The concept of a bold connected script with a hand lettered feel has been on my bucket list for decades. I imagined a pretentious, ornate, swashy look, a variety of word-end embellishments, heaps of ligatures and underscores. It took a weekend workshop on Python Scripting at Type@Cooper in San Francisco reinforcing the smarts of Opentype to make it happen. Hand drawn on paper using broad pen strokes for reference, the design was the easy part. The real work was in the back-end and self-imposed rigorous testing. Download a comprehensive pdf User Guide at this link.

Tazugane Info is a screen-ready Japanese font family, that follows on the debut of Monotype's first original Japanese typeface – Tazugane Gothic. It offers a more restrained personality, with calligraphic design details pared back to create a geometric letterform – a good alternative for designers looking for a matter-of-fact alternative to the warmer Tazugane Gothic tone of voice. Tazugane Info was updated to support the “Reiwa” new era symbol. Reiwa can be written as two kanji: 令和. This update to Tazugane Info includes Reiwa designed as a single ligature and is encoded as U+32FF. “While Tazugane Gothic fits perfectly when your job requires an organic and friendly tone of voice, Tazugane Info provides a more solid look,” says Kobayashi. “I hope that having two options will make it easier to choose an appropriate tone of voice to convey information or brand messaging.” Its strokes create a smooth uninterrupted flow that's designed for use on-screen. Although books, newspapers and magazines are traditionally set vertically in Japan, smartphones, information panels and car navigation systems are all set horizontally – and Tazugane Info has been tailored to this environment, featuring a new set of kana phonetic symbols. Tazugane Info is available in 10 weights, and includes the complete set of kanji and latin found in Tazugane Gothic.

A handwritten ”font for technicians“ from ca. 1900. Very geometrical, rigid forms borrowed from the typical characteristics of Jugendstil / Art Nouveau. This script is found in a magazine from the Otto Maier publishing house, Ravensburg, which was issued sometime in the years shortly before WWI. The magazine is entitled ”Schriften-Sammlung für Techniker: Verkleinerte Schriften der wichtigsten Alphabete“ (Collection of scripts for technical specialists: reduced scripts of the most significant alphabets) and published by Karl O. Maier. The original copy, produced by means of a galvanized plate, is just 7 centimeters wide. It served as the model for technical professions in which, at that time, the captions of drawings were still done by hand. The characters have been scanned, digitized and greatly magnified. Special attention was given to ensure the ”uneven“ edges, typical of handwritten script, remained effectively noticeable even in the digitized form. As a result, this ”technical“ font retains a handmade touch. Especially worthy of note are the Jugendstil forms characteristic at the turn of the19th century. In comparison, many alleged ”ultramodern“ font types of today suddenly look quite old-fashioned. Maier’s Nr. 21 Pro is suitable for all European languages. It includes ”Latin Extended-A,“ for Central and Eastern Europe incl. Turkish, and even Cyrillic and Greek, too. The font includes several stylistic alternates as well as a number of ligatures.

A condensed serif that’s been through the ravages of reproduction but has now been digitized for modern use. Elegantly wasted.

Leon is a modern wide sans serif type family in Hebrew and Latin. It comes in four styles to match any design need - Headers in Black or Thin to long text in regular and Bold. Includes full Hebrew support including punctuation. Designed in Tel Aviv by Ben Nathan, 2021.

Galea is a slightly condensed serif typeface with long extenders. Its elongated proportions and graceful terminals seek to bring femininity and elegance to any layout. It is a display face that works well at large sizes in editorial contexts as a headline, titling or introduction to a text. Galea was designed by Isabel Urbina Peña while at Cooper Union’s Type@Cooper Extended Program, 2012 and released on May, 2014. Galea obtained an Honorable Mention from the Fine Press Book Association in the Text Family Category, 2013. Also, it is featured in the book "Playing with Type: 50 Experiments" by Lara McCormick, Rockport Press, on Parenthesis Magazine, Autumn 2013 on Behance's Typography Served and will appear on "Typography Magazine", Japan (Nov 2014).

An Arabic font designed by a German living in Berlin’s Neukölln district, between Karl-Marx-Strasse and Sonnenallee. This is the Latin+Arabic version of poster/display font Pivnaya designed and published by Roman Type. Designer Roman Wilhelm finds himself constantly surrounded by Arabic type and hand-lettering in his neighborhood. With this font, he is trying to answer to all these linguistic, type-related, and cultural inspirations. It works for Afrikaans, all languages of the Arab World, Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanisch, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Zulu. Equipped with a wide coverage of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the font is equipped for multi-purpose usage.

The Stroke typeface is based on a broad nib pen theory taken to its extreme, using idealization of computer-generated pen stroke.

The name “Parchemin” is derived from the word in old English for “parchment.” Our modern word “parchment” changed its spelling to conform with French spelling practices during the French occupation of England. The font was created to suggest an informal but antique form of handwriting written on parchment with a quill pen. The scratchiness of the old quill pen is conveyed in the roughness of the characters. The font was loosely based on the font Queen. Use this font whenever you want to suggest rough informality or antique handwriting. The characters have been letter-spaced and kerned in such a way that they join perfectly with one another giving a completely convincing imitation of genuine handwriting. The font is fully professional in terms of its character set. It contains more than 235 characters — (upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals, symbols and accented characters are present). In fact, it has all the accented characters used in the major European languages.

