Over the years I have bought many books and music CDs in persuit of my passion for African and Latin (and especially Afro-Latin) cultures. I've noticed that a great number of these books and CDs feature either of two popular display fonts that are, in my opinion, very much overused. As an alternative, I designed Tambor. The Tambor family includes seven styles.

Beginning in January, 1932, Becker, at the request of then-editor E. Thomas Kelly, supplied SIGNS of the Times magazine’s new Art and Design section with an alphabet a month, a project predicted to last only two years. Misjudging the popularity of the “series”, it instead ran for 27 years, ending finally two months before Becker’s death in 1959, for a grand total of 320 alphabets, a nearly perfect, uninterrupted run. In late 1941, almost ten years after the first alphabet was published, 100 of those alphabets were compiled and published in bookform under the title, “100 Alphabets”, by Alf R. Becker. And so, as published in August, 1937, The Fontry presents the truly "modern" version of Becker’s 187th alphabet, Moderne Caps, complete with OpenType features and Central European language support.

Fifteen hundred years from now, a man will be selected to go back in time to prevent a catastrophic event which turned his world into a dystopia. Sent back in time, he was enveloped in empyrean fire, the strands of energy that make up time itself. Crash-landing near Astro City in late 1985, he learned how to master and channel the empyrean forces that had suffused his body -- finally learning to control his powers in time to prevent the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the event he had been sent to avert. He described himself to journalists as nothing more than "a Good Samaritan", and has continued to help his fellow man in Astro City ever since. John JG Roshell has also been struggling with the empyrean challenge of fitting all of Kurt Busiek's Astro City dialogue into balloons with the regular Samaritan font, so he created the Samaritan Tall font to help his fellow comic book letterers! It's kinda the same thing really. See the families related to Samaritan Tall: Samaritan &

Hellmut G. Bomm first released his Linotype Nautilus typeface in 1999. Ten years later, he updated and expanded the design. Now users have two additional families at their disposal: Nautilus Text and Nautilus Monoline. Nautilus Text bears more similarities to the original Linotype Nautilus. The letters shows a high degree of contrast in their stroke modulation. Bomm's intention was to create a clear, highly legible face. While the even strokes of most sans serif types eventually tire the eyes in long texts, the marked stroke contrast of Nautilus Text lends the face its legibility. The characters were drawn with a broad tipped pen. Like serif typefaces, the forms of Nautilus Text display a variety of elements. Its characters are narrow, with relatively large spaces between them. This helps create an overall open appearance, and allows a large quantity of text to fit into a small space. Nautilus Monoline's letters share the same overall proportions as Nautilus Text's. But as their name implies, they are monolinear. Their strokes do not have the calligraphic modulation that Nautilus Text features. This allows them to set another sort of headline, making Nautilus Monoline a refreshing display type choice to pair with body text set in Nautilus Text.

Hellmut G. Bomm first released his Linotype Nautilus typeface in 1999. Ten years later, he updated and expanded the design. Now users have two additional families at their disposal: Nautilus Text and Nautilus Monoline. Nautilus Text bears more similarities to the original Linotype Nautilus. The letters shows a high degree of contrast in their stroke modulation. Bomm's intention was to create a clear, highly legible face. While the even strokes of most sans serif types eventually tire the eyes in long texts, the marked stroke contrast of Nautilus Text lends the face its legibility. The characters were drawn with a broad tipped pen. Like serif typefaces, the forms of Nautilus Text display a variety of elements. Its characters are narrow, with relatively large spaces between them. This helps create an overall open appearance, and allows a large quantity of text to fit into a small space. Nautilus Monoline's letters share the same overall proportions as Nautilus Text's. But as their name implies, they are monolinear. Their strokes do not have the calligraphic modulation that Nautilus Text features. This allows them to set another sort of headline, making Nautilus Monoline a refreshing display type choice to pair with body text set in Nautilus Text.

