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.

If you're regularly compelled to scrawl fiery French poetry, declare independence, or design indie folk albums, then Chris Watson's romantic Steel Pen typeface is for you. With old-school edge and spirited opentype alternates, it's as gallant as type gets.

Oswald Cooper is best known for his emblematic Cooper Black™ typeface. Although he was responsible for several other fonts of roman design, Cooper never drew a sans serif typeface. But that didn’t stop George Ryan from creating one. Ryan saw a sans serif example of Cooper’s lettering in an old book and decided that it deserved to be made into a typeface. Ryan’s initial plan was to make a single-weight typeface that closely matched the slender and condensed proportions of the original lettering. While the resulting Oz Handicraft™ typeface proved to be very popular, Ryan was not satisfied with the limited offering. So, between other projects – and over many years – Ryan worked on expanding the design’s range. The completed family includes light, semi bold and bold weights to complement the original design, plus a matching suite of four “wide” designs, which are closer to normal proportions. Fonts of Oz Handicraft include a Pan-European character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

Veneribe -the Venerable face- is an experiment in what many today might call 'grunge', though we at Greater Albion would probably prefer to talk of rustic (or if we're feeling really old-fashioned rustick) charm. It's a derivative of our Clementhorpe family, and aims to combine a battered antique look with the charm of that decorative Roman family. Regular and oblique forms are offered.

This lettering style is unusual in that combines aspects of several lettering styles. It is essentially a Germanic Blackletter but with many romanized capital letters and also features an italic slant along with some italic lower case traits. It is evocative of “old world” craftsmanship and early 20th century romanticism. The font was developed based on the logo of the Lakin Company of Buffalo, NY circa 1900.

Fidel Black Essential is a heavily weighted, condensed, sans-serif typeface with a large x-height. Ideal for short, high-impact headlines, its design is inspired by Russian Constructivism and old Cuban communist posters. Variants include Fidel Black, Fidel Black Italic and Fidel Black Stencil. Fidel Black Essential is an excellent choice for headlines, subheadings, posters and logotypes. Languages: Basic Latin, Euro, Mac OS Roman.

The “XXII Totenkult” is inspired by the classical letterforms of old roman/renaissance typefaces and an ode to the decay. This is an allCapitals-font and the lowercase glyphs contain a variation of the uppercase. With activated “calt”-feature every second lowercase will be replaced by an alternate, this will give the font a more natural look. Detailed information here: XXII Totenkult on Behance.

Because all good things can get better. Texta was born in 2014, a collaborative project of the study of humanist models from Edward Johnston to Adrian Frutiger. Texta Pro is a contemporary and rational sans, almost invisible, but not quite. It is a workhorse for any type of project. New design of symbols such as Section, Partialdiff, Dagger, approxequal, among others. Expansion of monetary signs (Bitcoin, Peso, Franc, etc.) Basic ligatures fi, fl. Includes Cyrillic. Added set of small caps for Latin, Cyrillic, numbers, punctuation and monetary. Increased set of monetary and mathematical symbols. Set of 983 glyphs, 487 more glyphs than the update. New ligatures ff, ffi, ffl, It has two stylistic sets, ss01 and ss02 (tails). Set of numbers with versions: higher, lower, denominators, numbered, old, modern and tabular for the last two cases. New fractions added. Set of case sensitive signs.

From the basement labs and after hours lounge of R?U?S?S?T Institute, we present After 5. With a somewhat formal (ha ha) yet warm, friendly feel, its normally calm, even tempered and sensible rhythm takes on the syncopated, jazzy beat that goes along with too many martinis when discretionary ligatures are turned on. A friend once asked, was I trying to design a font that looked sort of �Korean?� I said no, I was trying to mess up the Latin alphabet. So, here it is: After 5, a bold, upright condensed slab-serif display typeface with a mixed-up attitude. Complete with bold roman and matching italics. This attention getting font is ideal for Posters, headlines, Packaging and logos.

"A capital titling face with numerals, erroneously labelled in Figgins specimen book of 1817 as an 'antique' or roman. With a very bold, nearly monoline construction and squared serifs as thick as the main stroke, this type surpassed even the fat face style in blackness, it was popularised by the advent of handbills and early advertising posters, which needed bold type styles to project commercial messages from a distance. A sign-writer friend of mine theorises that the Egyptian style originated with the North African campaigns (hence Egyptian) of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the type historian Ruari McLean also suggests that the Egyptian style originated with signwriters 'block' letters, just like the prototypical (and contemporary) sans serif of Caslon IV." (Ben Archer)

