The letterforms that we now accept as the historical standard for printing latin alphabets were developed in Italy around the end of 1400. Deriving from Roman capitals and from italic handwriting, they soon replaced the blackletter letterforms that were used a few years before by Gutenberg for his first moveable types. Between these two typographical traditions there's an interesting and obscure middle ground of historical oddballs, like the Pannartz-Sweynheym Subiaco types, cut in Italy in 1462. Keratine is the result of Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini's exploration of that territory. Like our Kitsch by Francesco Canovaro it explores the impossible territory between antiqua and blackletter, not as a mere historical research, but rather as a way to re-discover and empower an unexpected and contemporary dynamism. Using contemporary digital aesthetics to combine the proportions of humanistic type with the gestural energy of Fraktur letterforms, Keratine develops a "digitally carved", quasi-pixelated appearance (clearly stressed in Keratine's italics) that allows an unexpected balance between small-size readability and display-size personality. Keratine also relies heavily on a variable identity as the letterforms change dynamically with weight, developing from a contrasted, text-oriented light range to more expressive and darker display range, for a total of 8 weights with italics. Open type features and glyph alternates further enrich the usage possibility of this typeface that embodies our contemporary swap culture by embracing the contradictory complexity at the crossroads between Gothic and Humanist styles, while playfully empathising with a digital, brutalist spirit.

Rizado Script is a classy one-weight script typeface, made with “dolce vita” in mind. Its high contrast and pointy tone are recalling the fine nib handwriting of a meticulous and decisive person that hasn’t got free time to spare but surely knows how to enjoy his life. No quick and dry strokes, but rather wide, elegant and strong-minded temper that will bring a long-lasting touch to your packaging layouts. Sure, if you are looking for a good fit for some more ephemeral design such as a weekend high-class cocktail promotion, or a wedding invitation – this handy display typeface won’t let you down for a second. If you happen to go to Venice and enjoy their popular Aperitivo, you’ll be asked to choose between three types of bitter-reddish base drink. Rizado will bring you the same amount of pleasure, authority and uniqueness while you pick out one of the three ampersands or other alternate characters. According to the concept of Fellini’s lifestyle, “la dolce vita” is a luxury lifestyle full of cheerful worldly pleasure. But don’t let yourself be fooled by this moto, because Italians are famous for their modesty and sagacity as well. That’s why you’re always supposed to turn on the Contextual Alternates (to activate extra positional forms — isolated, initial and final) and keep your voice down and never set this typeface in all Capital letters. There are 391 total glyphs made to support West European, Central European and South East European languages.

The Typorium presents a new optimized and enriched version of ITC Ellipse which first appeared in 1996 in the International Typeface Corporation typeface library. ITC Ellipse Script is a complementary typeface to ITC Ellipse Neo, designed a very legible handwriting style. ITC Ellipse Script is both modern and classic. Modern in the unusual shape based on the geometric ellipse form. And classic in the structure of some letters like the lower cases c, e, g, o, s. These letters alone could come from a traditional typeface, but they fit perfectly with the atypical rest of the alphabet giving it a present-day and traditional mix. Furthermore, the ellipse shape fits naturally in the italic styles, giving the font an organic and fluid feeling. ITC Ellipse Script offers OpenType features such as alternate characters for upper and lower case, and an extended accented character set to support many languages. Five weights have been created for each style to offer a wide range of graphic possibilities in a tidy digital footprint. Designer: Jean-Renaud Cuaz Publisher: Typorium MyFonts debut: Nov 1, 2020 Le Typorium présente une nouvelle version optimisée et enrichie d'ITC Ellipse qui est apparue pour la première fois en 1996 dans la bibliothèque de caractères de l'International Typeface Corporation. ITC Ellipse Script est une police complémentaire à ITC Ellipse Neo, conçue dans un style d'écriture très lisible. ITC Ellipse Script est à la fois moderne et classique. Moderne dans le dessin inhabituel basé sur la forme géométrique de l’ellipse. Et classique dans la structure de certaines lettres comme les minuscules c, e, g, o, s. Ces lettres pourraient provenir d'une police de caractères traditionnelle, mais elles s'intègrent parfaitement avec le reste de l'alphabet plus insolite en lui donnant un mélange de modernité et de tradition. De plus, la forme de l'ellipse s'intègre naturellement dans les styles italiques, donnant à la police une sensation organique et fluide. ITC Ellipse Script offre des fonctionnalités OpenType telles que des caractères alternatifs pour les capitales et les bas de casse, et un jeu de caractères accentués étendu pour prendre en charge de nombreuses langues. Cinq graisses ont été créés pour chaque style afin d'offrir un large éventail de possibilités graphiques pour une empreinte numérique rigoureuse.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

