From the standpoint of calligraphy, a font family of capitals and uncials makes perfect sense. The Roman square capitals, the quadrata, are matched by round capitals of older Greek origin; the word "uncus" means hook-shaped like a beak or talon. Interrelated and often interchangeable, these capital letters served as book hands for both the Latin West and the Greek-speaking East before they evolved into minuscule alphabets. The Testament family is based on the few formal capital manuscripts of the Bible, Virgil and Homer that have survived from the ancient world. Throughout the Middle Ages both uncials and square capitals were used, often together, for headings and initial characters. By their nature the Roman capitals are the voice of Caesar and hold the place of authority, while the uncials speak for the Church in a balanced relationship. In ancient times church and state were not as separate as they are now, and the alphabets were not as different as typographic tradition has made them. In this calligraphic rendering it is clear that they are of the same substance and can be written in the same style, conveying even to the modern eye the eternal and classical quality of epic and scripture. Testament comes in all popular font formats, and includes support for a vaster-than-usual range of Latin-based languages.

The branding agency's client wanted an ultra modern"" typeface that was ""futuristic without being gimmicky or ephemeral,"" according to the design brief. Designer Sebastian Lester took on this intriguing custom font assignment, but soon, a bureaucratic decision cancelled the project. ""I was left with a sketchbook full of ideas and thought it would be a shame not to see what came of them,"" says Lester. He decided to finish the design on his own. Lester's research confirmed that the principal ingredient of an ""ultra modern"" typeface was simplicity of character structure: a carefully drawn, monoline form, open letter shapes and smooth, strong curves. To conceive a typeface that crossed the line from modern to futuristic, Lester decided to amplify these qualities. About a year after Lester's initial conceptual work, two highly functional and versatile typefaces emerged. These are Neo Sans and Neo Tech, designs Lester describes as ""legible without being neutral, nuanced without being fussy, and expressive without being distracting."" Both the Neo Sans and the more-minimalist Neo Tech families are available in six weights, ranging from Light to Ultra. Each has a companion italic, and Neo Tech offers a suite of alternate characters. While engineered to look modern as tomorrow, Neo Sans and Neo Tech display the functional and aesthetic excellence that earns them a place in the list of classic designs from the Monotype typeface library.

Forget that hipster coolness for a minute and design something cute and charming with LiebeLotte! Go ahead and make beautiful things with her: birthday cards, wedding invitations, love letters, new signage for your deli—so many things look sweeter when you use this well-crafted handwriting font. We’ve put all of our heart and soul into this typeface—it took us a whole year to draw, refine, and interconnect all these loopy letterforms. We hope it’s really hard to tell that this is a typeface at all—the perfect connections and many swash variations make it look like you actually sat down with a pen. A pretty good pen in fact. LiebeLotte comes with a state-of-the-art character set. She also sports a variety of ligatures and alternative forms, available through OpenType features. (Please make sure your software supports ligatures for the letter connections and OpenType if you wish to use the advanced features.) Advanced designers, please take a look at our best-sellers LiebeErika and LiebeKlara: the all-new LiebeLotte makes a great companion for these popular fonts. We do think you’ll have plenty of fun with this versatile package of loopy letters for letter lovers. Or lovely letters for loop lovers. And hey, you can absolutely use LiebeLotte to make happy hipster designs, too! Promise!

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Palatino Arabic is a collaboration between Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine and Prof. Hermann Zapf. The design is based on the Al-Ahram typeface designed by Zapf in 1956 but reworked and modified to fit the Palatino nova family. The design is Naskh in style but with a strong influence of the Thuluth style as well. This is evident in the swash-like finials and the wide proportions of the letterforms. It is designed for use in print in both large and small sizes. The counters are wide open to allow for better readability in small sizes as well as to maintain an open and friendly appearance. The font has 1091 glyphs and includes a large number of extra ligatures and stylistic alternates as well as the basic Latin part of Palatino nova and support for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. It also includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. Palatino Arabic wins Type Directors Club award. Each year, the New York-based Type Directors Club judges typeface designs from all over the world in their TDC2 contest. Linotype is pleased to announce that a very new typeface of its own is among 2008’s winners: Palatino Arabic. A collaboration between Nadine Chahine and Prof. Hermann Zapf, this face is an extension of Zapf’s Al-Ahram Arabic type from 1956 recreated to join the Palatino nova family.

