Ice Creamery is a new variation of our Saloon Girl font family complete with italics and fill fonts which may be used to layer different colors into the open parts of each glyph. We don’t recommend using the fill fonts for Ice Creamery as stand alone solid fonts, Ice Creamery Chocolate was designed as a the stand alone solid font for this font family. Fill fonts go back to the 1850's where they would design matched sets of printing blocks and the layering of colors took place on the printing press, they would print a page in black then on a second printing they would print a solid letter in red or blue over the letters with open spaces to fill them in. Most of the time the second printing didn't line up exactly to the open faced font and it created a misprinted look. With the fill fonts in Ice Creamery and other FontMesa fonts you have the option to perfectly align the fill fonts with the open faced fonts or shift it a little to create a misprinted look which looks pretty cool in some projects such as t-shirt designs. I have some ice cream making history in my family, my Grandfather Fred Hagemann was the manager of the ice cream plant for thirty years at Cock Robin Ice Cream and Burgers in Naperville IL. In the images above I've included an old 1960's photo of the Cock Robin Naperville location, the ice cream plant was behind the restaurant as seen by the chimney stack which was part of the plant. If you were to travel 2000 feet directly behind the Cock Robin sign in the photo, that's where I started the FontMesa type foundry at my home in Naperville. My favorite ice cream flavor was their green pistachio ice cream with black cherries, they called it Spumoni even though it wasn't a true Spumoni recipe. Their butter pecan ice cream was also incredibly good, the pecans were super fresh, their Tin Roof Sundae ice cream was chocolate fudge, caramel and peanuts swirled into vanilla ice cream. One unique thing about Cock Robin and Prince Castle was they used a square ice cream scoop for their sundaes.

Touch Me is a Script hand-drawn style typeface—designed by Coto Mendoza—resulting from polyrhythmic exploration, sign deconstruction and altered calligraphic contrast plays with watercolour brush. Coto has been using these experimental calligraphy techniques when creating the catchwords for Macarons, the Boho Family, Bikini Season Script and Matcha Script and so forth. Touch Me was inspired by a character in a story written by Coto while attending a literary workshop with Ina Groovie in Santiago de Chile. The character is a tribal girl who lives on an island in the Caribbean. She is heir of ancestral knowledge and possesses wild beauty, very passionate and sensual: intense, strong and free. These features are reflected in the polyrhythm of the typeface's curves: an irregular baseline, variable x-height, different lengths of initial and terminal strokes (that sometimes expand and sometimes shrink) and amount of brush pressure that generates changes in contrast within the characters. This way, when composing, signs with stroke contrast randomly alternate with monolinear ones and with signs of altered contrast, thanks to the typeface's OpenType programming. The family, with more than 3,000 glyphs, provides a number of alternative characters, swashes, ligatures, initial and terminal forms, in short, a vast ocean of choices! Touch Me is a spontaneous typeface with a fresh and unique personality. It is the perfect choice for short text in both print and digital formats. The family comes with a Script Regular version and a seductive Script Drop that you will enjoy a lot! The Extras set includes some catchwords, dingbats and ornaments that allows for endless composition options. The family also comes with a Caps version —designed by Luciano Vergara—in 2 styles: a funny and big-headed condensed Sans Grotesk display of inverted vertical proportion plus a Grotesk, neutral and slightly expressive Petite. Both versions, available in 6 weights, have been especially designed to create hierarchies when composing. This allows for balance between strokes of different weight when it comes to the Sans and Script fonts. Come and dare yourself! Touch Me! Thanks Alisa for sharing your amazing and beautiful picture with us.

