"TSUBAME" means swallow in Japanese. These fonts are based on the shape of Tsubame. The relationship between humans and swallows is as deep-rooted. Japanese swallows have adapted to nesting in and around human habitation from ancient time. So in Japan, they prohibited people from catching or killing swallows because of their beneficial role as insect eaters. Since the relationship between humans and swallows is close, this font's letter spacing is designed to be very tight.

Do you remember that kid from Lord of the Flies? Why do I even remember that kid, I’m too young for that. However, his name was Piggy, and I wanted to make a typeface that resembled him. So this is my tribute to Piggy who got killed by that falling plastic rock in the movie. May he live forever through this typeface, on birthday cards, or maybe some sweet candy packaging or why not through an graphic identity for a toy company?

Health Warning! Coconuts are not that healthy!! I always thought that coconuts were the new quinoa, but apparently they’re not that good for you. They are furry balls of saturated fat, sugar and calories, so don’t go all out with your coconut eating habits! Of course, eating a bit of coconut now and then will not kill you, so enjoy! Coconut Punch is a handmade didone-ish font. Nice and rounded and full of saturated brush strokes. Comes with all the diacritics you need too!

The Wild Bunch, also known as the Doolin–Dalton Gang, was a gang of outlaws that terrorized Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma Territory during the 1890s. They robbed banks, killed lawmen and held up trains. Of course its members were hunted down and 'wanted' posters, with that typical 'Wild West' font, appeared all over. Wild Bunch is a 'wanted poster' type font. It is an all caps font, but upper and lower case differ slightly. A set of alternate, non-eroded, glyphs for the lower case (including alternate numbers) completes this font.

My 9-year old son Sam asks a lot (a LOT!) of questions. Like: ‘what killed the dinosaurs?’ (probably an asteroid), ‘what is the distance to Pluto’ (about 7.5 billion km), ‘how big is space’ (93 billion lightyears - give or take). I am pretty sure he asked me about gravity as well. Gravitational Pull is a messy pencil script font. It comes with a whole bunch of double-letter ligatures and some really wonky glyphs. And no, in its virtual form, this font is not subject to the Earth’s gravitational pull.

After watching a bunch of Danish series like Dicte, Bron and The Killing, I figured it would be nice to give my newest font a Danish name. It became Hyggelig. Hyggelig, like the Dutch word 'Gezellig', cannot be translated into English, but it means something like 'cosy'. And a 'cosy' font it is. Hyggelig is a very cute, very threedee-ish typeface. It works great in poster ads and as a display font. It comes with upper and lower case letters and a whole bunch of diacritics. Enjoy!

My kids asked me what killed the dinosaurs. I told them it probably was a meteor strike off the coast of Yucatán in Mexico. So, when I made this font, that little talk about the meteor hitting earth came to mind and a font name was born! Meteor strike is a slightly slanted brush font. It was made with my Chinese ink and a cheap brush (like most of my brush fonts). Meteor Strike comes with an attitude and a cheeky grin. It will sure leave a lasting impact on your designs!

Like many cities in the Midlands and North of England, Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history linked to making and industry. In Stoke’s case it was pottery. In the early 1900s bottle kilns could be seen covering the landscape of the six towns making up Stoke-on-Trent with hundreds of factories producing some of the best ceramics in the world. But by the 1990s most of these had gone. Torn down for development of housing or just left to rot. During the next few decades Stoke continued to change. The industry was in a decline and Stoke itself was seen as another poor midlands city with a dwindling industry. Then in 2008, Spode, one of the largest and most famousceramics factories in Stoke entered into administration. Pens cast aside, drawings left half finished, designs left in the turned-off kilns; Spode factory was abandoned. This was a real shock and the way everything was getting thrown into skips to be put on the tip was heartbreaking. Thankfully people salvaged some of the technical drawings, sketch design, old sample pieces and ceramics that people hard worked so hard on. Potbank has been in development over a number of years taking inspiration from the heritage and designs from the ceramics industry. It has a mixed Clarendon and Antiqua style structure with its main purpose to be used as a printed type.

