German type designer Hans Reichel created this sans FontFont in 2005. The family has 14 weights, ranging from Thin to Black (including italics) and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text, editorial and publishing, logo, branding and creative industries, poster and billboards, small text as well as web and screen design. FF Daxline provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, case-sensitive forms, fractions, super- and subscript characters, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths. As well as Latin-based languages, the typeface family also supports the Cyrillic and Greek writing systems. This FontFont is a member of the FF Dax super family, which also includes FF Dax and FF Dax Compact.

Welcome Home JNL gets its inspiration from metal letters and numbers affixed to homes, posts and mailboxes in the 1920s and 1930s. The block style of lettering that was silk screened onto enameled rectangles of steel was especially popular during that time period. This font has a limited character set.

Originally, this 1870s wood type font was called Armenian. We came across a showing of alphabet at the South Street Seaport in New York, bought it and immediately drew the additional characters needed to make the font. We used it for some circus program work that was part of our livelihood.

One of my dreams as a type-designer was making a good looking chancery cursive. Full of life, like some of the best calligraphers around the world do on their artworks. With Julian Waters, John Stevens and Denis Brown (just to name a few of them) (1) chancery, or italic script, was transformed into a new, exciting and very fresh style of calligraphy mainly at the end of 20th Century. Dream Script may be that dream named above made true. I have been practicing chancery in the way I learnt from those calligraphers for many years now. Making a font out of my ink-sketches was a tough work, since they were closer of -being art- than of -being type-. However, this font rescues many aspects of handmade calligraphy: You have to look at it really close to notice it is actually a font, and that was one of my goals. The secret of a good looking chancery is on its subtle details: pen angle is constantly changing, even on the strokes which seem straight. Capitals and swashes have to be done a little faster than lowercase letters. The rhythm has to be even, in spite of its playful look. The fact that makes Dream look alive is that it has many alternates per glyph. This makes each word look unique like it happens in calligraphy: you will find alternates for the beginning/ending of a word/phrase, some for the middle of it, some interchangeable. Also, to accompany the script, you will find Dream Caps, which was inspired in the eternally beautiful trajan capitals. Place them like I did on the posters and you will have great results for sure. The font works great in small, middle and big sizes and can be a great selection for magazines, wedding invitations, perfumes, and posters. Close your eyes, and Dream with me... TECHNICAL Dream Script Pro is the most complete style, it contains all the alternates and ligatures (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) If you plan to use the font for text, be sure to activate the less decorative capitals, which are placed in the “salt” group of alternates. Dream Script Standard has less glyphs than the Pro one, it contains just some ligatures for a better legibility. (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) NOTES (1) Not only are they great artists, but also good people, who are always willing to share with their students all what they know. I would also like to thank Ricardo Rousselot, whose work inspired me this time to make “The Dream Script” exlibris; and to Alisara Tareekes, a very talented friend which international calligraphy conferences gave me: She kindly helped me with some tips to make this font better.

Opinion varies regarding the role of Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) in the development of the Old Face font Garamond. What is accepted is the influence this font had on other typeface developments from the time of its creation to the present. Garamond, or Garamont, is related to the alphabet of Claude Garamond (1480–1561) as well as to the work of Jean Jannon (1580–1635 or 1658), much of which was attributed to Garamond. In comparison to the earlier Italian font forms, Garamond has finer serif and a generally more elegant image. The Garamond of Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 as Original Garamond, whereafter many font foundries began to cast similar types. The famous Stempel Garamond interpretation of the 1920s remains true to the original Garamond font with its typical Old Face characteristics. The bold italic was a modern addition at the end of the 1920s and the small caps provided an alternative to the standard capital letters. In the mid 1980s, a light version was added to Stempel Garamond. Since its appearance, Stempel Garamond has been one of the most frequently used text fonts.

St Atmos was the first commercial typeface of Stereotypes, the first of what’s likely to become a significant collection of headline fonts. The massive ink traps at Atmos give this typeface something of a three-dimensional feeling.

How To Consume Oxygen was created with the plan of emulating words written on a fluted-steel 'warehouse'-type door in advanced state of rusting.

It was used in parts of Transylvania until the 1850s, although it was banned by Istvan, the first Christian king of the Hungarians (Szekel), in line with an order to "destroy all pre-Christian inscriptions". Hungarian runic script was usually written on wood-stone pieces in the bustrofedon style. In this method, the writing was written consecutively from right to left and from left to right. This article is available in Bosnian, Carpathian and Glozel editions. Whenever possible, I will present the fonts in these versions.