Bex Script is a riff on traditional French script forms: the Bâtarde, the Ronde, and the Coulée. It has two versions: First, there’s La Belle, a straightforward, lovely interpretation of the script form, suitable for things like invitations, poetry and branding. La Belle’s evil twin is La Bête, a more whimsical (and considerably more hairy) version, great for anything that requires an elegant-but-beastly feel. Bex is surprisingly versatile! With three optional capital forms (Swash, Caps, and Small Caps) all taller than the x-height, Bex has a variety of voices. A full small cap set and a full set of Swash Caps, plus a large complement of alternates, initial forms, terminal forms, and ligatures makes it customizable and… well, FANCY! Additionally, both versions of Bex Script have a set of ten ornament glyphs. La Belle has a combination of fleurons on a culinary theme and symbols of France. La Bête has ten pseudoheraldic beasts that would feel at home at the top center of any whimsical letterhead. NOTE: A few years ago in Paris, I was lucky enough to stop at the Librairie Paul Jammes in St Germain-des-Prés, where I bought a turn-of-the-19th-century signature from a Type Specimen of the printer Joseph Gaspard Gillé. The irregularity of his script types — particularly the ones at smaller sizes, like the Cicéro — was very intriguing. They seemed to blend the Ronde with some elements of the Bâtarde and Coulée. And they, along with the work of French master penman Louis Rossignol, gave Bex Script its initial form.

The Novera family is a sharp geometric sans in ten weights plus matching italics, available in two versions – Modern and Classic. It has a contemporary, approachable and multifunctional yet characteristic design, that comes with an extensive glyphs set of 1000+ glyphs per font, meeting all typographic demands. The Design Vertical terminals, circular shapes and angular apexes – Novera truely breathes geometry! But the concept goes beyond the application of rational geometry. The intension was to create a highly legible family suitable for every day usage inspired by the work of Paul Renner, Eric Gill or Jakob Erbar, combining the geometric with the human and the functional with the unconventional. Although Novera is inspired by the past, its appearance is unmistakingly modern. Modern vs Classic Novera is available in two versions - Modern and Classic - born from the same source file but with different characters set as default. This creates subtle but effective distinctions such as the double-storey a (Novera Modern) which is optimized for legibility in longer text paragraphs, as opposed to the single-storey a (Novera Classic) which allows a purely geometric appearance. Another distinguishing feature are the ascenders on Novera Mondern, which extend above the cap height for an elegant presence, compared to the ascenders on Novera Classic, ending at the cap height, for a compact and helvetica-flavored look. Novera Modern was intended for usage in body copy, whereas Novera Classic was planned for headlines, short paragraphs or logos, but both versions can be used vice versa too, of course. Alternate Characters To maintain neutrality and a modern appearance, the standard character set largely dispenses with idiosyncratic forms. This is in contrast to the alternative forms with the gill-like lowercase letters g and t as well as a traditional shape of S and the German ligature t/z, which traces back to old German spellings. Also inspired by German poster designs from the early 20th century are the elongated i-dots and dieresis-dots that can create eye-catchers in headlines or logos. By the way, both versions, Novera Modern and Classic, can be created via stylistic set 1, 17 and 18. Opentype Features and Symbols The family comes with many opentype features to support modern typesetting. This includes ligatures, different number sets or alternative shapes for texts set in all caps. If you like arrows and other shapes, you will love Novera! The family has a built-in extensive symbols-set including 48 different arrows and various geometric shapes or icons. Weights With its 40 styles and 1000+ glyphs per font, the Novera family covers all thinkable design scenarios from branding to web, app or editorial usage. It blends in perfectly in text heavy paragraphs with its mid-weights like Light, Regular, Medium or Bold or stands out like a monument in headlines and posters with its extreme weights like Thin, ExtraLight, Black or Ultra. Testfonts If you like to test the fonts before buying the full version, please follow the link below. Please note, all test fonts are available for evaluation purposes only and contain a limited character set! A commercial license for the full version must be purchased separately. Please send a mail to contact@renebieder.com for more information. Download the test fonts here: https://www.renebieder.com/test-fonts

