Ceciliany is a classy font family that adds calligraphic touches to the basic structure of the display serif. Italic styles share a language set and OpenType Features compared to static styles, but have a completely different metrics In addition, an elaborate and detailed kerning system is also operated separately. 9 weights and 18 unique styles offer designers the amazing creativity of the serif font family. It offers a variety of options for editorial design as well as typography work for various channels. Features 9weights, 18styles Optimized Kernings Stylistic Set Fractions Oldstyle Figures Discretionary Ligatures : AM, AR, BA, BR, CA, CH, CR, DE, EA, El, FR, GA, GH, HR, IL, IM, JA, KA, KR, Ki, LA, LE, LO, MA, Ma, Me, NA, NE, NT, Nu, PS, RA, RE, RO, Ro, SA, ST, TH, UB, Ze, Zo, ft, li. Standard Ligatures : ff, fi, fl. * In particular, ligatures displayed in preview images can be easily applied to Adobe apps. Check out the ligature features of the software you are using.

This script font was inspired by a lot of manuscripts, notes and drafts, written by the famous french novelist Émile Zola (1840-1902). Specially, letters and notes from the period he was writting "Germinal" one of his very famous novel (published in 1884-1885) depicting the french minor's life in the past middle of eighteens. It is an elegant pen written type, sometimes connected, sometimes disrupted, but always regular and legible, with many variants, ligatures and contextual alternate glyphs specialy numerous in the OTF version. It is used as variously as web-site titles, posters and fliers design or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, menus, certificates, letters. This font, in spite of its small size, supports very strong enlargements as well as small sizes ( the original size was about 22 to 30 pts ). When printed, it remain perfectly legible and elegant from 12/14 pts even if using an ordinary inkjet printer.

The Core Sans ES Family is a rounded version of Core Sans E and a part of the Core Sans Series such as Core Sans N, M, A, G, D. This is a modernized grotesque font family with horizontal terminals, low stroke contrast, enclosed apertures and little line width variation. Its tall x-height makes the text legible and the spaces between individual letter forms are precisely adjusted to create the perfect typesetting. The Core Sans ES Family consists of 9 Weights (Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, ExtraBold, Heavy, Black) and Italics for each format. It supports WGL4, which provides a wide range of character sets (CE, Greek, Cyrillic and Eastern European characters). Each font includes support for Superiors and Inferiors, Fractions, Tabular numbers, Arrows, Mathematical operators and Opentype Features such as Proportional Figures, Tabular Figures, Numerators, Denominators, Superscript, Scientific Inferiors, Subscript, Fractions, Case Features and Standard Ligatures. We highly recommend it for use in books, web pages, screen displays, and so on.

My eldest son Sam always wanted to visit Japan and he has been saving up for a ticket for years now. We should have traveled there this year, but due to the pandemic, that was impossible. We’re now trying to go next year. Sam and I did make some kind of itinerary and I told him how we were going to get around, as I have been to Japan many times. I told him about the Shinkansen trains, the cute Tram in Nagasaki and the immense subway system in Tokyo. One of the lines in Tokyo is the so-called Yamanote Circle Line, which I have used on numerous occasions. A new font name was born and it stuck to this particular font! Subway Circle is a 100% handmade font. It is rounded, slightly slanted and comes with a sunny disposition. I am sure that, when you use it, you will find your 生きがい… ;-)

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

This willowy wonder is based on Morris Fuller Benton’s Stymie Obelisk, one in a series of typefaces he designed for American Type Founders in the 1930s. An obvious choice when real estate is at a premium, its classic forms will add just the right amount of punch to any headline it graces. Both versions include complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1524 character sets, with localization for Moldovan, Romanian and Turkish.

