Marco is a lively text face, with an informal touch, inspired by 15th century Italian letter-forms with strong calligraphic traces and intended to be used primarily in continuous and intensive reading conditions. Marco is full of features required for high-quality book typography, including: strong language-support in extended Latin, Cyrillic and polytonic Greek, a multitude of swashes in the italic styles of Latin and Cyrillic, stylistic alternates to obtain the best possible solutions and other typographic niceties. Inspiration for Marco goes back to Italian humanist typography such as those of Nicholas Jenson or Aldus Manutius, and general influences from calligraphy. As a result, Marco has matured into a personal and unique text face where its lively and somewhat informal style is an ideal counterpart to its careful and ingenious crafting. Toshi Omagari’s Marco features a huge set of over 1900 characters per style —and almost 2600 in the italics— and is available in Regular, SemiBold, Bold with matching Italics.

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

A classic “American” sans serif with a kink Desphalia belongs to the kind of sans serif fonts that were created in the 19th century. You could also name it “American Gothic”, a sans serif in the style of fonts like Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and similar. Above all, the high x-height characterizes this typeface style, as do the identical heights of uppercase and ascenders. However, I allowed myself a few peculiarities ;-) On the one hand, there is the gently sloping horizontal middle line on letters such as H, E, F, A and e. The M also got gently slanted sides. Some of the lower-case letters have an up- or down-stroke: a d m n p u. This "kink" on the shaft also serves to better distinguish the small l from the capital I — as can be seen clearly with the term »Illinois«. In keeping with the tradition of American typefaces, Desphalia does not have a true italic. Rather, the letters of the “Italic” have the same character forms as the normal upright variant, but in oblique — and so it is not called “Italic” but “Oblique”. Style Set 01: Another American peculiarity is the capital I with dashes above and below. It is included in the Desphalia as an alternate character form. An alternative small l with the “kink” in the ascender is also included — as is a y with the “kink” in the descender. Style Set 02: The corresponding “straight” forms a d l m n p u without the break are included as alternatives in a separate style set. Small caps are uppercase letters that are optically the same size as lowercase letters. They offer a very classy way of emphasis. Desphalia is available in the widths Condensed, Normal and Expanded, the weights include Thin, Light, Book, Bold, Black. Using the variable font, all intermediate levels can be freely selected. The figures are optionally available as tabular figures, proportional lining figures or old style figures.

Kenza is a serif geometric font, which is inspired by letterpress printing. Hand crafted wood letters used in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by being large, bold poster-block movable type.

Originally inspired by the natural beauty of seahorses and their environment. It has the appearance of a turn of the century display face, but is in fact completely new and original to Drewfonts.

John Speed is an ornate, decorative calligraphic titling font based on the hand lettering of 17th century English mapmaker John Speed. It features extraordinary decorated letters, variant character forms and other unique features.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, a very useful design for display, lowercase missing, very narrow, unusual splayed serifs at top and bottom of strokes.

MYTHICA is a slightly condensed roman with spur serifs, derived from incised lettering on early twentieth century memorial stones and monuments. The typeface is available in 3 weights each with a complimentary italic.

One of the original nineteenth century designs, cut at Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in Chicago about 1880, passed on to us through ATF. Unlike most Circus types, the serifs of P.T. Barnum are bracketed.

Inspired by early 20th century hand lettered display advertising, Good Taste is a traditional, elegant roman face best used at larger sizes where its well rounded character can be shown off to advantage.

This is Solotype's version of a popular mid-nineteenth century style explored by several early foundries. It reads surprisingly well in paragraphs, and is a handy font for work with a Victorian theme.

Bendita could evoke the didones of the 19th century. It has and an extreme contrast that makes it only suitable as a display typeface, with its characteristic shapes. The fatty type par excellence.

Rococo Titling is a set of ornate titling caps based on work done by Jacques-Francois Rosart (1714-1777) and Pierre Simon Fournier (1712-1768) during the middle decades of the 18th century.

Roanoke Script is a hand-written script inspired by 18th century forms. The visual effect is of a steel nib pen writing on uncalendered paper. Ideal for a few words in display sizes.

Chen Xing, literally “morning star”, a font both futuristic yet mystifyingly ancient is cast in contemporary forms on the cutting edge of the present moment, but harkens back centuries to endless cultural heritage.

From the designers of ECLYPSE and CUBA presents another brand new idea to the 21st century. A typical handwriting font, inspired by one of my friends. I digitized it and called it RAVAN.

Condensed “modern” family based on the early 19th Century Walbaum typeface. A variety of treatments for use at sizes ranging from text to large display, where the micro-detailing comes into full effect.

A display style font, upper case only, very typical of wooden type of the 19th century, ideal for circus posters or posters of any kind which might feature antique material and so on