The gifted Hungarian punch-cutter and printer Miklós Kis was active in Amsterdam in the 1680s. Among the many fonts that he cut during those years were a ‘mediaen’ (pica-sized) roman and italic, and the digital Miklós fonts are an interpretation of these ‘mediaen’ types. The character set has been extended to cover all the European languages that use the Latin alphabet, and the fonts offer OpenType features such as small capitals; old-style and lining figures, both proportional and tabular; fractions; superior and inferior numbers; superior alphabet; contextual and stylistic alternates; and intelligent application of long ‘s’.

The font Marcel is named in honor of Marcel Heuzé, a Frenchman who was conscripted into labor during World War II. During the months Marcel was in Germany, he wrote letters to his beloved wife and daughters back home in rural France. Marcel’s letters contain rare first-person testimony of day-to-day survival within a labor camp, along with the most beautiful expressions of love imaginable. The letters — stained and scarred with censor marks — were the original source documents used by designer Carolyn Porter to create a script font that retains the expressive character of Marcel Heuzé’s original handwriting. The result of years of research and design work, P22 Marcel Script features more than 1300 glyphs. The font is a highly readable running script that includes textural details that capture the look of ink on paper. The font Marcel Caps is a hand-lettered titling face intended as a companion to the Script. Marcel EuroPost One and Two each feature more than 200 postmarks, cancellation and censor marks, and other embellishments found on historical letters and documents.

What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

I've had a lot of lovely cakes through the years (My wife is a great cook!) But I've also tried some really...ehem...not so good cakes. Actually, the worst cake I ever had, was at work - if you didn't know, I work as a kindergarten teacher - and the cake was made by one of the kids! Anyway, this font was made as a sort of tribute to that cake - the font may not represent something that is smooth and lovely, but it was made with lots of personality and love - just like that cake from that kindergarten kid!

Thirteen or 14 years ago I admired, out loud, a book I found on a shelf in Matt Carter's office. That Christmas I was pleasantly surprised to find that Matt had found another copy of the book and he gave it to me. The book was about the life of Oswald Cooper and it contained numerous specimens of Cooper's lettering jobs. Among them was an interesting image of 7 letter that spelled out the word 'Robusto'. These letters were used as the model for the font Robusto. All I needed to do was develop 221 other glyphs to finish the font.

Brick Lane is an picture font consisting of 52 detailed, hand drawn illustrations of people seen on Brick Lane, a street in the heart of the Bangladeshi community in the East End of London. It has over the last few years become the home of parts of the creative industries in London, mainly media, fashion and graphics. All illustrations are based on photographs taken on location over a period of time. The photographs are then hand traced to create high quality, detailed silhouettes.

Black Pearl is a revival of an ornate calligraphic font possibly created between 1850 and 1870. I spent two years looking for all the letters of this font; once I found them all, I immediately went to work on recreating this old classic. I was not able to find any numbers for the font, so new to this style are numbers, some punctuation and currency symbols. The Truetype and OpenType formats include an extended character set with Central and Eastern European accented letters. Extra characters in this font are left and right pointing hands in place of the less than and greater than keys; a ship’s wheel, located on the asterisk key; and a boat anchor on the bracket keys.

A wonderful, very condensed, 3D font. A few years ago, I was commissioned to digitize the letters from this typeface for the words 'LEGENDS OF RODEO' and liked the look of it so much that I went ahead and digitized the rest of the alphabet. This CastleType revival is very clean-cut and contains uppercase, numerals, and punctuation. Sculptura was originally designed by the Swiss designer, Walter J. Diethelm (1913-1986) in 1957.

Sting is a hybrid of Blackletter lowercase with Roman Capitals. This style drawn by Michael Clark in pen and ink evolved over several years and is now avaiable in font form. 12 alternate lowercase characters are included. Great for historical and official document titling as well as many decorative uses.

Modesto Open is now a Chromatic Font Family. The old font Modesto Open has been improved, renamed Modesto Open Primary and joined by four new fonts that ornament and augment the Primary font in many different ways. All Caps. Modesto is a loose-knit group of Font Families based on a signpainting lettering style popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It evolved from the lettering I used for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Logo. The Modesto family was not planned. It just happened, a few fonts at a time over about fifteen years. In 2014 seven new Italic fonts and two Chromatic families were added.

