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.

First things first: I am really not a Star Trek fan. I did come up with this name, which I thought had a good ring to it. When I checked whether the name was already taken, I found out that Black Cluster is a term from Star Trek. Now you want to know what a Black Cluster is, so just check out poster 2 and read all about it. For me, Black Cluster is a handmade ink font, with a lot of jumping glyphs, a lot of diacritics and a handful of ligatures. It may be rough, but you will be pleasantly surprised by what it can do to a design! May the font be with you. Oh, no, that was from Star Wars…

Meet the new font family! This font came to my mind while I was sitting in line at the dentist. There are often different magazines at the front desk to read and pass the time while waiting. One of those magazines turned out to be about fashion. When I opened it on a random page, I saw beautiful pictures. But you know what the first thing that catches my eye? The font! The font in which the headline or quote is written. After you read it, you look at everything else. And I wondered what my font would be in this case. I present to you my version of a font for fashion lettering. Good luck and love to you, friends!

Years ago, I developed an interest in the Japanese art of dwarfed potted trees, bonsai. I bought some books on the subject from Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In one -- Handbook on Bonsai: Special Techniques (seventh printing, February 1976) -- the type was bad. Old worn lead type, I suspect, spread wide in the tops of characters and disappearing on the bottoms. Two decades later, I came across my Brooklyn Botanic Garden collection and was struck again by this interesting type. Inspired, I made a typeface. Didn't take me long to decide on a name for it, either: a name with a double-meaning, based both on its look and its inspiration. Bonsai, the typeface, has two styles, a roman and a true italic.

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.

Bodoni Classic Deco Two, like the original Bodoni Classic Deco, breaks all rules. Giambattista Bodoni himself would probably hate me for doing it; he was a real purist. The whole idea of the Bodoni typeface is no embellishments and here I go and decorate those nice clear letters. Shame on me! But I find this is a very nice and useful typeface for all kinds of cards and certificates. So I just did it for all of you out there that are not born purists, and want a little embellishment to their lives. And to make things worse, I added a small caps cut. I even decorated the numbers. This Bodoni is the condensed version!!! Enjoy! Yours, still breaking all the rules, Gert Wiescher

To design a font Blezja, I was inspired by an old metal tin from 1907 from Potsdam, which was used to store earplugs. From a few letters I created whole typeface - lower and uppercase characters.

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

Geometa Deco is based on Paul Renners Futura Classic. The design is timeless, but I always missed some decorative characters. So I sat down and did some. The type-designer for surprising solutions, Gert Wiescher

This is the design that was always on the drawer. I designed it when I was bored of designing other typefaces, there was no briefing, I just wildly played with the bezier tool. It was something to relax from more serious work, so it feels like a very funny and smiling design. Genica mixes various styles creating a display type with lots of personality.

I’m not particularly fond of beans. I do eat them, but they’re not my idea of a delicacy… But this font has ‘fairy tale’ feeling to it, and I liked the name Beanstalker. Beanstalker is a hand made font (I used a fineliner to draw the glyphs). It is quite neat and organized, but does come with some rough edges and a bit of texture.

They say the Nile has many secrets and she was the most sacred of them all. Isis. I met her in a small tavern outside of Edfu, hidden like a jewel between Luxor and Aswan. I had journeyed to Egypt to study the mating habits of homosexual hippos. I had no idea it was the journey that would teach me the true nature of love.

Inspired by show card lettering and the more human side of art deco, I wanted this font to retain the casual unevenness of informal hand lettering. As decorative as the font looks, I do envision it being used for text more than display. Obviously not a workhorse, but rather a quirky niche font. I find it makes dense philosophic texts more friendly to read.

When creating the font, I was inspired by the various names of musical groups and sci-fi movies. I took the hourglass shape as a basis and added various serifs to it, hence the name of my font appeared - Klepsydra, as in the Greek hourglass. This style has an abbreviation - "Z". I will develop this font family and will add new styles, as well as characters.

I bought a pair of green gumboots (or Wellingtons) the other day. I have a little wilderness outside and it is quite muddy, so I thought a pair of boots would be a good buy. Gumboots is a handmade comic font. It comes in a regular and a fat style and you can use it for just about anything that needs a bit of comic relief.