The original release notes from England’s Stephenson Blake Type Foundry say it all: “a type of some waywardness in design, judged from any typographical standard…a type that seems unable to decide whether to be a roman or a script." Stephenson Blake called their release "Recherché"— sought after or in great demand, which seems quite appropriate. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

In 1937, Morris Fuller Benton designed Empire, titling capitals that became the headline style for Vogue magazine. In 1989, David Berlow revived it for Publish magazine, adding an italic and a lowercase, both unavailable in the original. He revisited Empire in 1994 with Kelly Ehrgott Milligan, adding two heavier weights, small caps, and an elegant set of Art Deco–flavored oldstyle figures, ultimately expanding it to a seven-part series; FB 1989–94

Visum means Visa in Dutch. The name was inspired by Dutch soccer club Vitesse's rather sad decision to leave Israeli player Dan Mori behind, after he was refused a UAE visa because of his nationality. Visum font is a tall and proud all caps typeface. It comes with alternates for the lower case letters, some ligatures and an impressive language support. Of course, upper and lower case glyphs can be freely interchanged.

Gravure was designed by Morris F. Benton in 1927 for American Type Founders and was also released in 1929 by the London foundry of C. W. Shortt. This luminous face has a slightly naïve charm seldom found in incised typefaces. Ornamental and engaging, it’s a perfect choice for headlines with warmth and grace. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin and 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan) character sets.

Mosquito Formal, by Éric de Berranger, takes the original jaunty design of Mosquito and dresses it in a tuxedo. The stressed character strokes, simple, straightforward shapes, relatively large x-height, open counters and hint of Peignot are still there, but the cursive strokes and lively terminals have been replaced with traditional designs. The result is a more serious-and more sophisticated typeface. The idea," says Éric de Berranger, "was to assuage the drawing of Mosquito. To 'calm' it; and eliminate its idiosyncrasies while preserving character structure and general appearance." Although still distinctive, as Éric de Berranger puts it, "Mosquito Formal is more to be read than seen, it is more invisible and thus, more readable than my earlier design." He does, however, use both typefaces in his graphic design projects: Mosquito for headlines and in applications where the lively design is appropriate, and Mosquito Formal for those instances that require a quieter more sophisticated look. Mosquito Formal is available in three weights with complementary italic designs in addition to a suite of small caps and old style figures. "

Oswald Cooper is best known for his emblematic Cooper Black™ typeface. Although he was responsible for several other fonts of roman design, Cooper never drew a sans serif typeface. But that didn’t stop George Ryan from creating one. Ryan saw a sans serif example of Cooper’s lettering in an old book and decided that it deserved to be made into a typeface. Ryan’s initial plan was to make a single-weight typeface that closely matched the slender and condensed proportions of the original lettering. While the resulting Oz Handicraft™ typeface proved to be very popular, Ryan was not satisfied with the limited offering. So, between other projects – and over many years – Ryan worked on expanding the design’s range. The completed family includes light, semi bold and bold weights to complement the original design, plus a matching suite of four “wide” designs, which are closer to normal proportions. Fonts of Oz Handicraft include a Pan-European character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

Quiroga Serif began in 2007 with the name Quadratta Serif. This typography was designed for continuous text, legible at medium and small sizes, with great saving of space, optimized for 6, 8, 10 and 12 points. The morphology is a mix between tradition and innovation; it has a vertical axis, thick serifs, tall x-height, light modulation and a lot of internal space between letters: key to improve legibility at small sizes. Formally, my idea was to make a serif type that had a unique color, this is visible due to the light modulation. This is also complemented with the incorporation of not common, alternative signs. Some parts of the letters that are usually curb or diagonal where made horizontal (for example: a, q, p, etc.), this makes the eye of each character to be wide and unique. The serifs (wedge type) suffered diverse variations during the process. At the begining they where thicker and ended vertically, but this caused a great deal of printing errors. And so we decided to modify them by giving them an angle to avoid visible errors in medium and small sizes. The ch, and ll ligatures where rescued because they are a part of our current spanish alphabet. The historic ligatures and stylistic alternates give different options to users who want different alternatives within a text. The accentuation signs were composed in a middle line above all signs to avoid visual shock. We also gave plenty of importance to small caps numbers, mathematical signs and currency signs so that the could interact well.

