Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Runway is the font that will satisfy the need for speed in your design. Simple lines and curves, a commanding slant, and big sturdy shapes made to cruise at any speed or altitude, through summer breeze or horrible snowstorms. Runway was designed to be tight like an engine chain, powerful like the hum of the engine itself, and simply the best choice when it comes to strength and velocity in design. Initially Runway was meant to be a single font. But during the spacing and kerning stages, Patrick noticed that most of the letters, especially the vowels and the s, can clasp stylishly with the L or the T to make some really funky combinations. That's how the Alternates font was born. After building a few alternates and about 40 "clasped" combinations around the L and the T, the decision was made to take Runway to the next level: OpenType. The OpenType version of Runway is a single font that contains some serious font magic. Some of the many features the font includes: Over 430 characters for that great character map utility you have, automatic to-and-fro small-capping, discretionary ligatures that call up some pretty funky combinations automatically as you type, and a lot of stylistic and contextual alternates for many characters, ligatures and composites. If your design program of choice supports the features of OpenType fonts (Illustrator CS, Photoshop CS, InDesign CS), then you're in for a lot of enjoyment playing with Runway. For those who don't fancy OpenType or can't handle it, Runway is also available (in Regular, Caps and Alt styles) in the usual font formats for both Mac and PC.

Space Armada - A Science-Fiction Font for Out of this World Designs! Space Armada is inspired by a 1980s interpretation of the future, referencing blockbuster sci-fi action movies of the period, along with the emerging video-game consoles and home computer technologies. It's nine unique fonts are designed to work together in a variety of ways, so you can layer it's different styles on top of each other to retro-futuristic effect!* Here's an example of how it works: Start by placing the Regular font on top of the Bold for a simple base outline. Add contrasting gradients to both fonts for an instant metallic or chrome effect. Take it a step further with one of the readymade Outlines for an embossed look. Overlay the Wireframe font for a glimpse inside the machine! This looks particularly good when you apply a glow effect and reduce it's opacity so the other layers show through. That's just one way to use it. Check out my visuals for more usage ideas! You can also follow my short tutorial! Space Armada is an all-caps font with unique uppercase and lowercase characters, along with a range of alternatives for experimentation with different looks. It also includes punctuation, numerals and language support, plus a selection of underlines and symbols. It's a highly customisable font, perfect for retro designs such as movie titles, posters, games, book covers and more! Every care has been taken to ensure that all fonts align perfectly when layering. Due to the variations in how different software handles text tracking, some minor tweaking may be required for pixel perfect alignment.

Crypto-typography - the passion for unknown, weird and unusual character shapes - is a disease commonly affecting type designers. Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini has celebrated it in this typeface family, aptly named Hagrid after the half-blood giant with a passion for cryptozoology described by R. K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books. Extreme optical corrections, calligraphic counter-spaces, inverted contrast, over-the-top overshoots: all the inventions that abound in vernacular and experimental typography have been lovingly collected in this mongrel sans serif family, carefully balancing quirky solutions and solid grotesque design. Hagrid is a typeface designed for editorial & display use, bringing dynamism to the printed and digital page thanks to its extreme contrast and unique details. It has been developed in a range of six display weights ranging from the monolinear and more traditional thin to the expressive heavy weight. For better readability in small sizes and on the web, a companion text family has been developed, with a slightly different selection of weights, wider metrics, and fine adjustments to keep the dynamic expressivity of the design without sacrificing legibility. This is evident in the design of italics: while the display italics sport a cursive feel with calligraphic terminals to lowercase letters, the text design is more restrained, with a more classical geometric grotesque slanted look. Given the crypto-typographer love for foreign specimens of letters, special care has been put into making Hagrid ready for multilingual projects, giving it an extended character sets covering over two hundred languages that use Latin, Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets and adding a selected range of OpenType features to handle alternate forms and stylistic sets.