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane. Simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, 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. To see how patterns can be constructed, see the “Samples” file here. Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. This typeface contains many Escher-like tessellations that resemble animals including horses, goats, rabbits, fish, frogs, and other vertebrates. Most or all of these shapes were discovered/created by the font designer during the past twenty years in the process of designing maze books, coloring books, and a book about tessellations. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns. The addition of a solid style that must be colored makes these new fonts a bit more difficult to use but offers far greater possibilities in getting visually interesting results.)

Evanston Tavern is a square typeface and the sans-serif version to Evanston Alehouse. Inspired by the years that prefaced the ratification of the American Prohibition, this typeface mimics the signage commonly seen outside of saloons, taverns and alehouses during that time. Back to the modern era, Evanston Tavern is more than just a vintage inspired typeface. It works in modern and futuristic settings with multiple styles, opentype alternatives and ornamentation. The family provides a robust 61 total fonts, within it's 3 styles of regular, stencil and inline. Each sub family includes 4 weights and 5 widths. It has special features that add depth to the typeface, with discretionary ligatures and stylistic alternatives. It also includes a complimentary set of ornaments, including a vintage graphic set from the era, as well as modern frames, borders and icons. This typeface works great at logos, packaging, and other display settings. Pair this font with Evanston Alehouse and have a great combination of serif and sans-serif square letterforms and a large array of ornaments! Here’s a snapshot of what you get with Evanston Tavern: - 3 Styles: Regular, Stencil and Inline - 4 Weights: Light, Regular, Medium and Black - 5 Widths: 1826 (condensed), 1846 ( narrow) 1858 (regular), 1893 (wide) and 1919 (expanded) - 2 capital Heights: Capitals and small caps - 2 Alternatives: Discretionary Ligatures and Stylistic Alternatives - 1 Ornaments font with over 100 graphic extras

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. These Tessie fonts have two family members, 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. To see how patterns can be constructed, see the “Samples” file here. Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. This typeface contains many Escher-like tessellations that resemble flying birds. Most or all of these shapes were discovered/created by the font designer during the past twenty years in the process of designing maze books, colorings books, and a book about tessellations. (Earlier tessellation fonts from IngrimayneType, the TessieDingies fonts, lack a black or filled version so cannot do colored patterns. The addition of a solid style that must be colored makes these new fonts a bit more difficult to use but offers far greater possibilities in getting visually interesting results.)

A handwritten ”font for technicians“ from ca. 1900. Very geometrical, rigid forms borrowed from the typical characteristics of Jugendstil / Art Nouveau. This script is found in a magazine from the Otto Maier publishing house, Ravensburg, which was issued sometime in the years shortly before WWI. The magazine is entitled ”Schriften-Sammlung für Techniker: Verkleinerte Schriften der wichtigsten Alphabete“ (Collection of scripts for technical specialists: reduced scripts of the most significant alphabets) and published by Karl O. Maier. The original copy, produced by means of a galvanized plate, is just 7 centimeters wide. It served as the model for technical professions in which, at that time, the captions of drawings were still done by hand. The characters have been scanned, digitized and greatly magnified. Special attention was given to ensure the ”uneven“ edges, typical of handwritten script, remained effectively noticeable even in the digitized form. As a result, this ”technical“ font retains a handmade touch. Especially worthy of note are the Jugendstil forms characteristic at the turn of the19th century. In comparison, many alleged ”ultramodern“ font types of today suddenly look quite old-fashioned. Maier’s Nr. 21 Pro is suitable for all European languages. It includes ”Latin Extended-A,“ for Central and Eastern Europe incl. Turkish, and even Cyrillic and Greek, too. The font includes several stylistic alternates as well as a number of ligatures.

