Back when OpenType hadn't yet opened and Apple was developing the Line Layout Manager called GX Typography I created a test font that I name after my stepdaughter, Kristen (now ITC Kristen). Not wanting to offend my wife I started on a font project and gave her name to this new set of glyphs, Roberta. Unfortunately, the name was already in use so I needed to find another name for the fonts. After September 11th I decided that there were people I'd met during my life who were truly cut from the cloth of the hero. Master Sargent McLemore of the 75th Ranger Battalion was one of these people. I met the Sarge when I was in basic training at Fort Gordon. I saw him 2 weeks before he died in 1970. All of the heroes we see on the silver screen pale in comparison to this man. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood both have played the type well, both could have taken lessons from the Sarge.

The font is named after my son Javier. He studies architecture. Font Javier follows architectural principles. Javier 1, Javier 2 and Javier 3 can be combined with each other.

Trinculo is a cursive font which combines traditional letter forms with ridiculously ornate embellishments and flourishes. It's rather like what an 18th century clerk might have done with his lettering if he was bored to distraction with writing the same old letters again and again. The upper case characters are more complex with simpler versions of the same characters in the lower case. Trinculo is a lot of fun, though if you use it too much it may become overwhelming.

Sinkwitz Gotisch is a new release of the font of the same name originally designed by Paul Sinkwitz in 1942. The Sinkwitz Gotisch was 1942 by Schriftguss AG Dresden font cast first cast and later supplied by the East German firm VEB Typoart. Paul Sinkwitz (1899-1981) has created them. This font displays not the characteristics of a chunky Gothic, which have influenced the image of national socialism. Paul Sinkwitz was a painter, graphic artist, wood engraver, was interested in religious topics, which he had presented in numerous graphics. But also his interpretation of his Gothic font is modern, without having the font this is ugly. In addition to the GOTISCH he created Roman Uppercase letters, which perfectly harmonize with the lowercase letters. This extra font is called BASTARD. The digital version of Sinkwitz is a beneficial addition to a Gothic with calligraphic character and should be in any historically interested graphic design.

Tomi Haaparanta got the idea for the Tyke typeface family after using Cooper Black for a design project. He liked Cooper's chubby design, but longed for a wider range of weights. “I wanted a typeface that was cuddly and friendly,” recalls Haaparanta, “but also one that was readable at text sizes.” He started tinkering with the idea, and Tyke began to emerge. Even though Haaparanta knew his boldest weight would equal the heft of Cooper Black, he began drawing the Tyke family with the medium. His goal was to refine the characteristics of the design at this moderate weight, and then build on it to create the light and bold extremes. Haaparanta got the spark to design type in 1990, when he attended a workshop held by Phil Baines at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. “I've been working and playing with type ever since,” Haaparanta recalls. He released his first commercial font in 1996, while working as an Art Director in Helsinki. After about two dozen more releases, he founded his own type studio, Suomi Type Foundry, early in 2004. At five weights plus corresponding italics, Tyke easily fulfills Haaparanta's goal of creating a wide range of distinctive, completely usable designs. The light through bold weights perform well at both large and small sizes, while the Black is an outstanding alternative to Cooper for display copy.

The lettering found on an 1878 Salt Lake City advertisement for the Forepaugh’s Circus inspired Faux Pas JNL, which is a bit of a pun on the circus’ name and also a commentary on how this unusual lettering style seems to break all of the rules on stroke width and balance. According to Wikipedia: “Adam John Forepaugh (February 28, 1831 - January 22, 1890) was an American entrepreneur, businessman, and circus owner. Forepaugh owned and operated a circus from 1865 through 1890 under various names including Forepaugh's Circus, The Great Forepaugh Show, The Adam Forepaugh Circus, and Forepaugh & The Wild West. In 1889, Forepaugh sold his circus acts to James Anthony Bailey and James E. Cooper and he sold his railroad cars to the Ringling Brothers. The Ringlings used the equipment to transform their circus from a small animal-powered production to a huge rail-powered behemoth, which later purchased the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Thus, in liquidating his circus assets, he indirectly contributed to the demise of his arch-rival.” Faux Pas JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

ITC Kristen is the work of American designer George Ryan. He describes it as not your average text or display font." The inspiration for the design came from the handwritten menu at a neighborhood restaurant. With time, the forms moved away from the originals and towards something more like a child's scrawl. The result is singularly unique. ITC Kristen remains legible without losing any charm.