ATTENTION CUSTOMERS :) There's a new Selfie available, have a look here; Selfie Neue is better done and more complete in every aspect. However, you can stay here if you still prefer the classic version. -But first, let me take a Selfie!- said that girl of the song and almost all of you at least once this year. While some terms and actions get trendy, some font styles do it too. It wouldn't be crazy to combine these worlds, in fact it happens often. Selfie is a connected sans serif based in vintage signage scripts seen in Galerías of Buenos Aires. These places are, in general, very small shopping centres which pedestrians sometimes use as shortcuts to get to other parts of the city. Their dark corridors take you back in time, and all of a sudden you are surrounded by cassettes, piercings, and old fashioned cloth. For some reason, all these shops use monolined geometric scripts. Surely, neon strings are easier to manipulate when letterforms have simple shapes. My very first aim with Selfie was to make a font that would serve as a company to those self-shot pictures that have become so popular nowadays. However, the font turned into something more interesting: I realised it had enough potential to stand-alone. Selfie proves that geometry itself can be really attractive. In this font, elegance is not achieved with the already-known contrast between thicks and thins of calligraphy, but with the purity of form. Its curves were based in perfectly shaped circles which made the font easy to be used at different angles (some posters show it at a 24.7º angle) without having problems/deformities. In addition to its nice performance when used over photographs, the font can be a good option for packaging and wedding invitations. TIPS Adding some lights/shadows between letters will for sure catch the eye of the viewer: Words will look as if they were made with tape/strings; so trendy nowadays. Try using Selfie at a 24.7º angle so that the slanted strokes become perfectly vertical. Having the decorative ligatures feature (dlig) activated is a good option to see letters dance. TECHNICAL It is absolutely recommended to use this font with the standard ligatures feature (liga) activated. It makes letters ligate perfectly and also improves the space between words.

MOTORWAY is the companion typeface to TRANSPORT, the British road sign lettering. The Motorway alphabet was created for the route numbers on motorway signage, and is taller and narrower than the accompanying place names and distances which are printed in Transport. However, for Motorway Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert created only the numbers 0 to 9, the capitals A, B, E, M, N, S and W, ampersand, slash, parentheses and a comma. So, although the lettering made its first appearance on the Preston bypass in 1958, K-Type Motorway is the first complete typeface and contains all upper and lower case letters, plus a full complement of punctuation, symbols and Latin Extended-A accented characters. As with the Transport alphabet the starting point was Akzidenz Grotesk, Motorway taking inspiration from condensed versions. Changes were mainly driven by a quest for legibility, resulting in some reduced contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes, and Gill-esque straight diagonal limbs on the 6 and 9, and high vertex for the M. Kinneir and Calvert designed the limited range of characters in two weights; a SemiBold 'Permanent' weight for use as white letters on blue motorway signs, and a Bold 'Temporary' weight for heavier black letters on yellow non-permanent signage. In addition to creating full fonts in both original weights, the K-Type family adds a new Regular weight, plus a set of italics, completing a highly usable condensed typeface which, while rooted in history, is fully functional for both print and web usage. The K-Type fonts are spaced and kerned normally, simply increase the tracking to recapture the generous spacing of motorway signage.

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

a, g, k and y It was a forensic examination by Jason Smith of his existing designs that laid the groundwork for FS Jack. Jason made a list of unique characteristics that would give the sans serif font its typographic thumbprint, which included an unusually large x-height and slightly off-the-wall letters like the lower-case “a”, “g”, “k” and “y”. “I wanted to make something that was slightly uncomfortable,” says Jason, “and in doing so simplify the quirkiness down to a few letters.” Fernando Mello did “the rest of the cooking”, filling the design out and making the additional weights. Tipos Latinos Upon its release in 2010, FS Jack was submitted by Fernando, who is Brazilian, for the esteemed type design biennial, Tipos Latinos, where it was selected as a winner in the Families category. It went on to be selected for type exhibitions throughout Latin America and around the world. “FS Jack is a workhorse,” says Fernando, “but also very ownable and distinctive, and available in a good range of weights, crafted by Jason and I.” Corporate “FS Jack took a couple of years to get noticed and is still fairly underused,” says Jason, “which is good in a way, for our Brandfont clients that have adopted it.” FS Jack was chosen as the signature font for The Shard in London, from its signage down to business cards. Fontsmith also worked with Lloyds Bank to customise FS Jack into a bespoke font for the bank’s updated brand identity – part of Fontsmith’s Brandfont service, which you can read about here. Fat Jack Included in the FS Jack family – just – is FS Jack Poster, the super-heavy weight of the range. “That was a last minute addition,” says Fernando, “after Jason and I started talking about how much we liked Gill KO, a typeface that is almost comically fat.”

