Fantini is the revival and elaborate update of a typeface called Fantan, made in-house and released in 1970 by a minor Chicago film type supplier called Custom Headings International. In the most excellent tradition of seriously-planned American film faces back then, CHI released a full complement of swashes and alternates to the curly art nouveau letters. Fantan didn't fare much among the type scene's big players back then, but it did spread like electricity among the smaller ones, the mom-and-pop type shops. But by the late 1980s, when film type was giving up the ghost, most smaller players in the industry were gone, in some cases along with little original libraries that existed nowhere else and became instant rarities on their way to be forgotten and almost impossible to resurrect for future technologies. Fantini is the fun and curly art nouveau font bridging the softness and psychedelia of the 1960s with the flirtatious flare of the 1970s like no other face does. Elements of psychedelia and funk flare out and intermix crazily to create cool, swirly letters packed with a lot of joy and energy. This is the kind of American art nouveau font that made its comeback in the late 20th century and is now a standard visual in the branding drive of almost every consumer product, from coffee labels to book and music covers to your favorite sugar or thirst-crunching fix. Alongside Fantini's enormous main font come small caps and three extra fonts loaded with swashy alternates and variations on plenty of letters. All available in all popular font formats. Fantini Pro, the OpenType version, packs the whole she-bang in a single font of high versatility for those who have applications that support advanced type technologies. In order to make Fantini a reality, Canada Type received original 2" film specimen from Robert Donona, a Clevelander whose enthusiasm about American film type has never faltered, even decades after the technology itself became obsolete. Keep an eye out for that name. Robert, who was computer-reluctant for the longest time, has now come a long way toward mastering digital type design.

Discover Cocogoose Pro Narrow Weights! Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini in 2013, Cocogoose was first expanded in 2015 with the help of Francesco Canovaro who co-designed the decorative display weights and Andrea Tartarelli who developed the condensed widths. In 2020 a full redesign of the typeface has been published: Cocogoose Pro now includes new widths, weights, open type features and characters, thanks to the help of Mario De Libero. Influenced by vernacular sign-painting and modernist ideals, Cocogoose is drawn on a classic geometric sans skeleton, softened by rounded corners and slight visual corrections. Its very low contrast, dark color and tall x-height make it a solid choice for all designers looking for a powerful display typeface for logos, headings and vintage-inspired branding. The tall x-height makes texts set in Cocogoose very readable even at small sizes, while the bold regular weight allows for maximum impact when used as a branding, signage or decorative typeface. Cocogoose Pro was designed as a highly reliable tool for design problem solving, and given all the features a graphic designer needs, starting from its wide range of widths and weights. Its 2000+ latin, cyrillic and greek characters make sure it covers over 200 languages worldwide, while its comprehensive set of open type features allows faultless typesetting thanks to small capitals, positional numbers & case sensitive forms. A wide range of alternate letterforms, developed along nine different stylistic sets, gives you an extra level of design fine-tuning. The layerable and color-ready display variants include inline, outline, shadow and a letterpress version that can simulate the effect of old print, also thanks to programmed randomization of its letters. Cocogoose Pro has been completely re-engineered in 2020 to include extra features and technologies. A variable font version allows you to fine tune precisely the appearance of the text while minimizing download size on the web. A darkmode weight range has been added to the whole family, to keep consistency of effect when the typeface is used in reverse on the web and in dark mode interfaces. Also, a new text subfamily has been developed for body text usage, to keep the look and feel of Cocogoose while maximizing readability on screen and on the printed page.

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.