a modern, original typeface that has been designed to have a warm and slightly antiquated feel. It is slightly too idiosyncratic for great lengths of continuous text but does work very well at both small and display sizes. The serif structure takes some inspiration from architectural buttresses (a structure built against a wall to provide support or reinforcement). The serifs only protrude a small way from the body of the letter, which serves to ground the letter and, because the serifs bracket (the curve) joins the vertical at a relatively great distance from the tip of the serif, it remains subtle. The italic variant draws on the roman but has a more pronounced and curvier serif structure, analogous to the cursive element expected of an italic. This serif structure is present throughout the italic, even extending into the uppercase, making it more of a true italic than the commonplace sloped roman.

The Kairos™ Sans family melds 19th century wood type design traits from fonts called Grecians with current-as-today sans serif letterforms. The distinctive octagonal corners of the original design are still there, but Kairos Sans has been streamlined through the sensitive shaving of its serifs. Drawn by Terrance Weinzierl to complement his Kairos family, Kairos Sans provides a natural counterpoint sans serif design and stands on its own as a powerful communication tool for everything from two-foot high display copy to the smallest sizes of text content. Kairos Sans is available in 48 styles; 8 weights in three widths, all with matching italics. In addition to a full Latin character set that support most Eastern and Western European languages, it also has the necessary characters to support Greek and Cyrillic scripts. Kairos Variables are font files which are featuring two axis and have a preset instance from Thin to Black and Condensed to Extended.

Quars is a text and display typeface family designed to work on magazines. However, it is also suitable for books and other editorial material. It has a strong personality with elegant, sharp and contemporary features. This typeface comes from several subtle influences, from the contrast of the Scotch Romans to the sharpness of contemporary Dutch designers. Quars is a crystal clear and neat typeface full of small details, its structure is bursting with curves and accurate features which gives it its firm personality. Its italic experiments with the boundaries of italics themselves; with just 1 degree of slant Quars Italic accomplishes its purpose of highlighting pieces of text within its Roman. This carefully thought out inclination protects the uppercase from the usual distortion which Italic caps suffer. It offers a generous glyph set with many ligatures specially crafted for titling and ornaments based on anonymous metal types found in the drawers of an old printing workshop in a coast town near Barcelona.

The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.