Extraordinary impact and visual conspicuousness. Poipoi is a super 3D sans family for posters, logos and all display. The basic idea is not a brand new. The Stacking type system has been used since before wood type age. As you imagined, colored wood type(woodcut), many other engravings and contemporary printer machine print many colors separately with different printing plates for each color. Poipoi uses the same system for 3d effect. Please use Photoshop or Illustrator, or your favorite graphic design apps that can handle layers. Layers are the printing plates of wood type. You should be able to change text color for each layer. Poipoi "Standard" style is the base of this font family. You can add effects by stacking Highlight and shadow layers. Stacked layers in different color make the text in 3D. Instruction 1. Type your text as you like. 2. Set font-name "Poipoi" and font-style "Standard" 3. Set color of "Standard" layer. 4. Duplicate the "Standard" layer twice (One for Highlight, one for Shadow). 4'. The layer order should be Highlight, Standard, and Shadow from top to bottom. 5. Set font-style and color of "Highlight" and "Shadow" layers. 6. Adjust tracking if you need. (Please use same tracking value for all 3 layers.) For further detail, https://www.dropbox.com/s/xymis7dh5hwxn9q/Poipoi.pdf Poipoi Standard, Highlighted, and shadowed style can be used solely. Rounded terminals add soft, cute, and casual impressions to your design. Spec: Over 400 glyphs! Basic Latin ✓ Western Europe ✓ Central Europe ✓ South Eastern Europe ✓ Mac Roman ✓ Windows 1252 ✓ Adobe Latin 1 ✓ Adobe Latin 2 ✓ Adobe Latin 3 ✓ Almost all Latins are covered.

VAROGE SARO NOEST arrives on your computer with OpenType replacement features standard, along with extended language support for Central European, Greek, Cyrillic and Extended Cyrillic. We've even included some nice character options for our German-speaking customers with the uppercase Eszett and a number of alternatives to the standard lowercase eszett. Also included is the new Turkish Lira. VAROGE SARO NOEST is a font with a very funny name. Sometimes it can be a funny font. Or a font that is fun. It looks kinda casual, but also a little bit handwritten--freeform and freehand. Or a form of block lettering with a rough edge. Not too rough. Just enough to break up the visual rigidity. But this is not a face in distress. It's mostly at ease in its surroundings. If it's in text mode, it handles the job comfortably. In headline mode it does well too. It's quite flexible and looking for a home. Give this font a home. See if you can figure out what to use it for. See if you see what we saw when we made it. We saw a font that's cool and elegant with a bit of a tantrum driving the node count. We also found it's impossible to look away from it. Anyone can see that. That's why you're here. That's why you're reading this. And VAROGE will do you a favor if you let it. Revisit your typographic beliefs and head over to the one persistent constant in life: your font list. Is VAROGE SARO NOEST on it? If it were to set up headquarters there, you might discover something ideal. That's the favor I was promising.

Who haven't heard the phrase that ‘any past time was better’?. Although I sometimes find this phrase a little too pessimistic (because I try to think that the best is yet to come), it may be true regarding my passion, typography. I'm too young (29) unfortunately, and this means I did not have the pleasure of being contemporary with maybe the man who has influenced my work the most (1). The man that showed that letters are more than just letters to be read. Herb Lubalin (1918-1981), also called sometimes as ‘the rule basher’ (2), smashed the taboos and sacred rules of type design and gave it personality. He rejected the functionalist philosophy of europeans in favor of an eclectic and exuberant style. To him, letters were not merely vessels of form, they were objects of meaning. (3). Nowadays, when looking at his portfolio, who dares to deny that the term ‘typography’ and ‘beauty’ may go hand-in-hand without any problem? Ed Benguiat, one of Herb’s partners, still likes making jokes with the phrase “screw legibility, type should be beautiful” and what I understand of this is not to forget the rules, but to know and break them carefully. In an era of pure eclecticism, we, the lovers of flourishes and swashes, can't do nothing but admire all the legacy that Lubalin, this wonderful type-guru, left. My font Lubaline read as “the line of Lubalin” is my humble tribute to him. Those who know his work, may see the influences easily like in his ‘Beards’ (1976) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) posters; the art-deco forms in many of his amazing logos and practically in all his creations where letters seem to be alive just like you and me. I really hope that the future finds me still learning more and more about type-design and letterforms, and like him, always willing to make innovations in my field: Because letters are not just letters to be read. NOTES (1) These are some of my fonts in which some of Lubalin’s influences can be seen (in order of creation): Reina, Aire, Erotica, String, Beatle, Heroe, Selfie, Model, Seventies, and many others that are still in progress. (2) (3) Steven Heller. Herb Lubalin: Rule Basher. U&lc (1998) http://www.printmag.com/imprint/my-favorite-lubalin/

