FlorishesA are a set of flourishes, that serves well for frames and other elegant embellishments, they are beginning of last century American. Your I-found-them-somewhere type-designer, Gert Wiescher

Crispy Blue is handmade, using a blobby brush. Inspired by a clumsy sign I saw the other day: full of blobby lines and uneven strokes - but full of life and personality!

Floyal Rush is 100% handmade, it’s organic looking and super friendly in a funky wobbly way! Although inspired by grafitti, Floyal Rush has got this cartoon and whimsical vibe to it. I don’t know about using Flyal Rush for massive text, but I would suggest short words and shout-outs - but I dare you! Go ahead and challenge me! I have added 3 versions, which fit together: Solid, Shine and Regular.

Some time ago, I read an article about the Kennedy assassination. In that article, a person dubbed ‘the umbrella man’ played a rather bizarre role: apparently an innocent bystander with an opened umbrella was thought to be in cahoots with Kennedy’s killer. I immediately thought that the name ‘Umbrella Man’ was a good title for a horror movie, so when I created this rough brush font, I named it Umbrella Man.

I have always wanted to create the world's biggest and heaviest font. I admit that I was visually inspired by contenders like Akimoto, Champ Ultra, Blackoak and Bloque. However, I not only wanted a real heavyweight, but a really good looking and readable font as well. Look out—Big Boy is here. This powerhouse can get the job done. Try it out and get the attention you deserve.

Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

‘Thwaites’ typeface is fully dedicated to one of my best Canadian friends who I do cherish and value highly. This great and industrious Canadian friend is ‘James Douglas Thwaites’ who lives along with his good-natured family in British Columbia, Canada. For me, James is like a source of inspiration and I do consider him as an ideal in my life. Our strong friendship has started since 1999 and I hope that it will endure just to the last moment of my life. Sometimes I see him as the writer and poet that I learn a lot from, sometimes I see him as a devoted religious minister that I try to understand more about his teachings, and other times I see him as the educator that I strive to imitate verbatim in my life. When I want to talk more about this Canadian friend, I will not be able to give him his due in full. Thus, I will instead mention some excerpts of his biography that he wrote himself saying that: “James D. Thwaites is a self-accomplished man. Having worked in various fields including restaurant management and cleaning, he has achieved his goals of being a full-time teacher, past-time writer, and volunteer religious minister for the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. His personal and academic pursuits have led him to be published in various magazines, newspapers, self-published books, and websites, including his now defunct ‘poetryofthemonth.com’ website. He continues to learn and augment the craft of writing while working primarily in early literacy and delayed literacy learners, teaching reading and literature to a wide age range of students. He views his religious endeavors as an extension of his academic ones. He teaches others both as a public speaker and in one-on-one situations, teaching about the benefits of submission to God and to His teachings. His future goals include expanding his ministry and continuing his writing.” The name ‘Thwaites’ itself comes from Great Britain and originated from the last Viking raids upon England, being an Anglicized version of a Scandinavian term meaning—depending on the source material—either "a place that is difficult to approach" or "a small thicket of trees." Another recitation mentions that ‘Thwaites’ can be described also as an English surname but one of pre 7th century Norse-Viking origins. It may be either topographical or locational, and is derived from the word "thveit", meaning a clearing or farm. As a locational surname it originates from any one of the various places called "Thwaite", found in several parts of Northern England and East Anglia to the south. The various modern spelling forms include Thwaite, Thwaites, Thwaytes, Thoytes, Twaite, Twatt, Twaites, Tweats and Twite. The name, although often appearing unique to outsiders, can often be found within other famous names like Braithwaite, Goldthwaites, or Misslethwaites. With various spellings, some families not including the ‘e’ or the ‘s’ at the end, Thwaites and its derivations—although not exceedingly common—is a name found worldwide. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is simply a sans-serif streamlined, stylish, and versatile font. It is designed using a combination of thick and thin strokes for its +585 characters. Its character set supports nearly most of the Central, Eastern, and Western European languages using Latin scripts including the Irish language. The typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media. It is also absolutely preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publication, press, services, and production industries. It can create a very impressive impact when used in headlines, posters, titles, products’ surfaces, logos, medical packages, product and corporate branding, and also signage. It has also both of lining and old-style numerals which makes it more suitable for any printing or designing purposes. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is really the cannot-miss choice for anyone who wants to possess unique artistic and modern designs produced using this streamlined typeface.