The branding agency's client wanted an ultra modern"" typeface that was ""futuristic without being gimmicky or ephemeral,"" according to the design brief. Designer Sebastian Lester took on this intriguing custom font assignment, but soon, a bureaucratic decision cancelled the project. ""I was left with a sketchbook full of ideas and thought it would be a shame not to see what came of them,"" says Lester. He decided to finish the design on his own. Lester's research confirmed that the principal ingredient of an ""ultra modern"" typeface was simplicity of character structure: a carefully drawn, monoline form, open letter shapes and smooth, strong curves. To conceive a typeface that crossed the line from modern to futuristic, Lester decided to amplify these qualities. About a year after Lester's initial conceptual work, two highly functional and versatile typefaces emerged. These are Neo Sans and Neo Tech, designs Lester describes as ""legible without being neutral, nuanced without being fussy, and expressive without being distracting."" Both the Neo Sans and the more-minimalist Neo Tech families are available in six weights, ranging from Light to Ultra. Each has a companion italic, and Neo Tech offers a suite of alternate characters. While engineered to look modern as tomorrow, Neo Sans and Neo Tech display the functional and aesthetic excellence that earns them a place in the list of classic designs from the Monotype typeface library.

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.

Corsa Grotesk is our very own tribute to two typographic giants: the Futura and Avenir typefaces. It is Designed with geometric simplicity in mind with well balanced strokes and modern touch. Generous proportions and x-height with more contemporary details - the single story ‘a’ and the horizontally barred ‘k’ being just two of many examples makes it shine in every jobs it takes. Corsa Grotesk blends the classic geometric aesthetics into a well-balanced font with generous proportions and minimal contrast. It features 10 weights ranging from Hairline to Black plus matching italics, as well as Cyrillic support for Bulgarian and Russian localizations. Filled with all the essential OpenType features like tabular figures, fractions, ligatures etc, it is a great choice for branding, advertising, user interfaces or any text that needs a bit of polish and a slick, present-day look that still feels familiar. With its 2.0 version we managed to polish the font even more. We revisited every path and fixed all the inaccuracies throughout. Corsa Grotesk now comes with way better and consistent spacing and kerning, just the right amount of contrast and balance. Live Tester | Download Demo Fonts | Subscribe

Upon numerous demands of highly esteemed users of our fonts I decided to supplement the Walbaum type family by display and poster cuts. Because I obviously cannot compete with world’s renowned type foundries which already offer a number of renderings of forenamed typeface, I thought proper to decline a bit from the original Walbaum’s design, strictly speaking, from the apprehension we commonly keep about this typeface. Therefore I didn’t set forth the way of modernizing (shame!), but rather the opposite direction: towards an analysis of the original neo-classical intention. I took the 10-point character, magnified it enormously and cut off progressively all the optically thickened bobbles which raised by small-size correction. I ended up at the size of about 120 points, where it became obvious that any further thinning would lead to an undesired manneristic fragility. Resulting 8-member family Walbaum 120 is naturally usable in variety of sizes, as well as cuts marked “10” you can use, say, from 6 to 30 points. I only hope that mister Justus Erich won’t pull me by the ear when we’ll meet on the other side...

Dealova Script is the font of choice for writing things beyond words. This typeface is designed with great detail to convey stylish elegance. So, it can be said, the character of the transformation is very beautiful, a kind of classic ornamental copper script. Dealova Script provides alternative variants of most fonts, binders and many calligraphy tips, ideal for elegant labels, high-end packaging, stationery and composition for specific brands, beautiful titles, paragraphs, fonts and short text intended for read only with the eye or intended to be whispered into someone's ear. Dealova Script has 691+ glyphs and 440 alternate characters, including multiple language support. It features OpenType with alternate styles and elegant binding. The OpenType features don't work automatically, but you can access them manually and for best results your creativity will be required in combining variations of these Glyphs. And also a touch of ornament makes this font look elegant. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternative, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Indesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010 or later. (Windows), Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as PopChar (for Windows and Mac).

