Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Guanabara is the third release of Plau Type Foundry. It started from the need of a wayfinding typeface that had personality enough to be the brand typeface for a city. The city of Rio de Janeiro, with its never-ending curves and all year long summer weather provided the constraints and requirements of this typeface. From there, it evolved to be a workhorse, with 8 weights from Thin to Black and matching true italics. It just had to have the features that all us designers have grown to love, such as alternate letters (a, g and r for the romans), tabular and proportional figures in lining and oldstyle set-ups as well as small caps, fractions and all that jazz (I mean, samba). And it needed to be recognizable and distinct. For that, design features like tapered R legs, capitals with classic proportions and calligraphic finishes on the terminals proved crucial. And last, but not least, like Rio, it had to welcome many cultures. We came to think of it as the “Typeface from Ipanema”, with a classic, timeless look, swinging elegance and joyful attitude.

Henrician can claim two sources of inspiration. One of these was a set of beautiful capital letterforms seen on the cover of a 19th century album of engravings. The engravings contained therein depicted lovely examples of half-timbered Tudor architecture and there was a clear 'Tudor' intent behind the letterforms. The second source of inspiration is more conceptual-the title lettering of period films from the 30's to the 60's…think if the opening text when Errol Flynn plays Robin Hood, or think of Richard the Lionheart, or even that great comedy Classic 'Carry on Henry', and it's discussion of Sir Thomas de Cobbler….but we digress! Henrician is a set of eight display and text (but perhaps not Body Text) faces in a 'Tudor Revival' spirit. Like any good revival design they are somehow at home with a wide range period themed design work, covering the medieval until, perhaps, the 18th century, just so long as we're more concerned with fun and appearance than strict historical accuracy. The family will be at home in the realms of advertising, posters, cover design and web design. Try Henrician out today!

Anziano follows the direction staked out with Delicato. When creating traditional typefaces, it is inevitable to be influenced by earlier designs. Anziano does show touches of another classic typeface – Weiss (by Emil Rudolf Weiss, 1926). Weiss is often misjudged and overlooked. Perhaps the most well known Swedish typeface – Berling (by Karl-Erik Forsberg, 1914–1995) is actually based largely on Weiss. MRF have appreciated the design of Weiss uprights for a long time. When Stefan Hattenbach bought the first Swedish edition of The Lord of the Rings (1959–61), in 2004, he was amazed by the excellent flow of the text presented on each page. Despite the very original character that Weiss has, it was a pleasure to read a book set in such a typeface. MRF realized that several major foundries had already done interpretations of Weiss, more or less true to the original. MRF didn’t want to add on to that list! Instead Stefan tried to find his own path. Anziano consists of three core styles, Regular, Italic and Bold; each with small caps, ornaments, stylistic ligatures, and extended Latin accents. Lining, tabular, oldstyle and smallcap numerals help round out Anziano’s typographic range and function.

FF Nort™ has all the design attributes that make for an exceptionally versatile print and web typeface – and it benefits from a distinct personality. Equally at home in long-form text copy or billboard size headlines, the family knows few boundaries. There is also a handcrafted neo-grotesque quality to the design, giving FF Nort a friendly mien and separating it from other industrial strength sans serif typefaces. Terminals are clipped at 90° angles to the stroke and counters are slightly condensed, saving space with no loss of legibility. The light weights have a subtle elegance, while the bold are commanding. All eight weights, and their italic companions, enjoy a large character set, with support for most Central and several Eastern European languages – including Cyrillic and Greek. Drawn by Jörg Hemker, the inspiration for FF Nort came from Transport, the typeface designed for Britain’s highway signage. Transport is formal, intellectual, and a model for modern street signage, but it was not intended for small sizes or continuous reading. Hemker took the basic structure of Transport and rebuilt it into a design that’s perfect for a wide range of contemporary hardcopy and digital imaging projects.