Bielik was created for a comic book that I’m working on. Main goal was to achieve random character of texts, so I made three glyphs for every letter, even for diacritics. Firstly I was drawing using brush pen with ink, so thickness of letters was really various. I decided to implement this style into a font. So that is how Bielik came into the world. This is good choice for comic books, children books, display designs and much more. Bielik is a polish word for Haliaeetus albicilla.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alexander Branczyk and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Branczyk and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! F2F Monako Stoned was inspired by the Apple system font Monaco, and is one of 41 Face2Face fonts included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype. Branczyk designed 16 of these himself."

Мир is Mir. The Russian word Мир (Mir) means both World and Peace. The rendezvous of the two terms seems quite unique and utopistic today, but it is comforting to see that it was natural at some time deep down in Russian history. Bits of both meanings were going through my mind while I was designing this typeface. Mir’s character set is multiscript – Latin, Cyrillic and Greek – and extends to many parts of the linguistic world. In fact it covers more than 100 languages. Stylistic consistency between the language systems make typographic border crossings painless even where national borders are still closely guarded. And in regions where mathematics, physics or chemistry are to be expressed, a rich set of OpenType features lets Mir master also these situations. Serious things are best be said in a relaxed, unpretentious way. So Mir doesn’t put on a show. Mir has authority without being authoritarian, it is serious but not stern. It can explain difficult things and stay calm and down to earth at the same time. Mir Medium has another useful feature: It can be freely downloaded and used by anybody anywhere. You can test the Mir Family with free Mir Medium and get more styles when you need them. @juliasys

"Hi there, thank you for passing by. Colllab Studio is here. We crafted best collection of typefaces in a variety of styles to keep you covered for any project that comes your way! When you have a project that needs a fun, unique font to make it pop, you can’t go wrong with Funtrude. Funtrude comes in three styles: Basic, Extrude, and Hole. Each style has more than 350 of the most beautiful glyphs you could ever dream of seeing. The Extrude style is great for titles, headings, and any other text where you want to use a bold font but don’t want it to be overly bold; the Basic style will work great for things like product names or subheadings; and the Hole style is perfect for anything else! Each individual style comes with its own swashes—so your fonts can look just as beautiful when they’re all capitalized as they do when they’re in normal text. What makes us so excited about this product is how much we love to use it ourselves. When we saw Funtrude for the first time, we couldn’t believe our eyes—it was everything we had ever wanted in a font, plus it was super affordable. GET IT NOW....!!! A Million Thanks Colllab Studio www.colllabstudio.com

This Font is born basing itself on several standard typographic models. Inspired by our calligraphic drawings, the idea was to synthesize these many shapes into a unique font that can be used commonly. The slab base has been gradually humanized. The serifs have been carved, refined, rounded off, in order to galvanize the font and ease the task of reading in lower case. The angle of attack of the round letters is an echo of the 15 Century typographic heritage. It was important for us to create an expressive and humanized font, which could also be used for edition. The purpose was to confront the Ancient typographic canon of beauty with some funny and fancyful elements.

On October 12th 1976 a new basilica was inaugurated in honor and in gratitude to the Patron Saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, loved by the Mexican people. This basilica was designed by the Mexican architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez (died on April 16th 2012). It stands out by its hug spacious interior, generously decorated with bronze elements. The aesthetic value of these items even includes many signs and text inscriptions in a particular typeface and style, of which this font is a reinterpretation. The purpose of this project is to revival this eclesiastical written letter forms in bronze and taking them to digital format. I was inspired to this on my last trip to Mexico in September of 2012.

Fer is a sans-serif font for body text, not lacking in its own distinctive voice. The aftertaste of reading the text set in Fer is like reading the letters on old rusty plates somewhere in Southern Europe, hence the name (Fer means iron in French). Being a modern system that includes a variable font with weight and optical size axes, Fer combines the features of geometriс sans serifs and old sans serifs with closed apertures. The typeface contains three sets of styles: for captions, text and headings, — with the weight ranging from regular to black. Fer was created with the idea to unite nations. The Latin character set supports all European languages, most African languages and Vietnamese. Cyrillic has support for all living Cyrillic languages and some obsolete characters too. The font also supports the Greek language. Additionally, the character set includes currency signs of all supported languages’ countries, old style, lining, tabular and proportional figures as well as numbers in squares and circles. Lastly, the font has lots of localized letterforms and stylistic sets. Fer was designed by Dmitry Goloub for Paratype in 2020–2023.

It's time for a party! A party with monkeys, or a party AS monkeys! :) The danish term "Festabe" is a partyanimal, and definitely in a positive way! And that's the spirit of this font! It has that happy attitude, that could boost your designs in a happy and positive way. Besides legibility, the font is superlegible, even at very small sizes. But try looking at the letters at a LARGE size, and you will notice the smoothness of each letter! To ensure the letters don't get too alike, I've added several (slightly) different versions of each letter. In fact, every letter has 5 different versions, and these automatically cycles as you type!

