The PARATYPE library is our latest major addition, consisting of more than 370 typefaces. In the spirit of the perestroika changes and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Russian type designers quit the state-owned Polygraphmash foundry to establish ParaType, the first, and now largest Russian digital type foundry. The ParaType team under the supervision of Vladimir Yefimov creates new typefaces and explores the Russian typographic heritage by making digital versions of existing Russian designs: these include the hits of Soviet typography such as Literaturnaya and Journal Sans. Most ParaType fonts are available in Western/Roman, Central European, Turkish and Cyrillic encodings. The Russian constructivist and avant garde movements of the early 20th century inspired many ParaType typefaces, including Rodchenko, Quadrat Grotesk, Ariergard, Unovis, Tauern, Dublon and Stroganov. The ParaType library also includes many excellent book and newspaper typefaces such as Octava, Lazurski, Bannikova, Neva or Petersburg. On the other hand, if you need a pretty face to knock your clients dead, meet the ParaType girls: Tatiana, Betina, Hortensia, Irina, Liana, Nataliscript, Nina, Olga and Vesna (also check Zhikharev who is not a girl but still very pretty). ParaType excels in adding Cyrillic characters to existing Latin typefaces — if your company is ever going to do business with Eastern Europe, we recommend you make them part of your corporate identity! ParaType created CE and Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces licensed from other foundries, including Bell Gothic, Caslon, English 157, Futura, Original Garamond, Gothic 725, Humanist 531, Kis, Raleigh, or Zapf Elliptical 711.

Marit Otto about C-Nation: The building typeface. Although the 70ties were very liberating and progressive, still girls played mainly with dolls and sweet things and boys with all kinds of challenging stuff. They did all sorts of basic scientific experiments in mini labs and of course built cool things with Meccano building sets. As a girl I was perfectly happy with the toys I had access to. But at the same time I was very curious about all the adventure toys and discoveries my brother did. It also made me wonder why the grown up people thought that our world could be separated so easily by separating our toys in pink and blue sections. At this day of age Meccano is probably hopelessly old fashioned and far to manual. Children of today are fed by fast images and cool animations on screen, they learn, play, communicate and relax in the same space, the digital space. The special feature of Meccano was that even though it was very basic there was the promise you could create anything. It might even contribute to a logical mind. The typeface I designed refers to the Meccano feel. It is a creative typeface. A bit masculine and bold looking perhaps but after the first impression a subtle and refined female touch is revealed. It has links to architecture and associations with metal constructions like ‘The Eiffel Tower’ and (old railway) bridges. I am convinced that we all think of that as very charming man-made objects.