Other guys may imitate him, but the original is still the greatest! Get in with the In Crowd and check out the font created by Mister Fontastic for Dave Gibbons Original Graphic Novel, The, ah, The Originals. Yes, Dave Gibbons now comes in lower case, it's not just what he does when he gets back from the off license. Be sure and pick up The Originals from Amazon -- now available in paperback, and probably still available as a hard case, much like Dave. After the crack about the case of beer above, I'm guessing you'll find me with a broken spine in the remainder pile. See the family related to Dave Gibbons Lower: Dave Gibbons Journal & Dave Gibbons .

I'm not sure where the inspiration for Tirade originally came from, but it looks like a good rant, hence the name.

John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States, didn't hit his stride until he'd left that lofty office. It was during his many years in Congress that he assured his legacy, not least because of his long, masterful oratory opposing slavery. His speeches, in fact, won him the nickname "Old Man Eloquent." So when I decided to simulate Adams's penmanship in his legendary diary (which he kept for nearly 70 years), it seemed fitting to call the font by that name. I focused on his handwriting from about 1810, when he was Ambassador to Russia, but also consulted pages from later years. Old Man Eloquent has both regular and bold weights. The OpenType version has more than 450 glyphs, including alternate uppercase characters, old-style and lining figures, and numerous ligatures; all formats contain several common (English) words.

Nono is the nickname of my oldest son, Konstantin. His little brother could not really speak yet, but he was always looking for him and said something to the tune of, "wea is a nono". From that time on I call Konstantin Nono. I designed a handwritten script with his real name, that i named Konstantin. Now I made this slick version of that script – hence – Nono! I made three basic sets of characters plus a smallcaps version. To top things off, I designed a set of endletters that I throw in for free. Everything can be mixed! I sell single cuts but the best deal would be the entire packet, it goes for a very fair price. Your generous typedesigner, Gert Wiescher

If it's dog friendly, it must be something good! Actually, I was never really into dogs, not until me and my wife decided to get a dog. We got a French Bulldog and life hasn't been the same since! I found out that I love dogs, and especially French Bulldogs! This font is a kind of tribute to everything good that has to do with dogs! :)

The engraver Jean Jannon ranks among the significant representatives of French typography of the first half of the 17th century. From 1610 he worked in the printing office of the Calvinist Academy in Sedan, where he was awarded the title "Imprimeur de son Excellence et de l'Academie Sédanoise". He began working on his own alphabet in 1615, so that he would not have to order type for his printing office from Paris, Holland and Germany, which at that time was rather difficult. The other reason was that not only the existing type faces, but also the respective punches were rapidly wearing out. Their restoration was extremely painstaking, not to mention the fact that the result would have been just a poor shadow of the original elegance. Thus a new type face came into existence, standing on a traditional basis, but with a life-giving sparkle from its creator. In 1621 Jannon published a Roman type face and italics, derived from the shapes of Garamond's type faces. As late as the start of the 20th century Jannon's type face was mistakenly called Garamond, because it looked like that type face at first sight. Jannon's Early Baroque Roman type face, however, differs from Garamond in contrast and in having grander forms. Jannon's italics rank among the most successful italics of all time – they are brilliantly cut and elegant.

Bodoni Classic Swashes is my personal addition to Bodoni’s family of typefaces. Bodoni did not design a decorative version. His quest was for purity in book design. Even though in his days it was not called design; he thought of himself purely as a printer. But I think, especially after visiting the Bodoni museum in Parma, if Giambattista were alive today he would design a decorative typeface. Yours classico, Gert Wiescher

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Salvador was born in a small village in the province of Seville, Spain where he lived until 2002. During many years he worked in restaurants, construction, and in the fields, until he decided to go try his luck in Palma de Mallorca. There he worked in hotels and in construction, until the economic crisis erupted and he was left without work or benefits of any kind and he began to live in the street: “The street has few good things, but it teaches you to be more selfless, to share with others what you have, even if it isn’t much.” In 2006, a friend encouraged him to come along to Barcelona and bought his plane ticket. Once there, things did not go much better and he had to continue living in the street. A year ago he left behind that life and now he explains his experience in guided tours to school groups: “I like it because I see that many of them are interested and they ask questions. It is good that they learn.”