The inspiration for Deco Eccentrique JNL was initially hand drawn contoured lettering from a mid-1920s piece of sheet music; the style of the letters showing influences of the upcoming Art Deco movement. This was made into a digital font entitled Poster Contoured JNL. Once all of the excess parts of the previous design were stripped away to only the inner letters, the pre-Art Deco influences remained along with characters of varying stroke widths and shapes. This non-conformist type face is available in both regular and oblique versions.

PT Petroglyph™ was designed by Ekaterina Kulagina and licensed by ParaType in 2002. The type was created on the basis of petroglyphs (rock-carvings) that are known in 77 countries. They remained in a form of geometrical drawings in the caves of North Spain and France. Scientists claim that the radial spread-out of circles or center-pointed circles that are usually depicted show the development of solar symbolism at that period of time. We know for sure that such mysterious signs as drawings carved on rocks already existed 40 centuries ago.

Gold Spur is a spurred version of the FontMesa Gold Rush set of fonts. Each version includes many extended characters for Western, Central and Eastern European countries. The Gold Spur Trail OpenType version has alternate double letter pairs included in the font and will automatically be substituted when used in Adobe CS products or other software that takes advantage of OpenType features. The $20.67 price of each font reflects the price of an ounce of gold in 1865 which was the year that the original Gold Rush font was created.

One Code was made in the end of 1998. Original naive character was specially created for an unique design project, but now it is ready for use as an ordinary typeface.

It is a handwriting-style font for body text that emphasizes gentleness and solidity by using less curvature and making use of a straight feel. The handwriting feeling is emphasized through the style that makes use of the natural bending and stroke order. Softness was added in the shape of a gentle curve, and perspective was applied by setting a vanishing point in the lower left corner.

After Nightfall is a handmade fairytale font. It was called Bunting Nook first (after a spooky story of a black dog that haunts a town in Britain), but I figured it was a bit of a weird name, so I settled for After Nightfall. This font comes with some lovely swashes, which should be used sparingly. But that, of course, is entirely up to you.

Mark van Bronkhorst’s MVB Sacre Bleu was inspired by an example of French handwriting from the 1930s. With a goal to keep the script as authentic as possible, the font includes a number of ligatures to avoid letterform repetition. The year it released, MVB Sacre Bleu was selected as one of Typographica’s Favorite Typefaces, where reviewer Joshua Lurie-Terrell deemed it “stylish, memorable, and decidedly unkitschy.”

Merganser is a Typeface intended for text and copy and was inspired to serve the avid community of Birders. Birders and birding material historically have a lot to say. Merganser serves that tendency because its designed legible at small scales. The Natural world also inspires the slightly humanist strokes of Merganser. Merganser was created as part of the Type@Cooper winter certificate in Type Design.

Skeleton Slab brings a new elegance to a classic form. I was thinking of calling it Ozymanidias, after Shelley’s poem, because it evokes memories of ancient runic inscriptions, but then I thought that was maybe a bit pretentious, and I decided I'd keep it simple and descriptive. Besides, I wasn't sure how to spell Ozymandias! Skeleton Slab has small caps in place of lower case.

It is a handwriting-style font for body text that emphasizes gentleness and solidity by using less curvature and making use of a straight feel. The handwriting feeling is emphasized through the style that makes use of the natural bending and stroke order. Softness was added in the shape of a gentle curve, and perspective was applied by setting a vanishing point in the lower left corner.