After release of Wood Bonnet Antique No.7 some of my clients asked for a sans serif version. So I printed my second batch of old wood type. I transferred these wood type into a digital font and tried to preserve the warm vintage look. » pdf specimen « The font offers up to four glyph variations of all the Latin base letters, figures and some additional letters - It has an build in letter randomizer. Please check you have turned on contextual alternates in your application. If you prefer a more common look and need more weights or to use the font in smaller text sizes I have done clean and sharp font family called Bonnet Grotesque Nr. It’s the preferred version for all the usages on websites, apps or ebooks. Have fun!

Satellite PT started out as an experiment. Wanting to explore the geometry of using angles instead of curves, I started sketching out the face using grid paper. I had seen similar fonts that tended to be completely symmetrical. My exploration tended to include what I humorously call 'faux humanist' elements, such as asymmetrical bowls, tapers and 'flare-serifs' (for lack of a better word) for select terminals. The result was a quirky and interesting face at display sizes. However, at small sizes, as ink bleed starts to take over, the angles disappear in favor of the overall forms (rounded bowls, etc.) and the 'faux-humanist' effects start to mimic modulation found in more traditional, modulated text faces. While it is hardly a true text face, the result is surprising legibility at text sizes.

ITC Cyberkugel is the work of British designer Timothy Donaldson, who occasionally likes to write with an extra-fine ballpoint pen. I like the spindly scrawny forms that it gives me when I follow all the usual 'italic' writing conventions", he says. And there lie the origins of ITC Cyberkugel, although the creative process was moved from pen and paper to software and a Wacom tablet. "I like the fact that people will be buying it to give them a 'human', 'organic', 'non-digital' look, and yet no ink has soiled paper. Although the movements of the hand are still the essence, the whole thing was created in cyberspace." The name comes from combining cyberspace and Kugelschreiber, the German word for ballpoint pen. ITC Cyberkugel is a fresh interpretation of traditional calligraphy."

Dorriss girls were the dancing troop at the Moulin Rouge. I had the idea for this font while trying to come up with an alternative to beveling. I thought it would be interesting to create this sort of stepped effect as I've never really seen this treatment on a font before. Then my need to create chaos shows up again with Doriss Girls informal. A hand drawn take on the forms. This seemed like it would appear on an old art nouveau poster by the great Toulouse Lautrec, so there you have the genesis of this font. I've been somewhat compelled by the letterforms so I may expand and create a more normal version of this font someday with a range of weights. That would be the bees knees.

The Klutz AOE Pro Family was inspired by the plethora of naive hand drawn lettering becoming commonplace in modern advertising. What I hadn't seen was a family of hand drawn typefaces, in a range of widths and weights, with both alternate capitals as well as small caps character sets...and so Klutz Pro was born. The letterforms started with a few letters my daughter had drawn which I expanded on from there. Pulling from inspirations in retro cartoon titling and modern hand lettering playfulness, the full font was born, with weights and width to follow. Quirky, eclectic, and just a bit ridiculous, it lends itself to a range of design typesetting - although I must confess, even though it all began with the Regular width, the Extra Condensed styles are my personal favorites. What's your favorite?

The Heat is On! Comicraft's ace lettering artists Richard Starkings and John 'JG' Roshell created this font for Marvel's Fantastic Four title. Now, you don't have to be Johnny Storm to light up, but we would like to remind you that The Human Torch is a comic book character and you are not! Also, smoking is bad for your health.

Bohemio was designed in memory of Gunter Böhmer, an artist famous for his many book covers of the 1950s in Germany. The cover I took as an inspiration for this font is that of a book called Stiller (by Max Frisch). Bohemio sounds similar to "Böhmer" (which means the one from Bohemia) and it is also an alliteration to artisty. I thought "Bohemio" to be a nice name for this very strong, almost expressionist design. Yours very artsy craftsy Gert Wiescher

Inky Fingers… Well, the name says it all! This rather obese font was made by hand (literally) using my index finger, some sheets of paper and a lot of Chinese ink. As the eco-paper absorbed quite a lot of ink, I had to do a second ink-run! Inky Fingers is a very legible typeface, ideal for headlines, books and posters. It comes with Babylonian language support - including the Schwa/schwa glyphs for the Azeri speaking crowd. Ain't I nice?

