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.

Yes, finally. This one took the most time and the most restarting. Years went into imagining what Lust Text should look like and how it should structurally behave in order to truly improve upon a setting that includes any of the Lust typefaces. I approached it as much from the side of the type designer, as I did a potential user. The flow, the warmth, the personality needed to be there, but all of the excess had to be removed responsibly. In the process, and in need of inspiration, I looked backward to historical artifacts and precedent. In each early Lust Text approach, the solution was lackluster and/or vanilla and not actually a ‘Lust’ typeface. The exercise was not in vain though. By exploring past examples, I found my footing drawing for media now and how it might be used later—all the while, producing seamless, elegant curves and restrained indulgence (that sounds almost silly to say, but I like it). The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.

Matthew Carter has been refining his design for Alisal for so long, he says, that when he was asked to complete the design for the Monotype Library, it was almost as if he were doing a historical revival of his own typeface. The illusion even extended to changes in his work process: although he now does all his preliminary and final drawing on screen, the first trial renderings of Alisal were done as pencil renderings. Alisal is best classified as an Italian old style design. Originally created between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries in northern Italy, the true Italian old styles were some of the first roman types. They tend to be the most calligraphic of serifed faces, with the axis of their curved strokes inclined to the left, as if drawn with a flat-tipped pen or brush. These designs offer sturdy, free-flowing and heavily bracketed serifs, short descenders, and a modest contrast in stroke weight. Alisal has nearly all the classic Italian old style character traits, plus a few quirks of its own. It is calligraphic in nature, with more of a pen-drawn quality than faces like Palatino or Goudy Old Style. It is more rough-hewn than either Goudy's Kennerley or Benton's Cloister, and is generally heavier in weight than most of the other Italian old style designs. One place where Alisal makes a clean break with traditional old style designs is in the serifs. While sturdy and clearly reflecting pen-drawn strokes, Alisal's serifs have no bracketing and appear to be straight strokes crossing the main vertical. Like Caslon or Trajanus, Alisal is a handsome design when viewed as a block of copy. Ascenders are tall and elegant, and serve as a counterpoint to the robust strength of the rest of the design. Alisal is available as a small family of roman and bold with a complementary italic for the basic roman weight, providing all that is needed for the majority of text typography. Alisal is not as well-known as some of Carter's other typefaces, but this lovely and long-incubated design was certainly worth the wait.

Geometric/Technical style logotypes have been developed for car chrome labels since the early 1980’s, but automobile companies don't monopolize the style by any means. Shoe companies have a foothold in the geometric sans serif styles as well, and range from straightforward to full of techno styled play. Nonetheless, these logotypes all lack an expansive family which shows off all the logotypes are and what they "could" be and do. And that's where we come in. The Midsole SC Family finds its origin of inspiration in the CONVERSE shoe company logo, or an older version of their logo, and from there we expanded it into a 40 font family of weights, widths, and obliques. Midsole pays homage to the styling of the earlier logotype, including unicase variations to match the original look, while further evolving beyond the brand inspiration to yield a family that pulls on modern and historical styles. It adopts a sturdy yet approachable and recognizable style with its uniform stroke forms and curves, and goes on to include smallcaps, numerals, and a comprehensive range of weights, creating a straightforward, uncompromising collection of typefaces that lend a solid foundation and a broad range of expression for designers. Here’s what’s included with the Midsole SC Family bundle: 489 glyphs per style - including Capitals, SmallCaps, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 10th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Stylistic Alternates - alternate characters and unicase variants for a less standardized text look. 4 weights in the family: Light, Regular, Medium & Bold. 4 obliques in the family, one for each weight: Light, Regular, Medium & Bold. Here’s why the Midsole SC Family is for you: - You’re in need of stylish sans font family with a range of weights and obliques. - You’re love that older CONVERSE letter styling, and want to design anything within that genre. - You’re looking for an alternative to Eurostile & Handel Gothic. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your rave poster designs. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