Johann Carl Ludwig Prillwitz, the German punch cutter and type founder, cut the first classic Didot letters even earlier than Walbaum. The earliest proof of so-called Prillwitz letters is dated 12 April 1790. Inspired by the big discoveries of archaeology and through the translations of classical authors, the bourgeoisie was enthused about the Greek and Roman ideal of aesthetics. The enthusiasm for the Greek and Roman experienced a revival and was also shared by Goethe and contemporaries. »Seeking the country of Greece with one’s soul«. All Literates who are considered nowadays as German Classics of that time kept coming back to the Greek topics, thinking of Schiller and Wieland. The works of Wieland were published in Leipzig by Göschen. Göschen used typefaces which had been produced by until then unknown punch cutter. This punch cutter from Jena created with these typefaces master works of classicist German typography. They can stand without any exaggeration on the same level as that of Didot and Bodoni. This unknown gentleman was known as Johann Carl Ludwig Prillwitz. Prillwitz published his typefaces on 12th April 1790 for the first time. This date is significant because this happened ten years before Walbaum. Prillwitz was an owner of a very successful foundry. When the last of his 7 children died shortly before reaching adulthood his hope of his works was destroyed, Prillwitz lost his will to live. He died six months later. His wife followed him shortly after. The typeface Prillwitz as a digital font was created in three optical styles (Normal, Book and Display). The typeface Prillwitz Press was created especially for a printing in small sizes for newspapers. »Prillwitz Press« combines aesthetic and functional attributes which make written text highly readable. It was originally designed for a newspaper with medium contrast to withstand harsh printing conditions. Its structure is quite narrow which makes this typeface ideal for body text and headlines where space is at premium. For the Normal – even more for the Book – a soft and reader-friendly outline was created through a so-called »Schmitz« and optimized in numerous test prints. The arris character and the common maximal stroke width contrast of the known classicist typefaces (Didot/Bodoni) were edited by the study of the original prints. This was also done in order to reach a very good readability in small type sizes. This typeface is perfectly suited to scientific and belletristic works. Accordingly it has three styles: Regular, Bold and Italic as Highlighting (1). The typeface Prillwitz is a complete new interpretation and continuing development of the conservated originals from 1790. They have been kept in the German Library in Leipzig. It was always given the priority to keep the strong roughness and at the same time optimizing the readability of this striking font. The type family has all important characters for an efficient and typographic high quality work. ----------- (1) Accentuation of particular words or word orders (e.g. proper names, terms etc.). Typographic means for Highlighting could be Italic, SmallCaps or semi-bold.

Telegrafo was developed from a couple of words on a 1920s telegram from Argentina.

This font was designed to resemble the Indo-Aryan scripts of the Indian subcontinent.

There are many script typefaces but there is only one Scripticus. Scripticus is like a chameleon: In whatever surroundings you put it, it adapts itself and looks like it couldn't be anywhere else. Be it a sales advertisement, a music Website, a comic strip or a journal with complex chemical formula – Scripticus always solves the problem in a natural and leisurely way. And it never makes compromises concerning clarity. But where does Scripticus come from? … From the good old high school blackboard! Blackboards have become almost obsolete in teaching, but be it a black or white background – clear, strong characters placed on the board while the facts are explained are still one of the best ways to make and keep things understandable. Scripticus is dedicated to my high school chemistry teacher who was an expert in just this. While the letterforms come from different inspirations, its aim is the same as the pedagogical aim of my teacher: Combining clarity with a strong personality. Scripticus has a special trick to give it its natural look: Four alternates for each letter and each number plus rotation coding make the glyphs appear in lively melodic flow. In this way even mathematic equations look nice! Scripticus has a lot of OT-features that help it do its job. They are: capital spacing, localized forms, subscript, scientific inferiors, superscript, numerators, denominators, fractions, ordinals, tabular figures, historical forms, ligatures, stylistic alternates, stylistic set and ornaments. Finally, as is my general goal in type design – Scripticus supports close to one hundred languages from Latin extended to Cyrillic extended.

“One Hundred Alphabets for the Show Card Writer” was published in 1919 to afford sign artists the ability to create signs and show cards in then-contemporary lettering styles. One such alphabet was big, bold and representative of the Art Nouveau stylings popular in the early part of the 20th Century. Most likely it was applied to store sales and public events that were casual and informal, for its letter forms are free of any constraints. This design is now available as Fun Time Nouveau JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

The Kimchi font had its starting point in the making of the film "Cloud Atlas", based on the novel by David Mitchell and directed by Lana & Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. A first version of Kimchi was created for "Papa Song" – an underground fast food restaurant in a futuristic Neo Seoul in the year 2144. It was used for the menus, advertisement and packaging. Kimchi was later further developed to become a useable typeface: it works for headlines, street art stencils and of course as logo font for korean fast food restaurants.

The French publication “La Lettre Dans le Decor et La Publicite Modernes” (“The Letter in the Modern Décor and Advertising”) was a 24-page booklet showcasing the then-current trends of the time (circa late 1930s-early 1940s). On one page was found a squared, extra bold sans serif alphabet set with strong Art Nouveau influences, yet it was ahead of its time by taking on the look and feel of 1980s techno typography. They say “everything old is new again”, and Nouveau Techno JNL is now available digitally in both regular and oblique versions.

“Tropical Type” was Alf Becker’s 148th submission to “Signs of the Times” magazine (a publication for the sign trade) where for years Becker would provide a monthly lettering design to inspire other sign writers. This particular design has more of a Far East flair to it, and was redrawn digitally as Travel East JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. Special thanks to Tod Swormstedt of the American Sign Museum and S.T. Media Group for providing the sample image from which the font was derived.

