Hardbop is a typographic system inspired by jazz, especially the style it's named after "Hardbop". It's also inspired by the prolific graphic work of Reid Miles for the covers of Blue Notes Records in the '50s, Japanese jazz album covers of the '70s and condensed and grotesque hand painted signs. Hardbop also references classic fonts such as Impact, Bebas, Din, Frontage and TT Trailers, the latter in the exaggeration of certain characteristics such as counterforms and endings. Hardbop design works for titles and wide spaces and was specially designed for covers and posters, where its intention is not to go unnoticed. Although it is a small family, it allows game possibilities with a wide set of characters. Enjoy!

The cover of the 1929 sheet music from the First National/Vitaphone picture “The Girl from Woolworth’s” had its title (“Someone”) hand lettered. This single word title was the model for Store Clerk JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions as well as solid and solid oblique versions (without an inline). A bold, casual sans serif with rounded ends and an inline, Store Clerk JNL is perfectly suited for projects where a strong, yet playful title is necessary to grab the reader’s attention. For those old enough to remember, Woolworth’s was a leading “Five and Dime” store chain, especially in the days when a nickel or a dime actually could purchase something.

I recently came across an old travel journal I’d misplaced, and in it was a really rough sketch of an Italian post office. The sign lettering caught my eye while flipping through the pages, and while not my forte, I thought I’d take my stab at recreating sans-serif lettering as a font. The Postale family recaptures that old post signage and the vintage flair that appeals to me. A little reminiscing is always a good thing. You’ll find the Stylistic Alternates feature changes up the retro styled letters to a more modern sans serif styling for a handful of letterforms, if the vintage style of certain letters isn’t your cup of tea.

This is the sibling font of Ink Brush, with the addition of Arabic glyphs; Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Kurdish, and Jawi (Pegon). The Ink Brush Font is a captivating addition to the world of typography. This versatile typeface offers two distinctive versions, adding a dynamic element to your creative projects. The textured version brings a sense of artistic spontaneity with its handmade appearance, while the solid version delivers clarity and precision. Whether you’re aiming for a rustic, handcrafted feel or a sleek, professional look, the Ink Brush Font has you covered. It’s perfect for a wide array of design applications, from branding and packaging to invitations and artistic endeavors, infusing your work with character and style

Mesquite is a narrow Tuscan-style typeface designed at Adobe in 1990. Like older Tuscans from the 19th Century, Mesquite has elaborate, creative serif treatments-although the serifs are so unique that it is difficult to call them serifs anymore, they are more like pointy finials. A convex-concave-convex ornamental feature appears on the middle of each vertical and diagonal stroke. Together with the serifs" at the tops and bottoms of each stroke, this feature creates a "tri-band" pattern over text set in Mesquite. Mesquite is not a text face. Aside from its narrowness and decorative qualities, Mesquite has no lowercase. The font's uppercase glyphs have been directly copied and placed in the lowercase range."

Seconda XtraSoft is the extra soft companion of Seconda and Seconda Soft. Friendlier, easier on the eye, more informal, more fashionable — but still the refined and reliable Seconda. Seconda XtraSoft’s extra softness comes from the moderate rounding of both the edges and the inner corners of its characters. Seconda XtraSoft has sixteen styles, extensive language support, eight different kinds of figures, sophisticated OpenType features — so it’s ready for advanced typographic projects. For text and display use. When using Seconda XtraSoft in small text sizes, it will be a reliable and legible text face. When using it in big display sizes, it will show its interesting details. For more information about Seconda XtraSoft, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

Ellida is a very elaborate and elegant script in the tradition of the 18th-century English calligrapher George Bickham and the 19th-century American calligrapher Platt Rogers Spencer. I really enjoyed designing this script and maybe one day I will add starting and ending letters. Doing this script was extremely time- and brain-consuming, it is a huge challenge to make calligraphic letters work on computers so that they join perfectly. That's also the reason that this has become my most expensive font so far, but I think the price is fair for the incredible amount of work I put into the script. I really need a break from scripts now! Yours very exhausted Gert Wiescher.

With the original Ranelte, Insigne Design pays tribute to the strong, simple forms of the long-lasting DIN series. Now, Ranelte Deco, a new variant on the classic-inspired font, makes a more specific statement with some unique styles that are clearly contemporary. It’s the type of face that you’ll find adds great value to your high-tech and bleeding edge design uses. Ranelte Deco is designed for title use and posters. Since it’s an experimental display font, there are no OpenType features, but the typeface fully covers Latin-based languages. Remember, even a timeless classic can be reshaped to something beautiful. See how the new style of Ranelte Deco can make your next masterpiece.