A girl’s handwriting written on the iPad Writing changes – throughout history over centuries, but also from generation to generation. Each new generation of students learns to write the basic forms of the letters a little differently than their predecessors. The role model is also changing. The cursive handwriting taught in school is getting closer and closer to printed type. The children no longer learn the forms of cursive handwriting required for connected writing, but first the “block letters”, only later should they develop their own individual handwriting from this, which many of them no longer do. And the writing tool is also changing. Of course, script looks different when children no longer learn to write on paper with a fountain pen, but on a tablet computer with the “pencil”. The writing experience is completely different, and the “material properties” are different too. There is practically no writing resistance that would make it difficult to move against the direction of writing. "Die Lara" was created based on the template by Lara Mörwald from the winter of 2023. The font version "Black" corresponds to the handwritten original, all thinner variants up to the wafer-thin "Hairline" are derived from it. In the variable font, the intermediate forms can be selected steplessly. In order to preserve the handwritten character of the font, "Die Lara" contains several alternates to most letters and numerals, so that different character forms alternate in the typeface. If the "ligatures" function is activated in the app (which is the default in most programs), these alternates appear automatically as you type. There is also an alternative "swashed" variant of some letters. So you can set somewhat livelier accents at the beginning or end of a word. "Die Lara" also contains fractions and tabular figures.

Jugendstil Initials were designed by Heinrich Vogeler around 1905, based on the German blackletter tradition. A similar set of initials by Vogeler, but based on roman letters was released by Rudhardsche Geisserei of Offenbach at about this time. I believe the originals were woodcuts. The backgrounds to the letterforms may be seen as examples of Heimatkunst, an art movement within Germany that drew deliberate inspiration from the rural countryside. Like the Arts and Crafts Movement in England a little earlier, Heimatkunst may be seen, in part, as a romantic rejection of urban industrialization, while at the same time representing a back-to-roots nationalism. Like any river, it was fed by many streams. Jugendstil Initials is an experiment with which I am most pleased. It is far and away the most complex font HiH has produced and I was uncertain whether or not it could be done successfully. To oversimplify, a font is produced by creating outlines of each character, using points along the outline to define the contour. A simple sans-serif letter A with crossbar can be created using as few as 10 points. We decided to make a comparison of the number of points we used to define the uppercase A in various fonts. Cori, Gaiety Girl and Page No 508 all use 12 points. Patent Reclame uses 39 and Publicity Headline uses 43. All the rest of the A’s, except the decorative initials, fall somewhere in between. The initial letters run from 48 points for Schnorr Initials to 255 for Morris Initials Two, with 150 being about average. Then there is a jump to 418 points for Morris Initials One and, finally, to 1626 points for Jugendstil Initials. And this was only after we selectively simplified the designs so our font creation software (Fontographer) could render them. The average was 1678, not including X and Y. There was no X and Y in the original design and we have provided simple stand-ins to fill out the alphabet, without trying to imitate the style of the orginal design. We did a lot of looking to find a compatible lower case. We decided that Morris Gothic from the same period was the best match in color, design and historical context. We felt so strongly about the choice that we decided to produce our Morris Gothic font for the purpose of providing a lower case for Jugendstil Initials. The long s, as well as the ligatures ch and ck are provided. at 181, 123 (leftbrace) and 125 (rightbrace) respectively. This font was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. I hope you agree.

Type designers have been integrating the design of sans serifs with serifed forms since the 1920s. Early examples are Edward Johnston's design for the London Underground, and Eric Gill's Gill Sans. These were followed by Jan van Krimpen's Romulus Sans, Frederic Goudy's ITC Goudy Sans, Hermann Zapf's Optima, Hans Meier's Syntax and Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger. Now, ITC Stone Humanist joins this tradition. It is a careful blend of traditional sans serif shapes and classical serifed letterforms. ITC Stone Humanist grew out an experiment with the medium weight of ITC Stone Sans, a design that already showed a relationship to these sans serif-serif hybrids. ITC Stone Sans has proportions based on those of ITC Stone Serif, and its thick-and-thin stroke contrast suggests the bloodline of humanistic sans serif typefaces. But other aspects of ITC Stone Sans are more closely aligned to the gothics and grotesques, a tradition that accounts for the largest portion of sans serif designs. Enter ITC Stone Humanist. During his experiments with the earlier design, Sumner Stone recalls, I was actually quite surprised at how seemingly subtle changes transformed the face," moving the design firmly into the humanist tradition. "The form of the 'g,' 'l,' 'M,' 'W,' and more subtly the 'a' and 'e' are part of the restructuring of the family," he explains. The top endings of vertical lower case strokes have been cropped on an angle, as have the ascender and descender stroke endings. ITC Stone Humanist is a full-fledged member of the ITC Stone family. It has been produced with the same complement of weights, and the x-heights, proportions, and underlying character shapes are completely compatible with the three original designs. The original ITC Stone Sans is a popular typeface, in part because of its notable versatility. ITC Stone Humanist shares this virtue, and can be used successfully at very small sizes, in long passages of text copy, and even as billboard-sized display type."