Type designer Xavier Dupré’s Garalda is a charming 21st century family that renews a legacy of finesse. As paragraphs on a page, Garalda’s overall impression is of a workaday personality, committed to the main purpose of the job: easy long-form reading. But setting it in display sizes proves something different: This reinvented Garamond is anything but basic. The Garalda story begins with the serendipitous finding of a book typeset in a rare Garalde, called Tory-Garamond, with which Dupré was not immediately familiar. This Garamond was used in bibliophile books in the decades surrounding 1920, but after that it became déclassé for an unknown reason. Dupré found the italic styles especially charming and discovered the family was probably the mythical Ollière Garamond cut from 1914. He obtained low resolution scans of the typeface and used them, rather than high resolution scans, as the basis for his new type family. This allowed Dupré the mental freedom to experiment and remix as he saw fit, culminating in a contemporary family with heritage. As seen in the simplistic rectangular serifs, Garalda is a humanist slab serif, but with a mix of angles and curves to give the classic shapes a fresh, unorthodox feeling. While almost invisible in paragraph text, these produce a graphic effect in display work. The set of ligatures in the roman and italics lend themselves to unique display use, such as creating lovely logotypes. In the italics, some swashes inspired by different historic Garamonds are included, sometimes breaking their curves to be more captivating. Just look at how the italic ‘*-s’ ligatures create ‘s’ with a cursive formation rather than merely a flowing slant. And how the roman ‘g’ link swings as wide as a trainer’s whip. These are all balanced by squared serifs in the roman to keep an overall mechanised regularity. The Garalda family comes in eight styles, includes some of the original arrows and ornaments, and speaks multiple languages for all typesetting needs, from pamphlets to fine book printing. The complete Garalda family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

How can Teutonia be called “Art Nouveau” with all those straight lines? It seems like a contradiction. In fact, however, Art Nouveau embraces a rather wide variety of stylistic approaches. Five well-known examples in the field of architecture serve to illustrate the range of diversity in Art Nouveau: Saarinen’s Helsinki Railroad Station, Hoffman’s Palais Stocklet in Brussels, Lechner’s Museum of Applied Arts on Budapest, Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art and Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Only the last fits comfortably within the common perception of Art Nouveau. Whereas Gaudi would avoid the straight line as much as possible, Macintosh seemed to employ it as much as possible. The uniting factor is that they all represent “new art” -- an attempt to look things differently than the previous generation. Even when they draw on the past -- e.g. Lechner in the use of traditional Hungarian folk art -- the totality of the expression in new. Teutonia clearly shows its blackletter roots in the ‘D’ and the ‘M.’ Roos & Junge of Offenbach am Main in Germany produced Teutonia in a "back-to-basics" effort that has seen many quite similar attempts in the field of topography. In 1883, Baltimore Type Foundry released its Geometric series. In 1910, Geza Farago in Budapest used a similar letter design on a Tungsram light bulb poster. In 1919 Theo van Doesburg, a founder with Mondrian and others of the De Stijl movement, designed an alphabet using rectangles only -- no diagonals. In 1923 Joost Schmidt at Bauhaus in Weimer took the same approach for a Constructivist exhibit poster. The 1996 Agfatype Collection catalog lists a Geometric in light, bold and italic that is very close to the old Baltimore version. Even though none of these designs took the world by storm, they all made a contribution to our understanding of letterforms and how we use them. Teutonia is compact and surprisingly readable at 12 points in print, but does not do as well on the screen. Extra leading is suggested. Four ligatures are supplied: ch, ck, sch and tz. The numerals are tabular.

