Light and flexible, slightly retro, casual and readable, Hoofer combines 28 brush script, mono line script and sans-serif styles with ornaments into one Mega-Family. The different styles of the Hoofer Mega-family have been chosen to work together and to harmonize in a pleasing way. The Hoofer Mega-Family of fonts can be divided into three sub-families: Hoofer BRUSH subfamily: An eclectic group of five fonts. These are mainly joined scripts. Hoofer LINE subfamily: Seven mono-line scripts with joined letters in a number of weights, widths and styles. Hoofer SANS subfamily: Sixteen casual, Sans-Serif fonts. They are very readable and in a variety of weights & styles The mood of the Hoofer mega-family is light and flexible, slightly retro, casual and readable. It combines script and many sans-serif styles with ornaments into one Mega-Family. The different styles of the Hoofer Mega-family have been chosen to work together and to harmonize in a pleasing way. The Brush Sub-Family is designed for titling, packaging and display purposes, The Line Sub-Family can also be used for titling, packaging and display, however, it is less “showy”, and conveys an air of informality. The Sans Sub-Family is designed to shine as sub-heads and as body text. The wide range of Hoofline styles gives you, the designer, great flexibility in creating just the mood or impression that you want. Most of the fonts can use one or more OpenType Features. These can be accessed in a number of ways. The reason for this is that the major software producers provide different (and often conflicting) ways of accessing OpenType Features. In some cases such software manufacturers provide NO way of accessing certain OpenType Features. We have tried to remedy this by providing a highly flexible family of fonts. OPENTYPE (these OpenType features are only available in the “otf” fonts and not in the “ttf” fonts.) OpenType features that Hoofer makes use of are: Swashes (Word-Begin and Word-End Features); Alternate Numerals; and True Small Caps. ORNAMENTS In addition the Hoofer family has a font containing 94 ornaments. ALTERNATE NUMERALS You can access two sets of figures (numbers) in Hoofer Sans fonts. Both sets are tabular and lining but they differ in the height (but not the width) of the figures. The height of the alternate figures has been chosen so that they are compatible with the small caps. However, these alternate figures are available in ALL Hoofer Sans fonts, whether they feature small cap fonts or not. Hoofer has all the features usually included in a fully professional font. Language support includes all European character sets, Greek symbols and all punctuation. Opentype features include automatic replacement of some characters and discretionary replacement of stylistic alternatives.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

An entry in the Second Linotype Design Contest, Linotype Brewery, designed by Gustavs Andrejs Grinbergs, became part of the TakeType Collection in 1997. Brewery No 2 represents a significantly improved version of its precursor, and the typeface has been both extended and enhanced. When asked about prototypes, Grinbergs cites German typefaces of the early 20th century. It is thus not surprising that the characters of Brewery™ No 2 are based on geometrical forms. However, this is no mere synthetic Grotesque-derived typeface. It has significant contrasts in line thickness and triangular line terminals that are not unlike serifs, placing it in the middle ground somewhere between a Grotesque and serif font. The contrast between the features of a synthetic Grotesque and an Antiqua gives the characters of Brewery No 2 their distinctive charm and is the distinguishing attribute of this contemporary typeface. Additional vibrancy is provided by bevelled line endings (as in the case of the 'E' and the 'F'), the circular punctuation marks and the slight curve of the descending bar of the 'k'. Thanks to a generous x-height and its open counters, Brewery No 2 is also highly legible in small point sizes. Only in its bolder versions is another aspect of Brewery No 2 apparent; Grinbergs has here made the linking elements more rectangular and has emphasized the counters, so that the Bold variants of Brewery No 2 exhibit elements typical of a broken typeface. Brewery No 2 is available in seven finely graduated weights, ranging from Light to Black. Every variant has a corresponding, slightly narrower Italic version. In addition, the lowercase 'a' is given a closed form, the 'e' is more rounded and the 'f' has a descender. The character sets of Brewery No 2 leave nothing to be desired. In addition to small caps and ligatures, there are various numeral sets with old style and lining figures for setting proportional text and table columns. In its most extensive form (the Pan-European variant), Brewery No 2 can be used to set texts in many languages that employ the Latin alphabet and also texts in international languages that use Cyrillic or monotonic Greek orthography. Although some of the features of Brewery No 2, such as the tiny serifs, are only evident in the larger point sizes, this typeface is not just at home when used to set headlines. Brewery No 2 also cuts a good figure in short or medium length texts. This contemporary typeface with its formally elegant quality looks good, for example, on posters, in newspapers and promotional material. It can also be used for websites as it is also available as a web font.

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.

As you can see, Nefertiti is a font based on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and could be classified as a fun-font. I've always been really interested in Egyptology and a couple of years ago I thought it would be great to be able to write in hieroglyphs. I started to study them but soon realized it would take me a long time to be able to do this. Still, I was determined to find a way around this problem. At some point I came up with the idea of rearranging and reforming the hieroglyphs so as to resemble the English alphabet. During this process I tried as much as possible to preserve their ethos and appearance. However, since they are designed to write in English with, it's obvious that they are not always going to look like the real thing. Despite this, I'm really happy with the final result and I think many Pharaohphiles who just want to have some fun will be also. The only difference in this font between lower and upper case characters, is that the latter are set between two parallel, horizontal lines. These are for use with brackets (motif ends) to form cartouches - elongated ovals for names and/or titles. Try typing the following using the upper case in the sample text box. e.g. (JOHN} The zigzagged vertical lines at each end, separate the motifs from the hieroglyphs. Note the three types of ends/brackets. These lines are also used to separated words from one another and to give a more authentic appearance. So pressing the space bar gives a zigzagged line - not a space. They can also be used at any point within a cartouche to separate first and last names or titles. e.g. ; (JOHN;BROWN} walked straight home after work. Notice the eye glyph (period/full stop) at the end of the sentence. This is the only punctuation mark which can be used within a cartouche, e.g. after Mr. or to add a more Egyptian appearance to a name or title. e.g. (MR>;JOHN;BROWN} Parallel lines dividing hieroglyphical inscriptions and writing into rows or columns are very common. To incorporate these in a body of text, simple use the underline U. e.g. (OSIRUS) and {ISIS} were important gods of the ancient Egyptians. (HORUS) {HATHOR} and [RA],the sun god, were also highly revered deities. The punctuation marks available are shown below. . , " " ' ! ? "where is the king?" The font also includes the numbers 0-9, the following mathematical symbols and the hash sign(Scarab beetle). Once again, I've tried to make them look as Egyptian as possible; whether I've succeeded or not is open to debate. e.g. + - x / = # This font is named after Akhenaten's beautiful wife, Nefertiti, who's image can be seen in the graphic on this page.