Almost a half of a millennium after being mistaken for the original 4th century Gothic alphabet and falsely labeled "barbaric" by the European Renaissance, the blackletter alphabet was still flourishing exclusively in early 20th century Germany, not only as an ode to Gutenberg and the country's rich printing history, but also as a continuous evolution, taking on new shapes and textures influenced by almost every other form of alphabet available. Blackletter would continue to go strong in Germany until just before the second World War, when it died a political death at the height of its hybridization. For almost 50 years after the war, blackletter was very rarely used in a prominent manner, but it continued to be seen sparely in a variety of settings, almost as a subliminal reminder of western civilization's first printed letters; on certificates and official documents of all kinds, religious publications, holiday cards and posters, to name a few. In the early 21st century, blackletter type has been appearing sporadically on visible media, but as of late 2005, it is not known how long the renewed interest will last, or even whether or not it will catch on at all. The last few years before World War II were arguably the most fascinating and creative in modern blackletter design. During those years, and as demonstrated with the grid-based Leather font, the geometric sans serif was influencing the blackletter forms, taking them away from their previous Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) hybridizations. Blackhaus is a digitization and elaborate expansion of a typeface called Kursachsen Auszeichnung, designed in 1937 by Peterpaul Weiss for the Schriftguss foundry in Dresden. This is one of very few designs from that time attempting to infuse more Bauhaus than Jugendstil into the Blackletter forms. This is why we used a concatenation of the words blackletter and Bauhaus to name this face. The result of injecting Bauhaus elements into blackletter turned out to be a typeface that is very legible and usable in modern settings, while at the same time harking back to the historical forms of early printing. The original 1937 design was just one typeface of basic letters and numbers. After digitizing and expanding it, we developed a lighter version, then added a few alternates to both weights. The Rough style came as a mechanically-grunged afterthought, due to current user demand for such treatment. Having the flexibility of 2 weights and many alternates of a blackletter typeface is not a very common find in digital fonts. More specifically, having the flexibility of 2 weights and alternates of a 20th century blackletter typeface is almost unheard of in digital fonts. So the Blackhaus family can be quite useful and versatile in an imaginative designer's hands.

Refinery is the newest font in the Evanston Collection of square typefaces. With a similar capital structure to Tavern and Alehouse, Refinery includes both lowercase and small caps, making it an ideal typeface for paragraph text settings. It also comes in a wide array of weights and widths, with 85 font files in total. DESIGN Refinery has it’s roots in early 20th century signage and saloon typography, but has been modernized - even future-ized - to fit the 21st century digital landscape. The design was aimed at providing a type family that could work in many modern design fields, from sports, tech and military to gaming, HUD, virtual reality and augmented reality. ENGINEERING Essentially. Refinery is a simple mono-linear square design has been expertly refined into an easy-reading sans serif typeface. It was designed to be used in both display and text settings. From hairline to black in ultra-narrow or extended, the wide array of weight and width options makes it easy to find the right font for each text need. SPECS Refinery not only includes 85 font files, but each one include a wide array of Opentype Extras that allow even further customization. • Stylistic Alternatives: Letters A W Y have a styling variation that rounds the pointed apex into a square curve. The S and 2 variation straightens the spine, making all curves in the alphabet read as 90º angles. • Small Capitals: A shortened version of the capitals for alternate header settings. • Titling Alternatives: In this typeface, this feature turns on lifted small caps. Take the small capitals, raise them to level with capitals and underline at the baseline. When multiple lowercase or small capital letters are typed in a row, the underlines connect, creating unique ligatures. • Figures: There are different figure styles for different text needs. Options include, proportional lining, tabular lining (for math), old style and small capitals. • Discretionary Ligatures: A little funk to this otherwise serious typeface. Letters with a long baseline or cap height stem - F, L, T - get elongated to hug a small capital vowel. Other ligatures include Co. and No. • Catchwords: These are common words that bring emphasis to a design. In English these words include ‘and’ ‘as’ ‘by’ ‘in’ ‘of’ ‘the’ ‘to’ ‘when’, among others. Refinery also includes multilingual catchwords of ‘el’ ‘la’ ‘oder’ ‘go’ ‘para’ ‘pour’ ‘und’ ‘y’, among others. For the full list, please check out the specimen images. EXTRAS To round the typeface off, a set of over 150 ornaments, icons, arrows, patterns and line breaks is included to provide complimentary graphics. These can be found in the Ornaments labelled font, it is recommended to use the Glyphs panel to select which text glyph is needed.