Kornelis de Vries, a headmaster from the Dutch province of Friesland, cultivated new potato breeds that he named after pupils in his school. In the early 1900s he came up with the tasty Bintje (a Frisian girl’s name) and it became a big success – in Belgium and France it has remained the most popular potato for french fries to this day, more than a century since its introduction. Donald Roos took 10 kilos of fresh Bintje potatoes and cut the Bint typeface by hand with a short, sharp knife. He then inked each character once and printed it twice; the second, lighter printing is accommodated in the lower case alphabet. The Bint family offers a script to make the letters bounce up and down the baseline; with OpenType functionality the font randomly chooses each character from the upper- or lowercase alphabet. ‘Tabular lining figures’ will activate a series of negative numerals in boxes; ‘Discretionary ligatures’ activates specially designed letter combinations like ‘www’ as well as arrows and stars. Bint has a distinct, slightly rough handmade appearance, making it useful for a wide range of designs.

‘Thwaites’ typeface is fully dedicated to one of my best Canadian friends who I do cherish and value highly. This great and industrious Canadian friend is ‘James Douglas Thwaites’ who lives along with his good-natured family in British Columbia, Canada. For me, James is like a source of inspiration and I do consider him as an ideal in my life. Our strong friendship has started since 1999 and I hope that it will endure just to the last moment of my life. Sometimes I see him as the writer and poet that I learn a lot from, sometimes I see him as a devoted religious minister that I try to understand more about his teachings, and other times I see him as the educator that I strive to imitate verbatim in my life. When I want to talk more about this Canadian friend, I will not be able to give him his due in full. Thus, I will instead mention some excerpts of his biography that he wrote himself saying that: “James D. Thwaites is a self-accomplished man. Having worked in various fields including restaurant management and cleaning, he has achieved his goals of being a full-time teacher, past-time writer, and volunteer religious minister for the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. His personal and academic pursuits have led him to be published in various magazines, newspapers, self-published books, and websites, including his now defunct ‘poetryofthemonth.com’ website. He continues to learn and augment the craft of writing while working primarily in early literacy and delayed literacy learners, teaching reading and literature to a wide age range of students. He views his religious endeavors as an extension of his academic ones. He teaches others both as a public speaker and in one-on-one situations, teaching about the benefits of submission to God and to His teachings. His future goals include expanding his ministry and continuing his writing.” The name ‘Thwaites’ itself comes from Great Britain and originated from the last Viking raids upon England, being an Anglicized version of a Scandinavian term meaning—depending on the source material—either "a place that is difficult to approach" or "a small thicket of trees." Another recitation mentions that ‘Thwaites’ can be described also as an English surname but one of pre 7th century Norse-Viking origins. It may be either topographical or locational, and is derived from the word "thveit", meaning a clearing or farm. As a locational surname it originates from any one of the various places called "Thwaite", found in several parts of Northern England and East Anglia to the south. The various modern spelling forms include Thwaite, Thwaites, Thwaytes, Thoytes, Twaite, Twatt, Twaites, Tweats and Twite. The name, although often appearing unique to outsiders, can often be found within other famous names like Braithwaite, Goldthwaites, or Misslethwaites. With various spellings, some families not including the ‘e’ or the ‘s’ at the end, Thwaites and its derivations—although not exceedingly common—is a name found worldwide. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is simply a sans-serif streamlined, stylish, and versatile font. It is designed using a combination of thick and thin strokes for its +585 characters. Its character set supports nearly most of the Central, Eastern, and Western European languages using Latin scripts including the Irish language. The typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media. It is also absolutely preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publication, press, services, and production industries. It can create a very impressive impact when used in headlines, posters, titles, products’ surfaces, logos, medical packages, product and corporate branding, and also signage. It has also both of lining and old-style numerals which makes it more suitable for any printing or designing purposes. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is really the cannot-miss choice for anyone who wants to possess unique artistic and modern designs produced using this streamlined typeface.

In 1995, when indie rock hipness was just reaching its pique, Chank was really into Jawbox, a post-punk band from DC. It was their music he was listening to when he made this font for the Space Ghost web site. The band broke up in 1997, but the font named in their honor lives on. This font family includes Jawbox, Jawbox Chanky, and Jawbreaker.

Heer Halewijn (The Song of Lord Halewijn) is a 13th century Dutch folk tale which survives in folk ballad. The story tells of a man called Halewijn, who lives in the woods and who lures pretty women with his songs (whom he then kills). One day a princess visits Halewijn, but when he wants to kill her, she requests he remove his robe, so as not to stain it with her blood. He obliges and when he is undressing, the princess seizes his sword and chops off his head. Halewyn is a handmade font, which was loosely based on my Languedoc font and Garamond. Use it for product packaging, books and posters. Comes in 4 weights (with italics) and a ballad full of diacritics.