Minnesota Plaid is the baddest plaid ever! It may not be the choice pattern for golfers' slacks or bagpipers' kilts, but it has a City-like flavor with its own twist, a stylish ruggedness & toughness that could even be described as a sort of formal graffiti, thanks to the art deco swash of many of its strokes. It’s the kind of look that would be perfectly at home with hip hop or rap music, football and other sports, cars and trucks, power tools, and other manly, masculine usages. Of course, women are just as capable of having the aforementioned interests, too. Minnesota Plaid is the kind of font that can get stuck on you! Digitized by John Bomparte.

A Colporteur is a peddler of books, newspapers, and similar literature. When I was young, we often got visits from colporteurs - mostly they wanted to sell us a very expensive encyclopedia. I haven’t seen them for a while - the internet probably killed their trade, as there are numerous free encyclopedias out there. Colporteur font won’t try to sell you stuff - it basically sells itself. It is a jolly serif family of 6 styles plus a very useful doodle style full of arrows. Use it to sell your encyclopedia online, write a book and use if for the cover or create a ‘hunt the colporteur’ game. Comes with an encyclopedic knowledge of diacritics too!

Kornelis de Vries, a headmaster from the Dutch province of Friesland, cultivated new potato breeds that he named after pupils in his school. In the early 1900s he came up with the tasty Bintje (a Frisian girl’s name) and it became a big success – in Belgium and France it has remained the most popular potato for french fries to this day, more than a century since its introduction. Donald Roos took 10 kilos of fresh Bintje potatoes and cut the Bint typeface by hand with a short, sharp knife. He then inked each character once and printed it twice; the second, lighter printing is accommodated in the lower case alphabet. The Bint family offers a script to make the letters bounce up and down the baseline; with OpenType functionality the font randomly chooses each character from the upper- or lowercase alphabet. ‘Tabular lining figures’ will activate a series of negative numerals in boxes; ‘Discretionary ligatures’ activates specially designed letter combinations like ‘www’ as well as arrows and stars. Bint has a distinct, slightly rough handmade appearance, making it useful for a wide range of designs.

The British Telegraph font family was inspired by classic headers of Britain newspapers from the middle of XX century. Classic look with three width – Light, Regular and Bold. Great for headers, signs or logos. Also, working well for text blocks. - The British Telegraph Light: Use it for text blocks, or for gently light header typographic. Try to make more wide tracking with capitals, it looks good. - The British Telegraph Regular: Great for simple message, quotes, subheaders (If the header is Bold) or advert slogans. - The British Telegraph Bold: Is a killing title buddy. Massive, strong, bold and in the same time – very gentle. Perfectly for main words, headers, signs or logo's. The British Telegraph has full glyph set with standard and discretionary ligatures (Open Type Features).

Linotype Gotharda is part of the Take Type Library, chosen from contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. This display font started as an experiment of the Croatian-German designer Milo Dominik Ivir. He wanted to design a font with characteristics of both sans serif and Gothic faces. From the Gothic he took the heavy strokes, the narrow letters, the exaggerated overmatter and the high x-height. The modern standard forms of the letters s, a, x and z, the clear capitals and the lack of serifs are the characteristics taken from sans serif faces. The result is a font with a constructed, old German feel. Linotype Gotharda is intended exclusivley for headlines in large point sizes.

The design of the typeface Moskau Grotesk and Moskau Pattern is based on the signage created for the Café Moskau in Berlin by the graphic artist Klaus Wittkugel in the beginning of the 1960s. The Café Moskau, across from the Kino International on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin Mitte was one of the prestige edifices of the former DDR (German Democratic Republic). Built in the early 1960s, it advanced over the years and changing social developments to a trademark building of the capital. The lettering display on the roof was created by the graphic artist Klaus Wittkugel (October 17, 1910 – September 19, 1985). He had been Professor at the School for Applied Arts in Berlin, and, in addition to the creation of many posters, book covers and postage stamps, he was responsible for the signage of the Kino International as well as for the complete graphic treatment for the Palace of the Republik. The signage for the Café Moskau with the words »RESTAURANT«, »CAFÉ«, »KONZERT« and »MOCKBA« set in capital letters, becomes the basis for the Moskau Grotesk which was developed by Björn Gogalla in 2013. This face should not be seen as an imitation. A few shortcomings were »fixed«. In favor of maintaining the core characteristics some unique features were, however, not relinquished. Lower case letters and the missing capital letters were designed from scratch. It is not surprising that the plain, unassuming geometrical direction of the basic character style forms a bridge to the architecture of the 1960s. Inspired by the then favored, diverse possibilities inherent in the architectural example and wall reliefs, two complimentary pattern fonts emerged.

