In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Linotype version, called simply "Times," was optimized for line-casting technology, though the differences in the basic design are subtle. The typeface was very successful for the Times of London, which used a higher grade of newsprint than most newspapers. The better, whiter paper enhanced the new typeface's high degree of contrast and sharp serifs, and created a sparkling, modern look. In 1972, Walter Tracy designed Times Europa for The Times of London. This was a sturdier version, and it was needed to hold up to the newest demands of newspaper printing: faster presses and cheaper paper. In the United States, the Times font family has enjoyed popularity as a magazine and book type since the 1940s. Times continues to be very popular around the world because of its versatility and readability. And because it is a standard font on most computers and digital printers, it has become universally familiar as the office workhorse. Times?, Times? Europa, and Times New Roman? are sure bets for proposals, annual reports, office correspondence, magazines, and newspapers. Linotype offers many versions of this font: Times? is the universal version of Times, used formerly as the matrices for the Linotype hot metal line-casting machines. The basic four weights of roman, italic, bold and bold italic are standard fonts on most printers. There are also small caps, Old style Figures, phonetic characters, and Central European characters. Times? Ten is the version specially designed for smaller text (12 point and below); its characters are wider and the hairlines are a little stronger. Times Ten has many weights for Latin typography, as well as several weights for Central European, Cyrillic, and Greek typesetting. Times? Eighteen is the headline version, ideal for point sizes of 18 and larger. The characters are subtly condensed and the hairlines are finer."

Iza and Paulo W (Intellecta Design) are proud to announce Van den Velde Script. A free interpretation of the work of the famous master penman Jan van den Velde, to be found in the “Spieghel der schrijfkonste, in den welcken ghesien worden veelderhande gheschrifften met hare fondementen ende onderrichtinghe. ” (Haarlen, 1605). Van den Velde Script has evocative ancient ligature forms from the XVII Century Dutch master penman Jan van den Velde. Your indescritible writing-book was important not only with regard to the specific period it represents, but also in relationship to the entire history of calligraphy as an art: Van den Velde is rightly credited with having introduced and perfected a new trend in Dutch calligraphy. Our font, Van den Velde Script merges modern necessities o better legibility without loose the taste of his archaic origins. This enhanced OpenType version is a complete solution for producing documents and artworks whith a evocative and voluptuous style of calligraphic script: - dozens of stylistic alternates for each letter (upper- and lowercase), accessed with the glyph palette; - historical ornaments and fleurons in the typical style (and motifs) from the XVII century at the Lower Countryes accessed with the glyph palette using the Ornaments feature); - an extensive set of ligatures (100s of contextual alternates plus discretionary ligatures) providing letterform variations that make your designs really special, resembling real handwriting on the page; - a tour-de-force kerning work: over 700 gliphs in this font was adjusted to your kern pairs handly. In non-OpenType-savvy applications it works well as an unusual and beautiful script style font. Because of its high number of alternate letters and combinations (over 700 glyphs), we suggest the use of the glyph palette to find ideal solutions to specific designs. The sample illustrations will give you an idea of the possibilities. You have full access to this amazing stuff using InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. However, we still recommend exploring what this font has to offer using the glyphs palette: principally to get all the power of the Contextual Alternates feature. You can has an idea of the power of this font looking at the “Van den Velde User Guide”, a pdf brochure in the Galçlery section. Two last things: take a special look at the Van den Velde Words (ready words) font and another super script font, Penabico. Van den Velde Script has original letters designed by Iza W and overall creative direction plus core programming by Paulo W.