SK Skrynka™ is a strict monospaced geometric accidental typeface. He absorbed both industrialism and simplicity, and futurism along with modernism. It is imbued with the spirit of the distant future and refers to the culture of cyberpunk. With its features, it resembles a computer's electrical circuit and fits perfectly into a futuristic design. SK Skrynka font supports many languages: extended Latin (Western European, Eastern European and Central European, etc.), extended Cyrillic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian, etc.), Greek and even Hebrew. This allows you to use it in absolutely any direction and style of design. Also, this font has many stylistic alternatives that bring variety to the monospaced typeface, further expanding its expressive capabilities. The SK Skrynka typeface will look great in headlines, or in stylized text and will become a functional addition to design work or game design.

Dante was designed by Giovanni Mardersteig. Mardersteig started work on Dante after the Second World War when printing at the Officina Bodoni returned to full production. He drew on his experience of using Monotype Bembo and Centaur to design a new book face with an italic which worked harmoniously with the roman. Originally hand-cut by Charles Malin, Dante was adapted for mechanical composition by Monotype in 1957. The new digital font version has been re drawn, by Monotype's Ron Carpenter, free from any restrictions imposed by hot metal technology. The Dante font family was issued in 1993 in a range of three weights with a set of titling capitals. Dante is a beautiful book face which can also be used to good effect in magazines, periodicals etc. Dante® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Cora is a sans serif with an experimental bent, offering a large x-height, some contrast of stroke weight, and capitals inspired by classical lettering. The large x-height gives it a voice with a little more volume so that those in the back of the room have no trouble hearing. Because the letters seem slightly large, Cora remains clear at smaller point sizes. It is a typeface intended to perform well on screen without losing its attraction in print and the nature of its shapes allows for condensation or expansion without becoming severely distorted. The uppercase exhibits classical proportions found in ancient Roman inscriptions, which provides opportunities for setting titles in all caps. Cora Opentype Pro has a full range of numerals for every use, small caps, the most common open type features and supports many languages that use the latin extended alphabet. It is available in a range of three weights plus Italics. CoraBasic is a reduced version of Cora. It is still an OT-font but without any particular features except of a set of ligatures, class-kerning and language support including CE and Baltic.

Tuscan wood types cover a fairly wide range of styles, and there is sometimes confusion over what is classified as a Gothic Tuscan and what is considered an Antique Tuscan. HWT American Chromatic and P22 Tuscan Expanded are more precisely faces of the Antique Tuscan variety. Gothic Tuscans are generally absent of the heavy serifs typically associated with their Antique Tuscan brethren (although decorative bifurcation of terminals can imply serifs). Additional internal decoration with spikes along the stems gives some Tuscans their distinctive look, these faces are often described as “Circus Types.” Tuscan Extended is an extremely wide design, with a distinctive slab crossbar running through the center of most characters. Each letter is a complex system in its own right. This typeface is best used very large in short headline work. The style defies falling clearly into either the Antique Tuscan or Gothic Tuscan category. The new HWT version of Tuscan Extended has been meticulously redrawn by Frank Grießhammer. During production, he also incorporated a number of new letterforms, bringing the font to over 300 characters (including a full ASCII character set and Central European accented characters).

The Core Sans M Family is a part of the Core Sans Series, such as Core Sans N, Core Sans N Rounded, Core Sans N SC, and Core Sans G. This font family has open and square letter shapes, and overall rounded finishes provide a soft and friendly appearance. Simple and modern shapes with a tall x-height make the text legible and the spaces between individual letter forms are precisely adjusted to create the perfect typesetting. The Core Sans M Family consists of 2 widths (Condensed, Normal), 7 weights (ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, ExtraBold, Heavy), and Italics for each format. Small Caps versions are also available. It supports WGL4, which provides a wide range of character sets (CE, Greek, Cyrillic and Eastern European characters). Each font includes support for Tabular numbers, Arrows, Box drawings, Geometric shapes, Block elements, Mathematical operators, Miscellaneous symbols and Opentype Features such as Proportional Figures, Numerators, Denominators, Superscript, Scientific Inferiors, Subscript, Fractions and Standard Ligatures. The Core Sans M Family provides both OpenType (.OTF) and TrueType (.TTF) versions in the same package. We highly recommend it for use in books, web pages, screen displays, and so on.