Inversion is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

This humanist sans-serif typeface was exhaustively designed, full-featured typeface family that reveals its character and distinctiveness in complex text. It features a large complement of ligatures, lining and old-style figures, expert characters, dingbats (arrows, brackets, and symbols for both Regular weights). In the original Lisboa Pro the forms of the letters are humanist, with hooked headterminals, the characters contains medium contrast with a left-angled stress on the strokes. After ten years from the first version publication, this new version (0.2) is available with Latin (Western, Central Europe) and Cyrillic alphabets. It was selected by Our Favorite Fonts of 2005 (Typographica).

This humanist sans-serif typeface was exhaustively designed, full-featured typeface family that reveals its character and distinctiveness in complex settings. It features a large complement of ligatures, lining and old-style figures, expert characters, dingbats (arrows, brackets, and symbols for both Regular weights). Lisboa Sans lacks the hook-head terminals, but its structure and proportions are the same. The simplicity of the sans weight created very strong readability at small sizes. After ten years from the first version publication, this new version (0.2) is available with Latin (Western, Central Europe) and Cyrillic alphabets. It was selected by Our Favorite Fonts of 2005 (Typographica).

Cruller is a display typeface that is based on a rare bit of lettering from a 1910 German lettering book. What was the inspiration for designing the font? I found the base lettering years ago in a specimen and scanned it. I've used it perennially for assorted metal bands' logos, and finally decided to digitize it. What are its main characteristics and features? It is a spidery bit of lettering that would work well in Harry Potter movies or on album covers. Usage recommendations: Display type for use in materials that are meant to have a hand-wrought look circa the turn of the century.

An irresistible design by my (11 year old) Granddaughter; it brings that child innocence to font design. When she first showed it to me I was so impressed I could not resist I had to make it into her very own font. Alexandra is also the designer of the font flag and says she is working on new font ideas.

Defect Scam could easily have been a name for a punk band. But it's not - it's the name of my stencil wannabe font. But, it was inspired by a combination of some punkband's LP cover and the vibes of that genre of music - but not overdoing it by making an obvious punk font! Well, you get 4 different versions of each letter in the Regular, Black and Fill versions, as well as multilingual support!

Dialog is my first sans serif. I had made some attempts earlier, but they didn't satisfy me. Dialog was, on the contrary, so inspiring that I made 19 different fonts of it, the most complete typeface for several years. I usually prefer typefaces with serifs, but I don't miss them in Dialog. The name needs no explanation. Dialog was released in 1993.

Rummaging through the toolbox recently, I was surprised by how many allen keys I had from years of assembling flat-pack furniture. After some experimenting with the keys to make up individual letters I was struck by their graphic quality. The typeface is defined by the slim, right-angled shape of the allen key; creating a geometrical, yet playful font. The typeface is suitable for logos and feature headings.

The hand lettered Art Deco title on the cover of the sheet music for “There Must be A Bright Tomorrow (for Each Yesterday of Tears)” inspired the font Incarceration JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Incarceration JNL earns its dubious name from the fact the song was written by Prisoner No. 3223 (Wallace Wysocki) who was held in the Marquette State Prison, Marquette, Michigan (1931)

Scary Notes is a spine-chilling display font designed to evoke fear and horror. With its big letters and bold weight, this font demands attention and is sure to send shivers down your spine. The details of the letters are meticulously crafted to resemble brush strokes, adding an unsettling and handcrafted touch to the font. Each letter in Scary Notes is bold and commanding, creating an impactful presence that cannot be ignored. The big size of the letters adds to the font's intensity. The brush details in this font give the font an organic and chaotic appearance, reminiscent of chilling hand-painted writings. These details add a sense of unpredictability and terror, immersing the viewer into the world of horror and fear. For the best legibility you can use this font in the bigger text sizes. Enjoy the available features here. Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Scary Notes fits in headlines, logos, movie posters, flyers, invitations, branding materials, print media, editorial layouts, headers, and any project that requires a terrifying touch. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

My kids like to read Donald Duck magazine. They have boxes full of old editions that we bought second hand. Most of the comics are well-used, but there are some in near mint condition. I thought it would be nice to create a font that mimics the lettering found in comics. Mint condition is a very nice, very friendly handmade comic book font that comes with extensive language support (including Vietnamese and Cyrillic), plus two sets of alternate glyphs.