I believe it was Picasso who had a Blue Period between 1901 and 1904. It seems that I have one myself - really not comparing myself to Picasso btw… Recently I created Blue Sheep font and now this one: Little Boy Blue. Little Boy Blue is a very legible, easy-on-the-eye font for texts, books, covers and packaging. Comes with 50 shades of diacritics.

If it's dog friendly, it must be something good! Actually, I was never really into dogs, not until me and my wife decided to get a dog. We got a French Bulldog and life hasn't been the same since! I found out that I love dogs, and especially French Bulldogs! This font is a kind of tribute to everything good that has to do with dogs! :)

Gawain Douglas was my co-worker and eventually my boss when I worked for the Tucson Citizen. He’s director of production and design for a children’s book publisher now, a very talented and creative guy and Gawain’s Hand is what his writing looks like. A shame, isn’t it? Just kidding, Gawain; I wouldn’t have featured it, if I hadn’t liked it. Really. No, really. :-)

With Quote Note I did my best to make a simple and unsophisticated font. I wanted the letters to come out as if they were made with a fat marker on a note. Well, I'll let you be the judge on how I succeeded. I've added 4 different versions of each lowercase letter and even did a simple complimentary dingbat. And of course there is multilingual support!

I don't have an Uncle Oscar, so the font is not named after someone I know. The name just kind of stuck. Uncle Oscar is a pencil font, made with a black ‘Lamy’ pencil I took from my son Sam’s pencil box. It is a little rough, but very legible and comes in Regular and Italic. Of course, Uncle Oscar speaks a lot of languages.

Need a catchy headline font with a clear handmade and organic look? Look no further, because Sukkergris is here to do the job! Each letter is handmade and manually cleaned up, but keeping the original quirky curves. I have added 6 different versions of each letter, which automatically cycle as you type. I also added a set of small caps, just because I think they look awesome!

This font is the byproduct of a T-shirt line for a punk/hardcore band I did a while ago. The guys like it skatestyle, so I scribbled their bandname and tagline with fat edding markers, which was so much fun that I decided to make it into a whole font. PiS Wallride features ligatures and OpenType alternates for an even grittier and more authentic feel.

There are many fonts inspired by Lucian Bernhard. I have always admired his 1906 award-winning poster: ‘Priester’— believed to be the birth of the ‘Sachplakat’ (or Object Poster). I have interpreted the hand lettered “Priester” logo into a formal typeface and only hope I have done it justice. Usage recommendations: Captions, fliers, packaging, cards, posters, ads, book jackets, manuals, bulletins, magazines, greetings, announcements.

I just launched brush script font in the new collection Sandblast is a extreme textured for brush script, I design it with real write my hand, I really hope you will enjoy it so much when using this font.I love using this one with layer masks in Photoshop, really look natural written. Please contact me if anything question,I'm glad to help :) Happy Designing, Haksen Studio

Minou is a French cat’s name. There are more: you could name your cat Léo, Fripouille, Orion, Orphée or Tigrou, but I kind of like Minou. Minou font is a very cute, handmade affair, that started from some doodles I had drawn. Use it for children’s book covers, pyjama party posters, toy packaging and inspirational quotes. I am sure it’ll do the job purrfectly!

Just before the end of 2020 all schools in Holland closed for the second time, because of an increase in the number of COVID 19 cases. This means that my wife and I have to educate our three kids at home. The kids are great and take their tasks seriously, but it is difficult, as all three of them require different educational levels. I am sure you parents understand. Trying to get some work done is virtually impossible, so my wife and I made a schedule and we live by ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty’ days. I was thinking of this when I created this font (obviously on an ‘off duty’ day). Home Education is a handwritten scribble font. It was made with a Sharpie pen (possibly used by one of my kids, because I noticed tiny ink stains on my wooden dining table…). It comes with all the diacritics you can hope for and lovely double letter ligatures for you to play with.