Rabenau (formerly Lucinde), the distinctly warm and legible type family For 30 years the graphic designer Axel Bertram worked at creating his typefaces: He developed complete new alphabets for magazines and typewriters as well as for the constant demand for typefaces for use by commercial artists. He has developed wall charts the size of advertising posters as teaching aids for training commercial and graphic artists to write in a clean, classic cursive script. In the eighties he used the American Chyron computer to design a screen font for television. In the mid-nineties he discovered for himself the fabulous possibilities offered by the Fontographer font software program and explored them playfully. From the results of these experiments, Axel Bertram selected a design for further development. From 2003 onwards the calligrapher and type designer Andreas Frohloff collaborated with him on the further development and production of the 16 fonts of the Rabenau™ typeface family.The Rabenau font was inspired by many factors: From the fonts used as book covers to typewriter fonts and even printed material from England dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century (e.g. those used by the skilled printer William Bulmer), Rabenau's relatively high contrast is offset by some organic tapers, subtley rounded bracketed serifs, and a fairly generous x-height. This makes for a typeface that looks especially good in print. Its broad repertoire of weights and styles - Condensed, Poster, and Shadow - give it added versatility, and make it ideal for setting both display and text in the same typeface. Throughout the heavier weights, the contrast is maintained. The Poster Italic sparkles, and will make a fine display type for dynamic headlines, or logotypes. This family of sixteen fonts works beautifully together. All Rabenau font styles have a large set of ligatures and thus cover typical letter combinations in many European languages. Besides the standard ligatures for ff, fi and fl, letter connections are also available for tt, th and fj or ffi, ffl and ffk. The range is completed with lovely arched transitions for the characters st, ck or ct. The latter gives the font that certain something, both in continuous text and above all in headlines.

Morris Fuller Benton, the principal designer of the American Type Founders, designed Mariage in 1901. Mariage, which has been sold under a plethora of different names during the last century, is a blackletter typeface belonging to the Old English category. The term blackletter refers to typefaces that stem out of the historical printing traditions of northern Europe. These letters, called gebrochene Schriften, or "broken type" in German, are normally elaborately bent and distorted. Their forms often print large amounts of ink upon the page, creating text that leaves a heavy, black impression. The Old English style is a subset of blackletter type that dates back to 1498, when Wynken de Worde introduced textura style printing to England. Continental printers had been printing with textura style letters since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press fifty years earlier. Italian printers stopped using them around 1470. For northern Europeans, texturas remained the most popular form of typeface design until the invention of the fraktur style in Nuremberg. Mariage is heavily classicized sort of Old English type. During the Victorian era, designers admired the Middle Ages for its chivalric, community-based values and its pre-industrial lifestyle. Yet they also found the basic medieval textura letterform too difficult to read by present standards. They desired to modernize this old style. Today, this sort of update is often referred to not as "modernization" but as classicism. Benton's design for ATF builds upon earlier Victorian classicist interpretations of Old English/textura letters. For an example of what these Victorian designs looked like, check out the popular 1990 revival of the genre, Old English . Old English style types often appear drastically different from other blackletters. For contrast, compare Mariage to a classical German fraktur design, Fette Fraktur , a schwabacher style face, or the popular early 20th Century calligraphic gothic from Linotype, Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch . Especially in the United States, classicist Old English typefaces are thought to espouse tradition and journalistic integrity. These features, together with the inherent, complex beauty of Mariage's forms, make this typeface a perfect choice for certificates, awards, and newsletter mastheads.

Geometric/Technical style logotypes have been developed for car chrome labels since the early 1980’s, but automobile companies don't monopolize the style by any means. Shoe companies have a foothold in the geometric sans serif styles as well, and range from straightforward to full of techno styled play. Nonetheless, these logotypes all lack an expansive family which shows off all the logotypes are and what they "could" be and do. And that's where we come in. The Midsole Family finds its origin of inspiration in the CONVERSE shoe company logo, or an older version fo their logo, and from there expanded it into a 40 font family of weights, widths, and obliques. Midsole pays homage to the styling of the earlier logotype, including unicase variations to match the original look, while further evolving beyond the brand inspiration to yield a family that pulls on modern and historical styles. It adopts a sturdy yet approachable and recognizable style with its uniform stroke forms and curves, and goes on to include a lowercase, numerals, and a comprehensive range of weights, creating a straightforward, uncompromising collection of typefaces that lend a solid foundation and a broad range of expression for designers. Here’s what’s included with the Midsole Family bundle: 489 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 10th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Stylistic Alternates - alternate characters and unicase variants for a less standardized text look. 4 weights in the family: Light, Regular, Medium & Bold. 4 obliques in the family, one for each weight: Light, Regular, Medium & Bold. Here’s why the Midsole Family is for you: - You’re in need of stylish sans font family with a range of weights and obliques. - You’re love that older CONVERSE letter styling, and want to design anything within that genre. - You’re looking for an alternative to Eurostile & Handel Gothic. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your rave poster designs. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