In mid 2001, P22 was approached by a Daniel Garrison, a Classics scholar at Northwestern University about possibly digitizing a long lost "Garamond" typeface. This font was used by Johannes Herbst (a.k.a. Ioannes Oporinus) in 1543 to publish Andreas Vesalius' "On the Fabric of the Human Body" (De humani corporis fabrica) in Basel. The story of the development of this font takes a few twists and almost becomes forgotten itself over time.Forteen years later it is available to the public.

Happy Halloween is the perfect font for the scariest time of the year. Inside the font, you will not only find stunning letters to create Halloween decorations.

Grabnika Unix is a unicase style typeface with a straight and a bit tall look and it has a residual influence of monospaced fonts. One of the major characteristics of this typeface are those sharp cuted ears and joints that appears repeating at some of the letters and gives him a distinctive personality and a minimalist design approach on other group of letters that creates an alternative interesting fill of the spaces. It is suitable for signage purpose and headlines or relatively short body texts and also for logo design and branding. It is a loud and fresh display that could give a certain distinctive and young personality to your designs. As a fun fact, the name of this font comes from the romanian word “grabnic” that means “fast” and I developed this font by chance as a custom lettering for a logo design project, so I saw it proper as an alternative in the actual wide font markets and I decide to finishing it as a multilingual support typeface. Enjoy!

Paralucent Slab is an addition to the ever-popular Paralucent family. Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans and slab serif design. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. The addition of the Slab family adds even more options for running text and headline.

Helmswald Post is a handsome Blackletter that's been years in the making. There's a mix of wispy terminals, flamboyant caps, and the use of negative space to create contrast. Elements from High German, Old English, and many other styles make their way into this gorgeous display font. The result is a medieval looking script with cleaner, more modern feel. In addition to European accents Helmswald Post is equipped with Cyrillic, alternates and ligatures. Old world numerals are present by default but may be substituted by accessing the stylistic sets. Use it for a book cover, web headings, or a restaurant logo.

The Kimchi font had its starting point in the making of the film "Cloud Atlas", based on the novel by David Mitchell and directed by Lana & Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. A first version of Kimchi was created for "Papa Song" – an underground fast food restaurant in a futuristic Neo Seoul in the year 2144. It was used for the menus, advertisement and packaging. Kimchi was later further developed to become a useable typeface: it works for headlines, street art stencils and of course as logo font for korean fast food restaurants.

Holiday Doodles includes a set of numbers plus 50 seasonal year-long holiday doodles. Great for a newsletter, monthly price list, or invitations. These illustrations have more detail, so they are great used at large point sizes as small illustrations. This font is designed to work well with the hand-lettering fonts offered by Outside the Line.

Shirens is a font inspired by Emo/metal/harcore music scene and the hype street wear/apparel. It includes uppercase and lowercase, ligatures and alternate styles ,and also multi-lingual support, Shirens is fit for Band album covers, video tittles, stickers, clothing brand names, tshirt designs, badges designs, banner, flyer and more. Just look how it performs on the preview that I have provided, you will see its capabilities. But it will also work well with other themes. I can’t wait to see what you guys will come up with with using this font!

Himawari means ‘Sunflower’ in Japanese. It was raining while I worked on this font, so I needly something to cheer me up - like bright yellow sunflowers! Himawari Script is a nice and neat handmade font, which was (more or less) inspired by an older font of mine, called mama Bear and, like the font it was modeled on, was made with a bamboo pen and Chinese ink. Himawari Script comes with some swashes and a cute smiling sunflower (just enable Stylistic Alternates and hit *).

Benson Script is a script that is desperately trying to be anything but a script. With 3 contrast levels, and 2 styles, the six styles of Benson Script are an experiment in the diversity of a single stem width. Modernism’s desire to fit all elements within geometric constraints and adhere to strong verticals has spread throughout type design, but has had little to do with the frills and ornaments of script. Cutting a script down to its bare bones is an offensive idea to many—almost seeming insulting to its genre. Benson Script bridges that genre gap between frill and function. As a matter of genre Benson Script errs on the side of modernism, and adds flair as a last resort. Read more about her open type features, and the development process here.