“Hello My Love” is a font love story. Inspired by my own long and happy marriage of 35 years, it was created to celebrate love! A classic hand-lettered script with a modern and fresh feel, it fits beautifully with current designs and yet is sure to stand the test of time. Made with invitation designers in mind, the Hello My Love Pro script font includes a total of 1985 glyphs plus a BONUS FONT, Hello My Love Ornaments! It has 91 hand illustrations including frames, florals and design elements. As a result, you will be able to create a variety of designs to highlight your special project. It’s especially well-suited for invitations for branding weddings and other special occasions! And it supports 129 languages! The font is loaded with features: Stylistic and Contextual Alternates, Swash Caps, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Beginning Swashes for lower case letters, Cross-less t and f that can be combined with a flourished letter to avoid clashing plus 3 ampersands, small word art "and" & "No.", Roman Numerals, Ordinals and Fractions. This font was created to make designing easy. Need to convert upper case letters into Roman numerals throughout a guest list? Just turn on contextual alternates in Open Type capable programs and presto, the caps become Roman! Want a variety of letter choices? There are 215 stylistic alternate upper cases and 259 stylistic alternate lower cases as well as 69 ligatures to give you plenty of options. You can choose from swashes in 4 different styles and 3 different lengths resulting in unique beginning lower case letters. Works for Cutting Machines! No special software is required to use Hello My Love. All of my fonts have been specially coded for PUA (Private Use Area) so you can access all of the swashes and alternates using Character Map (PC) or Character Viewer (Mac) or with any number of apps including PopChar. If you would like to purchase PopChar at a special discount email me and I will send you the link. For Microsoft Word users, you can easily access the Stylistic and Contextual Alternates and the Roman Numerals through the Typography feature. (Microsoft Word 2010 and later) For more details about how to use my fonts, check out my video tutorials on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Letteringartstudio/videos

Here is another design by jewelry designer Max Joseph Gradl. Zier is a verb, meaning to decorate, adorn or ornament; zierlich means decorative, elegant, fine, neat. Schrift means type. Zierschrift, therefore, means decorative type. Gradl Zierschriften is a decorative type in the Art Nouveau style, rather than the more ornate Victorian style. Very modern, very young, with an elegant simplicity of form. Maria Makela, in her book The Munich Secession (Princeton 1990) suggests that the frequent use of simple, flowing, organic forms that was so characteristic of Art Nouveau was a reaction against the growing complexity and rapid urbanization that resulted from 19th century industrialization. In keeping with that reaction is the hand-drawn quality that intentionally rejects a mechanistic mathematic precision of line rendering. Gradl Zierschriften preserves that hand-drawn quality. Designed with upper case only, this face was obviously intended for short headlines only and is best set at 18 points or larger. However, I don't think you really get to experience the grace of this design until you get to 36 points or more. In the larger sizes, it is simply stunning. Please note that while most of the uppercase letterforms are repeated in the lower case for convenience, the ‘F’,‘L’ and ‘T’ are rendered a little narrower than in the uppercase to provide for visual variety. The font also includes a generous supply of ligatures for just the right fit ... and just for the fun of using them. Three common ways of inserting a ligature, accented letter or other special character are: 1) Key in “ALT”+“0”+[ascii #]; for example ALT+0233 for the e-acute, 2) From within your application program, go to the INSERT menu and look for something like “Insert Symbol,” (this function is NOT available in all application programs) & 3) Cut & Paste from the CHARACTER MAP display that has been supplied by every generation of Windows Operating System that I can recall (All Programs>Accessories>System Tools). Isn't it amazing what you can do? Don't be afraid to experiment. If you back up your work, you have very little to lose and a lot to gain. Not only do you acquire a new tool, but by the very process you have learned how to continually expand your knowledge and skill base.

