The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Mantika Book was originally conceived and drawn parallel to the first Agilita drawings. *[images: pencil drawings] It took several years before having a chance looking at these designs again. But then, my first impulse was to turn this alphabet into a new sanserif, which was to become Mantika Sans. This was the starting point to conceive a super family consisting of different design styles and corresponding weights. The initial drawings of Mantika Book were refined and an Italic was developed to go with it. The aim was to create a modern serif typeface which is reminiscent of humanistic Renaissance typefaces, yet without following a particular historic model. Its large x-height for one is far away from original Renaissance models. Mantika Book was designed as a companion serif typeface to Mantika Sans that can be set for lengthy texts as in books, hence its name. It shares the same x-height with Mantika Sans but has longer ascenders and descenders, making for better word shapes in long, continuous reading. The approach of an ›old-style‹ looking typeface with large minuscules makes Mantika Book also a choice for magazine text settings where one often needs smaller point sizes to fit in a multiple columns layout. The unique details of Mantika Book are the asymetric bracketed serifs in the upright font and its higher stroke contrast than usual in a Renaissance style. The stems are slightly curved inwards. Also, the Italics have a low degree of inclination, which makes longer passages of text set in Italic rather pleasing to read. Another feature Mantika Book shares with Mantika Sans is that all four weights take up the same line length. It covers all European languages plus Cyrillic and Greek, is equipped with lots of useful scientific symbols [double square brackets, angle brackets, empty set, arrows] and the regular weight has small caps. There is a kind of an old-style feeling to Mantika Book, yet these citations were turned into a contemporary serif typeface with a soft but sturdy character.

The ITC Nova Lineta™ design is the first commercial typeface from Slobodan Jelesijevic. As with many typeface designs, it began as simple sketches. “I was working on a packaging design project,” recalls Jelesijevic, “and wanted an informal, slightly cursive design for the type. I could not find anything that matched my need, so I began sketching.” The preliminary design had an elegant yet fresh quality that, once developed, turned out to be perfect for Jelesijevic’s project. After its first use, however, Nova Lineta lay dormant for over a year. Other projects came and went, and new typeface ideas filled Jelesijevic’s notebook. Although Nova Lineta continued to tickle the creative crevices of his mind, no more work was done on the face. Then, in a period between projects, Jelesijevic began to polish the design – and, in the process, created extended and condensed versions to complement the normally-proportioned original. Born in Gornji Milanovac, Serbia in 1951, Jelesijevic graduated with a degree in graphic communication and lettering from the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade. These days, Jelesijevic is sought out not only as a typeface designer, but also as a graphic designer and illustrator. When not working on design projects, he teaches graphic communication at the Faculty of Art in Niš, Serbia. Although it is a casual and inviting design, Nova Lineta has been carefully constructed and refined. As a result, it performs exceptionally well within a wide range of sizes and in a wealth of applications. An ample x-height, open counters and distinctive character shapes also ensure a high level of legibility. And, although at first glance Nova Lineta may appear to be a sans serif design, subtle serifs make their presence known at large sizes. Nova Lineta emanates warmth when used for extensive text, and it has a fresh quality at display sizes. The small family’s range of proportions also provides added flexibility. The result is a friendly yet powerful communication tool in a remarkably modestly-sized package.

The Brazzari Pro AOE is an unusual but fun geometric typestyle design. It is the historical revival and elaboration of the "Bizarre" typeface created by MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan Co. in 1884. What began as a basic character set of Capitals, lowercase, numerals, and a small handful of punctuation characters has been expanded to a full character set including unlimited fractionals, superiors & inferiors, ordinals, tabular & proportional figures, and an expanded language glyph set, all with a smallcaps and Caps to Smallcap set to match. Definitely a niché use typeface, however, it has some great appeal. The letterforms of Brazarri Pro AOE are easy to convert to paths and extend various stems, making this revival something you can really let your imagination run wild with for your designs. WHAT'S INCLUDED: Enable the Stylistic Alternates feature for standardized letterforms without the extensions. Extensive language support. Invocation has accented and special characters that support the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan Cornish, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Indonesian, Italian, Kurdish, Leonese, Luxenbourgish, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Walloon, & Welsh. One of my guilty pleasures is in taking the time to recreate historical typefaces as digital fonts, and expand on their character sets to enable them to be used more widely than their limited originals. A lot of incredible historical typestyles created as wood or metal type with bare bones character sets have been lost or only exist as limited specimen proofs in old books. These typefaces may have more niché uses than modern typefaces, but I believe it is important nonetheless to preserve these typefaces for future generations. These typefaces, if nothing else, can often inspire new creations.