Hibagon is the Japanese equivalent of the Yeti from the Himalayas, or Bigfoot from North America. It is usually sighted on Mt. Hiba (Hiroshima prefecture), hence the name. I have never seen Hibagon myself, even though I have visited Hiroshima several times. Hibagon font is a nice, handpainted, all caps font with a mythical feel to it. It probably won’t scare you, but it will look good on anything that needs a bit of brushwork, or a bit of roughness.

Texas Chili is a modified version of our Philadelphian font family. With Texas Chili we've squared the curved inside brackets from the Philadelphian font which helps open up the inside of some letters for a sharper appearance. The Texas Chili font family also includes a Unicase i that's balanced to the weight of the uppercase. You need an application such as Adobe Creative Suite or any other Opentype aware program to access the alternate Unicase i in the Chili font family.

Joane mixes the elegancy of French didones, calligraphic endings and glyphic serifs, thus its features convey a warm unique style. Moreover, its curves have been beautifully designed, and it also comes with both and engraved and deco versions, which add more versatility to the way it can be used. Joanes is perfectly suited for magazines, branding, advertising, labels, web and packaging. Joane is my first typeface to be published worldwide. To achieve this goal, I received essential help from W team and friends. I personally want to say thanks to Diego Aravena for the patience, good will and learning; for the friendship and support to Franco Jonas and Raúl Meza. Because of their help I could find the treasures at the end of the process. Ale Navarro

Bonhomme Richard evokes the cursive penmanship of Chevalier John Paul Jones (1747–1792), celebrated Continental Navy commander during the American Revolution, in letters from the late 18th century. The font’s name comes from Jones’s famous frigate, lost during his victorious engagement with the British in the Battle of Flamborough Head in 1779. During this battle Jones is said to have exclaimed, when urged to surrender, “I have not yet begun to fight!” (In fact, his likely words were, “I may sink, but I’ll be damned if I strike!” – i.e., surrender.) A legible script, Bonhomme Richard has an elegance about it while also conjuring the colonial era of its source material. Use to simulate historical handwriting in film props, games, formal invitations, product labels, and the like.

The other day, I was thinking how time flies and how my kids grow up so fast. In the blink of an eye, they had turned from babies into almost-teenagers. They're not teenagers yet, but given their tantrums, it does feel like I have three teenagers in the house... ;-) Ogenblik, in Dutch, means: ‘in the blink of an eye’, ‘lightning fast’, or ‘for a brief moment’. It’s similar to the German ‘Augenblick’, which means exactly the same. Ogenblik was made with the same dried out marker pen that helped me create my font Castlerigg. I guess it had more than one extra font in it! Ogenblik is a bit of a grungy, yet quite legible and neat font. Comes with multilingual support.

If you are like me, you love to doodle in a sketchbook when traveling abroad to capture the indescribable moments that a camera or video would miss. Years ago, on a trip to Spain, I penned out this fanciful handwritten script and just fell in love with it. I came across that old sketchbook recently, and the love affair was renewed. Gonte brings back all of the magic and charm of that trip, and I hope that it will bring a little magic to whatever flights of fancy you might use it for. Double letter Ligatures, Contextual Swashes to start and finish letterforms, and Stylistic Alternates for the lowercase v and w all lend to keeping the carefree hand-penned style.

After researching the type styles contemporary graphic designers have been using over the past few years, I noticed a consistent use of Copperplate Gothic, and its derivative designs, for various corporate advertising campaigns. That level of usage gave me the inspiration to design a display font possessing subtle characteristics of Copperplate Gothic, and various Latin Condensed designs. The font I ended up designing was semi-condensed, with more contrast between thicks and thins than in Copperplate. Baltra also has a subtle flair in its otherwise traditional lowercase, while possessing a larger than average lowercase x-height. Copperplate Gothic, on the other hand, has minimal contrast and uses small capitals for its lowercase. After examining extensive type specimens from wood type, metal type, phototype and digital type, I was not able to find a single design possessing a majority of Baltra's characteristics. Consequently, I consider Baltra to be a truly unique design, sharing with Copperplate Gothic only its flairs on stems, and having only subtle characteristics in common with traditional Latin designs.

The award-winning Conrad was created by Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi. Its design was based on the fifteenth-century type by Conrad Sweynheym and Arnold Pannartz, two German printers active in Rome at that time. They produced a unique, slightly unbalanced yet attractive type. Kobayashi says of his typeface, “I have designed a couple of typefaces inspired from the past, but this time the original print acted merely as a reference. The distinctive lowercase ‘a’ and some other letters were inspired by Sweynheym and Pannartz’s second roman type, but I revived the type in a more informal way. Here I used the historical type as a springboard. The resulting type looks different, taking on a rather temporary and lively look. I assume that the Conrad is the first revival of the Sweynheym and Pannartz type, though it does not closely resemble the original.” Conrad won first prize for the text typeface category in Linotype’s Third International Typeface Design Contest (2000) as well as the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from the Type Directors Club (2001).