Since its foundation in 1901, the iconic building in the Rotterdam neighborhood Kop van Zuid, is shining. Where previously the Holland America Line was housed, you will now find Hotel New York. A building with a tremendous history. We’re glad to take you back in time with captivating memories. In 1991, catering entrepreneurs Daan van der Have, Hans Loos and Dorine de Vos refurbished the at the time vacant property into a hotel/restaurant. To honor its 25 years existence, we celebrate this happening with a brand-new font, ‘America Line’. A tribute to Wim ten Broek, the multi-talented Dutch Graphic Designer. As early as the 1930’s before the Second World War, Wim ten Broek made the famous posters for the Holland-America Line. The influence of A.M. Cassandre here in, is clearly recognizable. Wim ten Broek also worked for HAL with large surfaces and fixed lines in which primary colors dominate, accentuated with shadows acquired by spraying technique. He also made graphic works for, among others, the World Exhibition in New York, the Dutch railway company ‘Werkspoor’ and the royal Dutch steel factory ‘Hoogovens’. His drawings and lettering gave me a love for the trade and naturally gave me a completely different view on fonts. That’s how I slowly but surely made my way to the trade. Based on the letters I had at my disposal from the Holland – America Line poster, I started to complete the alphabet in the same style as the original text. I digitized everything in order to acquire a usable and modern font. The Holland America Line Font comes with uppercase and lowercase with all the needs of modern times to create a good digital font and to be able to use it for all graphic purposes. The font is ideal for headtext, posters, logos, etc... Don't hesitate and use this unique historical font! It will give your work that glamour that you will find in few fonts. Enjoy the Holland America Line. The Holland America Line Font comes with uppercase, lowercase, numerals, punctuations so you can use the Holland America Line font to customize all your designs. The Holland America Line font is designed by Coert De Decker in 2018 and published by Kustomtype Font Foundry. The Holland America Line Font can be used for all graphic purposes. It is ideal for headtext, posters, logos, logos, letterhead, apparel design, package design, label design etc... Don't hesitate any longer and enjoy this unique historical font! It will give your work the glamour that you will only find in a few fonts. Enjoy your journey with the Holland America Line!
Utusi Star, designed by the talented Peter Wiegel, is a font that captivates with its unique blend of creativity and functionality. This font, much like its creator, showcases a deep understanding of...
The MetroDF font is an intriguing and dynamic typeface crafted by the talented typographer Harold Lohner. This font takes its inspiration from the modernist sensibilities that were prevalent in the e...
The Spongy font, crafted by the renowned typeface designer Ray Larabie, is a testament to creativity and playful design in typography. Known for his extensive portfolio of unique and highly functiona...
La Rosa Muerta, a font created by the talented Juan Casco, is a testament to the artistry and profound emotion that typography can evoke. This font is not merely a set of characters; it's an explorat...
Astropolis, crafted by the imaginative minds at Iconian Fonts, is a font that seems to transport its audience into the far reaches of a futuristic landscape. This typeface embodies the essence of sci...
Brushstroke Plain by Altsys Metamorphosis is a captivating font that truly embodies the spirit and essence of artistic spontaneity. This font, with its bold and fluid characteristics, seems to dance ...
Ah, LT Chickenhawk! Such a name evokes images of brave, intrepid fowls, doesn't it? Crafted by the creative minds at Nymphont, this font strides into your design projects with the confidence of a chi...
As of my last update in early 2023, "Knives" is not a widely recognized or standardized font in the vast collection of typefaces used across design and digital platforms. However, let's explore a con...
Wolf's Bane, crafted by the talented Iconian Fonts, emerges as a distinctive and dynamic font that captures the essence of both adventure and mystery. Iconian Fonts, known for their vast portfolio of...
Ah, Brassiere by Apostrophic Labs – if fonts were garments, this one would definitely be a lacy number you'd find hidden in the mischievous corner of your wardrobe. Picture this: a font that flirts w...
Pushkin is a font that seems to embrace the art of storytelling with each letter it forms. Just hearing the name, you can almost feel the romantic brushstrokes of history and literature it's named af...
"Wizards Magic" is a font that seems to encapsulate the enchanting essence of the mystical and magical world, inspired by the rich tapestry of fantasy literature, movies, and folklore that involve wi...
The font named "WHEN THE GOES SUN . SCENE" evokes a profound sense of storytelling and emotional depth, designed to encapsulate the breathtaking moments of a sunset scene. This font is not just a col...