Ballet Mechanique is a custom designed font for musician Jeroen Borrenbergs, aka Ballet Mechanique. For his upcoming record releases Jeroen asked me to create a special font for him. As co-founder and graphic designer at Stoere Binken Design he creates his own artwork and therefor had very specific wishes. The font should be warm, soft and have soul. He gave me some sketches for his logo that I should use as a starting point. The result is a very narrow, kind of techno, monocased font called "Ballet Mechanique" (what else). After having served his purpose, Jeroen Borrenbergs allowed his font to be sold publicly. Jeroen Borrenberg’s debut work, in 1996, received hugely praising reviews. Muzik Magazine made Evolutionary Entities techno single of the month, Laurent Garnier and Mister C constantly played it in their sets and Morgan Geist just said “I won’t do a review here - let me just encourage all of y’all to listen to and/or pick up the new Eevolute 12″. Beautiful stuff - complex, melodic, soaked in just enough reverb to take it to another room. Check or regret.”

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

Developed over several years by the late Otl Aicher and first released in the late 1980s, the Rotis® typeface has become a timeless classic. ROTIS II SANS HISTORY Aicher was a renowned German designer and corporate image consultant. He created the four basic designs of Rotis – sans serif, semi sans, semi seif and serif – within an extended typeface family concept, wherein all designs share a common cap height, lowercase x-height, basic stem weight and general proportions. While each version is part of the large, integrated family, each was also designed to function on its own as a distinctive typestyle. The result is that all members of the Rotis family combine smoothly with each other. Aicher, however, did not design the Rotis family with the weights and proportions normal for more contemporary releases. Rotis Sans Serif, for example, was drawn with just six weights and only two italics. Starting in 2010, Robin Nicholas, senior designer for Monotype Imaging in the UK, and freelance designer Alice Savoie collaborated to bring Rotis Sans Serif up to current standards. The result is Rotis II Sans, a completely new addition to the Rotis family. “We devised our approach together,” recalls Savoie, “deciding which weights to start with, what kind of alterations to make to the original Rotis, etc. I went to work on the typefaces, regularly submitting proofs to Robin. We would then decide in tandem on the next steps to take.” Nicholas elaborates, “We revisited the range of weights and added matching italics so that the new additions to the family offer increased versatility. We optimized the outlines, corrected the weight of several letters and re-examined overall spacing and kerning. In addition to a new set of numerals, with a height similar to the capitals, we also drew case-sensitive punctuation.” ROTIS II SANS USAGE The new Rotis II Sans suite comprises 14 typefaces: seven weights, ranging from extra light to black, each with a companion italic. The designs are available as OpenType® Pro fonts, allowing for automatic insertion of ligatures and fractions. Pro fonts also offer an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. Aicher’s original Rotis designs were widely used for branding and advertising. With the addition of Rotis II Sans, the family is again poised to become a powerful communicator.

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.

This is a digital revival by Cristóbal Henestrosa based on an experimental typeface named Charter, designed – yet never fully accomplished – by the prominent William Addison Dwiggins. It is an upright italic, unconnected script typeface, whose main features are a pronounced contrast, condensed forms and exaggerated ascenders. While Dwiggins worked on this project from 1937 to 1955, he only completed the lowercase and a few other characters. However, it was used to set a specimen in 1942 and a short novel in 1946. The sources that Cristóbal used for Mon Nicolette were the original sketches by WAD as well as printing trails kept at the Boston Public Library, and a copy of the 1946 edition of The Song-Story of Aucassin and Nicolette. This gorgeous typeface can be used successfully in headlines, subheads and short passages of text from 12 points onwards, in applications such as fashion magazines, soft news, advertising, poetry, albums, and book covers. This project started ten years ago, while Cristóbal was studying the Type@Cooper Extended Program at New York City. A previous version was selected to be part of the Biennial Tipos Latinos 2018, and now Mon Nicolette is finally ready for commercial distribution with Sudtipos… and we are very proud of it! Festina lente.

