The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

The drawings, for what is now Triplex Italic, were done in Iowa City in 1985 by John Downer. The italic was originally conceived as a companion for another typeface being drawn at the same time called Arcatext, which (like Triplex) could be described as a "humanist sans-serif" having simplified character shapes constructed mostly of geometric parts. At one stage, a certain customer was interested in Arcatext but wanted a different italic drawn for it, so the plan for the italic took another direction and the idea for this one was dropped. Five years later, Emigre decided to commission the abandoned italic as a digital typeface in three weights as companions to the Triplex Sans and Serif families designed by Zuzana Licko in early 1990. The ascenders and descenders have been shortened to match those of Triplex and the new capitals embody more of the features that distinguish the lower case, but otherwise the digital version closely follows the original drawings. See also Triplex OT.

Inspired by a few letters in a hand-drawn logotype, Swashington is a serif font with both an early 20th Century feel and yet is evocative of the swash fonts of the 1970s as well. The real meat of this typeface comes with using all the swash and ligature variants allowing for an enormous amount of typographic flair. Starting with the original logo, Jason Walcott was moved to develop these interesting letterforms into a full typeface with all the swashy might he could muster. In addition to a comprehensive set of Swash and Alternate letters, there are also over 270 Discretionary Ligatures that can be used to create different possibilities by mixing and matching. Included with the downloaded fonts are two .pdf files showing all the swashes and ligatures, that can be printed and used for easy reference. All of the alternates are available via the Glyph Palette or with OpenType features. The font includes support for all Latin based and Eastern European languages.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

Serat is a medium contrast flared serif with mixed up styles of classic typefaces which is highly influenced by early stages of Latin based hand writing. The lowercase are modernized versions of Carolingian minuscules, vertical stems which touch the baseline have been modified to have horizontal cut for simpler look and keep the calligraphic style for terminals & stroke ends. Then the uppercase are flared serif which were influenced by Roman inscriptional capitals. The font name was taken from the Javanese word "serat" which means writing (noun). It comes with some unique features, such as: - Carolingian style alternate for some letters (a,e,f,g,t), also comes with separated stylistic set for long 's', and long left leg 'x' and alternative ampersand. - Discretionary ligatures for all caps titling. - Standard Ligatures. - Tabular and Proportional for both Lining and Old-style figure. - Fraction with Nominator and Denominator. - Superscript and Subscript for numbers, etc. Serat would be suitable for "classic" themed work; poster, book cover, branding, videography, etc.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

My Spellbound an authentic groovy typeface. So, The Stranger Things series is already watched and you'll waiting the last one season for another two years. Well, if you miss for late 70s or early 80s in your design – this one is for you. Smooth, groovy and playful – exactly for your vintage projects. This typeface will suit for the display block texts like package labels or will be perfect for an any display header. Create a vintage t-shirt print or make groovy stickers - Spellbound will suits perfectly. A lot of alternates will give you a really wide range of results. You may combine it with Italics and get a really playful pair. Two characters for any caps and up to 6 alternates for lowercases. Regular and true Italic Open Type Features Multilingual I would really love to see what you create with my products, so please feel free to tag me @vintagevoyagedesign on Instagram. Happy creating! Thank you.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

VLNL Berlagebrug Designer Donald DBXL Beekman daily crosses the Berlage bridge spanning the Amstel river in Amsterdam. The Berlagebrug was built as part of the city planning project ‘Plan Zuid’ by H.P.Berlage and opened in May 1932. Its name, carved out of two granite headstones, sparked the design of this font family. The original lettering is attributed to Anton Kurvers in the early 19th century, and can be seen on many Amsterdam buildings and bridges. It’s typical lettering of the Amsterdamse School, the Dutch equivalent of the expressionist art deco architectural style, and mostly known for its extravagant brick work. VLNL Berlagebrug is a rounded display font that comes in three outline styles matching the building materials used in the bridge. Gietijzer (cast iron) is smooth, Zandsteen (sandstone) has a softly distressed outline, and Graniet (granite) is outspoken rough and crumbled. The capital letters in VLNL Berlagebrug are in the Amsterdamse school style, the lowercases are more straight alternate capitals, giving you more design options.