Conversation Hearts are inspired by the sweethearts and conversation hearts that can be found all over the US and Britain, but not in Germany. A source of endless fun and surprise. As a typographer to me they are also a surprising document of written communication. Most people complain that nowadays the inscriptions are not as sweet as they used to be. While they used to held romantic and promising inscriptions like “Be True” “Sweet Talk”, today they carry “Tweet me” “Ur Hot” and “Party Girl”. So i took this as a motivation to work with conversation sweetheart on a conceptial inspirational and typographical level. The obvious: every letter pressed on the keyboard brings out a conversation heart that starts with the letter - i.e. L = Loverboy, H = Heartless but what to write? Since i didn't want to reproduce the old “Fax me” and “Email me” I had to come up with something new. Something with a personal relation and of course something that I Love - what else could i write in the shape of the heart? So I tried to access my upper subconsciousness and looked for two words for every letter in the alphabet. One for the capital letter pressed and one word for the lowercase letter. Resulting in a Kurt Schwitters worthy assemblage of vocables "Post-office" “Internship” “Zebra” “Answers” etc. It is not easy to read a text set in Conversation Hearts but easier as a text set in Zapf-Dingbats. To sparkle the visual appearance uppercase letters are filled hearts with “carved” inscription, while lowercase letters are an outlined heart with written inscription. Conversations Hearts is a part of the Light Hearted Font Collection that is inspired by a recording of Jean Baudrillard with the title, "Die Macht der Verführung" (The Power of Seduction) from 2006. Further inspiration came from the article, "The shape of the heart: I'm all yours". The heart represents sacred and secular love: a bloodless sacrifice. by British writer Louisa Young printed in EYE magazine (#43) London, 2002.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

This vintage, iconic typeface of original Czech letter-founding has been faithfully revised, extended and newly rendered in 2012. The majority of Vojtěch Preissig’s type faces have been, from their very creation, subject to controversial evaluations which might perhaps fill more pages than have been set in these type faces so far. The considerable technological backwardness of Czech typography between the world wars intensified the author’s creative effort even more. He had been devoting thought to his Antikva type face from 1912 onwards and dozens of hardly perceptible nuances of the same design have been preserved in his drawings. It was his only book type face, but it shows no signs of any hard struggle in creating it. Its extraordinary vividness and elegance are really surprising. It may be still indebted to the forms of Art Nouveau, which was withering away at that time, but its proportions, colour and expression inspire other Czech type designers. Preissig’s Antikva, Menhart’s Figural (and also Růžička’s Fairfield) and Týfa’s Antikva represent a clear line of development, very far away from the soft aesthetics of Tusar, Dyrynk or Brunner. The co-author of the modification for computer composition is Otakar Karlas. Without his experience the work would remain only a shadow of Preissig’s design. Our aim was to produce a large family of type faces for the setting of both books and jobbing works. The digital transcription of Preissig’s Antikva came into existence from summer till winter 1998. The direct model for this type face is the most successful, two-cicero (24 pt.) design dating from 1925. The designs of other sizes (12 pt., 14 pt., 16 pt. and then 36 pt. and 49 pt.) lack vividness and are the source of the widespread mistaken belief that Preissig’s Antikva consists of straight lines. That is, unfortunately, how even Muzika and Menhart describe it. Neither is it a Cubist type face as many of the semi-educated think today. Special attention had to be paid to italics. It is apparent that their design is not as perfect as that of Preissig’s Antikva. In contradistinction to the original we have deleted almost all lower serifs in the lower-case letters, enlarged the angle of inclination and completely redesigned the letters a, e, g, s, k, x, ... All crotches have been lightened by marked incisions. In other words, none of the italic letters corresponds to Preissig’s model. The signs which were missing have been supplemented with regard to the overall character of the alphabet. Preissig did not deal with bold designs, but the crystal-clear logic of his “chopping-off” of the round strokes enabled us to complete the type face family without any greater doubts. An excessively fragile type face, however, cannot be used for setting in smaller sizes; that is why we have prepared a separate family of text designs which has shortened ascenders, normal accents, slightly thickened strokes, and is, in general, optically more quiet and robust. We recommend it for sizes under 12 points. By contrast, the elegance of the basic design will be appreciated most in the sizes used for headlines and posters. Preissig’s Antikva is suitable not only for art books and festive prints, but also for poetry and shorter texts.