PT Root is a contemporary sans serif with strict, laconic forms. It’s a versatile typeface that provides a wide range of possibilities. Regular style works great in long texts (both on screen and in print), as well as in the interfaces. Medium and Demibold are good for signage, while the lightest and boldest styles look great in large sizes and are suitable for the brand identity. PT Root is a sans serif with 10 weights and a variable version. Its character set includes extended Latin and extended Cyrillic, three arrow variants, fractions, index numbers and letters. PT Root automatically lifts dashes and brackets with the case change. Its characters have stylistic variants, including the single-storey a, a strikethrough zero and some local alternates for Bulgarian and Serbian Cyrillic. PT Root can work in a project both independently and in pairs. Contemporary serif typefaces are the best text companions for it — try for example PT Serif, Yefimov Serif or Scientia. In case PT Root is the only text typeface in the project, then combine it with serious typefaces, such us technical (Din Condensed as an example) or pronouncedly contemporary typefaces, including postmodern ones, from Stapel or Spile to Helsa.

Mellow Sans is a soft and friendly rounded sans serif. Its bold styles are great for packages of something tasty, while light and regular ones work well in rather long texts, from a children's book to a reading app, or a family restaurant menu. The typeface was created by Natalya Vasilyeva, an expert in designing text and calligraphic typefaces. Mellow Sans’s forms are based on humanist sans serifs. The nobility and liveliness of Renaissance calligraphy reads beneath its curves and makes the typeface even friendlier, while helping the eye to move along the line. The typeface supports extended Latin, extended Cyrillic (all major languages of the Russia’s peoples) and Greek. It also has old style figures, arrows and non-alphabetic signs. With Mellow Sans as a heading typeface (in that case bold styles fit the best), calm open sans serifs, f.e. Vast or Fact, are its optimal text companions on the screen. Calm serifs, f. e., Octava, Scientia or Aelita, will work as its companions on paper. And to create expressive typography, for example, in packaging, you can match Mellow Sans with quirky rounded serifs — Cooper or Epice.

Opa-locka JNL is named for a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida and is based on an Art Nouveau-era bit of hand lettering found on vintage sheet music. Legendary aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss (who successfully developed the city of Miami Springs and the city of Hialeah with James Bright) began the development of Opa-locka around 1925 as a planned community with a "1001 Arabian Nights" theme. Plans for this exclusive community included a country club and a small private airfield, but the hurricane of 1926 derailed Curtiss' original vision of the city. Opa-locka gradually took shape as a residential area for middle-class families, but the closing of a long-established Marine base, changing demographics and a reputation for being a hot-spot for crime, drug abuse and corruption tarnished this once-grand community (which boasts the largest collection of Moorish Revival architecture in the Western hemisphere). Old-time Miamians bristle when the city's name (an abbreviation of a Seminole place name, spelled Opa-tisha-wocka-locka) is mis-spelled as "Opa-Locka", "Opa Locka" or "Opalocka". The correct name is hyphenated, and the second part is in lower case.

Nassim is a contemporary typeface for multilingual text-setting. With its lively texture and balanced rhythm, Nassim is a proven workhorse for a vast array of applications, from literature to the sciences, scholarly publications to contemporary news. Nassim Latin is stout in colour and resolute in its construction, standing up to the demands of long-form reading. But the heartiness that keeps it going is balanced with lively details: the asymmetric serifs and calligraphic modulation allude just enough to broad-nib flourishes to keep the reader alert and looking for what comes next. Nassim has always been ahead of the curve, bridging the distinct typographic traditions of Arabic and Latin without forcing the typographer into compromise. Nassim Latin offers upright and true italic styles across five weights, supporting more than 110 languages, and designed to pair harmoniously in multi-script settings with Nassim Arabic. Beyond that, it is equipped with smart OpenType features like small caps, case-sensitive punctuation, and a full palette of ranging numerals, fractions, and superior and inferior figures ensure that Nassim Latin is up to any task, be it print publications or delivering late-breaking online news.