Semi-serif? Semi-sans? Emerging from the hazy border that divides Sans from Serif, Integra aims to integrate both styles in a cool, elegant, contemporary fashion. With its sleek anatomy, flared terminals and almost non-existent straight lines, Integra was inspired by the stressed, modulated, unserifed letterforms incised in the early 15th-century ledger tombs at Santa Croce church in Florence, and the neoclassical grotto inscriptions at Stourhead in England that dates from the mid 18th-century. Integra, however, gives a contemporary, even futuristic twist to these references by featuring original, audacious shapes on key letters like L, E and X; as well as with the modern, generous proportions of its lowercase; infusing it all with a flowing, luminous, Latin American feel. Integra comes in several weights and italic styles, for text composition and display usage. Its rounded counterforms and arch-like shapes lend texts a spacious, neat, architectural quality, perfect for sophisticated content.

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

Brecksville is a condensed grotesk typeface that takes inspiration from early German designs of the mid-19th century. It was designed as part of my current research into grotesk typefaces and different letterforms, as part of my dissertation research, “Perfected Letters: German Grotesk in the Nineteenth Century”, which focuses on the role of German design in typography. The Brecksville font family provides a wide range of weights, ranging from light to bold for both its rounded display style and more rugged sharp style. Both its styles feature the same horizontal proportions and metrics so they can freely be combined with no spacing issues. Brecksville's visually punchy condensed style and sharp edges, allows it to stand out on the screen – at almost any size. Its black composition also brings out the details needed in magazine and tabloid headlines, while maintaining readability throughout. The rounded display version is ideal for posters and other uses where you want something eye catching but not too hard on the eyes.

Homage to 70s phototype typography in 3 styles The AW Conqueror typeface family is a nod to the spirit of phototype typefaces and transfer lettering from the early 70’s. Founded by Ed Rondthaler, Photo-lettering catalogs swarmed with more daring typefaces than the others. Both transfer letter and phototitling have liberated the principle of letter-to-letter spacing, previously impossible with metal type. Phototype allowed operators to position millimeters, on the fly, letter after letter: words, sentences according to the specifications of the art director. AW Conqueror superfamily AW Conqueror Didot is part of a larger family, who include 4 others subfamilies with great potential: They’re but based on same structure, with some connection between them (width for example), to offer a great & easy titling toolbox to any designers, from skilful to beginner. Each of the members try their best to be different from the others because of their features. They should work harmoniously in contrast. Club des directeurs artistiques Prix 2010 European Design Awards 2011

The Data Error AOE Family was one of my earliest typefaces, at a time when I had become obsessed with all forms of "digital/techology" typestyles. It's been awhile since the early 2000's, but I've had a hankering for awhile now to revisit this typeface, giving it a more expansive language character set and fill it out with some Opentype features. Inspired by some old printouts of BASIC programs and an Atari 1050 Disk Drive manual with pin printer examples, comes the familiar yet oddly restricted style with this Data Error family. This family comes complete with Regular and Bold versions with their respective Oblique versions. Odd pin printer restrictions inherent in this typeface are: no characters extend below baseline or above ascender line, (except international accents). A nostalgic typeface for computer programmers everywhere, strong and legible at any size, Data Error is perfect for so many purposes, get it today!