Blackletter typefaces follow certain fixed rules, both in respect to their forms and to the orthography. Possibly, they were a reaction to the half-developed Carolingian minuscule which was soon to end in the Latin script. Narrow, ordered script was to replace the round, hesitant and shattered shapes of letters in order to simplify writing, to unify the meaning of individual letters, and to save some parchment, too. Opposed to the practice common in monasterial scriptoriums where Uncial, Irish and Carolingian inspiration flew freely and as a result, the styles of writing differed in each monastery, the blackletter type was to define one, common standard. It was to express spiritual verticality, in perfect tune with the architecture of the Gothic era. Typography became an integral part of the overall style of the period. The pointed arch and the blackletter type were the vanguard of the spectacular transformation from the Middle Ages towards the modern era, they were a celebration of a time when works of art were not signed by their makers yet. Some unfortunate souls keep linking blackletter solely with Germany and the Third Reich, while the truth is that its direct predecessor, the Gothic minuscule, evolved mostly in France. Even Hitler himself indicated blackletter type obsolete in the age of steel, iron and concrete – thus making a significant contribution to the spreading of the Latin script in Germany. Once we leave our prejudice aside, we find that the shapes of blackletter type have exceptional potential, unheard of in sans-serif letterforms. The lower case letters fit into an imaginary rectangle which is easily extended both upwards and sideways. In its scope and in the name itself, the Moyenage type family project is to celebrate the diversity of the Middle Ages. I begun realizing the urge to design my own blackletter when visiting the beer gardens of Munich and while walking through the villages of rural Austria. The letters from the notice boards of inns are scented with spring air, with the flowers of cudweed, with white sausage and weissbier. The crooked calligraphic hooks and beaks seem to imitate the hearty yodeling of local drinkers and the rustle of the giant skirts of girls who distribute the giant wreaths of beer jugs. Moyenage is, however, a modern replica of blackletter, so it contains some otherwise unacceptable Latin script elements in upper case. I chose these keeping the modern reader in mind, striving for better legibility. The font is drawn as if written with a flat pen or brush, and with the ambition to, perhaps, serve as a calligraphic model. In medium width, the face is surprisingly well legible; it is perfect for menus as well as posters and CD covers for some of the heavier kinds of music. It has five types of numerals and also a set of Cyrillic script, symbolising the lovelorn union of Germans and Russians in the 20th century. Thus, it is well suited for the setting of bilingual texts of the German classic literature, which, according to the ancient rules, must not be set in Latin script.

A Venetian serif in 6 styles The Apolline typeface family was created by Jean François Porchez as a means to study the transition from Renaissance writing into the first printing types. Rather than sticking to the method commonly used these days for the creation of revivals of Jenson or Bembo types, it seemed more interesting to try and get in the same mindset as those exceptional designers during this pivotal period in the history of typography. Thus Apolline is an exploration of the design methods used by people like Nicolas Jenson and his contemporaries for adapting handwriting with its multiple occurrences (a, a, a, b, b, b…) into single, unique signs (a, b…). Initially Jean François made drawings modelled after his own calligraphy. They were done at a very small size on tracing paper (2 cm high for the capitals) to preserve the irregularity of human handwriting. Besides emphasising the horizontal parts of the letter forms, the serifs were designed asymmetrically to reinforce the rhythm of the writing. The final drawings were produced at a large size (10 cm high for the capitals) to allow for subtle optimisation of specific details. The very narrow and fluid Apolline italic Influenced by various concepts for an ideal italic by Van Krimpen, Gill, etc. Apolline italic was designed at 8° degrees. Although the structure of the letterforms were informed by chancery scripts, the italic has full serifs like the roman. Very narrow and fluid, its unique design creates a good contrast when used in combination with its upright counterparts. Thanks to the presence of the serifs similar to roman typefaces it sets very neatly in large sizes. The next step was digitising the drawings with Ikarus (the pre-Bézier-curves era) to create the final roman and italic fonts. Two years later, when the family was expanded to six series the same method was used, this time with Fontographer. This was necessary for correcting a few problems caused by the conversion to Bézier outlines, and to add intermediate weights. Before the advent of feature-rich OpenType, quality type families consisted of several separate fonts for each weight to provide users with various sets of numerals, an extended ligature set and alternates, ornaments, and so on. Introducing Apolline Morisawa Awards 1993