Mimix is designed especially for comic fans and all typographers who like to play. It’s ideal to express spontaneity and the joy of life. Where Mimix is used, there’s life. The characters are lined in a row, a face looks out from the page. Big ears surround an oval head. A mouse moves without haste, but dynamic and modern through the lines. Mimix skillfully combines the elegance of a modern roman with the spontaneity of a casual handwriting. The mouse shows its versatile character in its broad range of use. Without exaggeration, it’s always delicate and elegant. The quiet form and good readability is a result of its moderate inclination. Well developed, Mimix includes ten weights from Ultrathin through Black. The free trial pack includes two weights with a reduced number of glyphs. If you like it you will be then be able to buy the fonts itself complete with ligatures, special characters for Eastern European languages, uppercase, lining and old style figures as well as fractions and different Opentype features. Declare war on desert lead – with Mimix, those with charm. Download a free trial version of Mimix with a reduced character set. Check it out!

Googie Architecture, also known as "Midcentury Coffee Shop Modern," was born in California during the Atomic Age. Martini at Joe's is based on lettering from several historic Googie sources - many of which no longer exist. The futuristic Martini at Joe's collection was named for Northern California's famous Italian-themed "Joe's" restaurants, some of which are still serving up large portions of charbroiled beef steak, canned buttered veggies and pretty decent martinis. Martini at Joe's contains many fabulous typographic extras – and is available in single font packages or as a 15 font interchangeable Megaset (with "italic-esque" obliques and "retro obliques"). Martini at Joe's is perfect for use as commercial signage, on the menu for your coffee shop, supper club, tiki bar, fish grotto, smorgy, space port or destination casino. It also holds its own in any vintage store, on greeting cards, t-shirts, hi-brow gallery announcements, product skins, your 'zine masthead, on the faceplate of your futuristic microwave oven, tv dinner packaging, at millionaire's conferences or even embellishing the fuselage of your latest jet airline venture. Martini at Joe's: there's no better way to say, "Hold the olive, I'm having a moment."

Hey there! As the proud creator of Sketchen, I'm stoked to introduce you to my latest font creation! Sketchen is a sketch style font that's just perfect for outdoor advertising and menus. Imagine a beachy vibe, summer vibes, and a whole lot of fun – that's what Sketchen brings to the table! I designed Sketchen to capture the essence of summertime and the carefree attitude of beach life. With its playful, hand-drawn style, Sketchen adds a whimsical touch to any design project. Whether you're creating a menu for a tiki bar or promoting a surf competition, Sketchen is the perfect font to convey a sunny, laid-back feeling. Sketchen's bold, eye-catching letters ensure that your designs won't be missed. And with its relaxed, playful vibe, it's sure to make a splash in any setting. So why not give Sketchen a try and see what kind of summery designs you can come up with? With Sketchen, you can add a touch of fun to all your outdoor advertising and menu design projects. So let your creativity run wild and see where Sketchen takes you!

Argo Supernova is a sans serif font, inspired by science fiction titles. Delicate on the thinest weights, strong on the thickest ones, it is perfect for modern branding and logo design, editorial design, web design, packaging and various other projects. Argo Supernova has a geometric and open structure, with shapes that create a solid texture on the page. Its large x-height produces good reading in long texts and its peculiarities, such as curved bars and endings, generate a strong presence in titles. The Argo Supernova family consists of 8 weights with matching italics, with Extended Latin character set. The italics makes use of more curves and smoothness, creating an interesting variation in design. • 16 styles: 8 weights + 8 italics; • 602 glyphs in each weight; • Special SS02 feature: "bend" alternates for majority of caps characters with curved details; • OpenType features: Access All Alternates, Stylistic Alternates, Standard Ligatures, Discretionary Ligatures, Numerators, Denominators, Fractions, Superior and Inferior Numbers, Kerning, Localized Forms, Lining Figures, Oldstyle Figures, Proportional Figures, Tabular Figures, Slashed Zero, Stylistic Set 1 to 6. • Supporting 219 latin based languages, which are spoken in different 212 countries.