Handwriting of a strong Carelian personality revived: It’s autumn time once again, harvesting season, mushroom & berry time – the favourite season of my Karelian aunt Katri. A postcard she sent me more than twenty years ago had inspired me to SyysScript, “Script of Autumn” in Finnish. Katri had a very kind but also energetic personality, and I always thought her handwriting was a mirror of it. By making SyysScript I felt I could revive some of her unforgettable character. My Finnish autumn font has by now become a favourite for many and is branding fine food in both the Eastern and the Western hemisphere – even far beyond the arctic circle. “SyysScript“ is actually a growing family. For enhanced functionality in small sizes I added “SyysScript Eco” a year ago, a style with shortened extensions and simplified letterforms especially suited for packaging. And this autumn, a special one for Finland which is celebrating its 99th birthday, SyysScript grew again: Two long awaited newcomers, “SyysScript FeltTip” and “SyysScript FeltTip Eco” joined the family. They are bolder and softer than the previous styles but keep their positive, lighthearted feel. Use them to make a powerful individual mark on any background. – They are equally well suited for paper, packaging, a screen or even a concrete wall! Language support: Western and Central European, Extended Cyrillic.

Lately I feel reluctant to watch the news: The Amazon Forest is burning, Australian forests are burning, palm oil controversy… It really brings tears to my eyes to see all this destruction around me. It is like people hate nature with a vengeance - I cannot explain it otherwise. I made this font to take my mind off things. It was loosely based on Futura, a font I really like. Understory was completely made by hand. It comes with some cute upper case swashes and a whole bunch of diacritics. The good thing is: no trees were cut down or burned to make this font; in fact, I donated a nice amount of $ to help save the rainforests!

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Salvador was born in a small village in the province of Seville, Spain where he lived until 2002. During many years he worked in restaurants, construction, and in the fields, until he decided to go try his luck in Palma de Mallorca. There he worked in hotels and in construction, until the economic crisis erupted and he was left without work or benefits of any kind and he began to live in the street: “The street has few good things, but it teaches you to be more selfless, to share with others what you have, even if it isn’t much.” In 2006, a friend encouraged him to come along to Barcelona and bought his plane ticket. Once there, things did not go much better and he had to continue living in the street. A year ago he left behind that life and now he explains his experience in guided tours to school groups: “I like it because I see that many of them are interested and they ask questions. It is good that they learn.”

The talented designer of the well-known Formata typeface, Bernd Möllenstädt was born on February 22, 1943 in Germany. He has lived in Westfalia, Berlin and Munich, Germany, and now permanently resides in Munich. From his earliest years he was interested in typography, first studying as a typesetter (1961-64) and then a student of graphic design (1964-1967). In 1967 Möllenstädt joined the Berthold typefoundry and his career as one of the leading type personalities began. One year after joining Berthold, he became the head of the type design department. For 22 years he worked as the head of that department, under the leadership of Günter Gerhard Lange. Upon Lange’s retirement in 1990, Möllenstädt ascended to the type directorship of Berthold where he was responsible for type design and font mastering. Möllenstädt designed two typeface for the Berthold Exklusiv Collection, Formata (1988) and Signata (1994). Under license from Berthold, Adobe marketed Formata as part of the Adobe Type Library. Formata is now one of the most successful sans serifs in the world, used both in American and European magazines, as well as newsletters in the Far East (Gulf New Kuwait). Formata also was chosen as the corporate typeface of Postbank, Allianz, VW Skoda, Infratest Burke, etc. In addition to his work for Berthold, Möllenstädt has lectured at local Munich schools on typography and graphic design, and designed corporate type identities and diverse logos for major corporations, including Allianz, Commerzbank, Mauser Officer and Hoepfner. Möllenstädt continues his association with Berthold as a designer. He most recently completed small caps and fractions for Formata. He also has substantially contributed to Berthold's Euro symbol program (e.g. adding the Euro symbol design-specific to the most popular families). Möllenstädt currently is working on a new Berthold Exklusiv design.