Movie Script is the script that was used in German movie-brochures. Those were small four page leaflets with a lot of sepia-colored pictures about the movie one was about to see. Today those things are collectors items. The script was also used on those hand-painted posters above the cinema entrance. I cleaned up the old script and made it just a little bit more readable, but overall I left it as it was. Of course I added the necessary glyphs for today's world, like Euro and so on. When I was a kid, my grandfather gave me 1 German Mark and I could go to the movies matinee, that was around 10:30 in the morning, the entrance cost something like 60 Pfennig and the rest was for peanuts and a drink. Still today I love my grandfather for that, movies introduced the world to me (no TV then). Your grandfather-loving designer Gert Wiescher

Katsudon is a Japanese crumbed and deep fried pork cutlet, typically served on rice with egg drizzled over it. There is also a chicken variety. I have been to Japan numerous times (it is my favourite country) and each time I revelled in the great variety of foods being served in street stalls and hole-in-the-wall eateries. I especially love the grandma-and-grandpa eateries that are tucked away in alleys behind the major shopping streets. They never speak English and my Japanese is shaky (to say the least), but the food is always good and we always seem to understand each other. This year, I couldn’t travel to Japan, because of the Covid outbreak, but I can tell you that I miss Japan a lot! Katsudon is a crumbed and deep fried font. It comes with a splash of authenticity, a sprinkling of cheekiness and a generous dose of oomph. Oh, yeah, and double letter ligatures, plus a few alternates as well.

This type crept up the sense that it was made in Eastern Europe by poorly trained urbanites from a crippled nation, or that it is the remains of a contemporary gothic (like Eckmann) stencil. The choice of what this type signifies is up to the public. Lately I like the idea of 'putting on' (in McLuhan's sense) a genre of idea that is somewhat different from my tradition's beliefs, and fitting a core category of that toward a teleological/eschatological advantage. Therefore postmodernist/apocalyptic carelessness (which I may 'put on' by using this type) is how I abstain from the cravings of immortality, or more so that wanting it is pointless. It’s stands as memento morí; that I will have to die someday. I have to become less, He must become more. Of course, Interzone may signify a classic Joy Division track from Unknown Pleasures as well as the Cold Warish ongoings of conflicted eastern European life. I considered naming this Lunik 9.

I made the first sketches for Brocha when I first visited Easter Island in 2011. I took inspiration from pre-Columbian art for such sketches, but I must say that they were kind of rough and clumsy; it was an experimental and limited-use typeface. It took a long time, but thanks to my learning about type design gained over the years, I have finally been able to complete my project. I have made sure to preserve the Latin American spirit of my original designs in order to give my final typeface an expressively handmade, highly humanist look. Brocha is a display sans with friendly design ideal for high-impact headlines, logotypes or use on cookies packaging designs. Brocha consists of 2 subfamilies: one basic and one alternative. Each subfamily comes in 8 weights plus italics. The Alt version is highly recommended for those art directors who look for more varied fonts when designing.

My eldest son Sam always wanted to visit Japan and he has been saving up for a ticket for years now. We should have traveled there this year, but due to the pandemic, that was impossible. We’re now trying to go next year. Sam and I did make some kind of itinerary and I told him how we were going to get around, as I have been to Japan many times. I told him about the Shinkansen trains, the cute Tram in Nagasaki and the immense subway system in Tokyo. One of the lines in Tokyo is the so-called Yamanote Circle Line, which I have used on numerous occasions. A new font name was born and it stuck to this particular font! Subway Circle is a 100% handmade font. It is rounded, slightly slanted and comes with a sunny disposition. I am sure that, when you use it, you will find your 生きがい… ;-)

One day shortly after Christmas 2004, the art-director of Vogue Moscow called me. Would I maybe make a Cyrillic version of my Bodoni Classic Text typeface? Well, since I had been thinking about doing it since a long time, this was the perfect reason to finally do it. It was not an easy venture, since I do not have the faintest idea of Russian but, together with those nice people in Russia and a fellow helpful type designer in Kiev, I managed. I did an enormous amount of kerning, thanks to the help of the Moscow Vogue office. Here the fonts are now for all of you: five text cuts, plus one standard roman cut that has no Cyrillic letters but an extra set of medieval numbers. At Vogue they are happy with the fonts, even though I did not quite adhere to Bodoni's originals in this case. Nastarowje (or whatever you say in Russia), Gert Wiescher

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

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