PF Champion Script Pro is perhaps the most advanced and powerful calligraphic family ever made. It received an award for Excellence in Type Design from the International Type Design Competition ‘Modern Cyrillic 2009’ which was held in Moscow. Most recently, it received another award from the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition - Granshan Awards 2010. This typeface was first presented in June 2007 at the 3rd International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC) and was met with rave reviews. It is based mainly on the manuscripts of the 18th century English calligrapher Joseph Champion. Developed over a period of two and a half years, each one of the 2 weights is loaded with 4300 glyphs(!), offering simultaneous support for all European languages based on the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. Furthermore, a wide selection of alternate forms and ligatures is included for all languages, in order to accommodate diverse design aesthetics. These alternates are either applied automatically through an advanced programming scheme, or manually through several OpenType features. An attempt was made to design a contemporary script typeface with classic roots, by following certain guidelines, i.e. lowercase characters were designed so they are less inclined, have a higher x-height and are less condensed than the original. Several characters were stripped-off their connecting lines in order to enhance legibility. Four sets of alternate swashed capitals as well as a plethora of ornaments and frames (117) was included. Small caps and their alternate forms were designed to replace the capitals which disrupt the flow of text within a sentence with their extravagant swashes. All characters were carefully designed with the proper weight in order to sustain harsh printing conditions (on special papers), a situation which affects mainly the light connecting parts of calligraphic typefaces. Finally, it was programmed in such a way as to preserve handwriting qualities, by designing an extensive array of ligatures and alternate glyphs in all languages, never before released or incorporated within the same font.

A charming confidant. Italic, but without the slant. Campuni is a sans-serif typeface that can be described as an “upright italic”: its letters are modeled on the handwritten forms of italics—but without the slant. This gives Campuni a contemporary, charming, and trustworthy character. As with most modern sans-serif typefaces, Campuni’s design is based on low-contrast, almost monolinear strokes with a neat and clear appearance. This is where Campuni’s steep and tapered joints come in: with a bit of contrast, they provide the perfect foundation for a steady rhythm between characters—just like you’d find in meticulous handwriting. Careful spacing ensures that this rhythmic character is preserved on the page and on screen, making for a pleasant reading experience. It’s not just the letterforms that gain from Campuni’s calligraphic heritage, though. This typeface is packed with calligraphy-style swash capitals and end swashes on lowercase letters, as well as discretionary ligatures. These are available via OpenType, allowing you to spice up your logo or headline with a hint of calligraphy in a breeze. Despite its flawless legibility in body text, Campuni is definitely eye-catching in display sizes. (Decrease letterspacing for some additional punch.) Besides logo design, Campuni is a great choice for branding, advertising, packaging, corporate design, or even signage and wayfinding. The range of topics that Campuni excels in varies from food, leisure, retail, e-commerce, music, and travel to games, toys, childcare, and family-themed events. Campuni has got an Extended Latin character set, seven sets of figures, case-sensitive forms, arrows, and a few other advanced typographic features—622 glyphs in total. Its eight weights span from Thin to Black.

