From the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, by way of Toronto, comes Martie's handwriting. Martie Byrd is a school teacher in Roanoke, Virginia, and a friend of Canada Type's Rebecca Alaccari. After years of admiring the cheer and clarity of Martie's handwriting, we asked her to write out full alphabets for some cool font treatment. The intent was to do three different versions of her writing in two different pens, then use the auto-magic of OpenType to determine letter sequences and rotate character sets on the fly when the fonts are in use. A successful endeavor it was. Take a look at the images in the MyFonts gallery to see the character rotation in action, along with a visual explanation of why Martie is not just another handwriting font. Unlike other available felt tip and ballpoint handwriting fonts, the regular and bold variations are style-based, not weight-based. They are the handwritten expressions of two different Sharpie pens: The fine point one (Martie Bold), and the ultrafine one (Martie Regular). The style-based variation considerably helps the realism needed in design pieces that take advantage of the contrast of two different handwriting fonts. Weight thickening in handwriting is an obvious mechanical effect that only happens with computers. Weight changing by replacing pens is what happens in the real world. Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold each contain three different character sets in a single font. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European languages for all three sets. This translates into each Pro font containing over 750 characters. Add OpenType code and stir, and you have true handwriting fonts with versatility unavailable out there in anything else of the genre. A software program that supports OpenType features is needed to use the randomization coded in Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold. Current versions of QuarkXpress and Adobe applications (Photoshop, Illlustrator, InDesign) do contain support for the randomization feature. But if you don't have one of these apps, you can still use the interchangeable Type 1 or True Type fonts and change the characters manually to achieve the appearance of true handwriting. The Martie fonts come in a variety of price packages, from the affordable single fonts to value-laden complete sets. All the proceeds from these fonts received by Canada Type will be donated 50/50 to two primary schools: One in Roanoke (where Martie teaches), and one in Toronto (where the 10-year old, real Canada Type boss goes). So next time a design project needs a handwriting font, do the write thing and use Martie to keep it real.

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability. ITC Garamond? was designed in 1977 by Tony Stan. Loosely based on the forms of the original sixteenth-century Garamond, this version has a taller x-height and tighter letterspacing. These modern characteristics make it very suitable for advertising or packaging, and it also works well for manuals and handbooks. Legible and versatile, ITC Garamond? has eight regular weights from light to ultra, plus eight condensed weights. Ed Benguiat designed the four stylish handtooled weights in 1992." In 1993 Ed Benguiat has designed Handtooled versions.

Hear ye, hear ye! Adventurers of all realms, allow me to regale you with a tale of Mikadan, a font of great splendor and beauty. Behold, its letterforms are imbued with the grace and character of the medieval age, yet tempered with modern sensibilities. This typeface is a tribute to the great Verona of Stephenson Blake, a typeface of old that harks back to the days of yore, the age of kings and queens, and the rise of chivalry. Mikadan also draws inspiration from William Dana Orcutt’s Illumanistic, a font of great power and mystery from the turn of the century. Moreover, Mikadan possesses some of the accessible qualities of Morris Fuller Benton’s Motto, a font that has stood the test of time since 1915. Truly, Mikadan is a font that combines the best of old and new, of medieval fantasy and modern design. With its easy-to-read letterforms and medieval design, Mikadan is the ideal choice for all modern applications. Whether you’re designing a poster for a tournament, a sign for a market, or a banner for your guild, Mikadan will serve you well. And if your program supports OpenType alternates, you can access unique drop-down capital letters that will truly set your design apart. So come forth, brave adventurers! Embrace the medieval fantasy design of Mikadan and set forth on your journey to create designs that will endure through the ages. Most Latin-based European, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kalmyk, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Khalkha, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zulu and Zuni.