In August of 2009, I was commissioned by Zoo York, a New York City based skateboard company, to visit Buenos Aires to study and document street typography. As soon as my taxi driver took the bustling street Entre Ríos, it was clear that the city and I were going to be good friends. Many of the independently owned businesses on Entre Ríos are adorned with handmade signage. These signs are painted in a style called Fileteado which is a century-old Argentinian type of lettering and floral ornamentation. Nowadays, Fileteado is still a prominent part of the city’s landscape, coloring the façades of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Calaveras and Diablitos are two new typefaces that were inspired by Fileteado. Stylistically, the fonts are a return to a rhythmic and playful sensibility reminiscent of Vitrina and Cuba, two fonts that I designed in 1996. Along with dynamism and dance, these new fonts incorporate a rigor and functionality essential to labelling any font a ‘workhorse.’ The names Calaveras and Diablitos, came from the name of a song by the infamous Buenos Aires rock band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. —Pablo A. Medina

In August of 2009, I was commissioned by Zoo York, a New York City based skateboard company, to visit Buenos Aires to study and document street typography. As soon as my taxi driver took the bustling street Entre Ríos, it was clear that the city and I were going to be good friends. Many of the independently owned businesses on Entre Ríos are adorned with handmade signage. These signs are painted in a style called Fileteado which is a century-old Argentinian type of lettering and floral ornamentation. Nowadays, Fileteado is still a prominent part of the city’s landscape, coloring the façades of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. Calaveras and Diablitos are two new typefaces that were inspired by Fileteado. Stylistically, the fonts are a return to a rhythmic and playful sensibility reminiscent of Vitrina and Cuba, two fonts that I designed in 1996. Along with dynamism and dance, these new fonts incorporate a rigor and functionality essential to labelling any font a ‘workhorse.’ The names Calaveras and Diablitos, came from the name of a song by the infamous Buenos Aires rock band, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. —Pablo A. Medina

Milk Drops is a semi-casual-feeling cross between a didone and slab serif display font. Elegant, flourishy, whimsical and bold, as much as one font can be any or all of those things! It has highly contrasting weights, but not so much to take itself too seriously or risk legibility. Playfully, it entertains the teardrop motif wherever it can – in expected areas like the descender of a "y" and the ascender of an "f", but also in some whimsical flourishes. Many of the uses of the teardrop motif are implemented on the terminals and ears where many old prints may have suffered from bleed of ink – answering a "what if" question like "what if those accidental bleeds were designed on purpose?" or "what if a font were designed as though it was already seen through blurry eyes?" Milk Drops also features stencil-like open counters and lots of ligatures (32). Note also, it has some super-nerdy additions like symbols for Bitcoin, Pilcrow, Interrobang and Irony Mark. Language Support Milk Drops is highly versatile – with an impressive count of 470 glyphs, it can accommodate up to 78 latin-based languages.

