Released on the occasion of the 2012 London Olympics, Olympukes 2012 was a new set of pictograms telling the ‘real’ story of the Olympics and extending the unofficial project that began in 2004. The occasion of the London games provided an opportunity to revisit the complex contradictions of the modern Olympics and to acknowledge the geopolitical shifts of the intervening eight years. The 2012 games arrived at a time of great economic and political uncertainty for the nation and Europe. Greece – the host of the 2004 games – was now located at Ground Zero of a disintegrating Eurozone and the United Kingdom was two years into a programme of austerity enacted by the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Given that the previous London Olympics had been held in 1948, in a climate of recovery and austerity after a devastating World War (1948’s Olympiad was dubbed the ‘Austerity Games’) there was a sick irony to the 2012 games' arrival. The suppression of human rights in order to deliver the perfect games for PRoC’s Beijing games shocked no-one and yet, in London, the security measures seemed grossly excessive. Then again, in a country with an estimated 1.8 million cctv cameras, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Another aspect of the Olympics that returned for 2012 was the unfettered commercialism – if you think the Games are about pure sport, about noble human endeavour, think again. Please note that Barnbrook Fonts is in no way affiliated with, or has received any endorsement from, the International Olympic Committee, the organising committees of the Olympic Games, or any national Olympic committee.

Full of life Hispanic Didot in 2 optical sizes Retiro is a daring interpretation of Spanish typography. Severe, austere and yet, full of life, Retiro is a vernacular version of Castilian and Andalusian in a typical Didot. Named after a lovely park in Madrid, Retiro started life as a a bespoke typeface designed to give a unique voice to the magazine Madriz. In 2006, the founder of Madriz was looking for a Didot for his new magazine. The Didot is the archetypal typeface used in high-end magazines. Retiro is a synthesis of these high contrast styles mixed with an Hispanic mind. Result is then, after 2-3 years of work, a typeface with countless variations to establish typographic shades adapted to different sections and pages of the Madriz. In 2014, it was necessary to further revise the typeface before its launch at Typofonderie. In order to keep its originality, the unique weight was retained, but complemented with optical size variants to set highly contrasted headlines into various sizes, visually balanced. How to use Retiro optical sizes? Each font provided in Retiro family is named according to the scale of body size: 24 pt and 64 pt. Of course, these names are referring to the body sizes used in typographic design. In the “glorious old days,” the letterpress period, it was customary to cut punches directly to the size at which typefaces would be used. The punchcutter had to visually adapt his design to the engraving size. The aim was to optimize the best contrast and general weight, but also to respect both design’s and reader’s needs. In Retiro’s case, intended for large titling sizes, it’s an adaptation of this ancient practice for our contemporary uses. Although each font is named by a typographic point size, do not feel obliged to use this font at this precise size, but why not, in larger or smaller. It’s rather the concept of gradients that must be preserved in layouts, rather than strictly size numbers. It’s up to the designer to select the right font size for his own designs. Granshan Awards 2012 Creative Review Type Annual 2011 Designpreis 2011 Club des directeurs artistiques, 41e palmarès Type Directors Club 2010 Certificate of Type design Excellence