A playfull fancy sanserif typeface in 16 fonts Parisine Plus was designed in 1999 as an informal version of Parisine. A reaction to the subjective functionalism of Parisine. In fact, when Parisine try to express neutrality (a typeface is never neutral), Parisine Plus has fun with contrasts and not-so-obvious additions for a sans family. Parisine Plus is a precursor in the way it offers many ligatures and strange forms we generally find more in serif typefaces families that express historical connotations. The various Parisine Plus typeface subfamilies Parisine Plus is organised in various weight subsets, from the original family Parisine Plus (4 compatible fonts), Parisine Plus Gris featuring lighter versions of the usual Regular and Bold (4 compatible fonts), Parisine Plus Claire featuring extra light weights (4 compatible fonts), to Parisine Plus Sombre with his darker and extremly black weights as we can seen in Frutiger Black or Antique Olive Nord (4 compatible fonts). About Parisine Parisine helps Parisians catch the right bus Parisine Plus and its fancy type effects Observateur du design star of 2007

Traiectum is the old Roman name for the city of Utrecht (in The Netherlands). When I started working on this font, I wanted to give it a Latin name and Traiectum sounded good! Traiectum is a hand drawn font with a regal and messy look. It was based on Goudy Old Style, a classic old-style serif typeface created in 1915 by Frederic W. Goudy. Traiectum is a multilingual, all caps font and I am sure you’ll find lots of uses for it. The city it was named after, Utrecht, is actually very nice! You should visit one day!

When designing a font, I often imagine how I think it should be used or where I'd be likely to see it out in the real world. With Barataria I envisioned it on decorative, antique-looking signs hanging outside shops in the French Quarter of New Orleans - hence the name. Barataria is based on samples of 1920s period poster lettering. It's a bold, heavy roman font with strong, rounded character forms. Barataria also has some unique alternative character forms, like the super-looped 'g' shown in the sample.

Postulat is a contemporary slab serif typeface. The family contains 16 fonts: 8 romans with matching italics, from Hairline to Bold. The character set include contains more than 600 glyphs which support most Latin and Cyrillic languages. The font uses a combination of smooth and extremely simple straight shapes. The author abandoned the use of teardrop-shaped classical elements, replacing them with straight ones, which makes Postulat more dynamic and modern. These unique features give the font a unique personality. Postulat is the perfect choice for headlines, logos, branding, packaging, publications and websites.

Egon Sans is a geometric sans serif typeface family built in ten styles (extra-light, light, regular, bold and black weights all in roman and italic). Egon Sans is an extension to the Egon (Slab Serif) family, designed in 2008. The typeface is designed with industrial and architectural flavor, as homage to Egon Eiermann, one of Germany’s great architects of 20th century. Egon Sans is ideal as text and display font for publication use. Egon Sans is released as OpenType single master with a Western CP1252 character set.

There's a cemetery in Castine, Maine, a lovely coastal town perhaps best known for Maine Maritime Academy and a surviving crop of stately old American elms, with headstones dating back into the 18th century -- the standard old headstone shape, often topped by winged skulls. Thanks to a local historical society volunteer, I got my hands on a couple rubbings; these show a particular style of stonecarving that proved captivating to the point of typeface design. Castine has a full character set in both roman and italic styles.

Lockhart is a romantic, modern script font family available in 3 weights- light, regular and bold. Lockhart is perfect for branding projects, logos, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements, product packaging, product designs, labels, photography, and invitations. It includes custom swashes, opentype features and ligatures to make your projects more unique and customizable. Language Support: English. Danish, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, welsh, Icelandic

Goudy’s Newstyle typeface was desiged in 1921 began as an experiment in creating a phoentic alphabet with different shapes for letters depending on their unique sound. The design is strongly influenced by the Venetian Romans of Aldus which Goudy believed to be the most readable letterforms. Steve Matteson digitized the roman faithfully to Goudy’s original and designed the companion italic in the spirit of Goudy’s style.

Amelia Jayne is Ted Staunton's updated revision and expansion of his own Amelia decorative cap font. Amelia Jayne started as a Roman font to accompany the Amelia initials but has taken on a new life as a Pro Roman font with small caps and several variations of new matching initial companion fonts. (The initials are not included in the pro font but come bundled with the set.)

Ross George in his numerous Speedball chapbooks called the pattern for this typeface Stunt Roman. A studious observer may discern that many of the wackier letterforms were tamed to produce the popular font University Roman; however, this version remains unapoligetically true to the original. All versions of this font include the Unicode 1250 Central European character set in addition to the standard Unicode 1252 Latin set.

Multi is an extensive sans serif typeface family that consists of two subfamilies: Multi Text that comprises three weights (roman & italic) and Multi Display (seven weights, roman & italic). Vitality bursts forth from Multi. It has a distinctive ‘phrasing’ (in the musical sense), neither humanist nor glyphic, somewhere in between, exploring uncharted territory. Its design is pragmatic, yet not rigid, slightly tinged with tiny incised touches. This is clearly noticeable in Multi Display: the roman lowercase’s asymmetric stems are very softly tapered, with bevelled, sharp upstrokes. Furthermore, all weights consistently share these idiosyncrasies from Thin to Poster. With its lower contrast, wider proportions, shorter ascenders and descenders, Multi Text was purposely adjusted to meet all the requirements of a legible typeface for newspapers in paper and screen, as they were manually hinted. It also has a few new features, such as the outstrokes of the roman ‘l’ and the italic ‘a’, which bring a subtle calligraphic feel to the text flow.