Pliego is a textface designed to offer a comfortable continuous reading, with humanist proportions, an even texture, and informal calligraphic details noticeable only at big sizes, that gives it a contemporary feeling. Pliego has been named after Pliegos de Cordel, the Spanish word for the popular books that were common during the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries. These were rough, cheap books that basically consisted in a folded sheet attached to a string, hence the name. Their content was varied, from popular tales to ballads and songs, but also crimes and mysteries. They were cheaply made, roughly printed and bound. The name Pliego evokes the idea of a rough look, angular edges, informal taste, but classical look. To cover today’s needs, Pliego includes five weights with matching italics. Designed and engineered for continuous reading, the Book, Regular and Medium weights will perform at their best under 14 points. However, don’t be scared to use for headlines and titles: because of its quirky details and calligraphic flavour, Pliego’s personality is accentuated when enlarged. With an extensive Latin character set, Pliego covers a wide amount of Latin-based languages, including Latin Plus encoding and Vietnamese support.

Enzian is the fruit of a yearlong German Chancellor Fellowship sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Our hope was simple: to make something useful and beautiful out of something that most people consider to be neither. We were fascinated by the complex persona of Blackletter in Germany and drawn to its emotive ornament and its sensual, non-geometry. Two areas in particular, the long-standing rivalry and widely-believed inferiority that Blackletter had with Roman type and Blackletter’s relevance in contemporary culture, became the foundation of the project. The result is Enzian: an invigorated, original Blackletter of uncommon depth and hopefully, a bit of charm. It is warm and expressive, feminine and contemporary, while staying true to its hand-written, calligraphic roots. Enzian is a multi-language, workhorse typeface that can create hierarchy (with unconventional italic and small caps), and has numerals that fit the family. It is a display face that isn't afraid of handling longer text; one that is equally comfortable in headlines and in poetry. We are delighted to announce that Enzian has been awarded a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design by the Type Director’s Club.

Ellie Script is a hand drawn signature style typeface. Ellie is great for branding, headlines, invitation cards, poems, posters or as a logotype. Boasting over 600 glyphs, Ellie is equipped with handy OpenType features - Contextual Alternates and Standard Ligatures are automatically on and they help to keep the connections smooth and text varied to simulate hand writing. In addition Ellie Script is equipped with Swash and Stylistic Alternates that can be used for more customised look and in addition it has Stylistic Alternates that can be used for long end swash to a word. If that isn’t enough there are also Discretionary Ligatures: certain letter pairs like th, lt, or, is are made into more showy. They work best in shorter texts. Ellie has three ampersands and two sets of numerals, and even more alternates can be found from the Character Window. Ellie Script is PUA encoded so you can access the extras in most graphic design softwares. Ellie Script Ornaments is a set of strokes and arrows with the same look so that they can be used to complement layouts with Ellie Script. Have fun!

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

The Cholla typeface family was designed by Sibylle Hagmann in 1998-99 and named after a species of cactus she encountered in the Mojave Desert. Cholla was originally developed for the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. There, art director Denise Gonzales Crisp and associate designer, Carla Figueroa, collaborated with Hagmann to create a series of fonts that would offer a great deal of variation. The variety was needed to echo the school's nine different departments, yet together the fonts had to exude a unified feel. It was first used in the radically designed 1999/2000 Art Center catalog which won a honorable mention in I.D. magazine and was featured in Eye No. 31. Originally Hagmann set out to design a typeface that, as she recalls, "I could feel comfortable making, first of all, and one that would serve a purpose and had a clear idea behind it, and something that I would want to use myself." Stylistically Hagmann set out to create "12 cuts with slightly different personalities, with different ideas applied. For example the bold weight isn't simply the Regular with weight gain, but has bold letterforms with their own peculiar details. What all weights share and what is the necessary unifying detail is the tapered curve - marked out, for example, in the lowercase b's left top and bottom of the bowl." Gonzales adds: "The forms seemed classical as well. This combination could have a long life, and be timely. I also saw - at least in the beginnings of Cholla - forms that connoted hybrid, of inter-connection, of human and machine growing together. These notions seem appropriate for a school that teaches design and art." Greek version by Panos Haratzopoulos.