Phinney Jenson ML is a font with deep historical roots firmly planted in the fertile soil of the Italian Renaissance. Twenty years after Lorenzo Ghiberti finished his famous East Doors, the Gates of Paradise, of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and about fifteen years before Sandro Botticelli painted his “Birth of Venus,” a French printer by the name of Nicolas Jenson set up a small print shop in the powerful city-state of Venice. The fifteenth century marked the end of the plague and the rise of Venetian power, as the merchants of Venice controlled the lucrative trade of the eastern Mediterranean and sent their ships as far as London and even the Baltic. In 1470, Jenson introduced his Roman type with the printing of De Praeparatio Evangelica by Eusebuis. He continued to use his type for over 150 editions until he died in 1480. In 1890 a leader of the Arts & Crafts movement in England named William Morris founded Kelmscott Press. He was an admirer of Jenson’s Roman and drew his own somewhat darker version called GOLDEN, which he used for the hand-printing of limited editions on homemade paper, initiating the revival of fine printing in England. Morris' efforts came to the attention of Joseph Warren Phinney, manager of the Dickinson Type Foundry of Boston. Phinney requested permission to issue a commercial version, but Morris was philosophically opposed and flatly refused. So Phinney designed a commercial variation of Golden type and released it in 1893 as Jenson Oldstyle. Phinney Jenson is our version of Phinney’s version of Morris' version of Nicolas Jenson’s Roman. We selected a view of the Piazza San Marco in Venice for our gallery illustration of Phinney Jenson ML because most of the principal buildings on the Piazza were already standing when Jenson arrived in Vienna in 1470. The original Campanile was completed in 1173 (the 1912 replacement is partially visible on the left). The Basilica di San Marco was substantially complete by 1300. The Doge’s Palace (not in the photo, but next to the Basilica) was substantially complete by 1450. Even the Torre dell'Orologio (Clock Tower) may have been completed by 1470—certainly by 1500. Phinney Jenson ML has a "rough-and-ready" strength, suitable for headlines and short blocks of text. We have sought to preserve some of the crudeness of the nineteenth-century original. For comparison, see the more refined Centaur, Bruce Rogers's interpretation of Jenson Roman. Phinney Jenson ML has a strong presence that will help your documents stand out from the Times New Roman blizzard that threatens to cover us all. Phinney Jenson ML Features: 1. Glyphs for the 1252 Western Europe, 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Accented glyphs for Cornish and Old Gaelic. Total of 393 glyphs. 400 kerning pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, pnum, salt, liga, dlig, hisy and ornm. 3. Tabular (std), proportional (opt) & old-style numbers (opt). 5. CcNnOoSsZz-kreska available (salt).

Before Bodoni, there was Didot. With the publication by Francois Ambroise Didot of Paris in 1784 of his prospectus for Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, the rococo typographical style of Fournier de Jeune was replaced with a spartan, neo-classical style that John Baskerville pioneered. The typeface Didot used for this work was of Didot’s own creation and is considered by both G. Dowding and P. Meggs to be the first modern face. Three years later, Bodoni of Parma is using a very similar face. Just as Bodoni’s typeface evolved over time, so did that of the Didot family. The eldest son of Francois Ambroise Didot, Pierre, ran the printing office; and Firmin ran the typefoundry. Pierre used the flattened, wove paper, again pioneered by Baskerville, to permit a more accurate impression and allow the use of more delicate letterforms. Firmin took full advantage of the improved paper by further refining the typeface introduced by his father. The printing of Racine’s Oeuvres in 1801 (seen in our gallery image #2) shows the symbiotic results of their efforts, especially in the marked increase in the sharpness of the serifs when compared to their owns works of only six years earlier. It has been suggested that one reason Bodoni achieved greater popularity than Didot is the thinner hairlines of Didot were more fragile when cast in metal type and thus more expensive for printers to use than Bodoni. This ceased to be a problem with the advent of phototypesetting, opening the door for a renewed interest in the work of the Didot family and especially that of Firmin Didot. Although further refinements in the Didot typeface were to come (notably the lower case ‘g’ shown in 1819), we have chosen 1801 as the nominal basis for our presentation of HiH Firmin Didot. We like the thick-thin circumflex that replaced the evenly-stroked version of 1795, possible only with the flatter wove paper. We like the unusual coat-hanger cedilla. We like the organic, leaf-like tail of the ‘Q.’ We like the strange, little number ‘2’ and the wonderfully assertive ‘4.’ And we like the distinctive and delightful awkwardness of the double-v (w). Please note that we have provided alternative versions of the upper and lower case w that are slightly more conventional than the original designs. Personally, I find the moderns (often called Didones) hard on the eyes in extended blocks of text. That does not stop me from enjoying their cold, crisp clarity. They represent the Age of Reason and the power of man’s intellect, while reflecting also its limitations. In the title pages set by Bodoni, Bulmer and Didot, I see the spare beauty of a winter landscape. That appeals to a New Englander like myself. Another aspect that appeals to me is setting a page in HiH Firmin Didot and watching people try to figure out what typeface it is. It looks a lot like Bodoni, but it isn't!