Imagine if fonts could dance. Well, if any font were to throw on a pair of dancing shoes and hit the dance floor, Unity Dances by S. John Ross would be busting moves that would make even the most res...
Imagine if your favorite whimsical old uncle, the one who somehow pulls off wearing mismatched socks and a bow tie to every family gathering, decided to dabble in typography. That's the spirit you'll...
Certainly! Picture this: You're strolling through the whimsical alleyways of Typography Town, where the buildings stretch impossibly tall, framing the sky in slivers of blue. Suddenly, you stumble up...
Ah, the elusive and cheekily named "Liquidy Bulbous." If fonts were people, Liquidy Bulbous would be the life of the party, the one who shows up with a mischievous twinkle in their eye, ready to turn...
Once upon a paragraph, in the mythical realm of typography, there emerged a legend from the creative foundry of deFharo – The Black Box. Picture this: if fonts were a grand dinner party, The Black Bo...
Alright, prepare yourself for a journey into the whimsical world of Oramac, courtesy of the creative cosmos of Iconian Fonts. Imagine, if you will, a font that decided to go on an adventure, mixing t...
Ye Old Shire is a font that evokes the rustic charm and storied past of medieval England and the broader British Isles, transporting its audience to an era of knights, folklore, and the textual craft...
Ah, the 20th Century Font by Ray Larabie, a typeface that's as ambitious and forward-looking as its name suggests, yet marinated in the nostalgic vibes of the past century. Imagine a font that decide...
Imagine a font that practically wraps itself in the stars and stripes, saluting every time a character is typed – this, my dear friends, is the American Flag font, the typographical equivalent of an ...
Picture this: you're about to pen a love letter, the old-fashioned way. You dip your quill in ink, but instead of pressing it to parchment, you tap away at your keyboard and, voilá, out comes Jayne S...
Ah, the font Oohlalalulucurvy. Imagine, if you will, a font so lively and flamboyant that each letter seems to be thrown into a dance party from the moment it hits the page. This is no ordinary colle...
As of my last update in April 2023, there isn't a widely recognized or commercially available font specifically known as "Yodle." It's possible that "Yodle" could be a custom or a less-known typeface...

Sterling Script was initially meant to a be digitization/reinterpretation of a copperplate script widely used during what effectively became the last decade of metal type: Stephenson Blake's Youthline, from 1952. The years from 1945 to 1960 saw a heightened demand for copperplate faces, due to post-war market optimism, as well as the banking and insurance industries booming like never before, which triggered the need for design elements that express formal elegance and luxury. The name Sterling Script is a tip of our hat to England, the Stephenson Blake foundry's country of origin. It is also a historical hint about copperplate scripts having been used mainly for banking and bonds in the 19th century. Originally we just wanted to resurrect a gorgeous metal type from the ashes of forgotten history. But after the main font was done we saw that the original s really needed an alternate. We made one. But we felt sorry for the original s and didn't want to see it dropped from use altogether, so we saved it by building a set of ligatures that solve the minor connection problem with the s at large sizes. Before the completion of the ligatures, a few different alternates were also drawn, and we were faced by the fact that the single font we set out to do was now a much larger set than we anticipated. While thinking about how to split up our unexpected bundle of large characters, we drew a few more alternates and some swashes. This abundance "problem" reached a certain point where there was no looking back, so we just decided to go all the way with this font. We added many more alternates, swashes, ligatures, and two full sets of each beginning and ending lowercase letter. The result is over 750 characters of sheer elegance. Sterling Script has many features that set it above and beyond other copperplate scripts: - It has 2 beginning and 2 ending alternates for every single lowercase character. The beginning and ending variants on the vowels are also available in accented form in the appropriate cells of the character map. - Sterling Script is the ultimate elegant font choice for luxury design. Very elegant, but not too soft. Its strong and confident shapes convey a message that is real, comforting and assuring. - One of the eventual purposes of expanding Sterling Script this extensively was to create a script that finds the middle ground between formal and informal without compromising either trait, a script where the degree of formality can be gauged, tweaked, cranked up or toned down depending on the layout's needs. Aside from beginnings and endings, there