Whether you call them slab serif, square serif, or Egyptian, you know them when you see them – sturdy, nearly monoweight designs with blunt, straight-edged serifs and a no-nonsense attitude. The Rockwell® Nova family is a fine example of this appealing and eminently usable type style. This is a design that is both robust and adaptable. Marked by the flat top-serifs on the cap A, unusual Q tail and high-legibility two-storied lowercase a, Rockwell has a bit of handmade charm that distinguishes it from the cool, more modern interpretations of the slab serif style. The family is excellent for branding, headlines and other display uses. The simple shapes and hearty serifs also make it a good choice for short blocks of textual content in both print and on-screen environments. The light and bold weights are perfect for setting blocks of text copy, while the extra bold and condensed designs bring authority to display copy. Throw in a little color, and you amp up Rockwell’s messaging power. The regular and italic designs perform handsomely, in the most modest of screen resolutions. With four weights of normal proportions, each with a complementary italic, and three condensed designs, two with italics, the family is a commanding and versatile graphic communicator. Rockwell’s large x-height, simple character shapes and open counters, make for an exceptionally legible design. It should not, however, be set so tight that its serifs touch, as this will erode legibility and impair readability. A benefit to Rockwell’s slab serifs, however, is that the design combines beautifully with both sans serif typefaces and a variety of serif designs. Rockwell OpenType® Pro fonts have an extended character set supporting Greek, Cyrillic, most Central European and many Eastern European languages, in addition to providing for the automatic insertion of ligatures and fractions. Looking for its perfect pairing? Look no further than ITC Berkeley Old Style, Between™, ITC Franklin Gothic®, Harmonia Sans™, Metro® Nova or Frutiger® Serif.

This late 19th century design conjures up early 20th century Dutch DeStijl lettering with a mostly strict adherence to right angles and minimal stroke modulation. Geometric began its life as a metal typeface from the Central Type Foundry, circa 1884. Soon after, this design was officially licensed to Morgans & Wilcox and was shown in their 1890 catalog in Regular, Light and Condensed Light variations. After acquiring Morgans & Wilcox, Hamilton Manufacturing offered Geometric Light Face Condensed as their own No 3020 and the Geometric Light Face as No 3021. HWT Geometric has been expanded digitally to include a Regular Condensed version. A heavier wood type specimen was found from an unknown manufacturer and digitized as it was found, resulting in the HWT Geometric Shopworn and Shopworn Inked variations. These digital versions all include a full Western and Central European character set of over 380 glyphs.

Solido is a very versatile and usable type system with five widths: Solido, Solido Constricted, Solido Condensed, Solido Compressed and Solido Compact, in a total of 35 fonts with many of alternate characters.

Solido is a very versatile and usable type system with five widths: Solido, Solido Constricted, Solido Condensed, Solido Compressed and Solido Compact, in a total of 35 fonts with many of alternate characters.

Solido is a very versatile and usable type system with five widths: Solido, Solido Constricted, Solido Condensed, Solido Compressed and Solido Compact, in a total of 35 fonts with many of alternate characters.

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

Winnetka JNL was inspired by Cooley Antique Tuscan Condensed - a printer's wood type manufactured in 1859 by J.G. Cooley. Given an additional hand-made treatment, the lettering resembles characters made from cut paper.

Inspired by the hand lettering on a 1940 campaign poster for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this condensed, casual sans serif design is now available as Political Poster JNL – in both regular and oblique versions.

Solido is a very versatile and usable type system with five widths: Solido, Solido Constricted, Solido Condensed, Solido Compressed and Solido Compact, in a total of 35 fonts with many of alternate characters.

A 1930s poster advertising horse racing at Havana, Cuba’s Oriental Park inspired Ninth Race JNL – a condensed Art Deco sans serif type face with rounded corners; available in both regular and oblique versions.

Mirror Display is based on the condensed sans. Developed to 'double view' to give readers the same feeling they have when looking to a work of art they don't understand at first glance.

Working on a parody of the “got milk?” ads and loved the challenge of creating a whole font (family) from 8 glyphs. Quite condensed, clean, jaunty san serif Usage recommendations Advertising, announcements, logos

Oil Painting JNL is a casual and condensed hand-lettered sans serif design based on a vintage WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster advertising an oil painting exhibition by renowned artists of the time.

Catalog Sheet JNL is the digital version of an extra condensed serif typeface from the 1892 MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan type foundry specimen book. The font is available in both regular and oblique versions.

A vintage newspaper front page from June 6, 1944 proclaimed “France Invaded” in a bold, condensed wood type that has been revived as News Event JNL – available in both regular and oblique versions.

Grischel Is a condensed serif font that comes with tall style for display purposes to make it satisfying, also suitable for minimalist, chic, branding, packaging and merch design to boost your design exploration.

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

The Klutz AOE Pro Family was inspired by the plethora of naive hand drawn lettering becoming commonplace in modern advertising. What I hadn't seen was a family of hand drawn typefaces, in a range of widths and weights, with both alternate capitals as well as small caps character sets...and so Klutz Pro was born. The letterforms started with a few letters my daughter had drawn which I expanded on from there. Pulling from inspirations in retro cartoon titling and modern hand lettering playfulness, the full font was born, with weights and width to follow. Quirky, eclectic, and just a bit ridiculous, it lends itself to a range of design typesetting - although I must confess, even though it all began with the Regular width, the Extra Condensed styles are my personal favorites. What's your favorite?

PF Mellon is a modernist variable grotesque with mixed roots. Its unconventional aesthetic is the product of an exploration into the art of emphasizing titles, headlines and text in captivating and unpredictable ways. Contrary to conventional practices of highlighting text with heavier weights, PF Mellon proposes an intriguing new scheme based on striking and attention-grabbing compositions of narrow and extended letterforms- even when set in lowercase. Part geometric and part grotesque, PF Mellon’s expressionist alphabet and extravagant style challenge conventions of visual culture in an Art Deco-like manner. PF Mellon’s rebellious idiosyncrasy takes its cues from the eccentric personality of our popular PF Venue, an earlier geometric sans serif characterized by its daring combinations of non-uniform structures. PF Mellon’s basic design skeleton was influenced by nineteenth and early twentieth century condensed sans serif typefaces such as Stephenson Blake's Grotesque No.77 and ATF’s Alternate Gothic, adding an extra contrast to the thickness of strokes. PF Mellon is also available as a variable font format which you may request it free of charge from Parachute® once you purchase the whole type family.