Get in touch with Tipogra Fio and get inspired by Guaruja Neue specimens. Guaruja Neue is a neo-grotesque typeface with additional industrial traits to it, such as open corners in diagonal glyphs and short curves. The semi-cursive italics shapes, more than an orthographic matter, give sea waves for the headlines and copies that Guaruja Neue will compose, since it is named after a city on the coast of São Paulo, Brazil. Stylistic alternates, ligatures, ordinals, arrows and emojis give extra personality for texts that cross millennial and modernist concepts, going from a comprehensive Latin script, including Vietnamese support, until a basic Cyrillic set. Brazilian music tells the graphic story of Guaruja Neue specimens, songs that speak about beaches and the city of Guarujá, as well as the inspiration of 50’s and 60’s modernist design and the music movement of Bossa Nova. This family is also an evolution of Guaruja Grotesk (2021), a typeface with four fonts —Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic— developed as part of a design school project, that now in Neue gains professionalism, refinement and knowledge. Guaruja Grotesk took 18 months to make, and Neue took additional 12 months of redrawing and rethinking, as design as processes. Part of the project got feedback from the typeface designer Ulrike Raush, under the Alphabettes mentorship program. Overview and features: 8 weights and 8 italics; 2 free fonts: Guaruja Neue Regular and Guaruja Neue Italic; Extended Latin and basic Cyrillic; 800+ glyphs; Numbers: proportional, tabular, superscripts, subscripts, denominators, numerators and fractions; Greek for math; Case-Sensitive forms; Arrows; Standard and discretionary ligatures; SS01: one story a and SS02: two story g; Emojis and SS03: negative alternate emojis; Ligatures for English ordinals;

Teramo™ is daring, sharp and dynamic. Its personality is derived from asymmetry and movement. It is a contemporary serif family full of modern design elements playing with proportions of works of XV and XVI century masters such as Francesco Griffo or Claude Garamond. The family features four optical sizes. Display sizes feature extreme stroke contrast and are intended for fashion, lifestyle, cosmetics, magazine, business, hi-tech and advertising use. Text styles are created for all kinds of body copy — long and short paragraphs, books and websites in any modern design context. They are crafted to be elegant and legible, featuring more generous spacing and scrupulous kerning. Display weights are designed as modern, extraordinary variations on didone style. Teramo’s letterforms are merging classical proportions and precise, contemporary details such as asymmetric serifs, sharp edges and unconventional glyph shapes. Another important factor constituating Teramo’s personality is an angled axis, unusual for didone families and giving the typeface much more organic and dynamic feel. Teramo features a lively true italics strongly related to cursive handwriting. The italic styles imply movement, energy and fluency, introducing a new color to paragraph text, as well as being a powerful and interesting standalone display type. The family introduces additional titling letter variations for headlines and display uses, such as sharp and modern lowercase “y” or uppercase alternates for better all caps typography. Teramo consists of 56 fonts in 4 optical sizes - 28 uprights and their corresponding true italics + 2 variable fonts. It has extended language support as well as broad number of OpenType features, such as case sensitive forms, standard and discretionary ligatures, titling alternates, contextual alternates, lining, oldstyle figures, slashed zero, fractions, superscript and subscript, ordinals, currencies and symbols.