Erik Spiekermann, working in collaboration with Ole Schäfer, originally designed FF Info® Display for use in the context of wayfinding systems. The variants FF Info™ Text and FF Info™ Correspondence were developed later for text setting and office communication. FF Info Display The sober and clear forms of the sans serif FF Info Display have been deliberately molded to make them perfect for use on wayfinding systems. The font by Ole Schäfer and Erik Spiekermann not only takes the problem of lack of space into account - it is some 15% narrower than comparable typefaces - the characters have also been designed to ensure they remain legible even in adverse conditions for reading. As text on signs often contains words with which readers are unfamiliar and which are thus deciphered letter for letter rather than perceived as whole words, it is essential to provide for a clear differentiation between glyphs. Additional serifs on the lowercase "i" and uppercase "I" and a small arch on the terminal of the lowercase "l" ensure that it is possible to readily discriminate between these particularly problematic letters. Moreover, sharp corners on glyphs can also make it difficult to read signs with backlighting or when driving past. The rounded corners of FF Info Display counteract this effect and make sure that the character forms remain well defined.FF Info Display is available in five carefully coordinated weights, from Regular to Bold. In the corresponding italic variants, the letters appear overall more rounded while the lowercase "a" has a closed form and the "f" has a descender. Also included among the glyphs of FF Info Display are several ligatures and arrow symbols. Pictograms with different themes that complement the typeface are also available in four weights. FF Info Text Thanks to his know-how gained through designing other typefaces, Erik Spiekermann became aware that fonts created for use in problematic environments can be used in many different situations. In smaller point sizes, FF Info Display cuts a fine figure when used to set longer texts. So Spiekermann carefully reworked FF Info Display to produce FF Info Text, a font perfected for use in this context. Not only can the characters be more generously proportioned, certain features, such as additional serifs to aid with the differentiation of problematic letters, are also no longer necessary in textual surroundings. The upright styles have a double-story "g" while Spiekermann has added oldstyle figures and small caps. FF Info Correspondence FF Info Correspondence has also been designed for setting block text although it recalls the style of old typewriter characters and is specifically intended for use in office communication. The characters of this third member of the family are thus more formal, without rounded terminals but with rectangular punctuation marks. The narrower letters are provided with large serifs to give them more space although, at the same time, this reduces the differences in terms of letter width among the alphabet. In contrast with its two siblings, FF Info Correspondence has only three weights, each with corresponding italic.The three styles of the FF Info super family cover an extensive range of potential applications. If the different kerning is adjusted manually, the three styles harmonize happily with each other and can be readily used in combination to set, for example, headlines and texts and also creative display options.

Comenia Sans was designed in the framework of a unique typographic project for all types of schools. It is a complementary face for Comenia Serif, released by our friends at Storm Type Foundry. Comenia Sans has a lot in common with its serif sister: the height of both upper and lower case, the length of ascenders and descenders, and the general weight. This makes the two perfect partners which work well even when set side by side in a single line of text. Comenia Sans does, however, lack all serifs, ornamental elements and stroke stress variation. All these elements freshen up the feel of long texts, but for shorter texts use, they are not necessary. Despite that, Comenia Sans retains the soft, friendly character of its big sister, as well as a few tiny details which lend it its unique character without compromising legibility or utility. Open counters give all letters an airy feel and permit enough variation in construction. This is why the face works well even in multiple-page texts. All its letters are easily distinguished from each other, so the reader's eyes are not strained. Diacritics and punctuation harmonize with both upper and lower case. As usually, all diacritical marks fully respect conventional shapes of accents and they are perfectly suitable for Czech, Slovak, Polish and other Central European languages, where a lot of diacritics abounds. Similarly to the renaissance italics which refers to the cursive forms, Comenia Sans introduces novel shapes of some characters drawing from the hand-written heritage. This is most apparent in the single-bellied a, the simplified g, and the stem of f which crosses the baseline and ends with a distinct terminal. In the text, emphasized words are thus distinguished not only by the slant of letters, but also by the shapes of the letters themselves. All twelve styles contain set of small caps, suitable for the names, in the indexes or the headlines in longer texts. Legibility in small sizes under 10 points was at the center of designers' attention, too. This is why the counters of a, e and g are large enough to prevent ink spread in small sizes, both on-screen and in print. After all, the font was specifically optimized for screen use: its sober, simple forms are perfectly fit to be displayed on the computer screen and in other low-resolution devices. When used in the context of architecture, the smoothness of all contours stands out, permitting to enlarge the letters almost without limit. A standard at the Suitcase Type Foundry, each style of Comenia Sans boasts a number of ligatures, an automatic replacement of small caps and caps punctuation, a collection of mathematical symbols, and several types of numerals which make it easy to set academic and other texts in an organised, well-arranged way. For the same purpose, fractions may come in handy, too. Apart from the standard emphasis styles, the family also contains six condensed cuts (each set has the same number of characters), designated for situations where space is limited or the need for striking, poster-like effect arises. Comenia Sans is the ideal choice for the setting of magazines, picture books, and navigation systems alike. Its excellent legibility and soft, fine details will be appreciated both in micro-typography and in poster sizes. Although it was designed as a member of a compact system, it will work equally well on its own or in combination with other high-quality typefaces.