Johann Michael Fleischmann was born June 15th, 1707 in Wöhrd near Nuremberg. After attending Latinschool he started an apprenticeship as punchcutter in the crafts enterprise of Konstantin Hartwig in Nuremberg, which ought to last six years. For his extraordinary talent Fleischmann completed his apprenticeship after four and a half years, which was very unusual. 1727 his years of travel (very common in these days) began, during which he perfected his handcraft by working in different enterprises as journeyman. First location was Frankfurt/Main where he worked for nearly a year at the renowned type foundery of Luther and Egenolff. Passing Mainz he continued to Holland, where he arrived in November 1728 and stayed till he died in 1768. In Amsterdam he worked for several type founderies, among others some weeks for Izaak van der Putte; in The Hague for Hermanus Uytwerf. Between 1729 and 1732 he created several exquisite alphabets for Uytwerf, which were published under his own name (after his move to Holland Fleischmann abandoned the second n in his name), apparently following the stream of the time. After the two years with Uytwerf, Fleischmann returned to Amsterdam, where he established his own buiseness as punchcutter; following an advice of the bookkeeper and printer from Basel Rudolf Wetstein he opened his own type foundery 1732, which he sold in 1735 to Wetstein for financial reasons. In the following Fleischmann created several types and matrices exclusively for Wetstein. In 1743 after the type foundery was sold by Wetstein’s son Hendrik Floris to the upcoming enterprise of Izaak and Johannes Enschedé, Fleischmann worked as independent punchcutter mostly for this house in Haarlem. Recognizing his exceptional skills soon Fleischmann was consigned to cutting the difficult small-sized font types. The corresponding titling alphabets were mostly done by Jaques-Francois Rosart, who also cut the main part of the ornaments and borders used in the font examples of Enschedé. Fleischmann created for Enschedé numerous fonts. The font example published 1768 by Enschedé contains 3 titling alphabets, 16 antiquacuts, 14 italic cuts, 13 textura- and 2 scriptcuts, 2 greek typesets (upper cases and ligatures), 1 arabic, 1 malayan and 7 armenian font systems, 5 sets of musicnotes and the poliphonian musicnotesystem by Fleischmann. In total he brought into being about 100 alphabets - the fruits of fourty years of creative work as a punchcutter. Fleischmann died May 27th, 1768 at the age of 61. For a long time he was thought one of the leading punchcutters in Europe. A tragedy, that his creating fell into the turning of baroque to classicism. The following generations could not take much pleasure in his imaginative fonts, which were more connected to the sensuous baroque than to the bare rationalism of the upcoming industrialisation. Unfortunately therefore his masterpieces did not survive the 19th century and person and work of Fleischmann sank into oblivion. The impressive re-interpretation of the Fleischmann Antiqua and the corresponding italics by Erhard Kaiser from Leipzig, which were done for the Dutch Type Library from 1993 to 1997, snatched Fleischmann away from being forgotten by history. Therefore we want to place strong emphasis on this beautiful font. Fleischman Gotisch The other fonts by Fleischmann are only known to a small circle of connoisseurs and enthusiasts. So far they are not available in adequat quality for modern systems. Same applies the "Fleischman Gotisch", which has been made available cross platform to modern typeset-systems as CFF Open Type font through the presented sample. The Fleischman Gotisch has been proved to be one of the fonts, on which Fleischmann spent a good deal of his best effort; this font simply was near to his heart. Between 1744 and 1762 he created 13 different sizes of this font. All follow the same principles of forms, but their richness of details has been adapted to the particular sizes. In later times the font was modified more or less sensitive by various type founderies; letters were added, changed to current taste or replaced by others; so that nowadays a unique and binding mastercopy of this font is missing. Likewise the name of the font underwent several changes. Fleischmann himself probably never named his font, as he did with none of his fonts. By Enschedé this textura was named Nederduits, later on Nederduitsch. When the font was offered by the german type foundery Flinsch in Frankfurt/Main, the more convenient name of Fleischmann-Gotisch was chosen. In his "Masterbook of the font" and his "Abstract about the Et-character" Jan Tschichold refered to it as "Duyts" again. To honour the genious of Johann Michael Fleischmann we decided to name the writing "Fleischmann Gotisch PT" (unhyphenated). Developing the digital Fleischman Gotisch I decided not to use one of the thirteen sizes as binding mastercopy, but corresponding to the typical ductus of the font to re-create an independent use of forms strongly based on Fleischmann´s language of forms. All ascenders and descenders were standardised. Some characters, identified as added later on, were eliminated (especially the round lower case-R and several versions of longs- respectively f-ligatures) and others were adjusted to the principles of Fleischmann. Where indicated the diverse characters were integrated as alternative. They can be selected in the corresponding menu. All for the correct german black letter necessary longs and other ligatures were generated. Through the according integration into the feature-code about 85% of all ligatures in the type can be generated automatically. Problematic combinations (Fl, Fk, Fh, ll, lh, lk, lb) were created as ligatures and are likewise constructed automatically. A historically interesting letter is the "round r", which was already designated by Fleischmann; it is used after preceding round letters. Likewise interesting is the inventive form of the &-character, which is mentioned by Tschichold in his corresponding abstract. Nevertheless despite all interpretation it was very important to me to maintain the utmost fidelity to the original. With this digital version of a phantastic texturfont of the late baroque I hope to contribute to a blossoming of interest for this genious master of his kind: Johann Michel Fleischmann. OpenType features: - Unicode (ISO 10646-2) - contains 520 glyphes - Basic Latin - Latin-1 Supplement - Latin Extended-A - Latin Extended-B - Central European Glyhps - Ornaments - Fractions - Standard ligatures - Discretionary ligatures - Historical ligatures - Kerning-Table