Kayto Script is the second collaboration of Erwin Indrawan as the calligrapher and Dexsar Harry Anugrah of Majestype as the typeface designer. Today the resurgence of calligraphy has reached the summit, with social media as the vehicle, we are now familiar with many styles of calligraphy. One of the popular styles is brush lettering, especially the pointed brush calligraphy. Kayto Script is an exploration in pointed brush calligraphy. It’s an interpretation of modern brush calligraphy that combines cursive writing with the East Asian calligraphy flair. Kayto is made with a real brush and held perpendicular to the paper so the brush can twist and turn freely to follow the movement of the hand. This technique gives a natural gesture and energetic look to the strokes. Kayto has a unique rhythm of brush pressure to generate the thick-and-thin strokes... the beating heart of brush calligraphy. Instead of the mechanical thick-and-thin strokes like the regular calligraphy, Kayto is written with a lot of variety of pressure that is somewhat melodic but still conform with the discipline. The result is a script that feels personal and characterized with lively energy. And just like handwriting, every letter in Kayto script is crafted with many varieties of glyphs and ligatures to make an unlimited combination of personalized lettering. Because of its natural letterforms, Kayto Script is best suited to complement anything that is earthy or has nature as the ground. Erwin, the calligrapher, has used Kayto in many of his watercolor illustrations. Another ideas are wedding names on invitations or place cards, logo for any natural products, inspirational quotes, business cards and the list goes on... but in the end, if you wish for something personal and truly one of a kind then Kayto script the one you want. Also, Kayto offer a free version called "Kayto Doodles" designed by Adiet Pramudya.

Out of a lifelong inner struggle, Philip Bouwsma unleashes a masterpiece that reconciles classic calligraphy with type in a way never before attempted. Maestro takes its cue from the Italian chancery cursive of the early sixteenth century. By this time type ruled the publishing world, but official court documents were still presented in calligraphy, in a new formal style of the high Renaissance that was integrated with Roman letters and matched the refined order of type. The copybooks of Arrighi and others, printed from engraved wood blocks, spread the Italian cancellaresca across Europe, but the medium was too clumsy and the size too small to show what was really happening in the stroke. Arrighi and others also made metal fonts that pushed type in the direction of calligraphy, but again the medium did not support the superb artistry of these masters or sustain the vitality in their work. As the elegant sensitive moving stroke of the broad pen was reduced to a static outline, the human quality, the variety and the excitement of a living act were lost. Because the high level of skill could not be reproduced, the broad pen was largely replaced by the pointed tool. The modern italic handwriting revival is based on a simplified model and does not approach the level of this formal calligraphy with its relationship to the Roman forms. Maestro is the font that Arrighi and his colleagues would have made if they had had digital technology. Like the calligraphic system of the papal chancery on which it is modelled, it was not drawn as a single finished alphabet, but evolved from a confluence of script and Roman; the script is formalized by the Roman to stand proudly in a world of type. Maestro came together on screen over the course of several years, through many versions ranging widely in style, formality, width, slant, weight and other parameters. On one end of the spectrum, looking back to tradition it embodies the formal harmony of the Roman capitals and the minuscule which became the lower case. On the other it is a flowing script letter drawing on the spirit of later pointed pen and engravers scripts. As its original designers intended, it works with simple Roman capitals and serifs or swash capitals and baroque flourishes. The broad pen supplies weight and substance to the stroke which carries energy through tension in balanced s-curves. Above all it is meant to convey the life and motion of formal calligraphy as a worthy counterbalance to the stolid gravity of metal type. The Maestro family consists of forty fonts distributed over two weights. The OpenType version compresses the family considerably down to two fonts, regular and bold, each containing the entire character set of twenty fonts, for a total of more than 3350 characters per font. These include a wide variety of stylistic alternates, ligatures, beginning and ending letters, flourishes, borders, rules, and other extras. The Pro version also includes extended linguistic support for Latin-based scripts (Western, Central and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Welsh/Celtic, Maltese) as well as Greek. For more thoughts on Maestro, its background and character sets, please read the PDF accompanying the family.