A few emails sent to Canada Type have asked for more “bad scripts”. A few others asked for "more Mascara-like treatments". And some asked for more fonts of “distressed elegance”. Whatever you like to call this style of doubled-script font, sightings of designs using it have become common within the last few years. Such fonts have become the standard in expressing elegant confusion, old chaos in modern settings, recycled histories, and rebellious ideas. This style is quite often seen on chic clothing, music packaging, some sports paraphernalia, surfer and skateboarder gear, even book covers. That said, the Heathen font was made to include an advantageous feature that other distressed scripts do not normally have: More intertwined over-swashing in the majuscules. This over-swashing is quite useful in settings where the stroke and fill colors differ, or complement each other. It is also quite the point of emphasis where the idea is to show elegance gone ancient, old thoughts in a modern wrapper, rust never sleeping, or the very basic limits of the world’s nature. The original Heathen was made by redrawing Phil Martin’s Polonaise majuscules and superposing them over the majuscules of Scroll, another Canada Type font. The lowercase is a superposition of Scroll’s lowercase atop a pre-release version of Sterling Script, yet another Canada Type font. Heathen Two was made in a similar way, by combining two pre-release Canada Type scripts.

Because we know that you will never get tired of using them and that you will always need a new tool for Identity Design, we created Identa. Conceived to translate corporate and humanist ideals in its typographic form, it seeks a dialogue between neutrality and contemporaneity. With a pragmatic attention to functionality that does not forget aesthetics. It is a Sans serif model, accessible and well-founded. All-terrain, workhorse that seeks to be reliable and durable. It solves any type of content with efficiency, intelligence and professionalism. Its clean forms and x-height make it a very competent face for both short identifiers and long text bodies, ideal for display use where legibility and personality must match new design needs within a company. It is available in eight styles, ranging from its White version to the darker Vantablack, each optimally set with its respective italic variables, and a Dingbats font designed to solve everyday cases. Each font contains 737 glyphs, macro and micro aesthetic details inspired by current visual communication systems and trends. The dingbats font includes 303 signs and is a set of icons and symbols that can be used in multiple environments, both for print and digital media. This typeface family seeks to meet the needs of brand designers looking to create an assertive appearance, whatever the case. It is a solid and self-confident typeface, without appearing overly constructed; on the contrary, its nuance makes it look fresh.

Ornaments family with four different sets plus a decorative capitals font from the rare, valuable and amazing Allerlei Zierat book from Schelter & Gieseck (1902). A research and free interpretation by Intellecta Design. This encyclopedic specimen book of the Leipzig, Germany type foundry and printing supply house J.G. Schelter & Giesecke features, as the title indicates, all kinds of decoration for supplying printing of every type. On the title page, the firm boasts winning grand prize in 1900 in Paris (presumably at the Exposition Universelle). It is hard to do justice in a short description to the variety of styles (traditional, Jugenstil, etc.) and categories (certificates, letterheads, borders, ornaments, exotic motifs, flowers, animals, silhouettes, menus, greeting cards, vignettes humorous and otherwise, images of bicyclists, occupational symbols, portraits, Classical figures, religious art, heraldry, ships, trains, athletes, etc., etc.) offered in this volume. Some of the examples are printed in color, most are in black-and-white. The Jugenstil cover of this copy shows minor wear and soiling. The plate of “Gust. Carlsson & Co., Stockholm” is attached to the front pastedown. A small fraction of pages show minor soiling, a pencil notation or a short closed tear. Two of the fold-outs at the back have a little more damage-one is missing a 1x2 inch piece along the margin, the other has a 3-inch closed tear and an edge which is crumpled. A rare specimen from the Intellecta rare books library.

Introducing Royal Avenue, a display serif font that exudes the sophistication and fancy feels you're looking for. Each is carefully character crafted with a unique touch. It's versatility and stylish appearance make it an excellent choice for any project, from logos and branding to packaging and social media graphics. Royal Avenue is the perfect choice for any project. With multilingual support, ligatures, and an extensive alternate feature set, this font allows for freedom to explore and experiment with different variations, adding a unique touch to your designs and making them truly one-of-a-kind. It enables greater flexibility and creativity in your design work. This font is perfect for catching your audience's attention and is ideal for any design project that requires a touch of elegance and style, making it a must-have for any designer or creative. We recommend using it for titles, headlines, and other attention-grabbing elements. To get the most out of Royal Avenue, we recommend using programs that support OpenType features and Glyphs panels, such as Adobe apps and Corel Draw. This will enable you to access all the glyphs and variations of the font and make your design projects truly unique. We hope you enjoy using Royal Avenue as much as we enjoyed creating it. For any questions or inquiries, please email us at info@prestigetype.com. Get your hands on Royal Avenue today and elevate your design projects to new heights.