Max Joseph Gradl designed Art Nouveau jewelry in Germany. At least some of his designs were produced by Theodor Fahrner of Pforzheim, Germany -- one of the leading manufacturers of fine art jewelry on the Continent from 1855 to 1979. I don't know if he designed for Fahrner exclusively, but every example I found was produced by that firm. I assume it was also the same M.J, who edited a book, Authentic Art Nouveau Stained Glass which was reissued by Dover and is still available. For an artist as accomplished as Gradl was, he is very tough to research. There just does not seem to have been much written about him. The jeweler is visible in most of his typeface designs. They exhibit a sculptural quality as if they were modeled in clay (or gold) rather than drawn on paper. His monograms, especially, reflect that quality. Those shown in plates 112 through 116 in Petzendorfer actually appear to have been designed specifically for fabricating in the form of gold or silver pendents. Of the initial letters that came out of Germany during this period, these by Gradl seem unusually open and lyrical. They seem to be dancing on the page, rather than sitting. Please note that Gradl designed only the decorated initials. All other characters supplied were extrapolated by HiH, including the accented initials. Orn.1 (unicode E004) is based on a jeweled gold clasp designed by Gradl (please check out Gallery Image on Myfonts.com). Also included are an art nouveau girl’s face, a swan and the face from Munch’s “Scream”, from scans of old printer’s ornaments. Gradl Initialen M represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 341 glyphs. Both upper & lower case provided with appropriate accents. 2. 558 Kerning Pairs. 3. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: salt, dlig, ornm and kern. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Refined various glyph outlines. 6. Alternative characters: 16 upper case letters (with gaps in surrounding decorations for accents above letter). 8. Four Ornaments: face1, face2, swan and orn1 (silhouette of Gradl clasp) The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

The Joanna® Nova design, by Monotype Studio designer Ben Jones, is an extensive update to Eric Gill’s original Joanna typefaces and brings this much admired – but underused – slab serif typeface into the 21st century. Joanna Nova features 18 fonts – more than twice as many as the original Joanna – with a wide range of weights including thin and ultra black, which were not available in the original design. Every glyph has been redrawn using a variety of reference sources, including Gill’s original sketches and the copper patterns used in Joanna’s initial production. When Jones set out to design Joanna Nova, he saw that the ‘real Joanna’ was not immediately evident. “Some of Gill’s original drawings have a sloped ‘M’; there is also a ‘K’ and ‘R’ with a curled leg and a letter ‘d’ without the flat bottom,” he explained. “Is this Joanna? Or is it the version used to print Gill’s Essay on Typography? Or is it the digital version with which most people are surely more familiar than any other version? Ultimately, I think, none of these and all of these were ‘Joanna’ because, as with any typeface, it is more the idea or concept behind the typeface that makes it what it is. My approach was to create a version of Joanna that appears in your mind when you think of Joanna.” Jones noted that one of the most distinguishing aspects of Joanna is the italics; and that, for reasons unknown, many of the characters in the current versions are much more condensed than those in the hand-set fonts of metal type., The newer designs being almost unusable at small sizes. The italics in Joanna Nova have been reworked to be more legible and closer to their original widths. Joanna Nova expands the original Joanna in several ways that open up new typographic possibilities, These additions include several new weights, support for Greek and Cyrillic scripts, small caps for all scripts in both upright and italic styles, several numeral options and a host of context-sensitive ligatures. The Joanna Nova typeface family is part of the new Eric Gill Series, drawing on Monotype's heritage to remaster and expand and revitalize Eric Gill’s body of work, with more weights, more characters and more languages to meet a wide range of design requirements. The series also brings to life new elements inspired by some of Gill’s unreleased work, discovered in Monotype’s archive of original typeface drawings and materials of the last century.