Vette Letters are thrilled to add maverick designer Dirk Uhlenbrock to the family, with the release of VLNL Bromfiets. Bromfiets (the Dutch word for moped) is a ‘holiday child’, the basic idea coming from a stop at a road junction in the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland. The Dutch signage, the black and white rings of traffic light poles, the symbols for brom- and snorfiets have always appealed to Dirk. While on vacation in Zeeland the first scribbles and digital drafts were created, always in mind that the typeface had to be striking, clear and friendly. The end result is more than that, a strong and instantly recognisable font with a matching dingbat weight full of icons and arrows. Stencil fonts have always interested Dirk, the informal character and the possible universal use as a paint- or spray-stencil on a wide variety of surfaces makes this type of font so interesting for me. The technically necessary dissolution of closed font contours always ensures a special aesthetic: What’HAT and HOW MUCH has to be removed or left, in order to make words easy to read and to avoid a fractal impression. Dirk Uhlenbrock has been working as graphic designer and illustrator in his hometown Essen, Germany for over 30 years. Always interested in typedesign he got in contact with Fontographer in 1996 and started to create and distribute loads of free fonts through his online platforms ‘Eyesaw’ and ‘Fontomas’. A bunch of these type experiments have been extented on request to complete fonts. Still located in Essen in 2009 Dirk started his second owner-based business erste liga büro für gestaltung - ersteliga.de

Fresh and New, Harder. Harder is an elegant script font. Made from vectorized hand strokes so that it will look neat on each side of the character. He has several character alternatives that will offer interesting options for any of your design projects

I'm proud to present my Blober. He is a cute young font which will be helpful if you are going to design something cute and lovely. Fill him with pattern or texture and Blober will reflect the emotion in any way you want.

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.

It all started with a simple idea back in 1998: do a digital version of a "lost" 70's typeface, and make up the missing letters that were not present in the only available example Jeff Levine had to work with. Jeff wasn't yet doing his own digital font creation, so he hooked up with Brad Nelson who owns a small foundry called Brain Eaters Fonts. Together, they collaborated on "Action Is"- a freeware font named after the source of the type example. This was a title page for a commemorative photo album of images from the 60's TV music show "Where the Action Is", formerly hosted by Jeff's employer at the time, singer-writer-producer Steve Alaimo. The free font took off like a rocket, being released just at the peak of the 60’s/70’s retro craze in the late 1990’s, and it was EVERYWHERE! It showed up on TV shows, packaging and web design -- and was even spotted on signage used on the side of a major amusement resort’s retro-themed hotel. From that point on, Jeff kept getting requests for a version with a lower case. Although they shared the copyright in the freeware version, Brad Nelson gave Jeff his blessing to re-work and take Action Is into the realm of commercial type. Newly improved and re-released as Groovy Happening JNL, it became one of Jeff's better selling type designs. A simplified, yet similar font was issued called Groovy Summer JNL. Now, after about a decade, Jeff had decided to clean up the 3-D (drop shadow) version that was originally freeware with many minute design flaws and re-release it commercially. Groovy 3D Caps JNL is an all-caps, limited character set font which ties in well with the previous releases, yet retains itís 1960s-1970s era charm. The font flag art is courtesy of Barbara D. Berney and is used by permission.

Pirouette is based on a logo that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 (a shampoo container!). Tateno's logo experimented with complex, overlapped swash letterforms. He continued to develop these outside of the initial packaging project, until they took on a life of their own. Eventually, Tateno designed a full typeface out of the logo, Pirouette, which was the first place display face in Linotype's 2003 International Type Design Contest. The Pirouette typeface contains six different fonts. The basic font is Pirouette Regular. This is an engraver's italic lowercase paired with elaborate swash capitals. The swash capitals have two visual elements in their forms: thick strokes and thin strokes. Pirouette Text includes the same lowercase as Pirouette Regular, but the uppercase letters are much shorter and simpler. This "text" font can be used to set longer amounts of copy. Pirouette Alternate contains different lowercase glyphs and additional ligatures, which can be used as substitutes for the lowercase forms in the Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text fonts. Pirouette Ornaments contains swashes and other knick-knacks that can either be added onto the end of a letter, or used as separate decorative elements or swooshes (accolades) on a page. Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 are two fonts that can be layered over top of one another in software applications that support layering (e.g., most Adobe and Macromedia applications, as well as QuarkXPress). Pirouette Separate 1 contains the thick stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters, as well as the same lowercase glyphs that can be found in Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text. Pirouette Separate 2 contains only the thin stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters. By layering Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 over one another, you can give the uppercase letter's thick and thin stroke elements different colors and create unique, more calligraphic designs. The Pirouette family, Tanteno's first commercial typeface, was greatly influenced by the calligraphic and typographic work of the master German designer, Prof. Hermann Zapf, especially his Zapfino typeface.