Inspired by a biography of Coco Chanel and trying to capture the quintessential mood of classical fashion elegance, Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini designed Coco Gothic looking for the effect that the first geometric sans typefaces (like Futura, Kabel or the italian eponyms like Semplicità) had when printed on paper. The crisp modernist shapes acquired in printing charme and warmth through a slight rounding of the corners that is translated digitally in the design of Coco Gothic. This signature touch is enhanced by the inclusion of light humanist touches to the proportions of the letters, resulting in the unique mix that makes Coco Gothic one of our best sellers, with a look that is both contemporary and vintage. After six years from the original project (that has spawned in the meanwhile successful families like Cocogoose and Coco Sharp), we went back to the design to completely redraw and expand the original family, creating with a Pro version that has better on-screen readability, a wider weight range, variable type versions and more language coverage (with Coco Gothic Arabic adding a new script to the latin, greek and Cyrillic of the original). Coco Gothic Pro comes in three subfamilies, each with seven weights with matching italics and featuring an extended character set with open type support for small caps, ligatures, alternates, European languages, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. The original, body-text optimised Coco Gothic and Coco Gothic Alternate subfamilies have been kept for compatibility with the previous version, while a new Coco Gothic Display subfamily has been developed with a complete redesign aimed at display usage, featuring tighter spacing and optimised letterforms. A distinguishing feature of Coco Gothic Pro is the inclusion of ten alternate historical sets that allow you to use the typeface as a true “typographic time machine”, selecting period letterforms that range from art deco and nouveau, to modernism and to eighties’ minimalism. Equipped with such an array of historical variants, Coco Gothic Pro becomes an encyclopedia of styles from the last century, ready to transform itself and adapt to the mood of your text.

Inspiration for font design takes on many shapes and forms. It can be vintage source material, visualized concepts or simply suggestions made by others. In an email conversation with Kevin Redekop (the Principal Designer for FabArts Creative Fabricators in Canada) who had purchased a number of Jeff Levine Fonts, a sample sketch of a desired stencil font was provided. This set the wheels into motion for the drawing and production of Saskatoon Stencil JNL.

This family of decorated initial letters was inspired from a French catalogue dedicated to engravers, embroiders and jewelers. unfortunately, we don't know the name of the illustrator, no more than the publisher, because a large part of the pages seems to have been lost or have been damaging, so, we have had to redrawn a few of figures. The font is containing standard Latin capitals without diacritics, identically repeated in lower case keys, and numerals.

Georges Peignot designed the font Nicolas Cochin based on copper engravings of the 18th century and Charles Malin cut the typeface in 1912 for the Paris foundry Deberny & Peignot. The font is named after the French engraver Charles Nicolas Cochin (1715-1790) although its style had little to do with that of the copper artist. Nicholas Cochin is a freer variation of another Peignot font, Cochin, a bit more balanced and elegant.

Iova Nova is based on Jowa Script, designed by J. Wagner in 1967. The typeface has been redesigned, digitized, completed and expanded as OpenType Pro in the profonts studio. The resdesign includes the modification of the numerals which originally had capheight size. Besides, we complete the character set to cover Western and Eastern Europe including Turkey and Romania. The font contains more than 300 characters. Iova Nova is a young, fresh and casual design.

Hesster Mofet is what I got after writing with an old and weathered calligraphic marker on textured paper. The characters were smoothened for a clean result, but since the original sketches had such a nice rough, edgy feel to them, they were also made into a complete font set. A couple of ligatures and a Hannibal Lecter reference were thrown in the mix as well. You can get both versions at a discount.

Eleonora tends to defy standard categories. Had the typeface been designed in about 1790, it might've been called a "late transitional face" and lumped together with Bell and Bulmer. But it's a modern typeface, showing more restraint in its finer details than even Baskerville. Also noteworthy: it has no traditional, script-like italic but a more severe oblique with baseline serifs and other roman features. Has regular, italic, bold, and bold italic styles.

Obrigado means 'Thank You' in Portuguese. It is my way of saying thanks to the unknown designer of a Portuguese port-wine poster from the thirties. Obrigado font is based on that poster. As I had to work with a handful of glyphs, I designed the missing ones myself. Obrigado is a quite elegant and refined art deco font, which would be ideal for posters and logos. Obrigado speaks most Roman based languages.

The name Old Style No. 7 comes from a time when foundries released a variety of typefaces under one name. Linotype produced Old Style No. 7, which was based on an early 1870s typeface from the Bruce Typefoundry, which had based its design on a type from the Scottish foundry Miller and Richards. Old Style No. 7 is a reliable text type that is serviceable for both books and shorter copy demands, such as magazines.