are multiple variations for the majority of the basic characters. This is a formal script on steroids, where twirls and swashes can be set to come out unexpectedly from any place in the word, which is great for reducing the inherent rigidity of words set in copperplate scripts and "humanizing" them whenever needed. This is especially useful for wedding, postcard and invitation design, where not every viewer of the collateral material has something to do with banking or insurance. - With such an extensive character set, a designer can easily set a word or a sentence in 10 or more different ways, and choose the perfect one for the task at hand. This is particularly useful for work where details are of utmost importance, like logos, slogans, or elegant engravings that consist of one to three words. Let those swashes and twirls intertwine for maximum elegance. The Sterling Script complete package consists of 7 fonts: Sterling Script, Alternates, Beginnings, Endings, Swashes, Swash Alternates, and Ligatures. Sterling Script is available in five different purchase options and price ranges. But with such a massive offering of variation, the Sterling Script complete package is definitely the most value-laden set in its class. Once you use Sterling Script, you will never want to go back to other copperplates.

There is plenty of lyric and literature about looking over one's shoulder in contemplation. What would you have done differently if you knew then what you know now? This is the kind of question that comes out of nowhere. When it does and whether its context is personal or professional make very little difference. It's a question that can cause emotions to rise and passions to run hot. It can trigger priority shifts and identity crises. It's never easy to answer. Three years ago, I published a font called Semilla. My aim with that was to distill the work of Bentele, a lettering artist from early 1950s Germany. Picking such an obscure figure back then was my way of pondering the meaning and efficiency of objectivity in a world where real human events and existences are inevitably filtered through decades of unavoidably subjective written, printed and oral history. And maybe to pat myself on the back for surviving surprises mild and pleasant. Having been fortunate enough to follow my professional whims for quite some time now, I took another, longer look at my idea of distilling Bentele's work again. I suppose the concepts of established history and objectivity can become quite malleable when personal experience is added to the mix. I say that because there I was, three years later, second-guessing myself and opining that Bentele's work can be distilled differently, in a manner more suited to current cultural angles. So I embarked on that mission, and Bowling Script is the result. I realize that it's difficult to reconcile this soft and happy calligraphic outcome with the introspection I've blathered about so far, but it is what is. I guess even self-created first world problems need to be resolved somehow, and the resolution can happen in mysterious ways. Bowling Script is what people who like my work would expect from me. It's yet another script loaded with all kinds of alternation, swashing and over-the-top stuff. All of that is in here. These days I think I just do all that stuff without even blinking. But there are two additional twists. The more noticeable one is ornamental: The stroke endings in the main font are of the typical sharp and curly variety found in sign painting, while the other font complements that with ball endings, sometimes with an added-on-afterwards impression rather than an extension of the actual stroke. In the philosophical terms I was mumbling earlier, this is the equivalent of alternate realities in a world of historical reduxes that by their very nature can never properly translate original fact. The second twist has to do with the disruption of angular rhythm in calligraphic alphabets. Of course, this is the kind of lettering where the very concept of rhythm can be quite flexible, but it still counts for something, and experimenting with angular white space in a project of a very dense footprint was irresistible. After playing for a bit, I decided that it would interesting to include the option of using optically back-slanted forms in the fonts. Most scripts out there, including mine, have a rhythm sonically comparable to four-to-the-floor club beats. So the weirdly angled stuff here is your chance to do the occasional drumroll. Everyone knows we need one of those sometimes. Bowling Script and Bowling Script Balls fonts comes with 1600 characters and features extended Latin-based language support. There are also a basic version of both fonts without all the alternates and extra OpenType features. Bowling family ships in cross-platform OpenType format. We also want to present “Mute”, a visual essay narated by Tomás García and Valentín Muro, about digital life created specially to introduce Bowling Script.