The clock struck 2am. In the Wixendorf Café, a dingy diner off Route 75, the waitress behind the bar took another swig of whiskey—it was one of those nights. Ask to get a cup of coffee and you’re never sure how much will end up in your cup and how much will end up on the bar top. But it is hot, and paired with a plate of cherry pie? Why, that place is a slice of heaven. Tipsy Waitress, with a few too many swigs of liquor, is full of character and ready for any task—if you don’t mind a bit of sloppiness! The font includes: - A complete set of uppercase and lowercase letters, basic punctuation, numerals and currency figures, and diacritics - Western Europe language support - A whole heck of a lot of fun Need an extended license? Simply email us at hello@sajatypeworks.com and we’ll be happy to help! A collaboration between Dave Savage of Savage Monsters and Aaron Bell of Saja Typeworks. Get in touch: We’re here to help! If you have any questions or need assistance, please DM or contact us via hello@sajatypeworks.com Languages supported: Abneki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bikol, Bislama, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chickasaw, Cofán, Corsican, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, English, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Ido, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Kagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Latin, Lojban, Lombard, Makhuwa, Malay, Manx, Marquesan, Meriam Mir, Mohawk, Montagnais, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Norweigan, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu.

With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed. The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable. The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima nova works for just about anything from book text to signage. Optima Nova® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Youthful Fontsmith received a brief to develop a font that would form part of the broadcast identity for the UK’s first digital Freeview channel – E4. It needed to work seamlessly in text and display, both in print and on-screen, and please the eye of the target audience, 18-34-year-olds. So, young, fresh and informal. No problem. Except for one thing: the timing. Daughter As he worked on FS Maja, Jason Smith was occupied by another imminent deadline: the birth of his third child. The pressure was mounting, but rather than let it get to him, Jason embraced the challenge and made light of the tension, fashioning a bright, bubbly, entertaining type with a personality made for memorable headlines. Beautifully random FS Maja’s soft, rounded shapes and assured, fluent lines encompass lots of notable features that contribute to its warm, fun-loving personality, including: a very large x-height; a short, rounded serif to allow for close spacing and give texture to body text; a slight convexity, or bulge, in the stroke terminals; a calligraphic fluidity in the entry to the down-stroke of most lowercase letters; open, generous curves, especially in the “B”, “P” and “R”; and a “w” made of two “u”s.

Frogurt is a soft, plump, rounded slab serif font full of fun! Its fat curves make me think of frozen yogurt, and I've always preferred the shorthand "frogurt" to "fro-yo." I was inspired by a 30-year-old hand-carved wooden sign; when I went to try to find a font with a similar look, I couldn't really find anything soft and funky enough! It was a real Goldilocks situation: that one was too thin, that one's corners were too sharp, that one's baseline was too strict. So since I couldn't find something I liked, I made something I liked! I gave Frogurt big pillowy slab serifs, a slightly irregular baseline, and just enough tilt and variation to be fun while still keeping things really clean and readable. The outlines are cleaned up and sharp, so Frogurt will work well for both printing and cutting. Frogurt clocks in with just over 570 glyphs total, including all of the basics (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and a ton of punctuation), plus over 310 extended Latin characters for language support, and over 50 alternates and ligatures to add some variety and flair. Frogurt is PUA-encoded for easy access to all characters.

Euroscript Pro is the handwriting of Ralph M. Unger, a very talented and hard-working German type designer. Unger has redesigned a large number of beautiful ancient typefaces during the last few years. Peter Rosenfeld of profonts persuaded him to try and produce his own very beautiful handwriting. Kind of hesitant at the beginning of the design process, Unger's joy and excitement about the project was continuously growing during the design process. He designed not only the standard character complement West, but added all of the Eastern European Latin glyphs and, on top of that, even the complete Cyrillic characters. Born and grown up in Th�ringen, former East Germany, Unger has a fair knowledge of Polish and also Russian (Cyrillic). Euroscript Pro is a very beautiful, casual, informal and modern handwriting of a contemporary type designer. Even though a digitized handwriting, it keeps a very natural and pleasant look, at the same time being generous and well-readable. The individual characters combine quite easily and perfectly with no need for extra variants.Euroscript Pro is well-suited for plenty of applications, e.g. personal correspondence, invitations, greeting cards, headlines etc.Euroscript Pro is supplied in the complete Latin character set (West + East) plus Cyrillic.