Shueitai is a typeface that has been undergoing development for more than a century, starting from the days when Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) was still known as Shueisha. As Japan underwent rapid modernization during the early years of the Meiji era, Shueisha, believing that printing was a business befitting a modern civilized society, began operations with a focus on letterpress. Before long the company expanded into developing its own typefaces. In 1912 it completed a full range of Mincho type, in sizes from Sho-go (#0 size, 42pt) through Hachi-go (#8, 4pt), which it called "Shueitai" a new style that came to form one of the two mainstreams of Japanese typefaces and continues to have a significant influence on font design even today. The Shueitai typeface is distinguished by abundant variations matching the size of type and the changing demands of the times. Whether it is the spirited and powerful Sho-go, the delicate and flowing San-go (#3, 16pt), or the bright and solidly reassuring Shuei-Mincho L, all Shueitai typefaces share a vibrant brushwork that adds an expression of eloquence and a burst of brilliance to every printed word. Currently, Shueitai is composed of 17 kinds of fonts useful for various purposes. The world has witnessed vast changes in the environment surrounding the printed world, with the tran-sition first from letterpress to Desktop Publishing, and most recently to e-books. But no matter how this environment might evolve, the written word remains the basis of communication, and the importance of beautiful and readable typefaces stays unchanged. In preparation for the changes that will inevitably come during the future, DNP will continue to evolve the Shueitai designs from now on. Through its continual reinvention, Shueitai, a typeface consistently adopted at the vanguard of the industry, perhaps represents Japanese innovation at its very best.

Acarau is a 6 fonts display typeface with high reverse contrast—since from Roman capitals and calligraphy, usually Latin alphabet letters have thiner horizontal steams and thicker verticals, these features being optical or visual—quite adequate for logos, headlines and posters. Moreover, the style of the typeface is inspired by Italics form factor: lowercase letters having less strokes to make their shapes; A has one story; E has one stroke shape, such as K, G, Y and Z; F has a descent. To give it more calligraphic feeling, there is contrast for uppercases as well, this is very perceived by the diagonal letters like A, K, M, N, V, W, X, Y and Z. J also has a descent. Q and R have natural swashes, but they have alternates in case the costumer want to go for more usual forms—including accent marked letters. Acarau is a 12 months project, the contrast for uppercases were increasing as the process was made. In the middle it is found suitable blend the letter shapes with the history of Brazilian music from the 70’s and 80’s, since the font has a tropical, warm, spicy and nostalgic feeling. Songs from bands and singers that emerged on Rio de Janeiro like Paralamas do Sucesso, Cazuza, Lulu Santos and Kid Abelha bring the beach accent and rhythm that this font has. OpenType features complement the set, which has Multi-Lingual support for a comprehensive Latin set, including Vietnamese—meaning more than 640 glyphs: Case-Sensitive forms, so symbols can properly align to uppercase letters; Ligatures, to better reading for z_y and L_I, and style for s_s, w_w_w; also for ease arrows and punctuation typing; Stylistic Set 1: two story a—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 2: two story g—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 3: diagonal (usual) z—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 4: flower i and j dots; Contextual alternates; Terminal forms, for R and Q; Ordinals.

A literary font FS Neruda takes its name from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, described as “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language”. As such, it’s a font that references the very best literary typeface traditions. Smart, sharp and classical, FS Neruda bridges the gap between the classical and the offbeat. This font started life in the world of newspapers and books and is the perfect storytelling typeface for savvy, inquiring readers whether in printed journals, hard news, short online missives or poetry. Idiosyncratic precision FS Neruda is clear and legible in body text, while also being a space-saver fitting in more characters on each line than the typefaces that inspired it. In larger sizes it becomes a different beast – livelier, quirkier, but no less sharp. This is a truly classic typeface designed with long text setting in mind, thanks to its large x-heights, and short ascenders and descenders. FS Neruda mixes suave, sharp confidence with a sense of fragility and quirkiness. It’s knowledgeable, informative and idiosyncratic; one for readers and enquiring minds. Subtle weight modifications The construction and details of the letterforms differ across each of the five weights, with each cut separately to evoke different flavours: Thin is typewriter-like, Light is classy, Regular is canonical, Bold is robust, Black is magazine-esque. FS Neruda also boasts a radiant italic companion, a wide set of small caps, lower and uppercase ligatures, case punctuation and spacing, four sets of figures, and some ageless typographic symbols such as manicules, fleurons and teardrop crosses. Suggestive simplicity “The key to success in the current type design landscape is to design a typeface which looks conventional at text sizes but has a few small, suggestive touches visible at bigger sizes that make it distinct,” says designer Pedro Arilla. “Another thing we wanted to achieve with this typeface is simplicity.” FS Neruda is available in ten carefully crafted styles: it’s designed to work perfectly at text sizes, but still glows as a display typeface.