Cloveron Media unveils its first serif font that goes beyond the formal nature of typography. It celebrates the artistic expressions of graphic designers within themselves. The Name Mary Anne Remulla is the Master Designer behind the Enchanter Font. She aims to make graphic designers filled with delight and enjoy typography with its extensively artistic alternates and multilingual characters. The Font Style The serif style, known for its formal touch to typographic design, infuses the font with its professionalism as its regular. Using its middle alternate adds a hint of unique touch without losing the serif style's essence. The Enchanter font's start and end alternates are the designer's illustrations of design balance, which elevates its charm and enticing nature that adds to its overall artistic power. "I am fascinated by art and so by design. A font with alternates was my great revelation that I can do typography artistically, enthusiastically, and with freedom. I later found myself fascinated and lost in paper space, which then ended up that I completed my first font creation with extensive alternates for each letter." - Mary Anne Remulla

“THE DEMON FONT” has been specifically created for a very contemporary graphical usage. It represents Gore, Violence, and Lust with Sinful appearance; with diabolical appearance and reflects the dark side in its every character, which may not be Ideal for daily use. But some expressions never look good in the boldest, brightest of Type, for it is their Vocabularic nature and deep interpretations. In such cases The Demon Font shall fill the role gracefully. INSPIRATION When I recently started my web graphic novel focusing around Demonic Possessions, Crime and Paranormal occurrences, I felt the need to have a type that spoke very unconventionally and supported the language of my story. I wanted to break apart from the usual Comic Sans like typefaces used for decades in Pop cultural mainstream Comics, and wanted something very sublime and independent in style concurrent to the the parallel digital media of Web Comic genre. Thus I created my own type to help translate the communication of my plot thicker to the plain old “Lettering” Font.

Pseudonym is a low-contrast, subtly-flared serif available in four weights across three styles in both roman and italic. As with all of my typeface designs, I am creating fonts that I would use myself for branding purposes—typefaces with style and purpose that are intended for use in creating logos and distinctive branding typography. I wanted to create a typeface that had incisive flared serifs combined with the strength and solidity of modern grotesque faces. The result is Pseudonym, which I feel has great presence, style and legibility. Although I must admit, I had to tone down the flared serifs during the design process in order to achieve that :) I’m sure you will have great fun playing with some of the Open Type features that I’ve added to Pseudonym. There’s a full set of true small caps with their corresponding diacritics and figures. There are also a number of discretionary ligatures, these are chosen from the glyphs palette in your layout app to replace pairs of standard characters. You’ll also enjoy making use of the catchwords – these have been created to harmonise with each style, again, giving you more flexibility and scope to create some innovative typography. Finally, there are some alternate characters for /C/D/O/. You may wish to use these when creating logos that include standard contractions for limited, number, incorporated, etc. Key features: • Pseudonym is a low-contrast, subtly-flared serif that has great presence, style and legibility • 3 styles – Narrow, Regular and Wide • 4 weights in roman and italic: • Light | Regular | Medium | Bold • Full set of small caps with diacritics and figures • 30+ discretionary ligatures, catchwords and alternate characters • Full European character set • 600 glyphs per font

FranklinGothicHandLight is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

FranklinGothicHandDemi is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

One of my earliest memories of being able to write - an exciting skill - was of writing with my finger in the fine soft sea sand. I remember the freedom - I had no fear of making mistakes, of smudging ink or of doing anything wrong - and the ease with which I could write or wipe out any thing in the sand. Designing SandWriting was a tribute to those early memories. The font was an attempt to capture the simplicity and ease of a finger effortlessly making its mark in the sand. It can be used in many ways: in menus and invitations, in newsletters and advertisements, and in scrapbooks and brochures. It might be particularly useful for written material aimed at younger people. SandWriting contains all upper and lower case characters, all punctuation and special characters as well as all accented and standard European characters.

