The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

To the sound of smooth jazz 50's and incendiary Rock'n'Roll dance of 60's Im glad to Introduce you the new product in my Vintage Voyage — The Big Tickle Font Family! Absolute useful collection! Firstly is playful serif. The range of weights can be used to maintain an even colour across different sizes. Use it normally or all caps and play with baseline, give more bounce to composition. Or try to use Caps alternates and get really bouncing letters. Alternates has every uppercase letter. Also, for more variety I add a few versions for decoration: Inner hatched and Offset with Shadow. Okay, folks! The second one is Script. I really love them, they look like was signed with true brush. It can be perfectly used both independently and in tandem with the serifs. And the last one is Retro Graphic! Authentic collection of typical design elements of 50's and 60's style of Poster, Books or Ads. You can create awesome retro patterns or use them individually. 124 graphic elements total. A-Z; a-z; 0-9. Multilingual. Grab this stuff and have a good time with Mid Century Modern Adventure!

Anna Gagarin is the loving matriarch of the Gagarin Family. Her life was full of love and passion. She had several affairs with Futurist and Contstructivist artist in the beginning of the 20th century. She was in love with the Russian poet Vladimir Majakovski (born on July 19th, 1893 and died in Moscow on the April 14th, 1930). She gave birth to his son Boris. She called him 'a cloud with trousers'. After this love story, Anna Gagarin met the designer and artist Gustav Klucis in Italy. His radical and political ideas were much too childish for her. After a period of love and passion Anna gave birth to his son. At that time they were in Italy, which explains his italic forms. After her return to Moscow in the beginning of the 1920's Anna was introduced by Alexander Rodchenko. They were heavenly in love but Ilja Stepanova was very jealous on her husband. Anna once said that 'Alexander fills mine construction with love...' That phrase can be an explanation for the term Constructuvism as an art movement. Alexander was the great love of Anna. She gave birth to their love-baby Dimitri Gagarin. That night Alexander designed his most famous poster. A decade before that Anna told it was
'a time for a change'. In a local bar in Sint Petersburg she met Gregory Rasputin. At that time Rasputin was a well known person and a respected member of the Sint Petersburg upper class.His diabolic character influenced Anna and after several months she gave birth to their son Kurt. He inherited the main characteristics of his father. The Gagarin Family wants to give love and wants be loved...

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.”

The idea for the Generis type system came to Erik Faulhaber while he was traveling in the USA. Seeing typefaces mixed together in a business district motivated him to create a new type system with interrelated forms. The first design scheme came about in 1997, following the space saving model of these American Gothics. Faulhaber then examined the demands of legibility and various communications media before finally developing the plan behind this type system. Generis’s design includes two individually designed styles; each of with is available with and without serifs, giving the type system four separate families. Each includes at least four basic weights: Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold. Further weights, small caps, old style figures, and true italics were added to each family where needed. The Generis type system is designed to meet both optical criteria and the highest possible measure of technical precision. Harmony, rhythm, legibility, and formal restraint make up the foreground. Generis combines aesthetic, technical, and economic advantages, which purposefully and efficiently cover the whole range of corporate communication needs. The unified basic form and the individual peculiarity of the styles lead to Generis’ systematic, total-package concept. The clear formal language of the Generis type system resides beneath the information, bringing appropriate typographic expression to high-level corporate identity systems, both in print and on screen. The condensed and aspiring nature of the letterforms allows for the efficient setting of body copy, and the economic use of the page. A range of accented characters allows text to be set in 48 Latin-based languages, offering maximal typographic free range. This previously unknown level of technical and design execution helps create higher quality typography in all areas of corporate communication. Optimal combinations within the type system: Generis Serif or Generis Slab with Generis Sans or Generis Simple.

Linotype Univers is a completely reworked version of the original Univers typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1957. After a long process of painstakingly detailed revision, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed this large joint project in 1997. The result: a brilliant and cohesive font family of 63 weights and styles including the 4 monospaced typewriter weights. All the existing weights were completely redrawn, with careful attention paid to making the proportions more consistent with each other and improving fine details such as curves and thick-to-thin stroke ratios. The family was expanded from 27 to 63 weights, providing a much larger framework to graphic designers for choosing just the right style. The bold and condensed weights were reworked for improved legibility and on-screen application. The stroke weights were revised for consistency within each face as well as in relationship to the other weights. By following Frutiger's original designs, the humanist character of the sans serif Univers now comes through more distinctly. T he systemized numbering system has also been updated. With its sturdy, clean forms Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence. In fact, the strong familial relationships between all the styles and weights make it a serviceable choice for large graphic design projects that require versatility with consistency. Frutiger was successful in staying true to his initial aims; the new Linotype Univers does indeed work in longer texts as well as for display settings. In 2010 the typeface family was extended and renamed into a more logical naming of "Univers Next" to fit better in the Platinum Collection naming. Univers Next Variable are font files which are featuring two axis and have a preset instance from Light to Heavy and Condensed to Extended. Univers® Next font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

This typeface comes from a self initiated project called Sápmi, which aims to contribute to keep a group of minority languages alive through solving issues in the education environment. This re-thought edition takes the name of Aanaar and joins our library with a bigger character set and two new weights which complete the typeface providing a big typographic palette as well as adding stylistic two-story a and g for more advanced readers as well as to enable the typeface to be used in other environments. The typeface was originally designed for children’s text books. Analysing kid’s typeface design, we identified some important problems and solved them within the boundaries we had. The main concern in a typeface which will be used by children is letter recognition, as they have not yet fully develop their reading skills. For example, letters like “a” and “g” share a very similar structure in this particular kind of typefaces, where the only distinctive part is the descender of the “g”. It is known that the lower part of the letter is the less important feature when reading, therefore we decided to make a clear distinction between them by having an “a” with a spur on the top right. This also helped distinguishing “a” and “o”. Children typefaces usually have one story “a”, making “a” usually too close to “o”. Additionally we moved the joint in “a” upwards and narrowed very slightly the “a” to make sure they cannot be mistaken. More generally, the x-height is fairly tall and the typeface has a bit of movement which give it a good rhythm helping moving along nicely when reading. Aanaar consists of 5 weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black) plus two Italics (Light Italic and Italic).