The "Turok" font, created by Neale Davidson, is a fascinating and distinctive typeface that captures the essence and spirit of adventure often associated with its namesake. Neale Davidson, known for ...

Mundo Sans, by Carl Crossgrove for the Monotype Studio, is distinctive, approachable – and ready to tackle jobs both big and small. Its open counters and large x-height, which give the design a straight-forward no-nonsense mien, are softened by inviting calligraphic undertones. With 10 weights and a complementary suite of cursive italics, there is little outside the range of the Mundo Sans family. The light weights are elegant in packaging and brochure design, the medium are easy readers in digital blogs and print periodicals and the bold command attention in banners and headlines. Mundo Sans is at home in a wide range of sizes, and comfortable in everything from wayfinding to mobile apps. Mundo Sans takes on complicated branding projects with efficient grace. The family enables companies and products to express their brand seamlessly in websites, advertising, corporate messaging, packaging – virtually everywhere visible engagement is possible. A large international character set, that includes support for most Central European and many Eastern European languages, ensures ease of localization. Mundo Sans was originally released with seven weights. The family was updated with three new roman weights and their italics in 2019 that extend and diversify its range of use: a fine hairline weight, a book weight, slightly lighter than regular, and a demi that is subtly lighter than the medium. The design is also is a good mixer. It easily pairs with everything from refined Didones to stalwart slab serif designs. And if you need a more harmonious palette, look no further than Mundo Sans’ relative, Mundo Serif. The two designs harmonize with each other perfectly in weight, typographic color and proportion. Mundo Sans’ italics are true cursive designs, with fluid strokes and obvious calligraphic overtones. The flick of the down-stroke in the ‘a,’ the descending stroke of the ‘f’ and baseline curve of the ‘z’ add grace to the design and distinguish it from more mechanistic styles. Mundo Sans is a design with deep roots. It was originally drawn to pair with classic Renaissance book typefaces like Bembo® and ITC Galliard®. With a hint of diagonal stroke contrast and gentle flaring of strokes, Mundo Sans complements these designs with warmth and grace. Crossgrove says that Mundo isn’t meant to be showy or distinctive. It is intended to follow the tradition of sans serif designs that have a wide range of uses, enabling comfortable reading and clear expression. Crossgrove has designed a variety of typefaces ranging from the futuristic and organic Biome™ to the text designs of Monotype’s elegant Walbaum™ revival. His work for Monotype also often takes Crossgrove into the realm of custom fronts for branding and non-Latin scripts.

Polias is an all-caps uniwidth typeface inspired by an ancient inscription carved on a monoblock stone in hybrid characters — between no-contrast linear sans to low-contrast flared serif. The inspiring inscription is the dedication by Alexander the Great, discovered in the Temple of Athena Polias in the ancient Ionian city of Priene. Stanley Morison mentioned this inscription in one of his lectures: “The distinctive feature of this inscription consists of a consistent thickening towards the ends of perpendiculars and horizontals.” … “We have not the right to say that the serif was invented for Alexander the Great's inscription, only that this is its first datable appearance.” The letter proportions are almost identical to the original, but the stroke features have been reinterpreted and characterized. Serif-like nodes at the end of the strokes are subtle extensions that serve to accentuate rather than break its monoline elegance. With an analogy, they are not flowers, but like blooming buds. Polias is a flared sans typeface which is closer to sans-serif forms on the spectrum between sans and serif. It’s especially light looking by design to convey rather thin and white typographic color of its original monumental look. It comes in eight weights and a variable font, scaled from Thin to Bold. It is multiplexed, so the weights do not affect text lengths. Light weights are closely based on the actual carving of the inscription. Thicker weights can be used on smaller typesettings to compensate for the weight difference of larger letters’ strokes, and to keeping the monoline appearance of the entire text block intact. This method can be used for any purpose, such as setting a hierarchy between the lines or to justify their lengths. Some of the original letterforms have been preserved and stylistic alternatives such as Ionic four-bar Sigma, dotted Theta, palm Y are provided as open type feature. Some of the other ancient forms, such as the three-bar Sigma (S), the pointed U, were also added for both the Greek and Latin scripts. Polias is preferable for big type settings such as logos and headlines as a modern representation of perennial classical forms. Its a fine fit for product branding, movie posters, book covers, packaging materials, and more, which require an epic look to attracting attention with a distinctive elegance. Polias can be considered for distinctiveness wherever Roman Capitals work. As a noun, Polias is one of the epithets of Athena / Minerva, and in this case referring to her role as the protector of the city of Priene. Polias is one of the seven typeface designs in Esintype's ancient scripts of Anatolia project, Tituli Anatolian series.

