Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Gryffensee is designed to be the Futura of blackletter, combining the time-honored gravity and relentlessness of the Gothic script with the clean, contemporary freshness of the geometric sans. Built from a tightly controlled inventory of lines, arcs, sharp cuts, and OpenType features, Gryffensee was born and raised in the digital age, yet retains the powerful charisma and human warmth of its mediaeval blackletter ancestors. As a result, it excels in a wide range of display settings, logotypes, and short text. Unlike most conventional blackletters, it even handles all-caps usage with grace, and includes an extensive Cyrillic character set (in the Pro version). Apart from a generous range of automatic ligatures and contextual alternates, Gryffensee offers stylistic alternates that allow users to customize its appearance to their tastes. The capital letters |AGHIKZ| come in alternate cuts that trade traditional shapes for increased legibility, while the letter |s| appears in three cuts, each with a unique, distinct flavor. All these options are accessible through OpenType stylistic sets in the main Latin font, Gryffensee Eins. For easy use in applications without OpenType support, we provide two additional Latin fonts (Gryffensee Zwei and Drei) in which these options replace the default cuts. Finally, Gryffensee Pro offers all the functionality of Gryffensee Eins, plus Cyrillic support. My intention to devise a contemporary geometric blackletter was inspired by four hand-painted letters, |ABCD|, in Sasha Prood�s online portfolio. I later found out that he had, in turn, taken those letters from an existing font, Bastard, by Jonathan Barnbrook. Luckily, by that time my project had taken on a life of its own. Gryffensee is an original design that bears only the most superficial resemblance to Bastard. Gryffensee is a mediaeval spelling of the lake Greifensee near which I grew up. It is pronounced [?gri?f?n?se?], or "GRIEF-un-say" in English approximation. This font is dedicated to Simone.

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

Taking its name from the arabic word for "king", Malik is a flared sans serif typeface family designed in 2020 by Andrea Tartarelli. The designer wanted to find a way to bridge the classical letterforms of Roman Old Style typefaces with the readability of contemporary sans typefaces. This was achieved by using the so-called flared serif that emerges gradually from the stem of the letter, ending in a sharp angle. It's something that also reminds of the peculiar shapes of the Simoncini Method, invented by italian type designer Francesco Simoncini to get a sharper definition of letterforms. To this blend of classical elegance and modernist expertise, Malik adds the calligraphic influence of modern masters like Frederic Goudy or Ed Benguiat, visible in signature details like the reverse contrast uppercase B, or the calligraphic lowercase k. Malik also means "owner", and this font surely wants to rule the page. It manages to be extremely readable when used in body text size, but looks surprising and expressive in display use. The inclusion of the Malik Heavy Display weight, with its black texture balanced by deep inktraps, allows for striking logo design. The weight range of the family is extremely wide, including a Book alternative to the Regular weight for fine-tuning readability, a range of light display weights and a solid choice of bold weights for branding, all coming with matching true italics. The 16 cuts of Malik have been equipped with all the features you need to solve your editorial and design challenges, including a wide language coverage (thanks to over one thousand latin and cyrillic characters) and a complete set of open type features (including small capitals, positional numbers, case sensitive forms). Alternate characters and stylistic sets allow you to fine-tune your editorial and branding design by choosing variant letter shapes. Malik is the typeface for everyone who wants to design like a king...or like he doesn't care who the king is!

It all started with a simple idea back in 1998: do a digital version of a "lost" 70's typeface, and make up the missing letters that were not present in the only available example Jeff Levine had to work with. Jeff wasn't yet doing his own digital font creation, so he hooked up with Brad Nelson who owns a small foundry called Brain Eaters Fonts. Together, they collaborated on "Action Is"- a freeware font named after the source of the type example. This was a title page for a commemorative photo album of images from the 60's TV music show "Where the Action Is", formerly hosted by Jeff's employer at the time, singer-writer-producer Steve Alaimo. The free font took off like a rocket, being released just at the peak of the 60’s/70’s retro craze in the late 1990’s, and it was EVERYWHERE! It showed up on TV shows, packaging and web design -- and was even spotted on signage used on the side of a major amusement resort’s retro-themed hotel. From that point on, Jeff kept getting requests for a version with a lower case. Although they shared the copyright in the freeware version, Brad Nelson gave Jeff his blessing to re-work and take Action Is into the realm of commercial type. Newly improved and re-released as Groovy Happening JNL, it became one of Jeff's better selling type designs. A simplified, yet similar font was issued called Groovy Summer JNL. Now, after about a decade, Jeff had decided to clean up the 3-D (drop shadow) version that was originally freeware with many minute design flaws and re-release it commercially. Groovy 3D Caps JNL is an all-caps, limited character set font which ties in well with the previous releases, yet retains itís 1960s-1970s era charm. The font flag art is courtesy of Barbara D. Berney and is used by permission.

Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Plumage is somewhat unusual in that it has elements of calligraphy as well as script in a semi-loose form that gives it a pleasing appearance for both large and small sizes, and interesting flare finish strokes add to its unique character. As I read a dictionary description of "plumage", I realized that in many ways there is a parallel between a bird's plumage and how it is utilized in the context of writing: Plumage varies in pattern and arrangement for different purposes; what it expresses can of course be even more interesting. Plumage is disposable after a season, as new ones become available... imagine, a self-sustaining quill! - I guess that's equivalent to a refill or disposable pen. Historically, quill pens were made from feathers of a variety of birds, each chosen for its special characteristics. The sturdiest and most reliable feathers, however, come from turkeys, swans and geese. Feathers used to make pens are the stiff-spined flight feathers on the leading edge of the bird's wing. Pens for right-handed writers come from the left wing, and pens for left-handers, from the right! Each bird yields 10-12 good quills, and sometimes only 2 or 3 - so small a yield that the geese reared in England could not furnish nearly enough for local demand, and quills were imported from the Continent in large quantities. At one point St Petersburg in Russia was sending 27 million quills a year to the UK. It is said that geese were specially bred by US President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) to supply his own vast need for quills - in his lifetime he wrote almost 20,000 letters. The name "Plumage" was selected to pay homage to the noble birds that supplied countless quills for centuries of literary works. Plumage is recommended for any formal or informal invitation, decorations, awards, poetry, plaques, etc. We hope you will have the pleasure of using Plumage.

Imagine America in the 1930s. A gangster flick with Al Capone, a crime novel featuring Philip Marlowe. Our hero in a fedora sits in a classy bar, orders a double bourbon, lights a cigar and eyes the evening paper. He turns the pages, reading about a bank heist over on Third Avenue, a scandal involving a baseball player, a small ad for a general practitioner and a large spread about a famous law firm. What do the bottle of booze and the majestic facade of the bank have in common? The elegant baseball uniform and trustworthy attorneys? - Copperplate Gothic - When Frederick William Goudy created his legendary typeface in 1901, it went on to literally become the symbol of early 20th century America. Tiny serifs, characteristically broad letterforms, and particularly bold titles decorated calling cards at 6-point size, enormous bronze-cast logos, newspaper headlines, restaurant menus and more. This was the golden age of Copperplate, lasting up until the arrival of die neue Typografie and monospaced grotesques in the 1960s. Then the typeface almost completely disappeared. It made a partial comeback with the advent of the personal computer; digitizations of varying quality appeared, and one version even became a standard font in Adobe programs. This may have played a role in Copperplate later being used in DIY projects and amateur designs, which harmed its reputation. Copperplate New has been created to revive the faded glory of the original design. Formally, the new typeface expands the existing weight and proportional extremes. The slight serifs are reduced even further, making the typeface sans-like at smaller point sizes and improving readability. In contrast, at large point sizes it retains all of its original character. Decorative inline & shadow styles have been added and both have been created in all five proportions, making it easy to adapt the typesetting to the format you need. Despite these changes and innovations, Copperplate New remains true to Goudy’s original design and represents a snazzy way to evoke a golden era in American culture. Specimen: http://carontwice.com/files/specimen_Copperplate_New.pdf

FF Neuwelt™, from Jens Gehlhaar, is open, inviting, highly legible, and strikingly handsome. Combining the straightforward clarity of a geometric sans with a welcoming warmth, FF Neuwelt’s eight display and text weights, vast range of alternates and extended character set, make for a family with few limitations. While grounded in a solid geometric sans serif foundation, Gehlhaar has drawn a large suite of alternate characters that infuses FF Neuwelt with softened, and ultimately easy on the eyes, humanistic shapes and proportions. Alternative cursive italic forms and a choice of round or square punctuation are also available at the click of a mouse. FF Neuwelt is spaced for sizes larger than 16 point, while FF Neuwelt Text has more open letterspacing to set perfectly at sizes smaller than 16 point. In addition, five key lowercase characters were drawn with more legible shapes. The result is that FF Neuwelt adapts from text to larger sizes and one stylistic mien to another with ease and grace. FF Neuwelt is a natural for interactive design, performing well on both large digital displays and small screens. Counters are generous and apertures are open, making them a perfect choice when setting text as microcopy or in short blocks where quick and accurate comprehension is the goal. Even the heaviest weights translate well to on-screen reading. FF Neuwelt also speaks with authority in large sizes on big screens. Equally at home in print environments, FF Neuwelt is a perfect choice for long-form text, captions, editorial, packaging, point-of-purchase design – as well as extensive branding projects. Its many choices of alternative characters make for a design that draws the reader in, without overpowering the message. Although he has drawn typefaces in addition to FF Neuwelt, Gehlhaar is primarily a filmmaker. Directing commercials with style and grace, his work includes spots for Nissan, Apple, Emirates Airlines and Microsoft. As a creative director, Gehlhaar has worked on a broad range of projects for Coca-Cola, MTV, EPSN, Volkswagen and more.

Joachim Müller-Lancé's Uppercut is a rather sporting fellow, originally developed for the Krav Maga training center of San Francisco (Krav Maga is a simple and efficient self-defense system that has become equally popular in Hollywood and with law enforcement). Joachim has spent several years training, hitting things and people whenever he needs a break from kerning. Uppercut can be seen on the school's t-shirts and other articles. Despite bearing the same moniker as an upwards punch to the chin, the name actually fell together quite naturally as Uppercut is an all uppercase typeface, and the word "cut" is also historically used to describe a type style in hot metal type. For this slanted look, "Angle" felt just right (with thanks to Mia McHatton). The design idea sprang from pencil sketches for the center's new identity. Uppercut's shapes are not calligraphic or handwritten, more like lettering seen in comics or sports logos. Its brush movements are imaginary, not too literally brushy. During development, details were simplified and reduced until a bit of a cut-paper feel emerged, but more fluid like writing. The shapes are economical and efficient; simplicity makes the font versatile, holding up in small as well as big sizes. Uppercut is decidedly analog, muscular but not bulky, with the fluid but determined movements of a boxer or martial artist - not theatrical but powerful, fast, confident and dynamic. Well... it has punch. In the proportions, there is emphasis on a strong upper edge "keeping its guard up", while several stems protrude downward, giving the impression of leaping or being "light on the feet". Use Uppercut to pick up the pace, add snap, verve and drive - on movie posters for action and adventure, to advertise your dojo, rumble or prizefight, racing team or tuning shop, or invite friends to your barbecue with old time rock'n'roll and homemade hot pepper sauce.

Ambiguity is a type family with five distinct personalities or ‘states’, created as a tool for coaxing designers and brands out of their comfort zone. It embraces both tradition and radicality, as well as generosity and thrift, encouraging us to question our beliefs about the intersection of style and meaning. The family is designed by Charles Nix, who describes Ambiguity as “as much thought experiment as typeface.” Its five states—Tradition, Radical, Thrift, Generous and Normate—each express or subvert different aspects of typographic tradition. Tradition is conservative, relying on historical letter shapes. Radical rejects inherited ideas of proportion, making typically slender letterforms wide, and wide letterforms slender. “It’s contrarian,” says Nix. Thrift cherry picks the condensed shapes from Tradition and Radical, while Generous does the same for wide forms. Normate sits at the center, a synthetic blend of all of the others. “Tradition is very comforting,” says Nix. “It’s the mask of conservatism. It’s calming because it delivers the proportions we expect. With Thrift more fits into a smaller space, so it’s great where words want to get large, like gigantic headlines, or text needs to cram in, like small screen type. You get a sense of carefree and luxury from the Generous cut. One would expect the Radical to be used in a sort of Dadaist way, but in a classic context it provides an enjoyable jolt.” Ambiguity is a litmus test. Designers could spend hours trying on typefaces that offer just one of these voices. Ambiguity provides five different personalities—ideas—beliefs—each of which also work seamlessly together. “It’s a palettea, like idea cards,” he says. “It’s a way of making yourself see differently. My hope is that traditionalists will try on radical clothes and vice versa. It’s a way of exploring outside your comfort zone, breaking out of the doldrums, by stepping through a variety of voices.”

🏆 Selected for Tipos Latinos 9. 🏆 Selected for the 13th Biennial of Brazilian Graphic Design. 🏆 Hiii Typography 2018 Merit Award. Kiperman is a text typeface designed in honor of Henrique Leão Kiperman, founder of the publishing house Artmed, now Grupo A. Its forms are simple and straightforward, with no unnecessary embellishments that could disturb the reading. The fonts are slightly narrower than normal, which yields higher efficiency without compromising reading comfort. Besides that, its italics are not just a slanted version of the romans, but rather a separate drawing. With a slope of 8°, its calligraphic structure provides the right amount of emphasis when necessary. The Kiperman typeface works best when setting books, magazines, ebooks and websites. It will also work very well in branding and packaging projects where a sober typeface is needed. The inspiration for the design came from the personality of the honoree. Just as Henrique always wanted to stay away from spotlights, the Kiperman typeface was designed so that it would not call attention to itself or impose any obstacles in the understanding of the text. In this way, the fonts revere Henrique’s legacy by respecting and honoring the published content. Henrique Leão Kiperman began his career in 1958, selling medical books in travels through the interior of the Brazilian states of Paraná and Santa Catarina. In 1973, he opened a bookstore in downtown Porto Alegre, the Artes Médicas Sul, and a few years later edited his first book. Since then, his company has grown to become one of the most important publishers in Brazil in the area of scientific, technical and professional books, with more than 2400 active titles distributed among the McGraw Hill, Bookman, Artmed, Penso and Artes Médicas imprints. Henrique passed away in 2017 at the age of 79. The Kiperman type family has been commissioned by Grupo A and is available for licensing. This was the way found for the fonts to be read by more people, spreading some of his spirit around the world.

The ITC Nova Lineta™ design is the first commercial typeface from Slobodan Jelesijevic. As with many typeface designs, it began as simple sketches. “I was working on a packaging design project,” recalls Jelesijevic, “and wanted an informal, slightly cursive design for the type. I could not find anything that matched my need, so I began sketching.” The preliminary design had an elegant yet fresh quality that, once developed, turned out to be perfect for Jelesijevic’s project. After its first use, however, Nova Lineta lay dormant for over a year. Other projects came and went, and new typeface ideas filled Jelesijevic’s notebook. Although Nova Lineta continued to tickle the creative crevices of his mind, no more work was done on the face. Then, in a period between projects, Jelesijevic began to polish the design – and, in the process, created extended and condensed versions to complement the normally-proportioned original. Born in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia in 1951, Jelesijevic graduated with a degree in graphic communication and lettering from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. These days, Jelesijevic is sought out not only as a typeface designer, but also as a graphic designer and illustrator. When not working on design projects, he teaches graphic communication at the Faculty of Art in Niš, Serbia. Although it is a casual and inviting design, Nova Lineta has been carefully constructed and refined. As a result, it performs exceptionally well within a wide range of sizes and in a wealth of applications. An ample x-height, open counters and distinctive character shapes also ensure a high level of legibility. And, although at first glance Nova Lineta may appear to be a sans serif design, subtle serifs make their presence known at large sizes. Nova Lineta emanates warmth when used for extensive text, and it has a fresh quality at display sizes. The small family’s range of proportions also provides added flexibility. The result is a friendly yet powerful communication tool in a remarkably modestly-sized package.

The script version of the typeface Viabella introduces us to the calligraphic side of the Berlin type designer and typographer Karl-Heinz Lange. The sketches for this script typeface, which resulted from the close cooperation with Veronika Elsner and Günther Flake, found their roots in sketch drawings which Karl-Heinz Lange had already drawn in the 1980’s. For the Viabella design, Karl-Heinz Lange drew the basic letterforms of the Black and Regular cuts with a brush. He then re-worked the drawings and transferred them on to tracing paper. The design studio Elsner+Flake in Hamburg cut these typeface extensions and later digitized them manually with the help of the IKARUS Sustem. With the Regular cut as a basis, Elsner+Flake extended the family with the Light version and interpolated and re-worked the Medium weight. The completion of the family was taken over by the type designer Björn Gogalla who had done the same kind of work on Rotola, a design which Karl-Heinz Lange had also created for Elsner+Flake. While Viabella was originally conceived as a headline typeface, its lighter weights can certainly be used for shorter text applications. The Black version creates powerful headlines with highly effective accents. With the help of swashes, which are available for all weights, the user can lighten up longer texts and add special character to titles. In contrast to pure headline fonts, Viabella has been enriched by an extensive complement of special characters. In addition to the Europa-Plus character set which allows setting type in over 70 latin-based languages, the user will find multiple versions of numerals as well as oldstyle figures, tabular and proportional lining figures, diagonal fractions, and a complete set of superior and inferior figures and fractions (60%). With such a rich character set, Viabella is not only ideal for many different uses in the areas of newspaper, magazine and advertising but it will surely be chosen for the design of greeting cards, invitations and other design projects within the privat sphere.

The Brass Family has a lineage that extends into English history. About five hundred years ago a devout, but anonymous Englishman gave glory to the God he worshipped by designing the capital letters and decorations of these two fonts. Originally recorded in The History Of Mediaeval Alphabets And Devices by Henry Shaw (London 1853), they are described by Alexander Nesbitt in his Decorative Alphabets And Initials (Mineola, NY 1959) as “Initials and stop ornaments from brasses in Westminster Abbey.” I wish I could say I remember seeing them when I was there, but that was forty-two years ago and all I remember was seeing the tomb of Edward the Confessor. One definition of “stop” as a noun is a point of punctuation. I have heard people from the British Isles speak of a “full stop” when referring to a period. Some may remember a 19th century form of communication called a telegram being read aloud in an old movie, with the use of the word “stop” to indicate the end of a sentence or fragment. A full dozen of these stop ornaments are provided. They occupy positions 060, 062, 094, 123, 125, 126, 135, 137, 167, 172, 177 & 190. The Brass Family consists of two fonts: Brass and Brass Too. Both fonts have an identical upper case and ornaments, but paired with different lower cases. Although the typefaces from which the lower cases were drawn are both of modern design, both are interpretations of the textura style of blackletter in use in England when the upper case and ornaments were fashioned for the Abbey. Brass is paired with Morris Gothic, which matches the color of the upper case quite well. Brass Too is paired with Wedding Regular, which is distinctly lighter than the upper case. I find it very interesting how each connects differently. The resulting fonts are unusual and most useful for evoking an historic atmosphere.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. ITC Founder's Caslon® was created in 1998 by Justin Howes, an English designer who used the resources of the St. Bride Printing Library in London to thoroughly research William Caslon and his types. As was common in the eighteenth century, Caslon had punchcut several different sizes of his types, and each size had a slightly different design. Howes digitized every size of type that Caslon cast, keeping their peculiarities and irregularities and reproducing them as they appeared on the printed page. This family has the 12 point, 30 point, 42 point, and Poster styles, as well as a full set of bona fide ornaments. In keeping with the original Caslon types, none of the sizes have bold weights, the numerals are all old style figures, and a full set of ligatures (some with quaint forms) are included. ITC Founder's Caslon® is a remarkable revival in the true sense of the word, and works beautifully in graphic designs or texts that require an authentic English or historical flavor.

Type designers have been integrating the design of sans serifs with serifed forms since the 1920s. Early examples are Edward Johnston's design for the London Underground, and Eric Gill's Gill Sans. These were followed by Jan van Krimpen's Romulus Sans, Frederic Goudy's ITC Goudy Sans, Hermann Zapf's Optima, Hans Meier's Syntax and Adrian Frutiger's Frutiger. Now, ITC Stone Humanist joins this tradition. It is a careful blend of traditional sans serif shapes and classical serifed letterforms. ITC Stone Humanist grew out an experiment with the medium weight of ITC Stone Sans, a design that already showed a relationship to these sans serif-serif hybrids. ITC Stone Sans has proportions based on those of ITC Stone Serif, and its thick-and-thin stroke contrast suggests the bloodline of humanistic sans serif typefaces. But other aspects of ITC Stone Sans are more closely aligned to the gothics and grotesques, a tradition that accounts for the largest portion of sans serif designs. Enter ITC Stone Humanist. During his experiments with the earlier design, Sumner Stone recalls, I was actually quite surprised at how seemingly subtle changes transformed the face," moving the design firmly into the humanist tradition. "The form of the 'g,' 'l,' 'M,' 'W,' and more subtly the 'a' and 'e' are part of the restructuring of the family," he explains. The top endings of vertical lower case strokes have been cropped on an angle, as have the ascender and descender stroke endings. ITC Stone Humanist is a full-fledged member of the ITC Stone family. It has been produced with the same complement of weights, and the x-heights, proportions, and underlying character shapes are completely compatible with the three original designs. The original ITC Stone Sans is a popular typeface, in part because of its notable versatility. ITC Stone Humanist shares this virtue, and can be used successfully at very small sizes, in long passages of text copy, and even as billboard-sized display type."

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Handy Andy Andy Lethbridge had only just completed his graphic design BA at the University of Portsmouth when he was spotted by Jason, who’d seen Andy’s exquisite hand lettering at his degree show and on Instagram. Keen to push the handwritten theme further, having recently launched a digitally-created, chalky script font (FS Sammy), Jason offered Andy a job and the chance to develop a suite of more stylised, truly hand-drawn fonts. Andy duly got out his pads, pencils and pens, and started experimenting with styles and textures. Magic followed. Imperfection perfected Most ‘handwritten’ typefaces are created entirely digitally. Not FS Shepton. From the start, the intention was to create a collection of alphabets of similar character but different texture and style – 100% hand-drawn and purposely imperfect, with the kind of inconsistent, organic shapes and textures of market stall signs, dashed off in chalk or paint. FS Shepton Regular, drawn with a wet brush pen, is solid with a rough outer edge and a casual but controlled feel. The dry brush used to create FS Shepton Light gives it more inner texture and a more formal, slanted, calligraphic style. FS Shepton Bold, drawn using a wider, looser dry brush pen, has a woody grain in the middle of its broad strokes and greater solidity where the brush moves more slowly. Fresh as a daisy Think of FS Shepton not as a family of three weights of the same font so much as a collection of three fonts penned by the same author. All of them – the light, regular and bold – were created independently as display fonts that offer something different to labelling, packaging, point-of-sale and advertising. Lovingly crafted by hand, they’re a good match for products and settings that share the same artisinal qualities: organic foods, drinks and healthcare products, as well as premium chocolate, coffee and condiments.

Pirouette is based on a logo that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 (a shampoo container!). Tateno's logo experimented with complex, overlapped swash letterforms. He continued to develop these outside of the initial packaging project, until they took on a life of their own. Eventually, Tateno designed a full typeface out of the logo, Pirouette, which was the first place display face in Linotype's 2003 International Type Design Contest. The Pirouette typeface contains six different fonts. The basic font is Pirouette Regular. This is an engraver's italic lowercase paired with elaborate swash capitals. The swash capitals have two visual elements in their forms: thick strokes and thin strokes. Pirouette Text includes the same lowercase as Pirouette Regular, but the uppercase letters are much shorter and simpler. This "text" font can be used to set longer amounts of copy. Pirouette Alternate contains different lowercase glyphs and additional ligatures, which can be used as substitutes for the lowercase forms in the Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text fonts. Pirouette Ornaments contains swashes and other knick-knacks that can either be added onto the end of a letter, or used as separate decorative elements or swooshes (accolades) on a page. Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 are two fonts that can be layered over top of one another in software applications that support layering (e.g., most Adobe and Macromedia applications, as well as QuarkXPress). Pirouette Separate 1 contains the thick stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters, as well as the same lowercase glyphs that can be found in Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text. Pirouette Separate 2 contains only the thin stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters. By layering Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 over one another, you can give the uppercase letter's thick and thin stroke elements different colors and create unique, more calligraphic designs. The Pirouette family, Tanteno's first commercial typeface, was greatly influenced by the calligraphic and typographic work of the master German designer, Prof. Hermann Zapf, especially his Zapfino typeface.

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

When Aldo Novarese designed his “tipo inglese” Juliet typeface, he had a simple objective in mind: Reduce the inclination angle of the traditional 18th and 19th centuries English script in order to make the punchcutter’s job easier and the resulting metal type more durable. But when Juliet was released by Nebiolo in 1955, it was a big surprise to both typesetters and calligraphers all over Europe. Novarese’s idea of working the standard copperplate script within the limited technology of the time proved to be a marvel in optical metal sizing (Juliet was available in sizes ranging from 12 to 60 pt), but also opened the door to new calligraphic possibilities. Easier readability and a very friendly color were obvious side effects of the reduced angle. So soon after its release, calligraphers worldwide began emulating the angle reduction and experimenting with the application of the same concept to other calligraphic genres. Today, more than 50 years later, many professional calligraphers point to Novarese’s Juliet as an opening to fresh ideas and new directions in 20th century elegant calligraphy. Ambassador Script, this digital version of Aldo Novarese’s surprising masterpiece, is the result of more than a thousand hours of work. Going above and beyond its duty as a revival, it was expanded by a great number of alternates, swashes, beginning and ending forms, as well as accompanying flourishes and snap-on strokes for even more ending forms. Ambassador Script also supports almost every known Latin-based language, which makes its name all the more fitting. Ambassador Script is available in all popular font formats. The True Type and Postscript Type 1 versions come in 12 fonts, available in different piecemeal configurations or a full volume. The OpenType version collects more than 2300 characters in a single feature-rich font that can sing mightily in OpenType-supporting applications. Ambassador Script is ideal for weddings, invitations, greeting cards, book and magazine covers, or anywhere a touch of calligraphic elegance is desired.

With designs drawn specifically for comfortable reading in everything from on-screen digital content to print in periodicals and books, Mundo Serif is ready to take on just about any project. Carl Crossgrove drew the suite of typefaces to complement his Mundo Sans family’s classic humanistic design traits – and added a subtle modern influence. Restrained stroke modulation, generous counters, commanding x-height and tall ascenders ensure that content set in Mundo Serif is both legible and easy on the eyes. While primarily designed for text copy in print and on screen, Mundo Serif becomes a powerful display type tool in the lightest and boldest weights. Headlines, navigational links and banners are naturals for this versatile collection of typefaces. Mundo Serif is a large family. Nine weights, each with an italic companion, enable precise typographic tuning. Captions, subheads, pull quotes and long-form copy can be melded to create a welcoming page of modulated text. For best results in digital environments, skipping a weight – or even two – ensures hierarchical clarity. Crossgrove did extensive testing of Mundo Serif to ensure the best possible on-screen readability. To further guarantee optimal digital imaging of the family, he gave the design generous inter-character spacing and slightly expanded intricate characters like the lowercase a and g. If the goal is diversified or multi-platform branding, look no further than Mundo Sans. The two designs harmonize with each other perfectly in weight, typographic color and proportion. Both designs benefit from large international character set that includes support for most Central European and many Eastern European languages. For a stronger contrast, pair Mundo Serif with virtually any sans serif grotesque design. Crossgrove has designed a variety of typefaces ranging from the futuristic and organic Biome™ to the warm, clean lines of the Mundo Sans. His work for Monotype also often takes Crossgrove into the realm of custom fronts for branding and non-Latin scripts.

Right now! FS Emeric reconciles a pair of seemingly opposing approaches: the systematic but chilly functionalism of early modernist typography, trapped in time, and a warmer, more emotional, more optimistic spirit. What Fontsmith created was something that marries precision with expression, geometry with movement, functionality with humanity. FS Emeric has a sharp, kinetic edge that cuts across design disciplines – graphic, fashion, product, automotive. It’s about what’s happening right now. Contemporary, optimistic, distinctive – a classic working sans serif. Appetite Discussions with some of Fontsmith’s design studio clients had revealed an appetite for a new kind of typeface that could express mid-century modernist principles in a fresh, contemporary voice. As he crafted the letterforms that would form FS Emeric, Phil Garnham was guided by two central ideas. First, there was Jan Tschichold’s contention that a good letter is “one that expresses itself, speaking with the utmost distinctiveness and clarity”. Second was a belief that a font can be personally expressive without compromising its functionality. These provided the fuel that drove the project to its conclusion. Posters To mark the launch of FS Emeric, Fontsmith asked 11 eminent design studios from around the world – the likes of Pentagram, Studio Dumbar, Bibliotheque, Non-Format and Build – to create a limited edition A1 poster. Each poster celebrated a different weight of FS Emeric, and just 50 of each were screen-printed by Dan Mather onto 175gsm Colorplan stock. “We gave away a randomly selected poster every time two or more weights of the FS Emeric were purchased,” says Phil Garnham. “They’ve now become somewhat of a collector’s item in their own right.” Superfamily In the spirit of Univers, the original font superfamily, FS Emeric now comprises 22 Roman and italic typefaces overall, making it one of the most versatile and functional modern fonts across all kinds of media, as well as one of the most distinctive.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. Caslon Antique was designed by Berne Nadall and brought out by the American type foundry Barnhart Bros & Spindler in 1896 to 1898. It doesn't bear any resemblance to Caslon, but has the quaint crudeness of what people imagine type looked like in the eighteenth century. Use Caslon Antique for that old-timey" effect in graphic designs. It looks best in large sizes for titles or initials. Caslon Black was designed by David Farey in the 1990s, and consists of one relatively narrow and very black weight. It is intended exclusively for titles or headlines. Caslon Black has a hint of the original Caslon lurking in the shadows of its shapes, but has taken on its own robust expression. Caslon Graphique was designed by Leslie Usherwood in the 1980s. The basic forms are close to the original Caslon, but this version has wide heavy forms with very high contrast between the hairline thin strokes and the fat main strokes. This precisely drawn and stylized Caslon has verve; it's ideal for headlines or initials in large sizes."

Claude Garamond (ca. 1480-1561) cut types for the Parisian scholar-printer Robert Estienne in the first part of the sixteenth century, basing his romans on the types cut by Francesco Griffo for Venetian printer Aldus Manutius in 1495. Garamond refined his romans in later versions, adding his own concepts as he developed his skills as a punchcutter. After his death in 1561, the Garamond punches made their way to the printing office of Christoph Plantin in Antwerp, where they were used by Plantin for many decades, and still exist in the Plantin-Moretus museum. Other Garamond punches went to the Frankfurt foundry of Egenolff-Berner, who issued a specimen in 1592 that became an important source of information about the Garamond types for later scholars and designers. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond's death, the French printer Jean Jannon (1580-1635) issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. Jannon's types disappeared from use for about two hundred years, but were re-discovered in the French national printing office in 1825, when they were wrongly attributed to Claude Garamond. Their true origin was not to be revealed until the 1927 research of Beatrice Warde. In the early 1900s, Jannon's types were used to print a history of printing in France, which brought new attention to French typography and the Garamond" types. This sparked the beginning of modern revivals; some based on the mistaken model from Jannon's types, and others on the original Garamond types. Italics for Garamond fonts have sometimes been based on those cut by Robert Granjon (1513-1589), who worked for Plantin and whose types are also on the Egenolff-Berner specimen. Linotype has several versions of the Garamond typefaces. Though they vary in design and model of origin, they are all considered to be distinctive representations of French Renaissance style; easily recognizable by their elegance and readability. Garamond Pemiere Pro was designed by Robert Slimbach, and released in 2005."