Gundrada ML was inspired by the lettering on the tomb of Gundrada de Warenne. She was buried at Southover Church at Lewes, Sussex, in the south of England in 1085. The Latin inscription on her tomb, STIRPS GUNDRADA DUCUM, meaning “Gundrada, descendant of the Duke” may have led to the speculation that she was the daughter of William, Duke of Normandy and bastard son of Robert the Devil of Normandy and Arletta, daughter of a tanner in Falaise. In 1066 William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned William I of England. More commonly known as William the Conquerer, he commissioned a string of forts around the kingdom and charged trusted Norman Barons to control the contentious Anglo-Saxon population. William de Warenne, husband of Gundrada, was one of these Barons. There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility. The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension. Features 1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist. 3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures. 4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets). 5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages. 6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic. 7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #. 8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl. 9. Historic alternate longs. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

A sturdy workhorse with the grace of a gazelle, the FF Pastoral typeface family marries pure craftsmanship with rapturous excesses of form. With his fifteenth release under the FontFont brand, prolific French designer Xavier Dupré has filled a typographic toolbox with plentiful options ranging from a tender, feathery Thin to a robust, healthy Black. At a glance, FF Pastoral appears deceptively simple, particularly in the middle weights. That surface serenity is intentional and allows for easy reading and quick comprehension of short blocks of copy. Upon closer inspection, FF Pastoral is complex and nuanced, carrying a balanced tension in its forms. This plays particularly well in magazine spreads and corporate logos, where uniqueness is a virtue. In creating his latest design, Dupré drew inspiration from a tasteful mix of references, combining diverse elements with a deft hand. While its letter shapes were informed by humanist-geometric hybrid Gill Sans, FF Pastoral’s proportions have been optimized for contemporary typography. Slightly condensed but generously spaced, FF Pastoral features a tall x-height, open counters, and subtle, sprightly italics slanted at just 5°. Proportional oldstyle figures are the default in the family, with tabular and lining numbers and fractions accessible through OpenType features. Elegant details evocative of calligraphy judiciously pepper the FF Pastoral glyph set. The ‘e’ bears an oblique crossbar, while the right leg of the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ are insouciantly curved in both the upright and italic variants. Further flourishes appear throughout the italics, notably in the ‘T’ and the ‘Z’, the gloriously looped tail of the ‘G’, and an extraordinary ampersand. Sharp-eyed fans of Dupré’s work may feel like they’re in familiar territory, and they would be right. An early version of FF Pastoral sprang to life in 2017 as Malis, a family in four weights on the heavier side of the spectrum. Over time, Dupré refined his original design, expanding it with four lighter styles and including true italics for all. The lightest weights are ethereal, with exquisitely delicate strokes drawing the eye in and across a line of type. The most substantial styles are tremendous in their power, allowing text to make a deep impression in print or on screen. Fully fleshed out, FF Pastoral works sublimely in a vast array of text and display settings. Dupré sees his latest FontFont offering as a ‘cultural’ typeface, perfect for the pages of an oversized coffee-table book or business communications where warmth and informality will win the day. Born in Aubenas, France (1977), Xavier Dupré is a gifted user of type as well as an award-winning type designer and lettering artist. After training in graphic design in Paris, Dupré studied calligraphy and typography at the Scriptorium de Toulouse. Since releasing FF Parango in 2001, Dupré has published such FontFont classics as the FF Absara and FF Sanuk superfamilies, FF Megano, FF Tartine, and FF Yoga. A designer of Khmer fonts as well as Latin typefaces, Dupré splits his time between Europe and Asia.