The Charles Bluemlein Script Collection is an intriguing reminder of the heady days of hand lettering and calligraphy in the United States. From the early 1930s through World War II, there were about 200 professional hand letterers working in New York City alone. This occupation saw its demise with the advent of photo lettering, and after digital typography, became virtually extinct. The odd way in which the Bluemlein scripts were assembled and created - by collecting different signatures and then building complete alphabets from them - is a fascinating calligraphic adventure. Because the set of constructed designs looked nothing like the original signatures, fictitious names were assigned to the new script typefaces. The typeface styles were then showcased in Higgins Ink catalogs. Alejandro Paul and Sudtipos bring the Bluemlein scripts back to life in a set of expanded digital versions, reflecting the demands of today’s designer. Extreme care has been taken to render the original scripts authentically, keeping the fictitious names originally assigned to them by Bluemlein.

What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

Secca is a fresh and versatile typeface series. With its workhorse qualities, Secca is perfectly suited for a wide range of applications - especially where legibility and economy are important factors. Secca is rooted in the tradition of early German Grotesk typefaces, but is tailored for the needs of today, with a wide language support and many typographic features and extras. » pdf specimen « The core family comes in nine weights from Thin to Ultra Black plus another three Hairline weights - each with italics, small caps and italic small caps. While the weights from Light to Bold perform well in text sizes, the more extreme styles give extra freedom for Headlines & Signage. For setting tables and charts, Secca offers tabular figures, fractions, currency signs and mathematic operators which share the same fixed width throughout the entire range of weights. This special feature is called “weight duplexing” and is a time saver for designers of annual reports and other figure-heavy texts.

The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.

The original Swift (1985) proved its worth in corporate identities, magazines and newspapers and occasionally in books. It is a versatile type and can be used in a wide range of circumstances. It is a striking type, with large serifs, large counters and letters that produce a particularly strong horizontal impression. This means that words and lines in Neue Swift are easily distinguished, even where there are large spaces between words, as can occur in newsprint. Neue Swift's large, robust counters were designed to improve legibility particularly in newspapers. It was designed in the early eighties, when papers were less well printed than they are today, and its special features help it survive on grey, rough paper printed on fast rotary presses. Today it is used more often outside newspapers than in them. Neue Swift (2009) is the newest version of the Swift concept. It has been improved by technical and aesthetic enhancements, and has been expanded into a family of twelve variants. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Websites, Best Fonts for PowerPoints

Initially commissioned in the summer of 2009 for a popular North American ice cream parlor chain we cannot name, Tuba started with a reconceptualization of a somewhat flawed '72 alphabet idea by Swiss graphic designer Erwin Poell. During the back-and-forth of the custom project, other ideas seeped into the design, mostly from other Canada Type fonts, like Fab, Jonah, Jojo and Teaspoon. The end result was what the client called a "sugar circuit trigger alphabet". This now is the retail version of that project. Tuba's main style is a straight-forward mix of 60s/70s art nouveau ideas and late-70s/early-80s tube aesthetic. The Highlight and Outline styles are almost necessary spinoffs for this kind of typeface. And the all-caps Black style is a nod to the fat font fad of the past couple of years. All styles contain many alternates – so many that each style is almost two fonts in one. Make sure to check out the character sets for a few nice and useful surprises. Life's too short. Seek sweetness. Get gooey.

Arzachel is a humanistic sanserif with a big x-height and a specific organic look. Its design is scientifically sharp and efficient in small type sizes as well as rugged and dramatic in headlines. Arzachel’s essential feeling comes from several features: all the letters are slightly sloped, stem terminations are flared at the top, and the terminals in letters a, c, e, f… are widening with the inside parts completely flat. The stroke contrast is low in the regular weight while it increases in the black; finally the capitals have an inscriptional flavor. Despite being a sanserif (thus a product of recent typography) Arzachel’s roots stretch back to the Renaissance tradition: Olocco took inspiration from some of the early and rather weird types cut in Venice in the 15th century. Arzachel was conceived during Olocco’s MA in Reading to provide a companion for his Zenon for use in small type sizes. But instead of expanding the Zenon family with optical sizes, the designer decided on a sans with its own personality rather than a sanserif version of Zenon with chopped-off serifs.