officially funky is a brand new, creative & unique font duo. It is a part of my font duo series and after French Lovers & Silver Garden it was time to create a font that is both modern and nostalgic. It is a 2 in 1 font, where the sans makes it modern and alternate serif letters & cool ligatures will make each of projects projects 100% unique. The font also includes over 45 ligatures and I am sure you will love this funky vibe. It also includes full language support, punctuation, numerals and detailed instructions how to use alternate letters most of the apps on your computer, as well as in Canva. I invite you to check out the preview images, and I hope you will be immersed in my vision for this creative typeface that, I am sure, will work for all kinds of interesting projects you might be working on this year. If you end up publishing your designs on Instagram, tag me - @silverstagco and I will make sure to showcase your design and work to my audience as well! Officially Funky - Modern Font Duo Includes: Over 45 ligatures in sans & serif font Numerals & Punctuation Web Font Kit is included as well Detailed instructions on how to use alternates in most of the apps on your computer and in Canva Happy creating everyone!

Ciseaux Matisse was inspired by the exhibition Drawing With Scissors, which I visited at the Kunsthalle Schirn in my hometown of Frankfurt am Main in 2003 and the book Jazz published in 1947 by Henri Matisse. Admittedly, before that time I wasn’t a fan of Matisse’s work, neither his late nor the early work. That definitely changed after the exhibition. While his motifs have been overused on postcards and mouspads, in front of the originals you forget those tiny pictures. Some of the works were massive—larger than 24ft. By cutting directly into the color Matisse created shapes with strong dynamics. Years later, in 2007, I used that inspiration to cut an exclusive font for a newspaper that I designed at that time (see Gallery Pictures). Later I developed that font into the four styles featured here. The cut-out style is a paper cutout; boxed is the paper background. Both linear and boxed linear have no curved outlines, so they are more aggressive. As drawing with scissors implies, all characters are cut by hand. With only uppercase letters, this font is designed for editorial use: headlines, slogans in ads, or musical usage in posters and flyers that need the little touch of the jazz scissors. In special cases the lowercase letters contain alternate shapes to the uppercase forms.

BARKLEY is a messy pencil drawn display font. It has over 200 glyphs and several variations on the standard alphabet and those extra pesky foreign features. I wanted it to look messy and rough but also with a little heart. Buy it, I know I might.

I used to be a tour guide and I traveled to China numerous times. Usually, the itinerary mentioned going to a restaurant in Beijing and eating ‘Beijing Roast Duck’ (北京烤鸭), a famous dish that has been prepared since the Imperial era. Typically, the whole duck is sliced at your table. The skin is crisp, glazed and thin and you should eat it with thin pancakes and thinly sliced spring onion. Of course, if I had to guide several ‘China tours’ in a row, I would often eat something else (there is only so much Beijing Duck you can eat). Peking Duck is a nice, handmade, Chinese Ink font. Use it for your restaurant menu, your book covers or your posters, advertising oriental food!

I, uh, don't know quite what to say. I'd toiled so long over Pumpkinseed back in '96 that I guess I needed a good, wild ride to shake out the head cramps, or something. Whatever grabbed me, it forced me to sit down and design a typeface real fast directly in Fontographer (had never done that before). Took less than two hours to finish the regular character set. No way to explain it, but the exercise actually paid off -- I think. And now that there was Speed Bump, there simply had to be a companion dingbat set. (Beats the heck out of me.) So check out Speed Bump's wacky character(s) and, if you're really bored, the 200-some-odd little pictures in Speed Bump Pi.

Grungy Old Typewriter is based on two typed letters, each on two pages and dated 1901. The results are eroded, rough, irregular and grungy. The final results are a vintage look. As a designer, I wanted as much flexibility as possible, so there are six versions that are designed to work together. Additionally, I decided to keep the grunge and irregularities within the shape and not include surrounding typewriter or paper marks. I leave it to the design to add those elements as desired. One note, the letter spacing is much tighter than an old typewriter. I felt that readability for modern readers suffered from the added space. Of course, you can get that same look by increasing the letter spacing in your favorite design program.

The story of Humana begins with an exclusive volume about some manuscripts in Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, Italy. The title page uses the characters upon which I designed Humana. I suppose they were drawn for that volume. Examining the reproductions in the book I found that the characters on the title page immitate the lettering in a manuscript from the 15th century with Petrarca's Rime volgari". Not bad as origin! But I cannot free myself from the thought that there may be a typeface with that looks, not just a few characters drawn for that volume. My reference books could not give me any answer about that. The name Humana refers to the humanistic era from which the characters originate. Humana was released in 1994.