* For when you need the most realistic looking electronic display. * See User Manuals Main advantages: - Spacing between characters does not change when entering a decimal point or colon between them. - Custom characters can be produced by selecting any combination of segments to be displayed. Low cost electronic displays have a fixed number of segments that can be turned on or off to represent different symbols. A digital watch would be the most common example. Fonts typically available for depicting electronic displays are often in the artistic style of these common LED or LCD displays. They provide the look-and-feel, but fall short when technical accuracy is required. Failure to represent an accurate and consistent representation of the real thing can be a cringe-worthy experience for the product design and marketing team, or even the hobbyist for that matter. To solve this problem, Fortune Fonts has released a range of fonts that accurately depict the displays typically found on low cost electronic devices: watches, answering machines, car stereos, alarm clocks, microwaves and toys. These fonts come with numbers, letters and symbols predefined. However, they also allow you to create your own segment combinations for the custom symbols you need. When producing manuals, marketing material and user interfaces, accuracy is an all-or-nothing concept. Instructions in the user manual describe how to turn these fonts into realistic displays according to your own design, in the manner of the images above. If you cannot see a license option for your specific application, such a license may be purchased from here. By purchasing &/or using &/or distributing the fonts the buyer user and distributor (including Monotype Imaging Inc. & Monotype Imaging Hong Kong) agree to (1) indemnify & hold harmless the foundry, for any consequential, incidental, punitive or other damages of any kind resulting from the use of the deliverables including, but not limited to, loss of revenues, profits, goodwill, savings, due to; including, but not limited to, failure of the deliverables to perform it’s described function, or the deliverable’s infringement of patents, copyrights, trademarks, design rights, contract claims, trade secrets, or other proprietary rights of the foundry, distributor, buyer or other parties (2) not use the fonts to assist in design of, or be incorporated into, non-software displays

First place in a spelling-bee competition, a Harvard University diploma or the Nobel Peace Prize? You can't go wrong with this classic Swedish calligraphy font, created by veteran designer Bo Berndal. He named Gertrud after his better half, but was also inspired by old handwritten documents: "Gertrud is a calligraphic letter design from the 16th century. I used it when I engrossed diplomas with a flat-nibbed pen in the 1980's. When I got my Mac I generated the typeface in Fontographer." Gertrud (the typeface) comes in three weights, with roman and italic. It is an OpenType creation, for both PC and Mac. Swedish type foundry T4 premieres new fonts every month. Gertrud is our sixth introduction.