Little Cecily was designed on the base of a Russian calligraphy sample book for primary schools “Propisi pryamogo pis’ma” (Moscow, 1914). Such kind of scripts were implemented in school programs at the end of 19th-beginning of 20th century. There was an opinion that the straight writing is easier for learning and better for children from a medical point of view. The letterforms of the typeface are characterized by simplified constructions and upright design which distinguishes it from the list of typical school scripts and convey to it a naive charm and originality. The character set covers standard Western and Cyrillic code pages and it includes alternative letters and contextual forms for connected writing.

Cut by Monotype between 1900 and 1902, the Monotype Modern font family was based on Miller & Richards News 23 and 28; slightly condensed news text types of the 1890s. Monotype Modern is a lively typeface, with long, fine hairlines and well rounded letterforms, representing the best of nineteenth century modern face design. A classic text face, and typical of the moderns that were produced in the United Kingdom at that time, being less extreme in its rendering than some of the models of purer form being produced elsewhere. Monotype Modern is an excellent text face for magazines, newspapers and books, the heavier and more condensed versions are useful in headlines and display.

When was the last time you listened to elevator music and found yourself humming along? And perhaps the tune you were listening to, got stuck in your ears for the rest of the day...the rest of the week? That's often what happens with elevator music: maybe you don't notice it - but it is there, and it could most likely be one of your all time favourites! :) My Elevator Music font does somewhat the same: it's nice and pretty harmless - but it works, perhaps even without you noticing! :) I've added 4 slightly different versions of each lowercase letter - and that goes for both Regular and Scratch versions. And they both have multilingual support, because elevator music is universal!

Conga Brava is the work of type designer Michael Harvey, a combination of the high-minded, purist letterforms of revivalist, modern calligraphers with the mundane, even crude, lettering of warehouse stenciling. The resulting lyrical yet utilitarian forms have a visually exciting graphic effect, which Harvey has frequently used in his book jacket designs. Like his other typefaces, Ellington, Strayhorn, and Mezz, Harvey named his design after a jazz classic, Conga Brava", by Duke Ellington and his trombonist Juan Tizol. The rolling rhythm, polished swing, and stacatto brass treatment of the tune suits the look of this sassy roman design and even more so, its stencil mate. When you need a typeface that radiates sound and motion, think Conga Brava."

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and the only way to get rid of that demon is to put something down on paper. A year later the doodles became a skeleton, and then the skeleton had a body, then the body had a name, then the name got a personality. What was left was a clean set of ten fonts that encompass a very simple skeleton with a lot of visual appeal. During the process, I saw ways to expand the typeface's display capabilities by producing inline styles as well as a down-and-dirty rough set. Each font has a full set of glyphs that include Central European and Small Cap characters.

Margon is a serif font family with a temperate design -- small serifs, moderate contrast, tiny roundings on the corners make it calm and serene. The Margon font family consists of 18 members divided into 4 groups of different proportions marked by indexes 360, 380, 400, 430. These values correspond to densities of sets -- 360 is the widest style, 430 is the most narrow one. The peculiarity of Margon family is a rather small difference in proportions of characters between neighbor groups, it’s less than 10%. Such tiny step gives possibility to select the font that gives the best result in combination of capacity and readability. Margon can be used in book, magazine and newspaper design.

Frutiger Next is Adrian Frutiger's and Linotype's completely new interpretation of the well known typeface Frutiger released in 2000. For these revised forms, the areas of application are almost limitless. Frutiger Next can be used for anything from office communications to multimedia to complex printed materials. The Frutiger Next family contains small caps, oldstyle figures, and other figure options in every font. Adrian Frutiger's eponymous typeface has been used for decades, everywhere from airport signage to book text to corporate logos to the smallest web graphics. The Italics in the original version of Frutiger were based very closely on the Roman forms; in Frutiger Next, they have been re-designed to be true Italics.

The original inspiration for Blue Parrot came from a short scene in the classic film Casablanca. For just a few seconds, the exterior of Ferrari's Blue Parrot night club is shown, complete with a wonderful hand-lettered sign... all in capital letters. Blue Parrot JNL was originally released in 2006, and it wasn't long before a few people noted that the font would also look good with a lower case alphabet. The idea of adding in lower case kicked around for a couple of years until Jeff Levine finally completed a revision of the font. In this version there's also an expanded character set thanks to the creative input of Michael Hagemann of Font Mesa.