This best selling series has now been extended to include a new member, Blue Goblet Drawn. Blue Goblet is hand-drawn by the artist, Cory Godbey, and is organic, charming and exuberant. Characters bounce and dance above and below the baseline and x-height, making this a whimsical and fun script. Not only is Blue Goblet Drawn a excellent choice, it also is also a versatile member of a wide family of different fonts. You can use it side by side with the original Blue Goblet fonts, and there are a wide range of ornaments available in the supplemental ornament sets--over 370 illustrations! These illustrations include doodley frames, lovely florals and other text ornaments that can be inserted into your text and resized at will. This makes the Blue Goblet series a great pick when you want a type system for a very unique and consistent look. The Blue Goblet series also continues to expand, making any of these family members a valuable investment for the future. Blue Goblet Drawn comes in three weights and three widths in each weight, with complementary italics for maximum impact for a total of eighteen pro fonts. The compact thin weights are delicate and tall, while the Regular has just enough heft for those situations where subtlety doesn't work. If you don't need the professional features, there are three stripped down fonts that include only the basic character set! Blue Goblet Drawn also includes auto-replacing ligatures that make it appear that the script was drawn by the artistís own hand--just for you! Blue Goblet Drawn also includes a wide variety of alternates that can be accessed in any OpenType enabled application. Blue Goblet includes over 190 additional glyphs and is loaded with features including an even more unique alternate alphabet. Included are swash alternates, style sets, old style figures and small caps. Please see the informative PDF brochure to see these features in action. OpenType enabled applications such as the Adobe suite or Quark can take full advantage of the automatic replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Blue Goblet Drawn is a great choice for friendly display type in children's books, packaging, organic packaging or other unique applications. Use Blue Goblet whenever you want to inject a handmade sense of fun and whimsy to your designs. Give the Blue Goblet series a whirl today!

Amazing lightness of modern calligraphic writing is reproduced in handwritten script font Sadlyne. This font consists of a pair of handwritten script font and additional font with hand-drawn flourishes and decorative elements. An outstanding feature of them is the fanciful swirls of the initial and final tails of the letters, which will add a playful elegance to your typography designs. The handwritten font itself includes all abundance of modern calligraphic font capabilities. The font pair Sadlyne is the best option for your wedding stationery and wedding monograms. Also it will be perfect for branding, logos, social media, packaging, and other projects. Sadlyne script contains a full set of uppercase letters and 5 full sets of lowercase letters, (standard, alternative, and initial, final form and flourish form). To make a needed form just type a letter with a number (such as a1, b1, c1...) and 27 ligatures - which can be used to create a handwritten calligraphy look. Sadlyne script font contains the Cyrillic glyphs too. The Cyrillic part of the font contains the uppercase letters and 3 full sets of lowercase letters, (standard, initial and final form). To make a needed form just type a letter with a number such as a1, б1, в1... After that select the word and apply the Open Type Features in programmes such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and others) Also Cyrillic part of the font contains 12 Cyrillic ligatures. To use all features of the font you need to have an access to all Opentype Features in software you work with. Sadlyne Symbols is a font with over 36 hand-drawn elements, illustrations and swashes that can help you to make your design unique and matchless. Combine and merge swashes and illustrations to create your own designs and make borders, frames, dividers, logos, and more (just use A-Z and a-z keys in the included Sadlyne Symbols font). A different symbol is assigned to each uppercase or lowercase standard character, so you do not need graphics software, just type the letter you need. Multilingual Support for 31 languages: Latin glyphs for Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh, Zulu. And Cyrillic glyphs support for Russian, Belorussian, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian languages.