MARIAMNE is an original design by Alex Kaczun. It is an elegant, modern and traditional interpretation based on and modeled after his successful "Contax Pro" and "New Age Gothic" typeface series. As such, it has generous proportions with clean, crisp lines—ideally suited for easy reading and long lines of copy. Alex felt that the skeleton for "Contax" was perfectly suited to transform the design into a modern version of 'old-style', somewhat reminiscent of German Black Letter. Numerous modifications where made to the body proportions, stems and shapes. True 'old-style' serifs and unusual 'cross-strokes' where added for a touch of distinction. The 'cross-strokes' where added at exactly visual mid-point on the overall heights. This gives the typeface a romantic, female-like quality to the overall design. Strong, yet delicate. Visually stimulating in appearance and function. The result is a truly unique transitional and modern design. Unlike other typefaces, MARIAMNE incorporates uniform stems throughout the capitals, lower case and figures. This gives the design a uniform appearance in overall color and strength. There is a perfect visual balance between inter-letter spacing, stem weights and proportions. The accents are equally large, bold and command attention. This font includes a large 'Pro' character set, which supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. As a result, the design is ideally suited for display copy as well as text composition. In the near future, Alex plans to expand the typeface series to include a light and heavy weight, along with true italics.

Franca is a neo-grotesk family in nine weights plus matching italics. The inspiration for the design came through the constant interest in new interpretations of the classic grotesk model and a study of "neutral“ typefaces like Helvetica, Univers or Normal Grotesk. During the studies, additional attention was given to the American representatives of the genre, resulting in the initial impetus for a reinterpretation, combining both paths into one contemporary design. This is reflected in the name, blending together the names of the most popular typefaces of each genres, (Fran)klin and Helveti(ca). Due to its large x-height and plain design, the family is perfectly suited for all kinds of text. Its mid-weights are optimized for usage in long paragraphs, while the bolder weights, due to a short descender and ascender, create a compact and confident look in headlines or short copy. In order to create strong and dynamic italics, the oblique glyph shapes come with a faint calligraphic hint, defined by a higher stroke contrast and a steeper connection between stems and arcs in, for example, h n m and u. This is followed by different standard shapes for a and y, supporting the dynamic movement of the lowercase in general. A wide range of OpenType features such as ligatures, old style figures, fractions, case-sensitive shapes and many more, are available for professional and contemporary typesetting. This is completed with eleven alternative glyph sets, enabling a quick customization of the typeface. The family supports up to 92 languages and comes with 500+ glyphs per font.

Wedding Regular was originally designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF and released as Wedding Text in 1901. It is a lighter version of his ENGRAVER'S OLD ENGLISH of the same period. Wedding Regular is based on the Textura style of blackletter that continued in popularity in England into the 16th century, long after the Dutch, French and Italians had moved to a Roman model that expressed the Renaissance humanism of the period. Wedding Headline is a still lighter version of the regular text face, suitable for setting larger sizes while still preserving the delicacy of the decorative hairlines. Textura continues in use in England and the United States for newspaper mastheads, gift shop signs, wedding invitations and programs and other applications where a feeling of tradition is desired. I recently saw an 1980ish photo of a “Tubby Isaac” sign in London using textura. I believe Benton’s design captures that feeling without being heavy-handed and still remaining quite readable for eyes accustomed to Roman lettering. Both Wedding Regular and Wedding Headline convey a comfortable familiarity. These two fonts may be purchased together at an attractive discount or they may be purchased separately. The full character set may be found in the pdf file that you can download from the gallery section. The two monks (alt-0172 and alt-0177) are from a set of sixteenth century decorative initial letters by Gering and Renbolt. Please note that there are two different eszetts, the blackletter style at alt-0126 and the antiqua style at the alt-0223.