In their book "Lettering of Today" by W. Ben and Ed C. Hunt, an Art Deco "thick and thin" alphabet with some stylized characters (which leaned a lot toward a calligraphic style) stood out from the rest. This is now available as Stylized Deco JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

Scratch up started out by testing a brush pen I bought. I penned down two alphabets: one by pressing hard on the pen and one without pressure. The result is Scratch Up: a pair of roughish tall & thin fonts. Scratch up comes with all the diacritics you need.

Abeille means bee in French. I am a little worried about the world's bee populations, as whole colonies collapse due to monoculture and pesticides. I have planted many bee-attracting plants in my garden and even put up a 'bee hotel' (which is full of tenants right now). Abeille is a hand drawn didone-ish font, kind of cute and happy, very legible and full of character. Abeille comes with a swarm of diacritics.

Quendel has been expanded to become Quendel Happy Family. Apart from the new Bold weight for easy distinction and emphasis, there are now four other very exciting variants, rendering different writing tools and writing materials. The basic form of Quendel was written with a Japanese bamboo tip and therefore embodies a form letter of natural flow. The new versions show other features that provide the feel of written scripts. While the styles Wood and Crayon include some alternate characters, Q Marking Pen and Q Fingertip, due to their apparently more complex enacted forms, do not need additional alternates without looking stiff or boring. The wood relief of Quendel Wood was created by a freehand wood relief drawn with oiled chalk. Quendel Marking Pen seems to be written with a felt-tip pen soon depleted. At the same time it is also reminiscent of the blooming effect, which we know from photography. The name of Quendel Fingertip suggests what can be seen - someone seems to have written with the finger in a grainy material. One would like to try it himself. The effect of broken lines which can be gained by writing with chalk as reflected in Quendel Crayon. Almost like parched sandy soil, the writing material seems to crumble.

ITC Christoph's Quill is just about everything you could want in a typeface: it's distinctive, beautiful, and exceptionally versatile. According to designer Russell Bean, ITC Christoph's Quill is the culmination of experimentation with a graphics tablet that spanned several years. Then one day, as if by magic, it all just fell into place. The design seemed to flow from my pen." Bean was born in Australia and, except for a brief stint with a photo-lettering firm in Southern California, has spent most of his career working down under. "I can recall a deep fascination for the written word," he says. "Even before learning to spell, read or write, I think I recognized that this was a means of visual communication." Bean's first job was in a small ad agency as a trainee in the production department, where he learned art techniques and how to handle print, as well as "the value of visual impressions," he says. His career path meandered from one design job to another, but always in the general direction of fonts and typefaces. Today, his workload consists of logo design commissions, font editing, typography and print production consultation to a select group of loyal clients - still leaving time, notes Bean, "to pursue my type design ambitions." ITC Christoph's Quill began life as a simple, visually striking font of caps, lowercase, punctuation and numerals. To this Bean added a bold weight, for when a little more strength is desirable. Next came a flock of alternate characters. Finally, Bean drew a set of decorative caps, a suite of logos, and a sprinkling of beginning and ending swashes. The net result is a type family that can add a signature flourish to a vast range of projects: from invitations and menus to logos, signage, packaging and more."

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.

Samantha is a bright and cheerful font based on pointed-pen lettering and featuring slightly condensed characters and a measured rhythm. Samantha is available in upright or italic variants, each with regular and bold weights and features over 1,100 alternates and swash characters that vary in size and complexity. Samantha includes 60 ornaments and 45 catchwords, lining numerals and oldstyle and swash numerals. See what’s included! Upright, Upright Bold • Italic, Italic Bold *NOTE* Basic versions DO NOT include swashes, alternates or ornaments These fonts have been specially coded for access of all the swashes, alternates and ornaments without the need for professional design software! Info and instructions here: http://lauraworthingtontype.com/faqs/

Textworthy Serif is a simple serif typeface with a human character. It is based on writing with a classic pen. Serif form we know as the trustworthy type style. Similar shapes we’ve been reading about since the 15th century when letterpress began. And antique can be developed after blackletter type. Textworthy Serif was created because we still believe in serif type for over 500 years. And we still need to use serif types in today’s world for comfortable and rational acceptance of text information. Italic styles are in production. We wanted to offer these 5 styles for those purposes where the number of styles is enough.

Manifesto was designed for an article written in response to opinions that philosophy and personal expression have been wiped clean from today's design profession. Contemporary design is sterile and sublime. Enter Ken Garland's revision of the original 1964 Manifesto. The publishing of the "First Things First" manifesto 2000 is exhibit A that a trend for social belief systems is growing. Or is it? Many comfortably accept that designers are indeed "engaged in nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality". The four 'voices' of the TX Manifesto Family (Regular, Slant, Stout and Stencil) is intended for your typographical response, and push for conscientious design.