Opal Bulgarian is a humanistic sans serif typeface of a modern type, inspired by the famous Optima typeface (designed by Hermann Zapf). Opal Bulgarian consists of 2 weights and corresponding italics. Opal Bulgarian is suitable for body texts; for titles; for corporate identity. Opal Bulgarian continues the design of Opal BulgarianCYR, designed in 1992 by Zhivko Stankulov. In compare to Opal BulgarianCYR the new font family Opal Bulgarian has more glyphs and cover more languages. A number of shortcomings in the construction of the glyphs have been eliminated, and the design as a whole has been updated. Opal Bulgarian is available with active support and upgradeability. Licensees will receive all new versions of the font free of charge.

Country Western is a revival of the classic William Page font known as Clarendon Ornamented originally designed in 1859 and again in 1877 by Vanderburgh & Wells. This version combines the best of both versions and adds something new. New to this font are the lowercase, italic, swash and script versions plus Greek and Cyrillic character sets. Keeping with the original theme from 1859 Fill fonts are available for the Ornamented and Open faced versions of this font. Greek, Cyrillic, Central and Eastern European characters sets are supported in the Windows TrueType and OpenType formats. The Windows and Mac PostScript Type1 versions of this font, however, do not support Greek, Cyrillic, Central and Eastern European characters sets.

In a typeface category that has been sorely under-represented until now, Aziga is a high (occasionally reversed) contrast, postmodern, deconstructed-reconstructed, serifless (mostly), fashion didone! Aziga lends itself to being set loud and proud, and the consistent angles throughout the glyphs make it a good candidate for more abstract typographic compositions. For the really graphically inclined (excuse the pun) a rotation of 66° will make the main diagonals in the font horizontal and vertical. Cool right? Features include stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and case sensitive forms. This is an unusual font, that’s for sure, but give it a try and you'll be rewarded with layouts that really stand out from the crowd.

Gyst is a neo-humanist sans-serif typeface that artfully blends the principles of Grotesque and Antiqua. With its classic uprights and the serifs in its true italics, Gyst spans the arc from a modern humanistic sans serif to a captivating calligraphic serif. Contrasting strokes and luscious, on the other hand razor-edged terminals reflect a sense of grace, thriving at the intersection of geometric precision and flourishing sophistication. Made for body text as well a s display use. In any situation, you will find the autonomous cursive posture to be a perfect playmate for the upright. Gyst comes in four upright and italic weights, all equipped with a whole lot Alternates and Ligatures.

Rusticana is a part of the 1990 program Type before Gutenberg, which included the work of twelve contemporary font designers and represented styles from across the ages. Linotype offers a package including all these fonts on its web page, www.fonts.de. Rusticana was designed by Adrian Frutiger and appeared with Linotype in 1993. Its historical roots go back to the Roman Capitalis, the all caps engraved writing of ancient Rome which reached its peak in the first century. From this style evolved other Roman forms, and one, Rustica, proved particularly good for text on bronze, as opposed to in stone. The Rusticana of Frutiger has open, seemingly irregular forms which lend a distinctive rhythm to text.

The extra bold version of R. Hunter Middleton's "Karnak" (produced in 1936 for Ludlow) served as the model for Bookkeeping JNL and is a companion to Bookkeeper JNL (the light weight version of this type design). Middleton based his "Karnak" family of typefaces on the geometric slab-serif "Memphis", which was designed in 1929 by Dr. Rudolf Wolf and released originally by the Stempel Type Foundry of Germany. According to Wikipedia, "Karnak" "was named after the Karnak Temple Complex in Egypt, in reference to the fact that early slab serifs were often called 'Egyptians' as an exoticism by nineteenth-century type founders." Bookkeeping JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Quat is a sans serif type family designed by Ani Dimitrova. The family comes in 22 weights, ranging from Hairline to Black with extra drawn italics and small caps versions, and each style contains more than 700 glyphs. The Regular and Medium weights are perfect for body text while the extra drawn Italic gives an interesting texture to the text. The lightest weights work well in subtle headlines while the heaviest ones are perfect for posters, short texts, web, branding and screen design. All weights contain ligatures, proportional figures, tabular figures, old style figure, numerals and arrows, matching currency symbols and fraction. The range of styles give a good flexibility to this family.