Classic Grotesque by Rod McDonald: a traditional font with a modern face. The growing popularity of grotesque typefaces meant that many new sans serif analogues were published in the early 20th century. Setting machines were not compatible with each other but all foundries wanted to offer up-to-date fonts, and as a result numerous different typeface families appeared that seem almost identical at first glance and yet go their separate ways with regard to details. One of the first fonts created with automatic typesetting in mind was Monotype Grotesque®. Although this typeface that was designed and published by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 has since been digitalised, it has never achieved the status of other grotesque fonts of this period. But Monotype Grotesque was always one of designer Rod McDonald’s favourites, and he was overjoyed when he finally got the go-ahead from Monotype in 2008 to update this “hidden treasure”. The design process lasted four years, with regular interruptions due to the need to complete projects for other clients. In retrospect, McDonald admits that he had no idea at the beginning of just how challenging and complex a task it would be to create Classic Grotesque™. It took him considerable time before he found the right approach. In his initial drafts, he tried to develop Monotype Grotesque only to find that the result was almost identical with Arial®, a typeface that is also derived in many respects from Monotype Grotesque. It was only when he went back a stage, and incorporated elements of Bauer Font’s Venus™ and Ideal Grotesk by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry into the design process, that he found the way forward. Both these typefaces had served as the original inspiration for Monotype Grotesque. The name says it all: Classic Grotesque has all the attributes of the early grotesque fonts of the 20th century: The slightly artificial nature gives the characters a formal appearance. There are very few and only minor variations in line width. The tittles of the ‘i’ and ‘j’, the umlaut diacritic and other diacritic marks are rectangular. Interestingly, it is among the uppercase letters that certain variations from the standard pattern can be found, and it is these that enliven the typeface. Hence the horizontal bars of the “E”, “F” and “L” have bevelled terminals. The chamfered terminal of the bow of the “J” has a particular flamboyance, while the slightly curved descender of the “Q” provides for additional dynamism. The character alternatives available through the OpenType option provide the designer with a wealth of opportunities. These include a closed “a”, a double-counter “g” and an “e” in which the transverse bar deviates slightly from the horizontal. The seven different weights also extend the scope of uses of Classic Grotesque. These range from the delicate Light to the super thick Extrabold. There are genuine italic versions of each weight; these are not only slightly narrower than their counterparts, but also have variant shapes. The “a” is closed, the “f” has a semi-descender while the “e” is rounded. Its neutral appearance and excellent features mean that Classic Grotesque is suitable for use in nearly all imaginable applications. Even during the design phase, McDonald used his new font to set books and in promotional projects. However, he would be pleased to learn of possible applications that he himself has not yet considered. Classic Grotesque, which has its own individual character despite its neutral and restrained appearance, is the ideal partner for your print and web project.

La vie est une fleur dont l'amour est le miel Fleur is the French for flower and I've chosen this language for a good reason. Over the past 5 years, I've had the opportunity to travel a lot to Paris and I've always tried to catch every moment and detail of this delightful city through the eyes of the designer inside me. Paris is full of surprises, mainly for us, artists. In fact, I believe the city is a museum itself. Every corner of any street has something inspiring. But, there’s something I particularly love and I want to address here: The Palais Garnier. Built between 1861 and 1875, this opera house is a dream made true for many of us, who love somptuosité. Garnier, the architect of this magnificent building, said that the style he proposed was not Grecian nor Roman/baroque, he created something new and called it Napoleonic: Luxurious at its best. Fleur is inspired in this palace which, in fact, has some similar letters inside. Garnier put his name at the ceiling of the Rotonde des Abonnés: Letters are interlacing each other with nicely done art nouveau curves. I thought I could take this idea and achieve something very delicate and imposing at the same time if the font consisted entirely of caps with the logic of a didone and a bit of art-nouveau. This mix of elegance and flamboyance gave birth to Fleur which has a wide range of uses but was mainly intended for perfumes, fashion magazines, storefronts, book covers or logos. Not only you'll find many decorative glyphs, but also a vast amount of unique ligatures will make you really adore this font. Get Fleur and profite de la vie TECHNICAL As suggested above, the font has many open-type coded alternates and a vast amount of unique ligatures. Install the font in applications that support them, like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Michael Hoffmann manufactures digital fonts for 30 years. At URW++ he contributed to the technological progress. Over the years, he also specialized in the ideal representation of fonts on screen and the complex assembly of international fonts with scripts of all countries. In his latest project he put the emphasis on developing a highly readable typeface. Less interested in the design as in the functionality of this typeface, he designed Arsapia which he has now installed as a system font on all his computers. Michael Hoffmann studied Japanology at the University of Hamburg and traveled in the early years of his professional activity frequently to Japan, there to train the IKARUS font production tools to Japanese customers. In his spare time he plays guitar or golf depending on the weather. The typeface Arsapia has been designed in such a way that all three font styles Light, Regular and Bold have the same width. When a user therefore opts for the use of Arsapia Light, even though he has already written his text in Regular, nothing changes with respect to the letter tracking. When choosing the Bold for emphasis: Nothing changes except the blackness of the letters. A font change does not engender unwanted line and page breaks of itself. All letters can be clearly distinguished from each other. 1 l I O 0 are all different. For programmers and lovers of monospaced fonts Michael Hoffmann has developed a fourth typeface: Arsapia Mono. This is the perfect terminal font.