The design of the typeface Moskau Grotesk is based on the signage created for the Café Moskau in Berlin by the graphic artist Klaus Wittkugel in the beginning of the 1960s. The Café Moskau, across from the Kino International on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin Mitte was one of the prestige edifices of the former DDR (German Democratic Republic). Built in the early 1960s, it advanced over the years and changing social developments to a trademark building of the capital. The lettering display on the roof was created by the graphic artist Klaus Wittkugel (October 17, 1910 – September 19, 1985). He had been Professor at the School for Applied Arts in Berlin, and, in addition to the creation of many posters, book covers and postage stamps, he was responsible for the signage of the Kino International as well as for the complete graphic treatment for the Palace of the Republik. The signage for the Café Moskau with the words »RESTAURANT«, »CAFÉ«, »KONZERT« and »MOCKBA« set in capital letters, becomes the basis for the Moskau Grotesk which was developed by Björn Gogalla in 2013. This face should not be seen as an imitation. A few shortcomings were »fixed«. In favor of maintaining the core characteristics some unique features were, however, not relinquished. Lower case letters and the missing capital letters were designed from scratch. It is not surprising that the plain, unassuming geometrical direction of the basic character style forms a bridge to the architecture of the 1960s. Inspired by the then favored, diverse possibilities inherent in the architectural example and wall reliefs, two complementary pattern fonts emerged.

My daily challenge is how to get my kids out of bed, feed them breakfast, get them to dress, wash and pack their school bags and drop them off at school before the bell rings. The rest of the day, the challenge is to renovate our house, get my work done, pick up the kids from school (plus all of their friends, who want to come and play) and cook dinner. Of course, the word ‘challenge’ was misused by the internet. Not too long ago, there seemed to be and endless stream of crazy challenges that ended up hurting or even killing a few people. Daily Challenge font is none of the above: it is a clean cut, 100% handmade, all caps font. The only challenge here is how to adapt your design so it fits this font perfectly… ;-)

Comply Slab is inspired by action and extreme sports, Comply gets it's name from the well known skate trick the “No Comply”. This type family doesn't mess about! With 9 weights from thin to black, Comply Slab will give you some great options to use. This font family will “kill it” in both print and digital, in headlines for editorial, posters, banners, websites, apparel, packaging, logos or magazines just to name a few. If you want to make a statement that gets the message across in a slick way with some cool looking glyphs Comply Slab is the font! There is an alternate R and S so you can choose to go with the cool default sharp glyphs or swap them for a more traditional chamfered corner version. Each of the 9 weights has an italic version to add even more action.

The Ancient South Arabian script (Old South Arabian 𐩣𐩯𐩬𐩵 ms3nd; modern Arabic: الْمُسْنَد musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic script in about the 9th century BCE. It was used for writing the Old South Arabian languages Sabaic, Qatabanic, Hadramautic, Minaean, and Hasaitic, and the Ethiopic language Ge'ez in Dʿmt. The earliest inscriptions in the script date to the 9th century BCE in Yemen. There are no letters for vowels, which are marked by matres lectionis. Its mature form was reached around 800 BCE, and its use continued until the 6th century CE, including Ancient North Arabian inscriptions in variants of the alphabet, when it was displaced by the Arabic alphabet In Ethiopia and Eritrea, it evolved later into the Ge'ez script, which, with added symbols throughout the centuries, has been used to write Amharic, Tigrinya and Tigre, as well as other languages (including various Semitic, Cushitic, and Nilo-Saharan languages).

