ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.

Carta is a map font designed at Adobe by Lynne Garell in 1986. Carta's development began with the study of a variety of maps from sources such as the U.S. Geological Survey and National Geographic. A diverse set of symbols, Carta can be used in city planning, travel, socio-economic, and survey maps.

ITC Digital Woodcuts font is the work of Timothy Donaldson. Although made on a computer, each character has the look of a block of wood with a character cut into it. The forms are made entirely of lines, typical of how the result would be if they were truly cut into wood. ITC Digital Woodcuts is a capital letter alphabet including both white letters on a black background and black letters on a whitish background which looks as though the bark of the piece of wood was chiseled away for the effect. Donaldson suggests alternating the black version with the white to create a three dimensional effect.

Pontif is a typeface based on the inscriptional lettering work of Luca Horfei, the Vatican scribe who designed the major inscriptions for Pope Sixtus V's Baroque-makeover of Rome in the sixteenth century. Garrett Boge modeled the design on a Horfei manuscript and on-site research in Rome in 1996. Pontif is part of the LetterPerfect Baroque Set.

HeyPumkin is a letterbat font designed for use in the late autumn, when the leaves are falling and the harvest is underway. October 31 is an especially good time to use it. The upper- and lower-case letters are almost identical. If you want a version of this face without the pumpkins, try Ingone. Buried in the font is another set of letters on pumpkins. They are on unicode characters in the 2400 block, circled digits and letters. These characters can also be accessed using the OpenType stylistic sets feature. (The alternative characters are further developed in a separate typeface, part of the InsideLetters family.)

The Azbuka™ typeface family has its roots in a fairly pedestrian source. “The idea came in part from an old sign in London that read ‘SPRINKLER STOP VALVE’,” says Dave Farey, designer of the typeface. Like all good sign spotters, Farey took a photograph of the sign and filed it away for possible use in a lettering or typeface design project. In Prague a number of years later, the street signs reminded Farey of the London signage - and his camera came out again. Comparing the two back in his studio, he realized that the signs from London and Prague were not as similar as he initially thought. However, they were enough alike to serve as the foundation for a no-frills, 21st century sans serif typeface family. “I wanted to draw a wide range of weights, italic and condensed designs all in one go,” recalls Farey, “rather than add on to the family later.” His goal was to create a family that could be used for text and display copy, with sufficient weights to provide a broad typographic palette. Indeed, the completed design, created in collaboration with fellow type designer Richard Dawson, consists of twenty typefaces in eight weights ranging from extra light to extra black. The five mid-range designs have complementary italics. Seven condensed designs round out the family. Azbuka’s lighter weights perform remarkably well in blocks of text composition. “They’re clean and legible - and perhaps a little boring,” says Farey, “but they are perfect for copy with a down-to-earth, yet contemporary flavor.” The heavier weights are equally well suited for a variety of display uses. The designs are authoritative but not overbearing and will readily make a strong statement without calling attention to themselves. The condensed weights of Azbuka are ideal for those instances where you have a lot to say - and not much room to say it. The name Azbuka? It’s Russian for “alphabet.” And what more appropriate name could there be for this utilitarian, industrial-strength type family than alphabet? The Azbuka family is available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts. Graphic communicators can now work with this versatile design while taking advantage of OpenType’s capabilities. The Azbuka Pro fonts also offer an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages

Aesop was developed from some book jacket lettering drawn by Michael Harvey for an edition of Aesop’s Fables by a master Japanese Artist. It is based upon a pen-drawn script, and is characterised by a lively sense of movement and grace. Aesop Plus, being an OpenType font, contains many alternative characters and additional ligatures which can be automatically substituted to enhance the liveliness of set text, where the application in which it is used, permits.

Accura is a sans serif font with a technological aspect and simple letterforms. Its closed angles and smooth curves make it an unique source of personality, and still offers great readability. Perfectly fits to headline sizes and text blocks, Accura has seven precise-calculated weights and their matching italics, from thin to black. Offers support for more than 50 languages and count on opentype features.

Designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum in 1956, Folio was the first popular Swiss Sanserif; the positive black shapes of the letters appear to be locked inevitably into the correct position by the firm and positive white shapes that surround them.

Here's another mosaic marvel from the New York subway system, to complement Midtown Tessie. This style is based on signage at the 34th Street station, with connections to Brooklyn. A full tile background is available at the bar position, and a marvelous meander can be found at the German double-s spot. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Tisdall Script is based upon the brush-drawn script lettering of Hans Tisdall, who was the designer of many distinctive lettered book jackets for Jonathan Cape in the 1950s. Michael Harvey, also a designer of lettered book jackets, long admired Tisdall’s style and so, with the blessing of his widow, designed this typographic tribute. The augmented Tisdall Script Plus version, has many alternative characters and ligatures, together with Opentype features, to enable their automatic substitution where the application in which they are used permits.

