Unarmed began life as a series of rectangles in Fireworks. The task was designing my own business card for the first time in years, and the perfect lettering couldn't be found in either free or commercial fonts. While there were some good choices, none of them really communicated who I was. Initially only the lowercase letters in my name were created, with each being designed around a 7 x 4 grid of squares. I liked the result so much that I wanted to use the same typeface in different projects - and to save time in future, I decided to create this font. In creating DM Unarmed, the intention was to avoid diagonal lines, and to keep all the lines horizontal, vertical and grid-like. This made creating some of the characters - particularly the rounded ones and the letters X and Z - challenging. Coming from both worlds, I wanted to achieve a blend of technicality and creativeness, without trying to pretend one was the other. For best results this font should be used for large and prominent text, although it works at smaller sizes up to 12pt. I've spent a lot of time trying to hint a few characters that wouldn't play ball, such as 2, 7 and 8. In case you're wondering: DM Unarmed got its name from my philosophy of facing challenges without reliance on tools and weapons.

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

The new sans-serif Franzi typeface family – as neutral as can be, but at the same time individual and striking. Its unmistakable character lies in the detail, with no effect pushing itself to the fore. As a wide-running typeface with a relatively large x-height, the typeface family is perfectly suited to small text sizes but, with its elegant details, it leaves nothing to be desired in display applications either. Originally designed with constructed, often rectangular elements, Franzi has gradually been rounded during the development process and is now less hard in order to guarantee optimal legibility. A total of 20 well-developed fonts are available: 10 line thicknesses from hairline to black, each of which can be upright and italic. The italics are softly and elegantly drawn, while the upright characters appear much more severe. The design appeal reveals itself in the two-storey ‘a’ – a tribute to legibility in body copy; however, for those who prefer the geometric in applications, an alternative single-storey ‘a’ is also available. All styles have small caps, superscript and subscript lowercase letters, lining, non-lining and small caps figures, fractions as well as several ligatures, alternative fonts, symbols and arrows. The Latin uppercase letters are also available as discreet swash variants. In addition to the extended Latin alphabet, the typeface family also includes the complete Greek, Cyrillic and International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. Franzi was created as a further development of an order to produce a sign for a therapy practice in Vienna’s Franz-Hochedlinger-Gasse – hence the name, which is more common as an abbreviation for Franziska than as a diminutive for the male name Franz: Franzi is therefore a hybrid typeface name which has female tendencies.