Yorklyn Stencil includes three fonts, each optimized for use at different size ranges. Grande has greater contrast and more delicate breaks designed to be used at larger sizes where finer details are more conspicuous. Medium and Petite are intended for smaller sizes where the breaks and contours must be more resilient. We embedded several OpenType layout features, including traditional fractions and nut fractions. We extensively tested Yorklyn Stencil in what might be the broadest range of media and conditions in the annals of Northwestern Delaware typefounding history. From the ceramic kilns of Heath Ceramics to our studio’s stucco facade, Yorklyn Stencil’s robust curves and deceptively delicate breaks will withstand a wide variety of harsh conditions with unprecedented aplomb. Whether you’re hand cutting a stencil to buzz your bespoke restaurant bar stools or simply looking for a practical yet illustrative display font, Yorklyn Stencil’s elegant efficacy will enhance any creative composition. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

In 1066, William, duke of Normandy, was invading England. He was demanding the crown for himself, against King Harold the Saxon. He killed Harold and reached the crown at Hastings, the well-known battlefield. A few years later, in Bayeux (Normandy, French)was displayed a large tapestry (almost 70 m long) who was telling the story of the conquest. Along the tapestry was written a comment in Latin, using Roman capitals influenced a little by English or Scandinavian style (as it is visible in the Eth character). We have created the font, inspired from this design, adapted for contemporary users, making difference between U and V, I and J, which has not any relevance for ancient Latin scribes, and naturally with Thorn, Oslash, Lslash... and usual accented characters did not exist at the time. We also have reconstructed the K, German double s and Z, always using patterns of the time. We have scrupulously respected the poetic irregular and distressed original forms with two or three alternate for each characters, including reconstructed numerals.

Action Hero - A grungy, textured brush font for action packed movie posters and titles. Action Hero is a hand-drawn brush font inspired by action movie posters of the 1980s and 90s. Does your movie feature a hostage situation on a speeding bus or train? Try Action Hero. How about a one man army tasked with rescuing stranded POWs? Try Action Hero! Maybe a post-apocalyptic race across the desert, or did they dare to kill your favourite second cousin? Big mistake - Get Action Hero!!! The Action Hero font family collects four all-cap variants featuring a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numerals, punctuation, language support and underlines. With so many creative options you'll never have to repeat characters (a personal bugbear with hand-drawn fonts) and achieve authentic hand-drawn looking title designs. Check out the visuals for ideas and tips on how to use this font on posters, movie titles, product packaging, broadcast and advertising. With countless creative options and a design that explodes off the screen, this is the last action hero font you'll ever need!

Finding out an attractive font regarding your project design can be such hard work as you take risks of either losing your clients or killing your good reputations once you pick the wrong font. However, Molly Hugs is the right solution for you. It is a rounded display font to add warm, fun character touches on every design. Its shapes and geometry are simple and without too many detailed points for a legibility reason. Additionally, Molly Hugs, completed with a clipart as a bonus, is perfectly applied for big text sizes to be legible and you can make use of some available features here. Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Molly Hugs fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, headings, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Eight designers present a set of icons that indicate the fun and fantastic world of signage. Each collaborator's solution represents a completely different interpretations on signage vernacular. Akira Kobayashi's "Subsumption", obscured by foliage, offers a perspective that signs on Japanese roads can be vague and beautiful. M.A.D.'s "People Signs" is a graphical association of people signage with a variety of well known situation symbols. Cynthia Jacquette's "Honest Arrows" are a series of arrows that attempts to honestly tell you how to get from point A to Point B in a big, confusing city. Mike Kohnke's "Road Kill" and the "Bump & Bruise" highlight how signs make for perfect targets when unloading a round of buckshot, and the licking a contruction barrier often endures. Joachim Muller-Lance's "Traffic Blends" places faces on things! Hey, didn't you give your first car a nickname? Cars are alive, you know - they guzzle and smoke all day. Jean-Benoît Lévy's "Inner-State" was inspired while reading the California driver handbook to pass a driver's test. Kevin Roberson's "Tail Lighting" reminds us to drive carefully and not to forget to signal. Diana Stoen's "Drivers Out There" shows us "driver personality archetypes", including the lil'ol lady that everyone tries to avoid.