The early Twentieth Century was a golden age for cinema, and for the artists who lettered the iconic title sequences. Stanffords Family evokes the soul of this vintage brush lettering with a modern twist. Its main characteristics are bouncy baseline, round forms. These qualities give Stanffords its casual, friendly and handmade looks. The font family is characterized by excellent legibility in both - web & print design areas, well-finished calligraphic designs, optimized kerning etc. Stanffords Family include 5 fonts: Stanffords, Stanffords Bright, Stanffords Sans and Stanffords Ornaments and Stanffords Bright Ornaments (sets of 86 ornaments) to combine and give options to your typographic elements and designs. Stanffords is a very versatile script font: it includes initial forms, and a generous complement of alternate characters, ligatures and ornaments, creating a genuine connecting hand-painted look in dynamic OpenType format. You have a lot of options to customize it and that makes it perfect for logos, packages, titles, food packaging, t-shirts, blogs, photo books, wedding and invitation stationery and for everything you think necessary ... You get the idea!

Magnat is a contrasting sans drawing inspiration from designs from the early twenties century and expands them into an elegant and distinctive contemporary design. Playful elements such as the curvy ear on the lowercase g or the long tail on the uppercase Q break the strictness and add character. The combination of closed apertures with the contrasting strokes create an elegant and distinctive overall appearance. The Magnat family is available in 36 weights including matching italics, divided into 3 subfamilies: Poster, Head and Text. Each has been designed for its individual range of text sizes. The Poster and Head styles with their tight spacing and luxurious shapes are made for impactful headlines and short paragraphs, whereas the text weights are either a great addition for small text sizes or, when set in large sizes, perfectly work as a robust standalone font with a lot of character. Each font style is equipped with many opentype features such as alternate characters, different number sets or case sensitive shapes making it a perfect choice for professional type setting in branding, editorial or digital design.

The Heinemann fonts were initially developed by the in-house design team at Heinemann educational publishing out of the necessity to find the perfect font for use in early primary reading books and literacy products. Basic Heinemann is defined by longer ascenders and descenders which help children to distinguish between letters; rounded edges on all letterforms help focus the reader on the individual letter shape; and modified characters (eg. a, g,) ensure instant recognition of letterforms. Heinemann Special offers further modified characters and kerning pairs ideal for dyslexic or special needs use (eg a, d, b). The Heinemann fonts were developed in partnership with children, literacy advisors, teachers of special needs/dyslexia and primary school teachers, and are now released in response to hundreds of requests from publishers, designers and teachers to purchase them. They have been trialled in schools and learning institutions over an 8 year period, and are a favorite for use in both print and electronic product. The modern, clean aesthetic of the fonts ensures that their use can span beyond educational application.

The font Steamfunk is based on Steampunk. A form of science fiction that couples Victorian era style with futuristic devices operated by early industrial age technology. Each Steamfunk letter is constructed in two symbolic parts. A thick stroke, for the machine’s outer shell, and a second, wire-like, stroke for that machine's delicate inner workings. The result is a look that is Steampunk in appearance, without it being exclusively so. Steamfunk has a glyph count of 398 and supports the following languages; Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Zulu.

Gerard Unger developed this newspaper font between 1984 and 1987 for Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH, Kiel. He was mainly influenced by William A. Dwiggins (1880-1956), the typographic consultant of Mergenthaler Linotype, who started to develop more legible, alternative fonts for newspaper printing as early as 1930. Swift was named after the fast flying bird. Austere and concise, firm and original, Swift is suited for almost any purpose. Swift has been specially developed to sustain a maximum of quality and readability when used in unfavorable print and display processes, e.g. newspapers, laser printing and low resolution screens. Its robust, yet elegant serifs and its large x-height provide an undeniable distinction to the typeface, making it suitable for corporate ID and advertising purposes as well. Swift 2.0 family was designed in 1995. It's an improved version with technical and aesthetic enhancements and new family members. The Cyrillic version was developed for ParaType in 2003 by Tagir Safayev. Please note that this family includes only basic latin characters; it does not include accented characters required for western and central Europe.