Once, Blackletter was a calligraphy style. Full of ligatures, with letters bumping into each other to create an unapologetic picket-fence pattern. Some even claimed that the regularity improved legibility! But then Blackletter was cast into metal, and only a handful of established ligatures survived, while most interletter connections were disentangled. Everyone since followed suit, and hundreds of years later, digital Blackletter fonts were modelled mostly on the metal fonts that prevailed rather than the original handwriting. Up until now! AJ Quadrata is an authentic revival of the textura quadrata hand, and its major inspiration is a 15th-century Latin manuscript of the Bible from Zwolle, the Netherlands. The typeface is delivered in two flavors. The default cut is a modern take on textura quadrata that can be useful for today and tomorrow. The standard ligatures feature employs nearly all letters. The tittle of i retains its original, hasty squiggle form (except for the Turkish localization). Discretionary ligatures include medieval ligatures da, de, do, pa, pe, po (and their mixed-case counterparts!). Stylistic sets allow to use historic letter variants such as long s and rotunda r, closed-counter a, and alternate capitals. AJ Quadrata Medieval is perfect for setting Latin. Default forms of capital F, H and O are swapped with the alternates. The squiggles above i only appear for disamibiguation nearby m, n or u, as in original manuscripts. Discretionary ligatures and historic variants are promoted to the standard ligatures feature to make room in the discretionary ligatures feature for a variety of scribal abbreviations. Dedicated stylistic sets include medieval punctuation and justification alternates — glyphs with elongated terminals used for lengthening lines that end up too short. The Rubrum styles can be layered and colored to create the illuminated effect on the capital letters. Besides a faithful rendition of extended Latin including Vietnamese, numerous synthetic additions are included: polytonic Greek, Armenian, and Cyrillic (with Bulgarian and Serbian/Macedonian localizations). Both flavors of the typeface can be considered a starting point that can be further customized using OpenType features, including Stylistic Sets (some features differ between AJ Quadrata and AJ Quadrata Medieval): ss01 Alt E ss02 Descending F / Roman F ss03 Uncial H / Roman H ss04 Angular O / Round O ss05 Contextual closed-counter a ss06 Diamond-dot i j / Always dotted i, j ss07 Contextual rotunda r / No r rotunda ss08 Contextual long s / No long s ss09 Dotless y ss10 Serbian Cyrillic ss11 Alt Cyrillic de ss12 Alt Cyrillic zhe ss13 Alt Cyrillic sha ss14-ss17 [reserved for future use] ss18 Scribal punctuation ss19 Alt linking hyphen ss20 Justification alternates

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

The Tazugane Gothic typeface family is the first original Japanese typeface created by Monotype. Designed by Akira Kobayashi, Kazuhiro Yamada and Ryota Doi of the Monotype Studio, the Tazugane Gothic typeface offers ten weights and was developed to complement the classic Latin typeface, Neue Frutiger. The design of the Tazugane Gothic typeface balances an original, humanistic style with elements of traditional Japanese handwriting. The two typefaces work together in a natural, seamless and adaptable manner so that Japanese and Latin texts can be used side-by-side for a wide range of applications, including in magazines, books and other print media; on digital devices; in branding and corporate identity systems; and in signage for buildings, highways and mass transit. Tazugane Gothic was updated to support the “Reiwa” new era symbol. Reiwa can be written as two kanji: 令和. This update to Tazugane Gothic includes Reiwa designed as a single ligature and is encoded as U+32FF. The inspiration for the Tazugane Gothic typeface is as elegant as its design. Since antiquity, cranes have been regarded in East Asia as auspicious birds for their noble appearance and elegance in flight. The typeface is named Tazugane Gothic in honor of the longevity of the crane, with the goal that it will be used for many years to come. The combination of the Tazugane Gothic typefaces’ traditional and humanistic elements, along with its intended ability to complement popular Latin typefaces, makes it one of the most uniquely flexible designs for applications where Japanese and Latin texts can be used together. The typeface family was created to have wide appeal, with a pleasing and consistent experience for readers, for use on screen, in print, in signage, packaging and advertising. Tazugane Gothic has 10 weights. The Light, Book, Regular, Medium and Bold weights are considered best for text sizes. The Ultra Light, Thin, Heavy, Black and Extra Black weights are recommended for headline sizes.