Fashion style meets typography in 9 styles The Ysans designed by Jean François Porchez is a sanserif influenced by Cassandre lettering pieces and the geometric sanserif style from the inter-war period. Since Chanel logo, the geometric sanserif style is the favorite typographic thing in fashion. Ysans asserts this reference. Not only Haute-Couture houses use these categories of typefaces for their visual identity, but fashion magazines usually strength their layout with these geometric sanserif when a Didot isn’t used. Details of Ysans drawings Nevertheless, Ysans takes its sources in certain details imagined by the graphic designer Adolphe Mouron Cassandre for the monogram then logotype Yves Saint Laurent (1961 …). One thing keeps coming in again and again in Cassandre’s post-war graphic work: the pointed finish and endings, the references to the Roman capitals engraved and unique features such as the open R or other details influenced by Antiqua and calligraphic forms or ductus (you should have in mind that an earlier typeface by Cassandre is the Peignot, a modern uncial based on researches of the palaeographer Jean Mallon.) Certain letters from the Ysans are directly an homage to the Yves Saint Laurent logo, the R, the narrow U, the apex of the N, and all the details of such pointed endings on the f and t lowercases. The Ysans, a typeface between diversity and synthesis There are several ways to approach the design of a new geometric sanserif. The first approach is to follow the Bauhaus philosophy by designing in the most rational way, typographic forms based on simple geometric elements: square, round, triangle. Another approach is to start a revival based on an historical geometric typeface and optimize the original ideas, in order to adapt certain details to the contemporary needs. For Ysans, the approach is somewhat different because this project started in 2011 at ZeCraft as a typeface designed specifically for Yves Saint Laurent Beauty, still in use by the brand under its original name Singulier. The Singulier-Ysans has been conceptualized by ZeCraft, both drawing its sources from Cassandre and various historical geometric typefaces. Some will spot specific traits as in Futura, others in Metro or Kabel. By closely observing the Ysans, the result can also recall the way Eric Gill draw the curves and endings of his typefaces, of which Jean François Porchez is a fervent admirer. In the end, Ysans is like fashion as envisioned by Yves Saint Laurent who constantly revealed multiple references in his new collections, without being recognisable any other than with his unique style. “Fashions pass, style is eternal. Fashion is futile, not style.” Cherry on the cake: Ysans Mondrian Ysans Mondrian, named in reference to the Mondrian dress created by Yves Saint Laurent, is the multi-layer version of the family. Ysans, fashion style meets typography Club des directeurs artistiques, 49e palmarès

Periódico (newspaper in Spanish), was originally commissioned by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC. Inspired by old Spanish typographic engravings, mostly from the second half of the 18th Century, we picked out the most relevant details of Spanish typography as the source of that inspiration, and instead of making a revival or an interpretation of these models, we started from scratch to create a truly original font family. The goal was to achieve a very distinctive family, functional and versatile at the same time, and reminiscent of old Spanish typography. Although we have borrowed many details from the old Spanish typography, like the nail, which is present in the letters U, G, or J, which we worked and evolved in order to be applied on other letters, we have also left behind several others. One example is the tilde of the ñ engraved by Gerónimo Gil, a very distinctive element of Spanish typography that was intentionally omitted for being too atypical to be used in a contemporary font.  The letters a and g are probably the most distinctive of the Periódico family. The shape of the bowl in the letter a, with the top arch in diagonal position, is very characteristic of old Spanish types. In Periódico, we emphasized this detail by applying it to many other letters (such as g, j, and t) up to a point that it became the leitmotiv of this family. The formal finish of serifs and terminals is something that gives great personality to any typeface, so we came up with plenty of alternatives in order to find the exact shape we wanted: sober, elegant, and contemporary. Even though the serifs are geometric, the upper terminals have a curve with a dynamic very similar to the arch in the a or the notch in the j. The terminals in the capitals follow the same style, but, in this case, the inspiration comes from Pradell’s Missal, which on the other hand has been influenced by the types engraved by Johann Michael Fleischman in the Netherlands. Eighteenth-Century types were mostly used for printing books. Therefore, they had very generous proportions (large ascendents and descendants) and high contrast, but today, these characteristics do not work well in newspapers because of the worldwide demand for more space-saving fonts. The adaptation of the type’s proportions to be used for a newspaper was one of the most interesting parts of the project, specially the time taken to find the perfect balance between the x height\ and legibility. Periódico is presented in 30 different styles, for a total of 30 fonts—10 for text (from Light to Bold) and 20 for display sizes (from Thin to Ultra Black); this family results in an extensive system capable of solving all the needs of a large publication.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <

The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.