Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

Swansbury, Inc. provides handwriting instruction to all ages, accompanied by two exemplar fonts, Barchowsky Fluent Hand.otf and Barchowsky Dot.otf. The basis for the design of the characters is the italic of the Renaissance. With the advantage of contextual alternates, Barchowsky Fluent Hand automatically joins lowercase letters so it can be used in any venue where a clean and elegant appearance of handwriting is desired. The fonts allow maximum instructional flexibility. Aside from their use in lesson plans, educators can customize pages for specific student interests, studies and needs. Included are all math symbols that one typically encounters in school curricula. Nan Jay Barchowsky, designer of this font, believes that children should hone their handwriting skills as they learn all subjects, reading, math, history and foreign languages. Both fonts support all Western European languages and Turkish. Barchowsky Dot is for young children or others who need remediation. The letterforms are identical to those in Barchowsky Fluent Hand. Used at a large point size open dots appear within the lines that form the characters indicating where one should start each stroke in a letter or number. Once formations are learned Barchowsky Fluent Hand can be used with the contextual alternates turned off until students are ready to write in the joined-up manner of a true cursive. Specifications: The technology for fonts that automatically join letters, or allow them to be unjoined is relatively new. At present, both fonts work on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or later (or Vista), using AbiWord, a free word processor (go to abisource.com). They also work well with InDesign 2. Currently there is an unknown factor in later versions of InDesign for Windows that disallows joining. Macs completely support the fonts using InDesign 2 and later, PhotoshopCS and IllustratorCS. If you do not have these applications, there is an inexpensive word processor for Macs.

Did your client just say ‘can you make it pop’? Then you already know you got it on lock. Introducing: Midnight Diner! A multi-layered dimensional script font family featuring thin, bold, outline and shadow capabilities, with a left-leaning slant to boot. You can experiment with various layer combinations and colour! How fun is that? Being effortlessly casual, retro and elegant all in one, you can play it up or down to your liking – perfect for display graphics, logos, signages, packaging, lifestyle imagery, invitations and more. It features a diverse range of stylistic alternates, contextual alternates, and standard ligatures, ensuring that you’ve countless options to choose from for your design work. This font family is delicately crafted and well thought out with every little detail in mind, to ensure its ease and versatility when used! Midnight Diner is a collaboration between lettering artist and calligrapher, Leah Chong (www.leahdesign.sg) and typeface designer, Roland Huse (www.rolandhuse.com). Product Content: Midnight Diner Layered Font - Thin (TTF) Midnight Diner Layered Font - Bold (TTF) Midnight Diner Layered Font - Outline (TTF) Midnight Diner Layered Font - Shadow (TTF) Font Guide PDF https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KPSf-gGrhX3wyaImEAmlJICERNbxu2IN/view?usp=sharing Font Guide Youtube Video https://youtu.be/GtZ8E7Y7wnQ 6 Bonus SVGs (TTF): Midnight Diner SVG - Red Yellow Midnight Diner SVG - Black Pink Midnight Diner SVG - Blue Green Midnight Diner SVG - Orange Yellow Midnight Diner SVG - Purple Pink Midnight Diner SVG - Black White Font Features: Latin character set: Uppercase & Lowercase A - Z Stylistic Alternates Contextual Alternates Standard Ligatures Numerals, Currency Symbols & Punctuation Accented Characters To access all features of Midnight Diner such as stylistic alternates etc., it's highly recommended to use professional design software such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign or Procreate (via the ‘add text' feature).