ARTA is an ArtDeco style font, inspired by classic font like Newport Classic with elongated typeface with high waisted uppercase letters which curve in an geometric and elegant way. It consisted of really condensed lettering which had little space available. It's a well complet font with 315 Glyphs for most latin languages as "English, French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Afrikaans, Catalan, Czech, Esperanto, Hungarian, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Northern Sami, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Sorbian, Turkish and Welsh". ARTA will give to your design an chic presentation, you will be able to generate beautiful writings,thanks to 3 differents type "Light, Regular & Bold". It can be used for Shop, Restaurant, Jewelry, Cosmetic, Press identity & more. I started to work on this typeface at the creation of a logo in 2017 for the butcher shop of my uncle in Luchon in France named "Le Louchébem". I always had in mind to complete & share it. So after some years, I decided that it was time to finish it. This was my first Typography creation and I wanted to make it as an Art Deco typeface. I really love this elegant, high & classy lettering style. I want to bring this 1910's vibes back to be more use in our days.

Meet Pamplemousse, a display font that's part fun, casual script and part elegant typeface! Pamplemousse is most decidedly a fellow who enjoys lazy Sunday mornings spent sipping mimosas or bloody marys over a plate of eggs benedict and the New York Times crossword puzzle. He enjoys dressing up for use in branding and headlines (he looks particularly dashing in all caps) and also sitting back and composing a casual note to a dear friend. Pamplemousse is mostly sweet and just a little sophisticated, and he likes being just as he is. Pamplemousse started out as a typeface based on the lettering of Gustav Klimt in his poster for the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession movement (Art Nouveau). This drifted into an homage to Rea Irvin's iconic masthead typeface for the New Yorker magazine. Finally, with the addition of a lowercase (absent from Irvin's typeface), a significant revision away from both Klimt and Irvin into a more casual space, Pamplemousse was born! Oh — why "pamplemousse?" "Pamplemousse" is French for grapefruit. What goes better in your Sunday gin and tonic than an aromatic slice of pamplemousse? Say it a few times. Preferably after a couple of those g & t's. You'll see how fun he can be...

Neuarc Font Family This is the 20th font family of CozyFonts Foundry, established 10 years ago in 2012 with the release of Aladdin Bold. Neuarc is based loosely on arcs and curves, hence it’s naming. As shown in one of the font posters that serves to showcase this font, a collage of rough sketches is displayed as the poster’s background. These hand drawn pencil drawings were worked and reworked and The final drawings were scanned and built in Adobe Illustrator and transferred to glyph windows, glyph by glyph, in Fontlab 8. The 5 styles, so far, are reminisscent of The Art Deco Era of Design between the 1030s and 1950s. Neuarc also has it’s own footprint with several characters that stand out, eg. A, 8, &, B, ?, $, 5, w, x, a, c, e, etc. giving the reason for the ’Neu’ in the naming. These letterforms & Numbers work extremely well in monograms. Each styles has it’s own personality. From the ultra chic Light style to the dominant cool Bold style, this family maintains a uniform legibility at small to large sizes. Meant primarily for display uses, Neuarc works well for posters, logos, headlines, packaging, branding, signage for a myriad of applications. The Neuarc Deco style font will work well in titles and numbers of any application.

We named this font Scholz Secession. Fin-de-siecle Vienna, Austria is the source of this Jugendstil design from Schriftgiesserei Eduard Scholz. The original release was under the name Reklameschrift Secession. Most of the curve strokes look like commas to me. The letters are as soft and plump as the comforter on the bed I slept on in a Salzburg B&B many years ago. I was traveling with a college buddy and our next stop was Vienna. There a kind, young student named Hanna and her boyfriend took us under their wing. One of the places Hanna proudly showed us was Otto Wagner’s Majolika Haus, built in 1898, and only about 8 blocks from Secession Hall. Hanna explained to us that the style was called Jugendstil and represented Art Nouveau as interpreted within the framework of their culture. I even took a picture. After all, memories are part of who we are. Figures are old-style for text use. This font would not be my first choice for a spread sheet. Included are German ligatures ch (alt-0123) & ck (125), two period ornaments (135, 175) and lower case o and u with Hungarian long umlaut (215, 247)). A very likeable and easy-to-use font.