Equines Display is a versatile font family designed specifically for display purposes. Its modern, thick and strong appearance is perfect for branding, logos, banners and any lettering that requires bold and clear letters. To add an artistic image rather than just the thickness of the shape, Equines Display adds a rounding feature to the corners of the letters with a cross system, which makes the word display dynamic, strong and elegant. Until this description was published, Equines Display had 14 styles including condesed, expanded, outline and shaded in hopes of meeting the display font needs of designers and everyone at large. Enjoy working with the Equines Display font family. Best regards, Saefulloh - Attractype Foundry.

The Handel Gothic? typeface has been a mainstay of graphic communication for over 40 years - all the while looking as current as tomorrow. Designed by Don Handel in the mid-1960s, and used in the 1973 United Airlines logo developed by Saul Bass, Handel Gothic was an instant success when released to the graphic design community. Its generous lowercase x-height, full-bodied counters and square proportions make the design highly readable at a wide range of sizes. Handel Gothic's slightly idiosyncratic character shapes gave the face a futuristic look 40 years ago that retains its power today. In addition, its Uncial-like lowercase is instantly identifiable - and unique among sans serif typestyles.

Regina-Cursiv is a warm, bold, casual typeface. Its friendly, rounded curves remind me of the line from a gospel song by the Canton Spirituals, about "smoothin' up the roughway." Jointly released by the Bauer and Berthold foundries of Germany during the fin-de-siecle period, this typeface has some cultural flexibility. There are alternate versions of the uppercase ‘H’ and ‘I’ that can be chosen to reflect a humanist or blackletter tradition, whichever you prefer. Other alternates offer various stylistic choices. Regina Cursiv is a friendly, comfortable font. You will enjoy using it. Alternative letters: D, E, G, I, K, S, T, d, h, k, m, n and z. The numerals are old-style figures.

Founder is a neutral sans-serif font family consisting of 6 weight categories. The font was created for use on his own website, but eventually the account went on public sale. The original purpose of the font was not intended to be a multi-tool. However, now everything necessary has been added to it so that it can be safely used in projects. Founder supports more than 50 Latin-based languages, as well as Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic. Gothic sans aesthetics give Founder a natural and relaxed feel that business fonts lack today. The font is perfect for cases when you need to dilute the silence of modern digital environment or just to complement the author's illustrations.

In 1935, Rudolph Ruzicka approached W.A. Dwiggins at Linotype in the USA and handed him six typeface design sketches. These later led to the typeface family now known as Fairfield. The sketch called Script’ was forgotten until 1993, when sketches and designs were found in Ruzicka’s archives. Ruzicka Freehand was originally a more flowing calligraphy typeface which Ruzicka later developed into this strong and unusual form. The typeface is designed in two weights and their matching italics. The figures are clear, only just indicating the handwritten style in the italic forms, and combine into light and harmonic lines of text. Ruzicka Freehand gives texts a private and personal character and is suitable for middle length texts and headlines.

The design of Gondolieri has its origins in an experiment to combine aspects of Didone and Tuscan typefaces. The result has a continental 'Italianate' feel. If you wonder what lies behind the name, just look at the lower case 'f'...definite overtones of a Venetian Gondola here, and throughout the design. Gondolieri is offered in regular and bold weights, as well as a simplified form for smaller text use. All of these are available in three widths. The Gondolieri family has a lovely Didone, 'Belle Epoch' feel for use in design, posters, book covers and so forth. An extensive range of Opentype features, including ligatures and terminal forms is included in the regular and bold faces.

Toothpaste Two is a reworking of Toothpaste . The new font has all the features of the original Toothpaste, but is now even crazier, with the line twisting and turning over and under itself, making a tangled string of text bordering on the edge of legibility. As in Toothpaste, every letter and number connects and there are numerous contextual alternates and ligatures to keep it all running smoothly. This is a fun, decorative font. It would look good on kids' websites, scrapbooks, party invitations and the like. It works best in brighter colors on darker backgrounds, which give the characters a neon light quality. Also, try it with a stroke for a cool cartoony effect.

Mister Earl, released by Bitstream in 1991, was designed by Jennifer Maestre. Inspiration came from a page in a ‘how-to’ book published in the 1930s. Later versions of Extra Light, Light and Bold were added by Jim Lyles, with the help of Wally Petty. Mister Earl is named in honor of Earl Biscoe, a Bitstream designer who retired in the mid-1980s because of illness. In the winter of 1994–1995, Richard Stetler accidentally left a copy of Mister Earl outside his Alaska home... In the spring, amazed to discover the unfortunate font was still just about alive, he decided to release the result to a wider public as Snow Cap.