The 1934 Dick Powell-Ruby Keeler-Joan Blondell movie musical "Dames" gave us the classic song "I Only Have Eyes for You", but the sheet music for the song had the movie title hand lettered in a multi-line Art Deco sans serif design that just begged to be turned into a type font. From these few letters now comes Deco Multiline JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart was one of the most popular songs of the early 20th Century, and a piece of vintage sheet music for this tune had its title hand lettered in a square, narrow block lettering style. With a few adjustments and adaptations, this led to the creation of Tall and Narrow JNL, a digital version of the type design which is a perfect alternate to the more conventional condensed faces.

ITC Bookman font was designed by Edward Benguiat, whose goal was to design a typeface that had a clear resemblance to previous Bookman faces but was different and more versatile. This typeface retains all the traits of the original and adds a large x-height and moderate stroke contrast for optimal legibility. ITC Bookman font also has italics which are true cursive forms, as opposed to oblique roman characters. Featured in: Best Fonts for Tattoos

This font is based on the handwriting of Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. Using his many letters, drafts, notes- and sketchbooks as reference, this font characterizes the elegant yet sometimes quite irregular writing style Munch had. To resemble naturalistic writing and remain as authentic as possible, a combination of extended ligatures and alternates has been included, as well as Swash characters (accessible via open-type). Additionally, several of Munch's paintings and woodcuts are embedded as extras.

The cover on the sheet music for the 1922 song "If She Comes from Dixie" had the title hand-lettered in an Art Nouveau style with a semi-stencil effect. It's now available as Nouveau Semi Stencil JNL in both regular and oblique versions. The typeface is not considered a "pure" stencil because many of the letters were made solid; lacking the classic stencil "breaks" at key points found in more traditional stencil designs.

With initial thoughts of creating something tubular, I had in the back of my mind the kind of contemporary chrome furniture that became ubiquitous throughout the 60s and that concept remained with me throughout the development process. The font-styling idea worked out very well in this case, resulting in plenty of optional character variations for my chosen theme, most of which are included in both styles of light and bold character sets.

Umerica first made its appearance in 2007 as a series of characters in a pdf I posted to Typophile. It has taken a lot of time, and determination, for me to finally decide to complete it. I had the basic font completed in 2008, but put it aside as the creation of the italics it deserved were beyond me. That was then. Now the italic version has finally been added twelve years later.

After creating the all-caps version of Supper Club JNL, a conversation between Jeff Levine and fellow font designer Ray Larabie brought forth the idea that one of Ray's freeware fonts had a lower case that would perfectly fit Jeff's design. With Ray's permission, Jeff adapted the lower case to his capital letters and the final version of Supper Club was born. Two separate ideas become one stylish Art Deco type design.

I've always admired the work of Rudolph Koch. Culpepper is what I think Neuland would have looked like if it had been developed with lowercase, small caps and a range of weights. I started work on this series in the late 80’s and, like so many of my ideas, it was shelved when life drew me in another direction. Culpepper is the name of one of the islands in the Galapagos chain.

“The Auto Show” is the title of an early 1900s pieces of sheet music proving that America has had a fascination with cars since the earliest days of the automotive industry. The song sheet’s title was hand lettered in a casual Art Nouveau style which has been re-drawn digitally as Nouveau Auto JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions… and what’s better than a nouveau auto (a new car)?

Ornata B is the second of a series of old ornaments that I am trying to save from oblivion. I am not just scanning these, I am completely redesigning the ornaments from scratch, thereby eliminating imperfections. These ornaments have been first designed by the Elzevier printer family from the Netherlands. The designs date back til the 17th century and I think they just had to be saved. Your digitizing type-designing savior, Gert Wiescher

Eckhardt Signwriter JNL is based on a casual display lettering face popular with many sign painters and show card writers of yesteryear, best suited for large print projects. Jeff Levine has named this font (along with others in a series) after the late Albert Eckhardt, Jr. (1929-2005) who had owned Allied Signs in Miami, Florida from 1959 until his passing. Al was a talented lettering artist and a good friend to Jeff.