Rahere is a humanist sans with subtle features that give the typeface a distinctive, warm appearance without distracting the reader. Legible at large and small sizes, Rahere is a versatile family suitable for a wide range of applications such as annual reports, advertising, brochures, catalogues, information signage, screen text and visual identities. For projects that need to convey a sense of authority or credibility, this is the ideal sans serif to use. The family consists of six weights ranging from light to extra bold with corresponding italics and the character set covers most of the major European languages. Each weight contains lining & non-aligning numerals in both proportional & tabular spacing. The tabular numerals share the same width across all weights and styles – a must for financial tables in annual reports. Spirited and lively, the italic lowercase is more cursive and calligraphic than the roman, although it harmonises perfectly, displaying enough character to create emphasis without looking out of place. When used on its own, for pull-out quotes or poetry, the italic exudes a charm that draws attention to the text. The typeface is named after Rahere, a 12th-century Anglo-Norman priest, who founded St Bartholomew's Hospital, London in 1123. I will always be indebted to Barts (as it is now commonly known) because in 2007 I was successfully treated for relapsed testicular cancer. Way back in 1992 I designed my first sans serif, Charlotte Sans, and although it was relatively successful, I was never really satisfied with the end result: not enough weights & italics, a small character set, lack of accented characters, and my design skills were still in their infancy. Whilst Rahere shares many common elements with Charlotte Sans, it is much more than just a reworking; it represents over 20 years of accumulated knowledge and experience as a designer.

Century Gothic™ is based on Monotype 20th Century, which was drawn by Sol Hess between 1936 and 1947. Century Gothic maintains the basic design of 20th Century but has an enlarged x-height and has been modified to ensure satisfactory output from modern digital systems. The design is influenced by the geometric style sans serif faces which were popular during the 1920s and 30s. The Century Gothic font family is useful for headlines and general display work and for small quantities of text, particularly in advertising. Century Gothic family has been extended to 14 weights in a Pan-European character set from Thin to Black and their corresponding Italics. The already existing 4 weights of Regular and Bold with their Italics are additionally still available in the STD character set. For international communication, the W1G versions offer the appropriate character set. They contain Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters and thus support all languages and writing systems that are in official use in Western, Eastern and Central Europe. Century Gothic Variable is features two axes: Weight and Italic. The Weight axis has preset instances from Light to Black. The Italic axis is a switch between upright and italic. Looking for the perfect way to complete your project? Check out Aptifer™ Slab, ITC Berkeley Old Style®, FF Franziska™, Frutiger®, ITC Legacy® Square Serif or Plantin®.

Century Gothic™ is based on Monotype 20th Century, which was drawn by Sol Hess between 1936 and 1947. Century Gothic maintains the basic design of 20th Century but has an enlarged x-height and has been modified to ensure satisfactory output from modern digital systems. The design is influenced by the geometric style sans serif faces which were popular during the 1920s and 30s. The Century Gothic font family is useful for headlines and general display work and for small quantities of text, particularly in advertising. Century Gothic family has been extended to 14 weights in a Pan-European character set from Thin to Black and their corresponding Italics. The already existing 4 weights of Regular and Bold with their Italics are additionally still available in the STD character set. For international communication, the W1G versions offer the appropriate character set. They contain Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters and thus support all languages and writing systems that are in official use in Western, Eastern and Central Europe. Century Gothic Variable is features two axes: Weight and Italic. The Weight axis has preset instances from Light to Black. The Italic axis is a switch between upright and italic. Looking for the perfect way to complete your project? Check out Aptifer™ Slab, ITC Berkeley Old Style®, FF Franziska™, Frutiger®, ITC Legacy® Square Serif or Plantin®.

Inspired by the sound of acoustic guitars, delicacy of harps and elegance of the engrossers script, String is a trendy monoline font which will for sure make unique layouts for your pieces of design. Combining String with String Hole in the same word is a good idea when a more playful rhythm is needed. The font works particularly well when standing on photographs, so be ready to use it in magazines with food, landscapes or super models. I like thinking of String as a distilled version of Erotica. A more “pure” relative of hers. When I designed Erotica, I was so in love with the spencerian style that I knew it'd be hard to just abandon it. With that in mind, this time my aim was to take the subtlety of it to the limit. So, in order to do that I had to find out what was actually the secret of its beauty. I found that the essence of Erotica, in other words, its ductus was the most responsible. The result is a font made of hairlines with a lot of emphasis on the pureness of the form and, (with a lot of inspiration in music) the sensation of continuity between its letters as if they were written with a string. Try String and its flowing melody.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <