As part of the day job I had to trace an old hand drawn logo of a Masonic Lodge from a very poor scan. When I finally got to the end of it I had almost a whole alphabet and I really liked the hand drawn uneven quality, so I made up the rest of the letters and set about making it into a font. I roughened up all the edges for an even older look, added a host of OpenType features and hey presto, Masonic Lodge was born. There are two versions of each letter and number which automatically alternate when contextual alternates are set, more alternates for O and o characters, a good amount of interlock style L and T ligatures (uppercase) and a square & compass ornament. Use it for pub signs, secret society meetings, monster movie titles and pub menus.

Last year I walked half of Offa’s Dyke path, a long distance trail on the Welsh/English border. Walking the trail, I came across a beautiful stretch of forest with a lovely name: Cadora Woods. Cadora Woods font was made with a Japanese brush pen. It sort of looks medieval and a friend of mine suggested it would be the font of choice for maps of ‘The Shire’. I guess that is true, but I am convinced you can come up with some innovative uses for this font!

I bought a pineapple the other day, because my kids really like pineapples. Ok, ok, it may not sound like something special to you - but keep in mind that pineapples in Holland are an expensive fruit. We mostly get the canned ones (which I don’t like too much). Anyway, when I was slicing up the pineapple, I thought I should name a font after this bizarre, but tasty, fruit. And so I did. Pineapple Daydream is a handmade serif. I am not sure how to classify it, but I am sure you’ll figure that out. Comes with a plantation of diacritics.

Pinch Remix is a recreated version of a typeface I made in 2007. The form hasn’t changed at all, but I composed the family by increasing the number of weights and revising the spacing and kerning. At first it was created from randomly drawing an alphabet offhand on paper with a drawing pen. Then I figured that perhaps it had the framework for a typeface. Originally because it was just a memo, I had already thrown in the trash once. Yet something about it caught me, and when I turned to look down at it, I couldn’t throw it away.

Mister Earl was designed for Bitstream in 1991 by Jennifer Maestre. A narrow decorative sans serif. Cyrillic version was developed in 2001 by Natalia Vasilyeva. For use in advertising and display typography.

When I started designing this font, I had the purpose of giving a retro warming christmas feeling. So I added ornaments to add more value to your designs. Ornament glyphs can be arranged in numerous different designs.

Floralissimo are flowery embellishments that I found in several old publishing books dating back over a hundred years. I thought they might be useful for some of you, so I digitized them. Your digitizing typedesigner, Gert Wiescher

This pseudo-Egyptian fantasy originally was named Karnac, and was unearthed in the pages of the 1888 American Type Founders Specimen Book. This version derives it name from a continuing character from Johnny Carson's stint on the Tonight show. Both versions of this font include the Unicode Latin 1252 and 1250 Central European character sets, with localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

blossom lovely is an elegant monoline script font that works just fine. I've always dreamed of designing a font that feels welcoming, Smooth lines, single weight lines and charming variations of blossom lovely achieve the ideal balance of humanity and clarity. This font is perfect for branding and marketing campaigns that call for personality and friendliness. My goal with this font is to create a readable script font that will serve a variety of purposes. This font maintains personality in creating a consistent character set. It has a handmade taste and provides a hint of authenticity; perfect for your upcoming project. Do not miss!

A retro seventies idea of the Futuristic typeface, Automatic is a reflection on the simple and innocent ideas of the future from our past. To reach to moon, to colonize other planets, feed and clothe the earth, and spread peace throughout the universe and our own planet. Those ideals of the future are now changed forever by genetics, and the progression towards automation, amongst others. Will the future still be an innocent place for our children, or something out of a Terminator or Matrix like film...? Put the retro techno edge into your designs, and bring the dreams of yesteryears future back into our future!

I don't know what other typedesigners call those long swirling embellishment, but I call them "Monkeytails". So when I decided on this version of my good old Royal Bavarian, I decided to call the new font "Monkeytails". I just fell in love with this name. Monkeytails and Royal Bavarian should be used together, in order not to have too many embellishments. That's why I offer the two together for a good price. Your swinging typedesigner Gert Wiescher

One day my kids asked me: ‘would you rather be healthy and poor or super rich and sick?’ Without a doubt I answered: ‘healthy and poor’. Having money is nice, but it is not what life is about. At least, that is what I believe. Radical Fortune is a font I made after a period in my life that could have ended with a really nice sum of money in my hands - but which I didn’t take. I had to give up too much of myself and that just didn’t feel right. I made Radical Fortune to keep me from thinking too much - and, symbolically, I used a really old and cheap marker pen to draw out the glyphs!

This font is based on a lot of the downtempo culture in Paris. Smoky bars, jazz clubs, that sort of thing. How a font can be influenced by intangibles is a question that I can't quite answer, but I can say that when I created it, it strongly reminded me of a couple of times spent in Paris back in the mid-90s.

I really like creating script fonts. Why, I hear you say? Well, creating script fonts lets me be me. I am not trying to create classy, connected fonts for you to write love letters with: there are already too many of those available and quite frankly, I just don't like them. I prefer the messy script fonts - uneven, no real baseline and with a bit of splatter or rough edges for good measure. Daft script is one of these messy script fonts: it was handmade and it comes with two alternates for the lower case glyphs that cycle as you type. This is an all-caps font, so that means you have 4 options per letter! I also love languages (I speak 6), so Daft Script comes with fantastic language support, including Vietnamese and Sami.

I hate the idea of revivals. I have publicly said I choose not to do revivals because they make me uncomfortable. This is as close as I have been to crossing my own line. To be direct, Rhythm is based on the ATF typeface, Ratio (I just recently learned the foundry of origin). I came across this typeface from a printed specimen years ago when I was in school and held onto it. It was unique and I loved how well integrated the inline worked within both the flourish and serif of the glyphs—it was old, but not, reminiscent, but fresh. My specimen was limited in the glyph offering (it was c. 1930ish) and I realized a lot would need to be done to ‘finish’ it and bring it to contemporary expectations. I didn't want to do ‘retro’ and tried to avoid the visual trappings associated with it. What I did want to do is interpret what I had in the specimen and reinterpret it digitally, refining its construction and extending its typographic equity along the way. The ‘One’ and ‘Two’ (and their matching ‘Solids’) styles diverge providing various elaborations that coordinate well between rigid bracketed serifs and compact tails. I further expanded the glyph offering to include a full diacritic set, old style numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates, swashes, titling alternates and controlled flourishes that adhere to the efficient framework of the script. And yes, I refer to it as a ‘script’ because calling it a ‘cutesy serif’ seems wrong :) I hope this is seen less as a slavish revival and more as a championing of a really unique typeface. The Original Typeface was Adastra, designed by Herbert Thannhaeuser for the Foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, Germany.

"If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me do I not laugh? If you poison me do I not DIE? And if you wrong me shall I not REVENGE?" "I am not a TYPEWRITER! I am not a MACHINE! I am -- NOT -- JUST -- a lettering ROBOT! I -- AM -- A -- HUMAN -- BEING!" Having trouble with YOUR lettering artist? LETTERBOT is here to help. Take all the fuss and muss out of dealing with a real person and install this helpful and responsive robotic font. It has no opinions of its own and will assist you in the lettering of your comic without all that tedious human interaction which lettering artists seem to think they're entitled. Designed by John JG Roshell.* *Now obsolete. Features: Four weights (Regular, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic) with upper and lower case alphabets. Includes Western & Central European accents and Cyrillic characters.

Original Quality: I often see these words on various objects - from T-shirts to sprinkles and cookies. In fact, I see this term so often that I decided to name a font after it. Original Quality font is an adaptation of an older font of mine called Butterfly Ball. It is a totally different typeface, but I hope it hasn’t lost its original quality… ;-) Comes with all the diacritics you want, plus a handful of cute stylistic alternates.

I like cookies. Especially butter cookies and ginger nuts. The word cookie comes from the Dutch word ‘koekje’ - which means exactly the same. Cookie Crumble is a cute little font that I made on a rainy day. I just needed something that looked and sounded happy and I guess it applies to this font. Cookie Crumble comes with a bunch of alternates, a full set of diacritics and a bit of sunshine to chase away your rainy day.

Raven hair and ruby lips, it may have been a trick of the light but I'm sure sparks flew from her fingertips. I definitely heard echoed voices in the night, of a restless spirit on an endless flight. If I remember correctly she held me spellbound in the night, with dancing shadows and firelight. Yes, I think I did see a crystal ball on the table, showing the future, the past and I did drink the potion she offered me, when I really should have gotten out of there fast. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it, your honor. It was that girl with the white hair, I'm telling you. She has my wallet too.

I happened to come across a facsimile of a sample of text with typeface made by Sweynheim & Pannartz in 1476. I scanned the sample, and redraw all the available glyphs from the sample in RobFog. After that I added the missing characters by copying and pasting the forms of the original characters, and filling in the missing parts.

Ornata G is the seventh of a series of old ornaments that I am trying to save from oblivion. I am completely redesigning the ornaments from scratch. These ornaments have been designed around 1890, I think by someone at the Enschede foundry in Holland. These have a lot of nice swings. Your digitizing type-designing savior, Gert Wiescher

Richfont Bold is the bold version of my handwriting. I always felt that I had unique handwriting. When I was learning how to design fonts, the first font I made was Richfont Medium, which Bitstream is selling. The Bold version is the perfect companion to the medium version, which is offered at Bitstream.

I was doodling away on a piece of paper, when I noticed that the weird letters I was producing were in fact a nice font. So, I decided to build it! Chillerz is a lovely, messy handmade script font. It comes with double letter ligatures, a healthy attitude and a relaxed fit.

Some time ago I bought my smallest book ever: Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet* 57 x 72 mm. I thought it was the sweetest little book I had ever seen. Not knowing about the fame of the designer Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), I put it in some dark drawer and looked at it from time to time. Kate’s books were all outstanding successes in English publishing history; she was an icon of the Victorian era. Some of those books are still being reprinted today. This little gem I had accidentally acquired has become very rare and I have not found any reprints yet. So I thought maybe I could adapt her drawings for use on today’s computers. I ventured to redraw her delicate illustrations, blowing them up 300 percent, being forced to simplify them without losing her touch. It took quite some time! While redrawing them, I discovered that she most certainly drew them in at least three different sessions as well. Then I scanned my drawings and put them in a font. To make the font more usable, I added the ten numerals in Kate’s style; the original does not have those. I hope she would have liked my adaptations. Yours in a very preserving mood, Gert Wiescher. * Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet, edited by George Rutledge & Sons, London and New York, ca. 1885.

It is a Latin-based Greek font that I developed by taking the typography used in ancient Greek monuments and inscriptions in cities in the Aegean region of Turkey as an example. I am working on the Latin font of this model. Karamanli version is finished, I will upload it soon.

I like Ravens. In fact, I like them so much that I have a tattoo of a Haida raven! Ravenheart was more or less modelled on my Qilin font, but it is completely different. It is scary and inky, but it has a certain flair as well. A bit mystical, a bit evil, but I am sure you’ll find many uses for it. Comes with a fluttering of diacritics.

I have been to Japan many times, but I have to admit that I have not (yet) been to Odaiba, so this font is a reminder that I should go there one day. Odaiba is a large artificial Island in the bay of Tokyo. It is a popular shopping and sightseeing destination and its sights include a copy of the Statue of Liberty and a mega-sized Gundam Robot. Odaiba Script is a handwritten font. I used a Sharpie pen on paper, so it is nice and thick. It comes with double letter ligatures and all diacritics.

Endgame font was made using a very, VERY bad brush and Chinese ink. I had bought a bunch of brushes some time ago and I discovered that the hairs had been treated with some goo to keep them from sticking out. The goo didn’t really come off, so when I started to draw the glyphs for this font, the brush strokes were kind of wild. In the end, I really liked it (even though I will never again buy that particular brand of brushes). Endgame is a wild brush font. Comes with the works: diacritics, ligatures and alternates.

I remember that my auntie once made a dish called ‘Macaroni and Smac’. It consisted of little ‘elbow’ macaroni, Spam (which in Holland was called Smac), cheese and ketchup. I am sure it didn’t contain on of your five a day, but it was delicious. As far as I know, I have eaten it only once, but it did make a lasting impression! Biscuits & Spam is a handmade ‘Western’ style font, which I found in my ‘unfinished fonts’ folder. It comes with multilingual support, a full set of alternates for the lower case letters and a really happy vibe.

My handwriting with a speedmarker turned into a font - well, not really, to be honest! Personally I did do all the writing of letters, but in order for the letters to fit perfectly together, I manipulated them - just a tad! But the result is a hasty set of letters! When I say I wrote all the letters, I mean it literally!!! All letters are unique, meaning all the accented characters are unique! On top of that, Laxory comes with ligatures for both double lowercase letters and numbers! You will need to use OpenType supporting applications to use the autoligatures.

Sonrisa is a design that evolved from my sketches of the skeletal structure of Jakob Erbar’s Koloss, trying to discover its underlying essence without all the contrast and bulkiness of the original design. Sonrisa Thin was the resulting font, from which the other weights of the family were developed. Gentle curves, open counters, generous x-height, and sleekly tapered terminals give Sonrisa a very legible, modern, elegant appearance. When she saw the first draft of this typeface, the smile on my friend Jennifer’s face gave me the idea to call it “Sonrisa” (Spanish for “smile”). Jennifer, a clinical psychologist, described Sonrisa’s personality as: "happy, clean, clear, open, joyful, spacious, playful, calm. I can see it being used for body product lines such as oils and lotions. Can see it being used in home/travel magazines or even Architectural Digest. Yoga magazine, definitely." Sonrisa is what some foundries call a “Pro” typeface family with all the bells and whistles that provide typographic versatility: true small caps, oldstyle numerals, arbitrary fractions, discretionary ligatures, and other powerful OpenType features. All fonts in the family, except Sonrisa Titling, support most European languages, including modern Greek and languages that use the Cyrillic Alphabet. (Cyrillic glyphs designed in consultation with Ukrainian type designer, Sergiy S. Tkachenko.) Sonrisa is available in the original Thin, monoline version as well as six weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extra Bold, Black), and a Titling font that is essentially a display font construction kit. If you enjoy using Sonrisa even half as much as I enjoyed creating it, then I know you will have a “sonrisa” (smile) on your face!

I have a notation that the summer of 1994, when I worked with Kalix, was a warm one. I had no special typeface in mind when drawing the characters of Kalix, but many typefaces contributed to it, e.g. my own Omnibus from which I borrowed the looks of the smal case g. I think it is a lovely typeface whose use is mainly for books and magazines. Kalix is the name of a northern Swedish town situated along a river called Kalixälven. Its name is of sami origin, *káles, meaning cold. There comes the connection to the warm summer of 1994! But even the Latin word for chalice, calix, has something to do with my choice of name. Kalix was released in 1994.

Lately I have been thinking about rabbits. Not that I have a particular love for rabbits - they’re cute, but also kind of stupid. But as Christmas dinner is approaching, I see more rabbit carcasses lining the shelves of supermarkets. These poor animals never saw the light of day, never felt the grass between their paws and never had a ‘true life’. In honour of the hundreds of thousands of rabbits being slaughtered for Christmas this year, I have named this font: Rabbit Escape. Rabbit Escape is a slightly back-slanted typeface - handmade with a permanent marker I bought in Japan. It is quite unusual, maybe a bit weird, but it will serve you well. Comes with a generous stuffing of diacritics.

Collins Florets is a collection of embellishments. I found them in the endless archives of Erik Spiekermann. I scanned them and carefully corrected the outlines, to keep the rough look of yesterday. Yours Gert Wiescher

Boom. You asked for more, um, well just ‘more’—more swashes, more options, more weights, more of everything. I cannot give you more weights. The design just won’t allow it and anything else would be a compromise or a bastardization of the exemplars just to make money that I am unwilling to do. But, I did give you an overly indulgent, 90% cacao bar and espresso, Lust Script Fine. The ending strokes on these glyphs will literally draw blood. Enjoy it as much as I have. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.

Novella has always been one of Fonthaus' more popular period (Art Nouveau) fonts. The style of Novella captures the essence of typography that was popular at the turn of the 20th century (1890-1905). Its curvilinear lines are organic and floral, complimenting the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Gustav Klimt among others of the time.

The tale of Pumpkinseed began with a bit of hand-printing I noticed on the dinner menu at a local restaurant. I took a menu home for future reference. Several months later, some similar hand-lettering on another dinner menu caught my eye. I became a sort of connoisseur of hand-done menu lettering. After tweaking and adjusting a few of these menu-inspired (uppercase) characters, I placed them -- along with some other designs -- in an online Type in Progress survey. They won. So I finished the caps, drew out the lower case from scratch, created three weights and oblique styles. The result: Pumpkinseed, a full-featured casual hand-lettering face. Comes in Light, Medium, and Heavy.