Microbrew Unicase is the latest addition to the Microbrew family, a versatile retro display family. Microbrew Unicase has 14 individual styles plus a very functional set of catchwords, and a fresh and eclectic set of retro-style ornaments. Microbrew Unicase sports a nice mix between wood type poster style, and vintage letterpress. The more detailed styles work well at large sizes, and the cleaner styles add legibility at smaller sizes. Microbrew Unicase is an all caps display font, but the lowercase act as alternates. The uppercase are all uppercase letter forms, while the lowercase is mixed. Type in all caps to be a buzz-kill. Mix upper and lowercase to have a little fun. Or type in all lowercase to have a party! (more informal) For super-easy alternates, just mix uppercase and lowercase letters. To add to the realism, Microbrew Unicase includes double-letter ligatures. Microbrew Unicase also includes a set of extremely intentional and eclectic ornaments and symbols. Designed to give a vintage feel, the ornaments and symbols compliment Microbrew nicely to round off the family. The ornaments also include old style numbers, and lots of retro symbols. Don't let the name fool you, Microbrew Unicase is very versatile and works great for almost any subject matter, including weddings, birthdays, restaurants, coffee shops, music, and many more. Opentype features include automatic fractions, subscript numbers, superscript numbers, and double-letter ligatures.

The great enigma There are hidden depths to FS Silas Sans. First impressions are of a functional, multi-purpose typeface with a cool, edgy, angular character. Gaze into its eyes a little longer, though, and you'll detect a more nuanced, colourful personality, with full, open, satisfyingly squarish forms balancing the abruptness of the sharply-angled terminals and ascenders. Authoritative, official and stern on the outside; amiable and welcoming on the inside. You’re so Dane The designers, led by Phil Garnham, were trying to capture something straight-talking, authentic, and a little... Scandinavian. ‘We were thinking about some of the characters in Danish dramas that were on in the early stages of the font’s development, like The Killing and The Bridge,’ says Phil. ‘The police officers, that is, not the psychopathic killers. Smart and a bit cool, but with a warm heart.’ For a good Danish name, we settled on Silas. It was that or Hans-Christian. The finer points Silas Sans rewards close inspection. Study, if you will, its amply squarish forms, the roomy ‘o’ and ‘e’, in particular. Observe the angular ascenders and terminals of, for example, the ‘L’, ‘I’, ‘d’ and ‘i’, inferring the movement and lift of a pen. Consider the cuts to the ‘A’ and ‘v’ that create harmony with adjacent letters. And scrutinise the subtle ink traps set within the ‘A’ and ‘Y’ for reproduction at small sizes. A fine subject, we think you’ll agree, and available in a versatile range of weights to make (with FS Silas Slab) a typographic system with a comprehensive hierarchy.

Minuet, an informal script with crossover deco elements giving it an unmistakable 1940s flavor, is a revival and expansion of the Rondo family, the last typeface drawn by Stefan Schlesinger before his death. This family was initially supposed to be a typeface based on the strong, flowing script Schlesinger liked to use in the ads he designed, particularly the ones he did for Van Houten’s cocoa products. But for technical reasons the Lettergieterij Amsterdam mandated the face to be made from unattached letters, rather than the original connected script. Schlesinger and Dooijes finished the lowercase and the first drawings of the uppercase just before Schlesinger was sent to a prison camp in 1942. Dooijes completed the design on his own, and drew the bold according to Schlesigner’s instructions. The typeface family was finished in February of 1944, and Schlesinger was killed in October of that same year. Though he did see and approve the final proofs, he never actually saw his letters in use. It took almost four more years for the Lettergieterij Amsterdam to produce the fonts. The typeface was officially announced in November of 1948, and immediately became a bestseller. By 1966, according to a memo from the foundry, the typeface had become “almost too popular”. This digital version of Schlesigner’s and Dooijes’s work greatly expands on the metal fonts. Both weights include a complete set of lowercase alternates — based on Schlesinger’s own drawings, as well as alternative variations for some of the capitals, a few ligatures, and extended language support covering Western, Eastern and Central European languages, plus Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese and Turkish. Minuet is available in all popular formats. The OpenType version, Minuet Pro, takes advantage of internal font programming to combine the main and alternate fonts into a single file per weight, making all alternates and ligatures automatically available at the push of a button in OpenType supporting programs.