Another Grotesk is a contemporary typeface that was inspired by the early grotesques. Upon closer inspection you will notice the terminals of some of the characters are slightly turned inwards, this detail gives Another Grotesk its distinctive and friendly personality. Another Grotesk is functional and has been crafted with a great attention to detail. It is available in 9 weights and two optical sizes with matching italics which adds up to 36 styles. Another Grotesk Text family has been carefully redesigned some of the details were removed and simplified, x-height increased, and ink traps added, but preserved the overall look and feel of the display version, to ensure a greater legibility and clarity in running text. The extensive language support allows type setting in more than 200 languages across Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts. Another Grotesk also includes small caps and punctuation, tabular and old-style figures, as well as case sensitive feature and offers stylistic alternates for K, a, g, and y to fulfil any creative need of a designer.

Sam Suliman is a condensed display face supplied in three weights – Regular, Medium and Bold – plus a set of handy italics (obliques). All six fonts are included in the value family pack. The fonts are inspired by lowercase lettering on a Sarah Vaughan album cover designed by Sam Suliman in 1962, a style which contrasts sharp tight outer corners with soft rounded counters. The letters were perhaps influenced by a Solotype font called Herald Square, but without that font’s aversion to diagonals, and adding distinctive perky ascenders/descenders on the lowercase r, a, u, g and n. The Sam Suliman fonts also add the nubs to d, m, p, and q. Suliman was born in Manchester, England in 1927. After working for McCann Erikson in London, he moved to New York where he took on freelance work designing album covers, particularly celebrated are his striking minimalist designs for jazz records. He moved back to England in the early 1960s, designing many book jackets, film titles and fabrics, also working in Spain and India before settling in Oxford in the 1980s.

Kompakt is one of the early typefaces of type designer Hermann Zapf, whose Palatino has long been a standard in almost every area of application. Kompakt consists of a single weight and was designed in 1952, two years after Palatino. It was produced by the foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where Zapf was at the time in the artistic department. The figures of this extremely strong and heavy typeface are decidedly those of a broad tipped pen. When enlarged, the sharp outlines of the characters can be clearly seen. The unique dynamic of the alphabet is a result of its strong serifs, which on the lower case letters almost connect the letters in a line. Together with the slight slant to the right, this gives Kompakt the character of handwriting, making it look like it is always striving to go forward. Kompakt is an excellent choice for advertisements, especially for posters which should display a hint of nostalgia, and should be used only in headlines.

The design of the first "Fat Face" is credited to Robert Thorne just after 1800 in England. It is considered to be the first type style designed specifically for display or jobbing, rather than for book work. The first instance of Fat Face in wood type is found in the first wood type specimen book ever produced: Darius Wells, Letter Cutter 1828. This style was produced by all early wood type manufacturers. The style is derived from the high contrast, thick and thin Modern style of Bodoni and Didot developed only decades previously. The extended variation makes the face even more of a display type and not at all suitable for text. This type of display type was used to compete with the new Lithographic process which allowed for the development of the poster as an artform unto itself. This new digitization by Jim Lyles most closely follows the Wm Page cut. The crisp outlines hold up at the largest point sizes you can imagine. This font contains a full CE character set.

The early Twentieth Century was a golden age for cinema, and for the artists who lettered the iconic title sequences. Cinema Script is inspired by this lettering style, but has departed substantially from the source material in an effort to be less retro and more in tune with today’s designers' needs. The font will work admirably ‘out of the box’ but to really shine use the advanced OpenType features. Contextual alternates and ligatures should be on by default for the best results. Discretionary ligatures are a little more out there, so use them, ahem, at your discretion. Cinema Script also boasts swash characters, optional oldstyle numerals, plenty of stylistic sets and a nice ordinal feature for 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. For greater detail, check out the user guide in the gallery section. This is a versatile brush script style font. It seems familiar, with a similar vibe to other brush fonts but without the staid ubiquity. Cinema Script will look great on the big screen, or on your screen, on food packaging, t-shirts, blogs, photobooks, wedding stationery... You get the idea!