Good, faithful Achates… Named after the trusty Trojan that followed Aeneas throughout his adventures, Achates is a humanist sans workhorse well suitable for broad range of design projects. Its soft, delicate and almost cursive shapes define warm and friendly typeface that is legible and easy on the reader's eye. Following into the footsteps of its namesake, it is humble, informal yet stable and trustworthy. Ideally suited for advertising and packaging, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries, poster and billboards, small text and signage as well as web and screen design. Achates provides a broad range of advanced typographical features such as language localization, alternates, stylistic alternates, extended ligatures, fractions and case-sensitive forms. It comes with a complete figure range set of old-style, lining and tabular figures. The family has extensive multilingual support, covering more than 70 Latin-based languages and specially designed Cyrillic with Bulgarian and Russian localization. As Achates was a humble hero, a devoted friend and faithful companion to Aeneas on his journey to greatness, so this font can be your trusty sidekick on your creative path. The marvelous Agate is also named after the Trojan hero. It is considered as the stone to call on for support when you need stability and grounding in your life. Along with its supportive energy, the Agate stone has been long admired for its incredible beauty. So… a Trojan hero or a thing of beauty – it is up for you to decide… or just maybe both!

An authentic script from the tip of the ball point pen. This hasn’t been seen yet: A typeface which truly looks as if it were handwritten. Calligraphy is, actually, the art of fine writing. And actually, written scripts as typeface for the computer are 100% nonsense. And yet, an obvious thought: Create a typeface which truly derives from everyday handwriting. And since we, if we write at all, utilize practically only a ball point pen anymore, then a modern cursive writing form must look like just that. As a counterpart to the artistic ”handwritings“ which have long been available as typeface, the thought of digitalizing a truly ”ugly“ handwriting is appealing. After all, time and again there is the need for a text to look ”handwritten“. Biró Script is written freehand with a ball point pen. Finally a truly individual script! Biró Script includes more than 300 authentic ligatures in addition to the customary alphabet. By the way, the most convincing effect is obtained with a font size of about 18 to 22 points, at which the thickness of the stroke is now about the same as that of a real ball point pen. There's a difference between the anglo-american forms of some characters (esp. the numerals 1 and 7, but also capitals I and F) and how it's written in the rest of the world. For those of us who aren’t used to the world-wide usual forms, Biró Script includes a US version with the appropriate characters.

Caslon Antique is a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall. It was originally called "Fifteenth Century", but was renamed "Caslon Antique" by Nadall's foundry, Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, in the mid-1920s. The design of the typeface is meant to evoke the Colonial era. Early printers would reuse metal type over and over again, and the faces would become chipped and damaged from use. Caslon Antique emulates this look. Despite the name, it is not a member of the Caslon family of typefaces. The renaming is believed to have been a marketing maneuver to boost the popularity of a previously unpopular typeface by associating it with the highly popular Caslon types. Caslon Antique is popular today when a "old-fashioned" or "gothic" look is desired. It is used by the musical group The Sisters of Mercy on their albums, for the logo of the musical Les Misérables, and for the covers of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is also frequently used on historical displays. It was used for the previous edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. Most recently, it has been used on promotional material for the smash musical Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway, the West End, and its tour of the United States. British 80's band The The also used the font in several of their music videos, usually displaying several lyrics from the song in the opening scenes. It used on the cover of Regina Spektor's album, Begin to Hope. This description was sourced (in part) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.