Boy, they're everywhere. One of your neighbors is probably one of them, Freaking super-heroes (TM, ©, ®, SM blah blah blah) are more ubiquitous in cities these days than Simon Cowell is on talent shows. Notice how that guy on the subway -- the one with the boy scout haircut? -- see how he keeps his shirt buttoned all the way up? He's not sweating either... that's 'cause he's probably from some dead planet that exploded twenty years ago. His REAL parents wrapped him in blankets and, when he turned 18, his Ma on Earth turned those same blankets into Long Underwear for her foster son. He's probably wearing his long underwear right now. That's why he's smiling at you through his horn rimmed glasses. He thinks you don't know. Thinks he's special. Thinks he's a super-hero (TM, ©, ®, SM blah blah blah). Ain't that Super?

So the lumber was cheap - just a pile of offcuts - and so was the carpenter… And you couldn't say he was exactly lazy, but he was certainly efficient… mostly he would just cut a couple of planks to size, slice off a corner now and then, once in a blue moon hash up a curve… I guess he didn't have a drill, cos there are no holes… and he sure as hell didn't have a ruler… But he did have some kind of an eye, and until it falls off the wall it'll look pretty OK… Ply comes in six styles, offering differing degrees of neatness and adorned or not with fixings… There are money-saving packages too… It’s uppercase only, with variations between upper and lower case, and OpenType types can switch on Stylistic Set 1 to take the effort out of keeping things varied…

ROARRR! THE STYLES -Pantera Pro is the most complete style, and although its default look is mono-rhythmic it gets really playful and crazy like the examples of the posters by just activating the Decorative Ligatures button in the Open-type Panel of Adobe Illustrator. However, I recommend using also the Glyphs Panel because there you'll find much more variants per letter. Pantera Pro is in fact, coded in a way the combination of thicknesses will always look fantastic. -Pantera Black Left, and Pantera Black Right are actually “lite” versions of Pantera Pro: They have very little Open-Type code, so what you see here is what you get. Pantera Black Left has its left strokes thick, while Pantera Black Right has its right strokes thick. -Pantera White is a lovely member in this family that looks lighter and airy, hence its name. With the feature Standard Ligatures activated (liga) the font gets very playful. -Pantera Caps is based on sign painters lettering and since it follows the same pointed brush rules as the other styles, it matches perfectly. -Pantera Claws like its name suggests, is a set of icons that were done by our dear panther. THE STORY It is said that typography can never be as expressive as calligraphy, but sometimes it can get close enough. I tend to think that calligraphic trials, in order to work well as potential fonts, need first to go through very strict filters before going digital: While calligraphy is synonym of freedom (once its rules are mastered), type-design, in the other hand, has its battlefield a little tighter and tougher. When I practice pointed brush lettering, there are so many things happening on the paper. And most of them are delicious. The ones who know my work may see that although many of my fonts are very expressive, my handmade brush trials are much more lively than them. With that in mind, this time I tried to go further and rescue more of those things that are lost in the process of thinking type when first sketches are calligraphic. I wondered if I could create something wild, hence its name Panther, by understanding the randomness that sometimes calligraphy conveys and turning it to something systemic: With Pantera, I created an ordered disorder. Like it happens a lot in many kinds of lettering styles, in order to enrich the written word the scribe mixes the thickness of the strokes and the width of the letters. Like one of my favorite mentors say (1), they make thoughtful gestures Some lively strokes go down with a thick, while some do that with a thin. Some letters are very narrow, meaning some of them will need to be very wide to compensate. Why not?. The calligrapher is always thinking on the following letters, and he/she designs in his head the combination of thicks and thins before he/she executes them. He/she knows the playful rhythm the words will have before writing them. It takes time and skill to master this and achieve graceful results. Going back to the font, in Pantera, this combination of varying thicknesses and widths of letters were Open-Type coded so the user will see satisfactory results by just enabling or disabling some buttons on the glyphs panel. I'm very pleased with the result since it’s not very easy to find fonts which play with the words' rhythm like Pantera does, following of course, a strong calligraphic base. I believe that if you were on the prowl for innovative fonts, this is your chance to go wild and get Pantera! NOTES (1) Phrase by Yves Leterme. In fact, it’s the title of a book by him. EPILOGUE Esta fuente está dedicada a mi panterita