Elevate Your Designs with Elegant Luxury Orliet Pro is a meticulously crafted serif font designed to add a touch of elegance and luxury to your visual creations, especially ideal for enhancing the sophistication of logos. This font stands out for its uniqueness, boasting over 50 ligatures and alternative characters with artistic flair. Its well-designed script optimizes your designs, ensuring a seamless integration into your projects. Key Features: Versatile Ligatures and Alternatives: With over 50 ligatures and alternative characters, Orliet Pro provides a wide range of design possibilities. Each character exudes a unique artistic charm, allowing you to customize your text in a myriad of ways. Elegance in Every Detail: The design of Orliet Pro aims for elegance. The serif style adds a touch of class to your projects, making it perfect for creating logos that exude luxury and simplicity simultaneously. Seamless Font Families: Each member of the Orliet Pro font family complements one another effortlessly. Whether you choose the Orliet Pro script or Orliet Pro icons, they work harmoniously to enhance your overall design. Enhanced Design Flexibility: Orliet Pro script and Orliet Pro icons contribute to the ease of design integration. The script is thoughtfully designed to optimize your creative process, while the icons provide additional elements for a professional touch. Cyrillic Alphabet Inclusion: For an added layer of versatility, Orliet Pro includes the Cyrillic alphabet in regular, italic, bold, and bold italic styles. This ensures that your designs can reach a broader audience with diverse language preferences. Optional Details: Design Concept: Orliet Pro was conceptualized to bring an air of sophistication to your designs, with a focus on creating an elegant and timeless serif font. Creation Inspiration: The font draws inspiration from classic design elements, aiming to provide a timeless aesthetic that resonates with a modern audience. Historical Context: While not a revival, Orliet Pro pays homage to the timeless elegance of serif fonts, adding a contemporary twist to meet the demands of today's design trends. Elevate your designs with the timeless elegance of Orliet Pro. Explore the possibilities of serif and script styles, accompanied by convenient font icons, all seamlessly integrated into one versatile font family. Embrace luxury and simplicity in every character.

Dulcinea is the title of Ramiro Espinoza’s in-depth look at Spanish Baroque calligraphy’s most extreme tendencies, and especially at some of those produced by the writing masters Pedro Díaz Morante and Juan Claudio Aznar de Polanco. These 17th and 18th centuries alphabets with their plentiful calligraphic flourishes represented a marked break with the harmonic and angular Renaissance Cancellaresca style. It was Morante who first introduced and popularized the use of the pointed quill in Spain, and although his famous text entitled “Arte Nueva de escribir” – first volume published in 1616 – contains alphabets that have much in common with traditional broad nib Cancellaresca calligraphy, most of the examples therein are outgrowths of the new models put forward by the Italian master Gianfrancesco Cresci. The writing’s swashes are complex and intricate, but at the same time they feature a profusion of defects. Many of them sometimes come close to ugliness. However, these pages contain an artistic essence that bears a relationship to the ironic and sometimes somber character of Spanish Baroque. That’s why the name of the font pays homage to “Dulcinea del Toboso”, the fictional beauty from Miguel de Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’, a work that reveals many of the period’s conflicts, such as the contrast between utopian ideals and reality, uncertainty and madness. But Dulcinea is far from being just a revival. Its forms are not careful tracings of the outlines of Morante and Polanco’s letters, nor are they attempts to reproduce them digitally. In fact, the author of the letters says that had the font been created that way it would have been too archaic to serve as acceptable contemporary typography. However, he believes that there are myriad interesting details that can be rescued and preserved, along with the playful spirit of the original. The work of designing Dulcinea consisted of combining original historical elements with the creativity and calligraphy of the font’s author in order to produce a modern typography that isn’t based on the same traditional sources as many recently created scripts fonts. Dulcinea offers attractive options for the setting of texts and headlines: abundant ligatures and swashes along with intricate alternate characters. It sophisticated forms make it an ideal option for women’s magazines, recipe books, lingerie products or perfume packaging.