Introducing Bronc Stomper; Bronc Stomper got its start from an old logo design used by the New York and Harlem Railroad in 1904.

Notebook BH Black was inspired by the block lettering we used to draw on our school binders. Notebook is a unicase design, with the lowercase drawn to the cap height, and each "case" having a distinctly different flavor. The fun and seemingly unlimited combinations of the upper and lowercase forms make it difficult to stop typing innocuous phrases and, if you're mobile, can even make boring lectures tolerable!

Prolexia is designed to make the font friendly towards those with dyslexia. All the characters are unique with no rotation or mirroring, this makes it harder for the mind to mix up similar glyphs. The characters are made with the illusion of perspective: this helps orient characters in the correct direction to make mental reorientation harder. Finally the o shape is somewhat flattened, this also helps to counteract mental rotation of characters.

ITC Ozwald was designed by David Farey and is a revival of a little-known typeface of American type designer Oswald Cooper called Cooper Fullface. The original was intended to be a modernized version of Bodoni and Farey captured all the charm, wit and creativity of the original in ITC Ozwald.

Monton is a wonderful font family that includes from thin to black style as well as in oblique style, a total of 18 fonts. This is a condensed block sans-serif font that is perfect for titles, logos, branding, posters, flyers, website design, advertising, labels, packaging, web titles, text descriptions and much more. It is well readable and irreplaceable in modern design and can be used as a main or additional one.

Giacinta is developed as a fresh alternate take on the traditional black-letter style. Rather than simply reproducing the standard uncial or Old English style, Luke William Turvey followed the tradition of Bastarda, making up his own scripted style with the Latin standards in mind. This style was conjured purely from imagination, so while it bares a resemblance to the standards, keeps its own original flavor. Giacinta is extended, containing the full West European diacritics & a full set of ligatures, making it suitable for multilingual environments & publications. Use Giacinta for medieval themed projects, certificates, awards, diplomas, anything that you want to look old fashioned and stately.

Sheepman font was named after my favorite Haruki Murakami character: the Sheep Man. Sheepman font is handwritten, messy, but legible and complete. It comes with alternates and ligatures.

Powder Script is a showy brush style script family of three weights -regular, bold and black plus matching Ornament and Pattern set. Powder Script is packed with almost 800 glyphs per weight and is full of features. To activate alternate characters click on Swash, Stylistic or Titling Alternates in any OpenType savvy program or manually select from even more characters from the Glyph Palette. Inside each weight is a set of block capitals that you can activate by turning on Small Caps. You can use Small Caps to create evenly lined text blocks to support your design. Engage Powder Ornaments and Powder Patterns to complete your designs while using Powder Script. For the best price purchase the complete Powder Script Family.

Gold Diggin is an authentic hand-drawn original. It harkens back to posters from the Gold Rush Era. Add some humor and moonshine to your designs with Gold Diggin.

Arpa is a display sans and condensed font family. The source of inspiration of this typeface is “wheat-barley”. This typeface has three styles. Extensive Latin language support and features multiple weights.

Based on some examples of a Clarendon-inspired wood type design, Clarenwood JNL is a bold and effective titling font which harkens back to old times and advertising on a grander scale.

Stanzer is an interpretation of wood type combined with the idea of modern stencils. Instead of cutting every letter, we are presenting an example of how a modern stencil typeface could look like, as we have come to the conclusion that almost every letter works without cutting it. Stanzer is a Unicase typeface, available in three OpenType weights: Black, Shadow and Block. Stanzer first started as part of our diploma 2010 (it was called Stanley at that time). The basic idea behind this typeface is that it is fully stencil usable, and, unlike other stencil fonts, does not require any bridges (except for the O and Q). Almost every letter can be sprayed without inserting planks. However, Stanzer also offers the display weight Block, which is only suitable for print or online usage.

Cover art for the 1933 sheet music of Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler's "Stormy Weather" (from the musical production "Cotton Club Parade") listed the cast of the show in a condensed hand lettered sans that typified the 1930s and the Art Deco era. This served as the inspiration for Uptown Review JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. The Cotton Club was a whites-only night club which showcased black acts, and was originally located on 145th Street in Harlem from 1923 to 1935, then existed for a short time in the New York theater district from 1936 to 1940. After the Broadway incarnation of the club closed, its space was taken over by the Latin Quarter.