Domani from CounterPoint is a faithful digital revival of an old photo-typositing face called ITC Didi. Originally designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, Domani brings to life a font that has been somewhat neglected by the digital era until now. Brought to the attention of Jason Walcott by graphic designer Rob King, this font immediately captured Jason with its 1970s high contrast Didone style, typical of that time period. It has some unique design details that set it apart from other didone style typefaces. “Domani” is the Italian word for “tomorrow”. The name was suggested by Rob King, and Jason felt it was perfect for this revitalized design. Walcott has created a professional quality digital version that is both faithful to the original design while expanding the character set to make use of OpenType features. A full set of swash capitals and several swash lowercase, designed by Walcott, has been added, as well as support for Latin-based and Eastern European languages.

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

Stone and steel FS Benjamin is a flared serif typeface designed by Stuart de Rozario. Consisting of 12 styles ranging from Light, Book, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold with Italics it has clear, delicate letterforms, punctuated with brutal chiselled angles. With a pure and crafted feel to the forms the typeface has traditional roots but has been designed to work in a contemporary setting. Archetypal proportions in terms of x-height to cap height and ascender to descender ratio, allow the typeface to feel familiar and be legible in all platforms. Delicate brutalism Inspired by the contrasts of London and named after Big Ben, FS Benjamin was designed by Stuart de Rozario and founder, Jason Smith. Walking around London Jason was inspired by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Glass and steel architecture can often be found amongst traditional signage and coats of arms seen around the City. These surroundings sparked an idea to create a modern design based on an alphabet that would traditionally be carved from stone. “Much of the typography we see today is so similar. I thought what if we created a typeface with traditional roots but modernised it to sit amongst the punk and noise of the streets of London? Old with new. Business with busyness. This is what London is all about.” Jason Smith

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Technobaby is a funky futuristic font done with modular letterforms. This typeface arose from playing around with the basic rounded rectangle shape. Jason wanted to see how many different letters he could create by simply changing the locations of the slots cut into the rectangles. Overall it lends the font a very cohesive and unique look. Get your "mod" on with Technobaby!

Grafista is an extrapolation on what fonts are used for: in spite of the possibility to use it for setting text, Grafista strives when used as a texture library, the same way that one would set up tiles. Thus, Grafista was built as two different things compiled in the same font: the letterforms (for setting text) and the texture library. Both of the sets are monospaced (with every glyph having the same width), but the letterforms are half of the texture tiles' width. On the tech side, the letterforms are 500/1000 UPMs, while the tiles are 1000/1000 UPMs.

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

If you're in need of a sophisticated sans serif font, look no further than type designer Jason Castle’s Carisma (Paul Shaw in HOW magazine). Carisma, a CastleType Original, combines the elegance of classic capitals, the simplicity of clean-cut, geometric lowercase letters and the warmth of sensuous curves, subtle contrasts and sensitively tapered terminals, making it the perfect typeface for an understated, modern, sophisticated look. Available in two styles: Carisma Classic (the original), and Carisma Gothic, plus Carisma Inline.

The dreams that you dare to dream really can come true when you perk up your headlines with this re-imagining of Saul Bass's 1982 glitzy Deco classic, Rainbow Bass. For best results at large sizes, choose the TrueType version, rendered at a full 2,048 UPM. Both versions include the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, as well as localization for Moldovan and Romanian.

Kanttelaz is a bold and elegant handwritten font. Its flexibility and neat style will brighten up each of your designs. Have fun with this cool font and explore its endless variations. What's Included : Uppercase, Lowercase, Numerals & Punctuations Ligature & Alternate Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Multilingual support

This elegant typeface was suggested to me by type critic Daniel Will-Harris. Jensen Arabique is based on a set of capital letters drawn by Gustav Jensen that included the word "ARABIQUE" at the top of the first page, therefore the name. Daniel Will-Harris has this to say about Jensen Arabique: "I found an example of this unexecuted Gustav Jensen typeface in a type sample book from 1933, and Jason Castle lovingly digitized it with all its rare and unusual curves intact." Uppercase with alternates, numerals and some punctuation.

Youthful Fontsmith received a brief to develop a font that would form part of the broadcast identity for the UK’s first digital Freeview channel – E4. It needed to work seamlessly in text and display, both in print and on-screen, and please the eye of the target audience, 18-34-year-olds. So, young, fresh and informal. No problem. Except for one thing: the timing. Daughter As he worked on FS Maja, Jason Smith was occupied by another imminent deadline: the birth of his third child. The pressure was mounting, but rather than let it get to him, Jason embraced the challenge and made light of the tension, fashioning a bright, bubbly, entertaining type with a personality made for memorable headlines. Beautifully random FS Maja’s soft, rounded shapes and assured, fluent lines encompass lots of notable features that contribute to its warm, fun-loving personality, including: a very large x-height; a short, rounded serif to allow for close spacing and give texture to body text; a slight convexity, or bulge, in the stroke terminals; a calligraphic fluidity in the entry to the down-stroke of most lowercase letters; open, generous curves, especially in the “B”, “P” and “R”; and a “w” made of two “u”s.

Vincent Pacella designed the inspiration for this typeface, which was called Carousel and was issued by Photolettering in the 70s. Fresh and bouncy, its retro charm will perk up any project it graces. The PC PostScript, TrueType and OpenType versions contain the complete Latin language character set (Unicode 1252) plus support for Central European (Unicode 1250) languages as well.