Alizé is a three-weight typeface inspired by the chancery italic of the 16th century. It is a high-contrast face, created with syncopations in axes and proportions and subtle irregularities that form a lively and delicate weave, suitable for setting a single word, a special expression, or a short block of prose. The family does not contain a roman, and instead promotes the italic as a primary style, a common printing convention in the 16th and 17th centuries. The italic lowercase predates inclined capitals by about twenty years, and as a nod to this typographic evolution, Alizé’s capitals, small capitals, and figures are very slightly inclined to match the energy of the lowercase. The low x-height and long ascenders and descenders, features associated with finesse and luxury, are reminiscent of the Venetian-style italic, but are further emphasised. Unlike the Venetian italic, however, Alizé has a sharp slope, giving a prominent sweep across the page (alizé is the name of trade wind). Each font of Alizé has a character set count of exceeding 700, and contains an abundance of ligatures, dynamic fractions, ornaments, and pan-European language support. They have also been manually hinted for the highest-quality display on both print and screen.

Grand Atlantic is a powerful display package by Fenotype. It’s a genuine Brush script packed with features and Swoosh extras and it’s a striking condensed flared serif in two weights, designed with the same sharp edges on the flares as the Brush. Together they make stunning logotypes, posters or headlines. On top of that there’s a “Printed” version of each. Printed versions are the same but with rugged outlines and a print texture. Grand Atlantic is great for creating powerful identities for artisanal coffee brands, craft beer, organic juice or a sports teams. Grand Atlantic Brush is equipped with Standard Ligatures and Contextual alternates that help keeping the connections between letters smooth. They’re automatically on as you should normally keep them. On top of that Grand Atlantic Brush has Stylistic, Titling and Swash Alternates for standard characters if you need more ornamental letters and if you want to break up the rectangular word shapes. There’s even more alternates in the glyph palette, making it total more than 600 glyphs. Grand Atlantic Swoosh contains 52 shapes designed to go with the Brush. There’s many “terminal swashes” that you can put in the end of a word and it will connect to the last letter, and swirl under the word from there.

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.

Designed with a hand-chiseled feel, Blau’s sculpted characters add a refined personality to a wide range of brand, corporate, product and service applications. Highlighting the sculpted theme, inkwell treatment variations are prevalent throughout Blau, with several key glyphs that are stenciled for increased legibility. This sturdy, typographic workhorse shines when a slightly unorthodox typographic approach is required — a prime choice for distinctive and dynamic logotype use. The Blau family is available in Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. The name Blau was chosen to celebrate the color Blue (or Blau in German, Blaauw in Dutch, Bleu French, Blå in Norwegian, Swedish & Danish, Blua in Esperanto, Blár in Icelandic) Blue is nature’s color for water, sky, mountains and glaciers. Blue is embraced as the color of heaven and authority, denim jeans and corporate logos. Surveys in the US and Europe show that blue is the color most commonly associated with harmony, faithfulness, confidence, distance, infinity, the imagination, and cold. In US and European public opinion polls, it is the most popular color, chosen by both men and women as their favorite color. Another very popular Wilton Foundry font in the “blue” family is “Cyan” and “Cyan Neue”.

After exploring tessellations for several years, I decided to see how many ways I could tessellate puzzle pieces. I began with a square template and used the same asymmetrical shape for all four edges. By flips or rotation each edge could be fitted in four ways. Eventually I discovered that, given this way of forming tiles, there were 15 distinct shapes that tessellate and these shapes can take a total of 96 orientations. (A note in the November 2016 issue of Mathematical Gazette has the proof for the 15 shapes.) This typeface contains those 15 shapes and 96 orientations. A pdf note here shows some of the tilings possible using only one shape in a pattern. An unlimited number of patterns are possible if shapes are mixed. There are two members of the family, a solid style that must have different colors when used and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns.)