The design process of this font was rudely interrupted on August 11th, 2015, when my first child, Hazel, was born. Thinking up names for fonts can be tricky, as can thinking up names for babies, so when the font was finally finished, it seemed like a good idea to kill two birds with one stone, and here it is: Hazel Script. Hazel Script is a finely crafted, elegant, connecting script. I wanted to make something unique, and to this end, the contrast in the face is not based on any ductal logic, or the writing of some imagined tool. The thick parts of glyphs are purely aesthetic devices, placed to give the otherwise monoline font an interesting rhythm. The over-sized upper case letters follow a mid-century lettering skeleton, and swash forms can be used judiciously to add spice to the text. Hazel Script works "out of the box" but to really get the best out of it, use OpenType-savvy programs to unlock a world of swashes, alternates, ligatures and the like. In detail, the features are as follows: Swash - alternate forms for many glyphs Stylistic Sets - 1: script r, 2: alternate s, 3: script z, 4 and 5: more swash options, 4,5,6 and 7: access to alternate ampersands (the font boasts six to choose from!), 8: connecting forms for K, L, R, X and Z. Localised forms - ij digraphs for Dutch, and a script lslash for Polish. Standard ligatures - a mixture of ligatures, including the 'percent off' (just type "% off") and a heart that connects to the ends of words (type "<3") Automatic fractions Ordinals - a and o for Spanish etc. but also s,t,r,d,h and n for English 1st 2nd and 3rd etc. Contextual alternates - automatically places special start and end glyphs where necessary. Hazel Script would look great in glossy magazines set large, or would make a slightly unorthodox choice for wedding stationery, birth announcements, letterheads...

The Schneidler Latein is a sharp and elegant Antiqua based on the ductus of the broad edged pen with a strong character. Running perfectly in paragraph text giving it something quite special and being effortlessly legible at the same time, Schneidler Latein works great in headings as well. Each glyph is a piece of art ready to be used in branding and blowup combining beauty and personality in a kick-ass blend. It is absolutely new to the digital world as it never has been digitized before. This new version digitized, further developed and extended by artist and graphic designer Lena Schmidt comes in nine styles from which there are four application-related ones like Subtext and Display and five weight-related ones like Bold and Heavy. Each style contains 948 glyphs, variations of numbers, three stylistic sets one preserving the historic forms of changed characters, small caps, open type features and superior and inferior characters. Designed by F. H. Ernst Schneidler the Schneidler Latein was released in 1916, the bold version in 1920 and the italics in 1921. Schneidler was born in 1882 in Berlin. He studied at the school for applied arts in Düsseldorf with professor F. H. Ehmcke and P. Behrens. He was as a painter, graphic designer and illustrator. In 1920 he was appointed as teacher in the school for applied arts Stuttgart. His students were Albert Kapr, Imre Reiner and Lilo Rasch-Naegele among others. Further well-known fonts from his hands are for example Legende, Amalthea, Schneidler Mediävel and Schneidler Antiqua. Lena Schmidt was born 1981 in Bremen. She is a german painter, graphic designer and illustrator mostly known for her huge wood carving paintings. From 2003 to 2011 she studied Fine Arts in Hamburg with professor Matt Mullican. From 2015 to 2019 she studied graphic design with a focus on type design at HAW Hamburg Department Design with professor Jovica Veljović. She lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.

THE SPARK Uniform started as a spark of inspiration one day while I was shopping at the store. I was looking at some typography on a can of dog food and the idea popped into my head, “What if there was a geometric typeface with a circular O that when condensed, the O became straight sided, instead of becoming an oval?” I quickly sketched out the concept of Uniform and liked what I saw, the only problem was I was working full time as a graphic designer, and as a newly married husband, I didn’t have any time to make the extensive typeface. LETDOWN A year and a half later, shortly after the birth of my first child, my boss cut my hours in half. Although stressful, I saw this event as an opportunity to finally have time to complete the typeface I had in my head. I spent a couple months putting together a Kickstarter campaign, thinking it would be a smashing success, and I would be able to live off the donations long enough to complete the typeface. Wrong! The campaign was a flop and I was left discouraged and dejected, thinking that the great idea I had in my head would never become a reality... PERSEVERANCE At the end of the year, in December 2013, I decided to go for it and make this new type family no matter what it took. I began waking up a few hours before work each morning (getting only four hours of sleep each night) carefully crafting each individual glyph day by day. After nine months of hard work (and just about killing myself in the process!) in October 2014, I finally had a finished product ready to be released to the public! THE PINNACLE Fast forward a few years and now Uniform has reached it's pinnacle, Uniform Pro. Uniform Pro now offers extended language support including Cyrillic and Greek character sets, integrated italic styles, additional weights, and additional OpenType features.

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.