Main Street is a revival of the old font Soutache, the original version of this decorative alphabet was created in 1873 by Julius Herriet, a type designer active during the period marked by the Western expansion. Main Street with its split serifs and ornate scrollwork reflects the romantic splendor of the old west from fancy garb and Cowboy Saddles to Ice Cream Parlors and painted window signage. Main Street goes one step further by creating a base fill font which can be placed behind the regular Main Street font giving this font more of an inline appearance. You will need an application that allows layering of your fonts in order to take advantage of FontMesa Fill fonts.

Sometimes you get an idea stuck in your head and the only way to get rid of that demon is to put something down on paper. A year later the doodles became a skeleton, and then the skeleton had a body, then the body had a name, then the name got a personality. What was left was a clean set of ten fonts that encompass a very simple skeleton with a lot of visual appeal. During the process, I saw ways to expand the typeface’s display capabilities by producing inline styles as well as a down-and-dirty rough set. Each font has a full set of glyphs that include Central European and Small Cap characters.

Cut by Monotype between 1900 and 1902, the Monotype Modern font family was based on Miller & Richards News 23 and 28; slightly condensed news text types of the 1890s. Monotype Modern is a lively typeface, with long, fine hairlines and well rounded letterforms, representing the best of nineteenth century modern face design. A classic text face, and typical of the moderns that were produced in the United Kingdom at that time, being less extreme in its rendering than some of the models of purer form being produced elsewhere. Monotype Modern is an excellent text face for magazines, newspapers and books, the heavier and more condensed versions are useful in headlines and display.

Falstaff first appeared with Monotype in 1931, an alphabet in the style of a wide, bold antiqua that was especially popular in the first third of the 19th century. Such typefaces distinguished themselves through their consistent basis in the transitional antiqua style. They are characterized by their extremely fine unflexed serifs with no curve connecting them to the thick strokes. The numerals with their generous curves and ball-like stroke endings and beginnings are particularly decorative. The vertical strokes are dominant and give lines of this typeface a column-like and therefore static look. Falstaff is today often used for book titling, especially for mystery novels. It is best used sparingly in middle and larger point sizes.

I live in a small hamlet near the Rhine river. It is a sleepy little town and it doesn’t have any facilities. For groceries I need to go to the next town. The only road leading to that town has been closed for half a year, because of ‘maintenance’, so doing groceries got a lot trickier. The fastest way to travel is through yet another hamlet in the forest, on a very narrow road with extremely bumpy shoulders. Yes, you’ve guessed it: it is a Bumpy Ride. Bumpy Ride was made using a so called Brush Pen. It comes with all the accents and a sweet set of alternates for the lower case letters.

The early inspiration designs for Kalpa comes from some old wrist watches dials from an iconic diving watch company. The result is a sharp and sleek design that gives an extremely strong look to the font. Kalpa comes in 4 weights and italics to make it versatile and easy to use on all kinds of media. It is a wise choice for headlines, logos, branding, packaging, publications and websites. The design comes with some alternatives glyphs which enhanced the use of the font and let you customise your letter works. The name comes from a Sanskrit word meaning a relatively long period of time to connect with its early inspirations of wrist watches dials.

The Linotype® Gujarati typeface was originally developed in 1983 by the Linotype letter-drawing studio under Fiona Ross’s art direction. This revival was designed by Gunnar Vilhjálmsson and Kalapi Gajjar with Fiona Ross as a consultant. The family has five weights from Light to Black. It is a traditional design, optimized for setting lengthy text copy for print projects or for use on screens. While faithful to the original design, Linotype Gujarati introduces many design improvements, additional weights, and an extended character set. This new Linotype Gujarati is part of a project to refresh the pivotal Linotype Bengali and Linotype Devanagari typefaces and make them available for the first time in the popular OpenType font format.

A couple of years ago, I walked the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail in Japan. At the start of the walk, I stayed in a nice guesthouse in Tanabe city, which lies in Wakayama prefecture. I wouldn’t mention all of this, if it didn’t have something to do with the font name: Wakayama prefecture is THE mandarin orange (Mikan) growing area of Japan and the owner of the guesthouse had just picked a bagful of mikan, which he shared with me. So, I had to think of that when I made this font. Mikan is a nice, rounded family of fonts. Both styles come with alternative a’s (and accented a’s), which some people prefer for Children’s books.