How can Teutonia be called “Art Nouveau” with all those straight lines? It seems like a contradiction. In fact, however, Art Nouveau embraces a rather wide variety of stylistic approaches. Five well-known examples in the field of architecture serve to illustrate the range of diversity in Art Nouveau: Saarinen’s Helsinki Railroad Station, Hoffman’s Palais Stocklet in Brussels, Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts on Budapest, Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Only the last fits comfortably within the common perception of Art Nouveau. Whereas Gaudi would avoid the straight line as much as possible, Macintosh seemed to employ it as much as possible. The uniting factor is that they all represent “new art” -- an attempt to look things differently than the previous generation. Even when they draw on the past -- e.g. Lechner in the use of traditional Hungarian folk art -- the totality of the expression in new. Teutonia clearly shows its blackletter roots in the ‘D’ and the ‘M.’ Roos & Junge of Offenbach am Main in Germany produced Teutonia in a "back-to-basics" effort that has seen many quite similar attempts in the field of topography. In 1883, Baltimore Type Foundry released its Geometric series. In 1910, Geza Farago in Budapest used a similar letter design on a Tungsram light bulb poster. In 1919 Theo van Doesburg, a founder with Mondrian and others of the De Stijl movement, designed an alphabet using rectangles only -- no diagonals. In 1923 Joost Schmidt at Bauhaus in Weimer took the same approach for a Constructivist exhibit poster. The 1996 Agfatype Collection catalog lists a Geometric in light, bold and italic that is very close to the old Baltimore version. Even though none of these designs took the world by storm, they all made a contribution to our understanding of letterforms and how we use them. Teutonia is compact and surprisingly readable at 12 points in print, but does not do as well on the screen. Extra leading is suggested. Four ligatures are supplied: ch, ck, sch and tz. The numerals are tabular.

Yet again, a font inspired by my work as a kindergarten teacher! The other day, I had a conversation with some of the kids, about what they ate for breakfast. Some had oatmeal, some bread and others yogurt. But this kid - he insisted that every morning, his mother would serve him cookies, “morning cookies”. It sounded too good to be true, and when I asked his mother, it turned out that “cookies” were actually bread, but to make it sound more appetising, they called it cookies! The letters are rounded and in some way quite naive, but still clear and legible. With an extreme ascender and descender, the font stands out with its oddities. I’ve added 3 different versions of each lowercase letter!

An Arabic font designed by a German living in Berlin’s Neukölln district, between Karl-Marx-Strasse and Sonnenallee. This is the Latin+Arabic version of poster/display font Pivnaya designed and published by Roman Type. Designer Roman Wilhelm finds himself constantly surrounded by Arabic type and hand-lettering in his neighborhood. With this font, he is trying to answer to all these linguistic, type-related, and cultural inspirations. It works for Afrikaans, all languages of the Arab World, Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanisch, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Zulu. Equipped with a wide coverage of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the font is equipped for multi-purpose usage.

Trithemius, a 15th century Abbott, and influential counselor to Emperor Maximilian I, was also an author who wrote both histories and the first printed work on cryptography which gained him much adverse notoriety. He has been long regarded as a mystic and some of his works were therefore banned. However, it may have been his intention to cloak his cryptology essays in mystical writing to keep people from easily grasping the subject matter, which it has been recently demonstrated, at heart was really cryptological methodology. This font is based on a printed version of the Polygraphiae -- a text that included many methods of encryption. The examplar for this font in that text was described as anothor method of Alchemists recording secrets.