A FEW THOUGHTS Indie is a trendy script, result of the wide range of possibilities that can be achieved using a pointed brush. (1) “You Only Live Once” say The Strokes, (to me, symbols of indie music) so, what would represent that sensation of volatility better than a brush? As you may already know, this time inspiration came from hipsters and indies around us: We may sometimes criticise them, we may sometimes want to be like them, but the truth is that the universo gráfico they generated these past years is gigantic, full of colour and variations. (2) Brush lettering and Sign painting are fields I've been fond of since I started as a designer. Nowadays, these styles are getting a lot of attention and maybe it’s due to the undeniable mark of life that is materialised when using a brush. This tool is so expressive that shows the passions and fears of the artist, and materialises that idea of “living the present”, so popular in this era. When you see Indie, you think of skaters, rollers, surfers, hiphop dancers, street artists, summer, and why not? California beaches. So if you feel life is only one, it’s high time you got Indie into your fonts' collection! STYLES Indie comes in 4 styles plus another one which consists only in capitals. Indie; Indie Shade; Indie Shade Solo; Indie Inline are all open-type programmed and have exactly the same glyphs and metrics, so you can combine them without probem. (I.E. You may use Indie Inline, then write the same word using Indie Shade Solo, and finally put them together). In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, the font has nice results when fi ligatures is activated. However, if you want a more casual look, activate the contextual and the decorative ligatures. NOTES 1. After several years of practicing calligraphy I can say that to me, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to create fonts out of your own handlettering. I owe a lot of this brush-style to Carl Rohrs. He was the very first calligrapher who taught it to me. His style is unique and what he can do with a brush is truly marvelous. I'm serious. 2. In spite of some particular cases, I can say I'm happy to live in a present in which Typography is living a kind of Renaissance along with Lettering. Like it happened with W. Morris a hundred years ago, handcrafts are being revalued/reborn, and some of this may be happening thanks to these indie designers that, trying to be unique, gave new/fresh air to different areas of graphic design.

In the 70's I went out with a girl whose father was a card-carrying member of 3 of the biggest unions in the printing arts. He gave me 2 things, a pre-war Linotype specimen book and an ancient 'how to' lettering book that contained 30 or 40 script specimens from lettering artists of the time. Tiamaria is the developed glyphs of one of these specimens. Tiamaria is the name of one of the islands in the Galapagos chain.

Regular Joe was first delivered to the font world by Ron and Joe. Yes, the same Ron and Joe of the ArtParts fame. A few years of being so regular, Regular Joe became, well, just bored. Regular Joe needed company. He wished for a family. After all, most of his font friends had big families. His wishes were granted by FontHaus. So Skinny and Husky were created to be with Regular and all together, they became Family Joe. All is well.

Big, bold and with attitude to spare, no-one better get in the way of Yuko when it’s got something to say. Although it’s a gentle giant really, Yuko has a lot of opinions and it won’t go without being heard. Yuko is most effective when you need to say something loudly and with attitude to get people’s attention, especially if you’re competing for space.

Overbold is an unapologetic display typeface inspired by an illustration in Eric Gill's Essay on Typography (p.51), in which he demonstrates �how not to make letters�. In particular, he shows that increasing the weight of the downstroke in a serif �A� without structural adjustments yields an absurd, �overbold� result. I found the letter so charming that I decided to blatantly disregard Gill's wisdom and draw an entire overbold typeface. Here is the result. I'm not sorry.

Karlo is a super family of several branches, originating in the same lightweight skeleton. The lightweights are based on a pen of an even stroke-width. Inspired by the writings of calligrapher Edward Johnston, the family moves on in two directions in the heavier weights. Johnston demonstrated that the broad nib pen can produce different writing styles. Following this, one heavy weight has a humanistic low stroke contrast (KarloSerifBold and KarloSansBold), and another has a high stroke contrast of vertical axis with references to the 19th century jobbing typefaces (KarloOpen). The latter is inspired by Johnston’s demonstration of the broad nib pen, where he suggested fastening two pencils together. With each pencil representing an edge of the pen, it becomes more evident how the pen works in writing. The friendly informal look makes KarloSans and KarloSerif usable for both running text and for display sizes. KarloOpen, on the other hand, is solely designed for display purpose showing few words at a time. In Denmark, a guy named Karlo would typically be an old fellow with a slick hairstyle that makes an effort with his appearance. He is a handyman who can do a bit of this and that when needed. He is a happy go lucky kind of guy that takes one day at a time. To me, the typeface family has some of the same qualities. Check out Pyke which is a great pair for Karlo.