Every year, more and more text is read directly on a computer screen in office applications, or from freshly printed sheets from a copier or laser printer. Clear, legible text faces are more imperative to office communication than ever before. Yet every worker desires a small bit of personality in the corporate world. Most office environments are only equipped with a few basic fonts that are truly optimized for use in text, with laser printers, and on screen. The Linotype Office Alliance fonts guarantee data clarity. All of the font weights within the individual family have the same character measurements; individual letters or words may have their styles changed without line wrap being affected! All numbers, mathematical signs, and currency symbols are tabular; they share the same set character width, ensuring that nothing stands in the way of clear graph, chart, and table design. In addition to being extremely open and legible, the characters in this collection's fonts also share the same capital letter height and the same x-height. The production and reading of financial reports is duly streamlined with the Linotype Office Alliance fonts. The Neuzeit Office family is designed after the model of the original sans serif family Neuzeit S, which was produced by D. Stempel AG and the Linotype Design Studio in 1966. Neuzeit S itself was a redesign of D. Stempel AG's DIN Neuzeit, created by Wilhelm Pischner between 1928 and 1939. Intended to represent its own time, DIN Neuzeit must have struck a harmonious chord. DIN Neuzeit is a constructed, geometric sans serif. It was born during the 1920s, a time of design experimentation and standardization, whose ethos has been made famous by the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements in art, architecture, and design. Upon its redesign as Neuzeit S in the 1960s, other developments in sans serif letter design were taken into account. Neuzeit S looks less geometric, and more gothic, or industrial. Separating it from typefaces like Futura, it has a double-storey a, instead of a less legible, single-storey variant. Unlike more popular grotesque sans serifs like Helvetica, Neuzeit S and especially the redesigned Neuzeit Office contain more open, legible letterforms. Neuzeit Office preserves the characteristic number forms that have been associated with its design for years. After four decades, Neuzeit has been retooled once again, and it is more a child of its age than ever before. Akira Kobayashi, Linotype's Type Director, created the revised and updated Neuzeit Office in 2006. His greatest change was to retool the design to make its performance in text far more optimal. Additionally, he created companion oblique to help emphasize text. The other three families in the Office Alliance system include Metro Office, Times Europa Office and Trump Mediaeval Office.Some weights of the Neuzeit Office are availabla as soft rounded versions. "
Matwin by Eyad Al-Samman, $10.00 
The idea behind designing ‘Matwin’ font was related to the youngest children of the designer namely the M-A fraternal twin. The name of the typeface (i.e., Matwin or M-A-Twin) was composed by merging three linguistic small syllables. The ‘-Twin’ syllable refers to the non-identical twin of the designer. The ‘M-’ and ‘A-’ syllables refer to the initial letters of the twin’s first names (i.e., Muhammad and Abdul-Wli) respectively. The typeface ‘Matwin’ has a personal trait which makes it as one of the most favorite fonts for the designer among his humble collection of fonts. Modestly, it is the designer’s handwriting and it has been designed to be added to the script font family known as brush un-joined. The brief process for having this typeface alive was done by firstly scanning the real script for each Latin letter, digit, symbol which were handwritten earlier by the designer himself. Then, the combination of these many scanned characters was manipulated using digital programs to produce at the end the complete typeface. The typeface has the essential glyphs comprising the character set required for most of the Latin, Western, and Eastern European languages including the Irish language. It combines +605 characters and this makes it as a pro font. It also entitles it to be applicable for usage in many languages of different communities and nations worldwide. ‘Matwin’ is dedicated for those who search for a genuine handwriting typeface with a natural touch and informal style to be added on their different published and produced products