London is one of my favourite cities, so it was about time I named a font after it. Well, technically, I named a font after one of London’s districts. Southwark comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Suthriganaweorc, which means ‘Fort of the men of Surrey’. The font Southwork is a handmade Clarendon. I used a Japanese brush pen to create the outlines. I gave the glyphs texture by filling them in with a brush and Chinese ink. Southwark, therefore, has an uneven look and a brushy texture. It looks good on just about anything, but posters, greeting cards and product packaging come to mind.

Park Avenue Park Avenue was designed by R.E. Smith in 1933 for American Type Founders. Park Avenue is an elegant and light script with freely drawn capitals. Park Avenues pen-drawn quality is particularly evident in the lowercase. The ascenders and descenders of this script font are long; the ascenders are bent-over at the top. Park Avenue has a small 'x' height with tall ascenders, giving the face a refined, elegant appearance. The full elegance and lightness of Park Avenue are only apparent when combining upper and lowercase. It would be worthwhile trying this script in display sizes, for personal messages, invitations, business cards and greetings cards.

The marker has been sitting in your pen drawer for years. You can't bring yourself to throw it out, because it's the best marker in the world; but it has become worn and frayed, and you can't bring yourself to use it, either. But today you have just the project for the best bad marker in the world, and you take it from the drawer, remove the cap, and notice with glee that time has accumulated a perfect supply of ink in the frayed tip. You bring it down on the pristine white paper in front of you, and magic begins to trace itself on the page...

RARE BIRD SPECIMEN III Rare Bird Specimen III is a graceful hand by Karla Lim of Written Word Calligraphy. This all lowercase font feels both modern and feminine. While uppercase letters are still lowercase in shape, they are larger and read as caps. OBSERVATIONS Specimen III has a dancer-like form; supple and lithe. Willowy letters are nimble and lissome, content alone or paired with a stronger, more masculine specimen. DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS Opentype programming, formal title and preposition word art, 7 alternate lowercase t cross-strokes, Roman numerals, old-style numerals, seamlessly semi-connecting calligraphic letters, realistic double-letter ligatures, in and out-stroked letters at the beginning and end of words where appropriate, basic Latin encoding. POTENTIAL SIGHTINGS Bridal + baby shower stationery, logo design, gourmet food packaging, clothing labels.

Chub was inspired by and dedicated to: Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage, J Otto, Ben & Jerry, Spunk, Chuck Jones, Run DMC, those teenage kids with their big baggy pants, French Market coffee, George Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chistina Ricci, Sesame Street and the letter C. God bless all those big, fat, fun things that make life grand.

Puchiflit is a typeface disguised as a pen script. I didn't create this typeface by importing the letters on paper and tracing them into a computer with a draw application. So I think it's a pseudo-pen script typeface. By the way, I used a famous Japanese maker's felt-tip pen as a reference for line widths. I thought, "Isn't this what it would look like if I wrote with this pen? I drew a line in the draw application while fantasizing about this.

Dear diary, what a day it's been. Dear diary, it's been just like a dream. Woke up late. Wasn't where I should have been. For goodness sake what's happening to me? Write lightly, yours truly, dear diary. At last, a font to help you overcome those moody blues… Features: Four fonts (Regular, Underline, Strikethrough & Small caps) with upper and lower case alphabets.

I was inspired by the letters of the mythical “Ideales” tobacco package, designed in 1936 in Barcelona by Carlos Vives, director of the designers studio of the Rieusset graphical industry. We have also studied other geometrical models from the 1920s, to be highlighted among them the alphabet drawn by Cornelis André Vlaanderen at Amsterdam in 1928, which would have been very probably the inspiration for the famous tobacco package. Eutopia has been born with the aim to be useful for the current graphic communications. For that purpose almost 400 glyphs have been designed and more than 2200 kerning pairs have been defined. The multiple diacritic signs have been prepared to allow a multilingual use in most of the languages based on Latin alphabet. The OpenType features have been used to get alternate characters of “A” and “g”, and also ligatures, lowercase numbers and other typographic refinements.

One of the most remarkable characteristic of this humanistic sans serif is its versatility. Ronnia’s personality performs admirably in headlines, but is diffident enough for continuous text and small text alike. The heavier weights deliver very cohesive shapes, and they have been successfully used for branding and newspaper headlines. Its ten styles grant the designer a broad range of coherent color and texture variations in text blocks, necessary tools to solve complex information and editorial design problems. Ronnia has been mainly engineered for newspaper and magazine applications manifested in its properties: economic in use, highly legible, and approaching the reader with some friendliness and charm. Ronnia features about 800 characters per weight, including small caps, fractions, old style and lining numbers, scientific superior/inferior figures, and a set of symbols and arrows. It supports over 40 languages that use the Latin extended alphabet. Ronnia Basic is a reduced version of Ronnia. It is still an OT-font but without any particular features except of a set of ligatures, class-kerning and language support including CE and Baltic.

Flatpen is a font that was written with a pen we used to call "Redis-Pen". It had a flat, round tip that enabled you to write letters, with the same width of stroke.