Chancery Lane is a condensed cursive with a breezy, flowing feel. Many of the lowercase characters join up, some uppercase ones too, and the two fonts are slantier than many other chancery-inspired faces, inclined at almost 20°. Each glyph has slightly rounded corners to bestow softness and warmth. The typeface emerged from a study of pen lettering, italic scripts and chancery hands – down a rabbit hole and along the Chancery Lane. The research ranged from early cancellaresca manuscripts to contemporary fonts, and also calligraphic work, most notably that of Indian artist Mayank Baranwal whose lowercase letters inspired many of the Chancery Lane glyphs. Uppercase characters have been designed to harmonise with the lowercase rather than providing overly ornamental openers, true to origins that were functional rather than fancy. Both the capitals and the uppercase alternates are unfussy and relatively simple, and the lowercase swash characters are similarly understated, only modestly flourished. Stylistic alternates and lowercase swash characters can be accessed using OpenType-aware applications or font management software.

Brazilian designer Eduardo Omine designed his Beret family of typefaces in an attempt to create a warm counterpart to the clean, minimalist sans serif of the 20th Century. The most individual characteristics of Beret are the terminals at the ends of its vertical strokes. They are slightly bent", simulating a subtle flare. Like many classic sans-serif typefaces (e.g., the original Syntax and Univers), this family does not include true (calligraphic) italics. Instead, a masterful set of obliques has been created. As Stanley Morison articulated in the early 1920s and 30s, these slanted versions of the regular "roman" faces may even work better when one wishes to emphasize certain words or passages within a text. The Beret family of typefaces is suitable for numerous applications, in both text and display sizes. The following nine fonts make up the family's design: Beret Light, Beret Light Italic, Beret Book, Beret Book Italic, Beret Regular, Beret Medium, Beret Medium Italic, Beret Bold, and Beret Bold Italic. Beret was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by the Linotype GmbH."

Take Bauhaus Bugler, dip it in chocolate, and what do you get? Bauhaus Bugler Soft, of course! Or dip it in butter! You can achieve all sorts of yummy, appealing images with the softness of Bauhaus Bugler Soft, whether it be food, cosmetics, fabric softener, or any number of other fluffy things! Unlike its fellow Bugler fonts, Bauhaus Bugler Soft’s design never appeared in Harry Warren’s 6th grade class newsletter, The Broadwater Bugler, but its design came about during that same period in 1975. Because of this, it has been officially designated an honorary Bugler font! Its theme of broad curves that leap over and under conjure visions of fashion and high-end department stores with their dress boxes and shopping bags, plus hair products, cosmetics, couture, and other stylish personal merchandise of the highest caliber. Bauhaus Bugler Soft also has an art deco flavor, especially when all capitals are used. It comes with two alternate versions of the upper and lower Y to give users more freedom of choice. Put Bauhaus Bugler Soft in your “haus” today! Digitized by John Bomparte.

In the early 1970s Ed Benguiat drew the International Typeface Corporation's logo, a flowing script that many have hoped would one day be expanded into a complete font. From 2008, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging - with Benguiat's blessing - took up the challenge. After two challenging years, Elegy™ was completed. I knew that developing the typeface would present many challenges, but I felt strongly that Ed Benguiat's lettering deserved to be preserved as a font that graphic designers could take creative advantage of." - Jim Wasco Elegy makes good use of modern OpenType features to really make this script shine, and introduces some of the spontaneity of Ed Benguiat's original logotype. And what did Ed Benguiat have to say about the completed typeface?"WOW! It's absolutely beautiful. Jim Wasco has done a magnificent job of turning my logo into a great typeface design."A glowing tribute for a very fine typeface. Do take a closer look at this elegant and very accomplished script." Featured in: Best Fonts for Tattoos