and services. It is more preferable when it is used in artistic, typographic, and other works using the lowercase letters or by mixing both upper- and lower-case letters. Moreover, the typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media such as boards and walls. It is also preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publications especially children-related ones, comics, printed or handwritten menus of cafeterias and restaurants at universities and public places, as well as other prints related to services and production industries. It also can create a very personal and friendly impact when used in headlines, books and novels’ covers, posters, titles, messages, envelopes addresses, grocery lists, postcards, ads, fliers, journals, paper arts, public notices, invitations, scrapbooks, notations, products’ surfaces for organic foods and juices, logos, medical packages related to children, Android applications, as well as products and corporates branding and the like. In a nutshell, ‘Matwin’ typeface fits without a glitch those (i.e., designers, typographers, publishers, artists, packagers, service providers, and so on) who have drastic and strong tendency towards imprinting their works with spontaneous and outlandish touches made by this typeface. Please, enjoy it extremely.

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

Polias Varia is an all-caps uniwidth variable weight typeface inspired by an ancient inscription carved on a monoblock stone in hybrid characters — between no-contrast linear sans to low-contrast flared serif. The inspiring inscription is the dedication by Alexander the Great, discovered in the Temple of Athena Polias in the ancient Ionian city of Priene. Stanley Morison mentioned this inscription in one of his lectures: “The distinctive feature of this inscription consists of a consistent thickening towards the ends of perpendiculars and horizontals.” … “We have not the right to say that the serif was invented for Alexander the Great’s inscription, only that this is its first datable appearance.” In Polias Varia, the letter proportions are almost identical to the original, but the stroke features have been reinterpreted and characterized. Serif-like nodes at the end of the strokes are subtle extensions that serve to accentuate rather than break its monoline elegance. With an analogy, they are not flowers, but like blooming buds. Polias Varia is a flared sans typeface which is closer to sans-serif forms on the spectrum between sans and serif. It’s especially light looking by design to convey rather thin and white typographic color of its original monumental look. It comes in eight weights and a variable font, scaled from Thin to Bold. It is multiplexed, so the weights do not affect text lengths. Light weights are closely based on the actual carving of the inscription. Thicker weights can be used on smaller typesettings to compensate for the weight difference of larger letters’ strokes, and to keeping the monoline appearance of the entire text block intact. This method can be used for any purpose, such as setting a hierarchy between the lines or to justify their lengths. Some of the original letterforms have been preserved and stylistic alternatives such as Ionic four-bar Sigma, dotted Theta, palm Y are provided as open type feature. Some of the other ancient forms, such as the three-bar Sigma (S), the pointed U, were also added for both the Greek and Latin scripts. Polias Varia is preferable for big type settings such as logos and headlines as a modern representation of perennial classical forms. Its a fine fit for product branding, movie posters, book covers, packaging materials, and more, which require an epic look to attracting attention with a distinctive elegance. Polias Varia can be considered for distinctiveness wherever Roman Capitals work. As a noun, Polias is one of the epithets of Athena / Minerva, and in this case referring to her role as the protector of the city of Priene. Polias (family) is one of the seven typeface designs in Esintype’s ancient scripts of Anatolia project, Tituli Anatolian series.
Ah, the Art-Nouveau 1895 font, a typeface that whispers of a bygone era, as if it was plucked right out of a Parisian cafe where the clientele discuss philosophy and the latest Toulouse-Lautrec. Desi...
Picture this: you're cruising through the cosmic expanse of fonts, navigating the nebula of serifs and the black holes of sans, when suddenly, out of the playful void, JptBubbles by Jpt Design Studio...