The name of this blackletter font was chosen due to the centennial of the Bauer Foundry, Frankfurt am Mai, in 1937. Ernst Schneidler probably created then the most beautiful of all fraktur fonts. They are the fruit of countless calligraphic drawings and of many years of professional experiences. Zentenar Fraktur became in its time the workhorse among German blackletter fonts. To access all ligatures in both styles, it is recommended to activate Standard and Discretionary Ligatures. The round s can be reached by typing the # key, and the combination N-o-period plus the OT feature Ordinals gives you the Numero sign.

The Madison Ave. family started from Madison Ave. at Fontstruct.com. As my most downloaded font, this was an easy, although not necessarily logical choice to make – regarding taking an existing free font and attempting to offer it for purchase. The font is very basic and simple in its layout, but has achieved popularity over at Dafont with almost 80,000 downloads with its cool, understated nature and inherent sophistication. The original Madison Ave. is now 95 Madison Ave. A couple of glyphs have changed from the original, but mostly the set is the same. The big news here is the availability of multiple variations on the original. Ninety-five refers to the filter settings used to achieve the faint cross lines in the font. The sequence 95-100 provides a gradual fade to solid effect when used together. The other versions use variations on the filter settings that allow each its own distinctive flavor, while at the same time maintaining inherent characteristics of the original. Ninety-five is now joined by 55, 75, 97, 99, 100, 102, 105, 155, 175, 201, 202, and 275. 100 is the solid version which doesn’t contain the trademark lines found in 95. In 95-99, the line width varies to achieve subtle effects. 50 and 85 are distorted by reducing the filter settings in a somewhat minimizing fashion. In 102-205, these are distorted by increasing the filter settings above the normal which is what 100 represents. While some of the effects are extreme and challenge the legibility of text, these can be fun or edgy. They offer a cohesion that can be used to advantage for different projects that require the use of a modern font family.

Avenir Next Paneuropean is a new take on a classic face—it’s the result of a project whose goal was to take a beautifully designed sans and update it so that its technical standards surpass the status quo, leaving us with a truly superior sans family. This family is not only an update though, in fact it is the expansion of the original concept that takes the Avenir Next design to the next level. In addition to the standard styles ranging from UltraLight to Heavy, this 56-font collection offers condensed and semi condensed faces that rival any other sans on the market in on and off—screen readability at any size alongside heavy weights that would make excellent display faces in their own right and have the ability to pair well with so many contemporary serif body types. Overall, the family’s design is clean, straightforward and works brilliantly for blocks of copy and headlines alike. Akira Kobayashi worked alongside Avenir’s esteemed creator Adrian Frutiger to bring Avenir Next Pro to life. It was Akira’s ability to bring his own finesse and ideas for expansion into the project while remaining true to Frutiger’s original intent, that makes this not just a modern typeface, but one ahead of its time. Complete your designs with these perfect pairings: Dante™, Joanna® Nova, Kairos™, Menhart™, Soho® and ITC New Veljovic®.

From the designer, Tim Ahrens... I started designing this typeface about half a year after learning that Frutiger was not a new brand of sweets and that Garamond is not the name of a fragrance. In time it became clear that designing a sans serif must always be considered as a transformation of traditional serifed typefaces instead of deriving it from typefaces that have been derived from others which have been derived from others again. I did not want Aroma to be one of those odourless and tasteless typefaces wich sacrifice a natural feeling and the characteristic shapes of the letters to neutrality. I think that beauty often evolves unintentionally. For example, I am fascinated by the beauty of airfoils, which are actually a careful transformation of a bird's wing. I love their anorganic and abstract shape which still bears the essence and all the complexity of what they are modelled on. This is exactly the formal concept behind Aroma. Many of the outlines are actually parabolics. The small r, for example, consists exclusively of straight lines and parabolics. I decided to give Aroma more stroke contrast than it is usual for sans serif designs. Many strokes are slightly convex, which gives the font an anorganic feeling. The font was intended to have a feel similar to the antiqua. More specifically, it is based on Old Style Faces. The character of those fonts, which were cut during the Renaissance, is still inherent to Aroma.

Designed with a hand-chiseled feel, Blau’s sculpted characters add a refined personality to a wide range of brand, corporate, product and service applications. Highlighting the sculpted theme, inkwell treatment variations are prevalent throughout Blau, with several key glyphs that are stenciled for increased legibility. This sturdy, typographic workhorse shines when a slightly unorthodox typographic approach is required — a prime choice for distinctive and dynamic logotype use. The Blau family is available in Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. The name Blau was chosen to celebrate the color Blue (or Blau in German, Blaauw in Dutch, Bleu French, Blå in Norwegian, Swedish & Danish, Blua in Esperanto, Blár in Icelandic) Blue is nature’s color for water, sky, mountains and glaciers. Blue is embraced as the color of heaven and authority, denim jeans and corporate logos. Surveys in the US and Europe show that blue is the color most commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, confidence, distance, infinity, the imagination, and cold. In US and European public opinion polls, it is the most popular color, chosen by both men and women as their favorite color. Another very popular Wilton Foundry font in the “blue” family is “Cyan” and “Cyan Neue”.

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

Oktah is a geometric grotesk that comes both as a variable font and 22 static fonts: 11 uprights and 11 matching italics, which make it a great tool for those seeking a versatile font with a strong character and high legibility. Throw in a very pleasing look, elegant curves and a wide range of weights, and you'd get what Oktah aspires to be: a perfect typographic tool for every need.In Oktah, elegant geometric curves meet bold strokes and wide apertures. Round letters are nearly circular, but, to boost readability, slight changes were introduced for optical compensation. Oktah is also equipped with amazing OpenType features: case sensitive punctuation, ligatures, fractions, superscript and subscript figures, two kinds of circular figures, stylistic & contextual alternatives and much more! Oktah supports all major European languages, as well as Vietnamese and some dozens of foreign languages that you may encounter in your designs. We've got all that covered. The glyph count for each of the styles is 800+ characters. Two styles (Extra Light and Bold Italic) are free to try and experiment with. If you need wide language support and more extensive OpenType features, consider taking a look at Oktah Neue, a bigger version of the classic Oktah.

»XPress-Rounded« is my new addition to »XPress«, my Sans-Serif that impresses – especially in small sizes – with its outstanding readability. »XPress-Rounded« looks very different, almost like a completely new font. But the rounded version has the same seven precisely calibrated weights from »Thin« to »Heavy« and its corresponding italics make this font-family universally usable. The »XPress« fonts got their bearings from the fabulous American »Gothic« fonts of the twenties of last century. Modern, present day elements, high lowercase letters and infinitesimal elegant slight curves in start- and end strokes make the font family not only great for body copy, but also very useful in advertising. Enjoy! »XPress-Rounded« ist meine neue Erweiterung zur »XPress« Familie, die durch aussergewöhnliche Lesbarkeit auffällt. »XPress-Rounded« sieht jedoch vollkommen anders aus als sein älterer Bruder. »XPress-Rounded« hat jedoch die selben sieben präzise aufeinander abgestimmten Schnitte von »Thin« bis »Heavy« und die dazu passenden Kursiven. Das macht die Schriftfamilie vielseitig einsatzfähig. Die »XPress« Schriften basieren auf der Formensprache der grossen amerikanischen Groteskschriften der zwanziger Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts. Durch moderne Formelemente, große Mittellängen und unendlich leichte, elegante An- und Abstriche ist die Schrift jedoch nicht nur als Textschrift, sondern auch im gesamten Bereich der Werbung vielseitig einsetzbar. Viel Erfolg!