ITC Dartangnon is a work of English designer Nick Cooke and began with the thought, It's a long shot but it might just work as a font." It started as a doodle with a chunky pencil. "So many script fonts look too stylized so I thought I'd try to produce one that looks more like handwriting." He scanned the doodles and used Fontographer to draw a set of monoline letters. "Working quickly I soon drew the whole alphabet, and without being too pedantic about the characters joining exactly, I arrived at this script." ITC Dartangnon is an energetic font which remains legible even in small point sizes. And, Cooke adds, "It is supposed to be used as upper and lowercase only, NEVER just caps.""

Once I had a young, very eager and interested designer in my employ. We got into talking about where our letterforms come from and the habits in perception we are used to. He did not quite believe me. So I said, let's try to design a typeface where everything is just the opposite of what we are used to. We really had a hard time, our habits crept up on us all the time. But after a couple of weeks we finally finished this typeface and wanted to call it crazytype, but my young apprentice ­ who did most of the manual labor ­ said Contype sounded crazier. So it became Contype and it's really crazy, with a small asian touch to it. Yours very crazy Gert Wiescher

PF DaVinci Script Pro is based on DaVinci’s own handwriting. He is considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. This great Italian artist left us with a unique writing (used to write from right to left), which we attempted to decode and simplify with PF Da Vinci Script Pro. Many of these letters are free interpretations and do not stick to the original forms. This typeface comes in 2 different styles: Regular and a more informal style called Inked. The all new “Pro” version supports all European languages including Latin, Greek, Greek Polytonic and Cyrillic. It comes loaded with many stylistic alternates in all languages.

Garnet is a rare TT typewriter face, made digital from analog samples gathered with great care by Coniglio Type. A time and place; type and life. Garnet Euro Typewriter is the first new release by designer Joseph V Coniglio in over 5 years. It is contemporary designer type, made from the struck steel hammers of an art deco san serif face transferred from a mechanical 1926 Royal Portable typewriter. It has an obsessively complete commercial roman character set ––for the pre-opentype environment of the late 1990's. Yes, it has that great “Monopoly Game” question mark -- and all on a period-piece typewriter! You should have no trouble grafting that sorely needed Euro symbol.” –And he very well did!

Nono is the nickname of my oldest son, Konstantin. His little brother could not really speak yet, but he was always looking for him and said something to the tune of, "wea is a nono". From that time on I call Konstantin Nono. I designed a handwritten script with his real name, that i named Konstantin. Now I made this slick version of that script – hence – Nono! I made three basic sets of characters plus a smallcaps version. To top things off, I designed a set of endletters that I throw in for free. Everything can be mixed! I sell single cuts but the best deal would be the entire packet, it goes for a very fair price. Your generous typedesigner, Gert Wiescher

Lapis was Jim Rimmer's venture into a territory he'd earlier explored with his Lancelot and Fellowship faces. This time he stayed much longer, dug pretty deep, and had plenty of fun in there. The end result is the kind of mosaic of influences only a guy like Jim could consider, gather, manage and apply in a way that ultimately makes sense and works as a type family. On the surface Lapis seems like something that can be billed as what Jim would have called an "advertising text face". But under the hood, it's a whole other story. On top of the calligraphic, nib-driven base Jim usually employed in his faces, Lapis shows plenty of typographic traits from a variety of genres, from Egyptian to Latin, from blackletter angularity to Dutch-like curvature, with an overall tension even reminiscent of wood type. There are some Goudy-informed shapes that somehow fit comfortably within all this. Then it's all strung together with a mix of wedged, tapered and leaning serifs, placed with precision to reveal expert spontaneity and a great command of guiding the forms through counterspace. In the fall of 2013, the Lapis fonts were scrutinized and remastered into versatile performers for sizes large and small. The three weights and their italic counterparts have been refined and expanded across the board to include small caps, alternates, ligatures, ordinals, case-sensitive forms, six kinds of figures, automatic fractions, and a character set that covers an extended range of Latin languages. Each of the Lapis Pro fonts contains over 760 glyphs. For more details on the fonts' features, text and display specimens and print tests, consult the Lapis Pro PDF availabe in the Gallery section of this page. 20% of Lapis Pro's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.