«Envelove» is the brand new typographic challenge handwritten by Yani Arabena and designed along with Guille Vizzari and Ale Paul, for Sudtipos. It all started as a game for Yani. A carefree and spontaneous calligraphy, making use of the pointed nib with black ink, exploring its expressive possibilities pressing against paper. With time that nib turned into her dearest tool to flow through her writing, breeding this particular style of hers that let her trespass the barrier that kept personal and professional passions apart. All that inspiration is present in «Envelove», a play on words that reflects the love of letters. An expressive free-and-easy typeface that follows no formal calligraphic model and lets itself go with the meaning of words, rhythm and sensations. «Envelove» successfully joins three different fonts, «Envelove Script»—free, spontaneous and unique of its kind—going together with «Envelove Caps»—an uppercase style that builds controlled but dynamic words thanks to its alternates and ligatures, and to its own true Small Caps set as well—and «Envelove Icons», ideal to decorate and bring to life any written message. «Envelove» encourages you to write as if you have a nib, ink and an envelope. It invites you to take part in other worlds like a magic cocktail, a summer night, a long-awaited reunion, a first dance, a dish cooked with your own hands. The fashion world, gourmet, stationery, scrapbooking and everyone where a Handmade or Handcrafted feel is craved for, save a special place for «Envelove». (The illustration series that are shown with «Envelove» were made by the incredible Argentine illustrator Eugenia Mello.)

Dever’s brute, industrial lines are rounded up in this new typeface from Jeremy Dooley. Dever combines plenty of inspirations. It’s the flair of the Wild West melded with a shout out to the sign painters and package lettering artists of the 1800s. Dever’s big, bold, and handy frame moves through all three of the family’s strapping members. First is the sans. No doubts on what this brother’s like. Dever Sans is as straight-forward as you’ll find in this family with its four separate weights and numerous distressed options. The second of the kin’s a bit of half-breed, you might say. Pointed serifs bring a sharpness to this outfit. Rounding out the family is Dever Wedge, a bit of wild rodeo all its own. This poke’s a quick draw with any of its 107 font, and with it’s auto-replacing alternates, no two repeating characters are alike. You’re guaranteed a great show anytime Dever leaves the chute. The route to Dever was long, with many a switchback. The Wedge variant was designed first, shelved, then developed into Plathorn. But I wanted to return to those brutish forms and decided to round out the family with a sans, serif and plenty of other options. Any of the Dever family have an extended character set including Central and Eastern European languages. The strong faces have specially adapted sub-families, too, so they’re bound and determined to have an outstanding impact at whatever size you use ‘em. It’s a hard ride ahead corralling all those words. Be sure and add these able-bodied boys to your posse today!

A comprehensive and faithful rendition of one of the finest metal typefaces of the 20th century. Rudolf Koch designed Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift (initially conceived as “Missal Schrift”, and later referred to also as “Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch”) between 1919 and 1925 for the Gebr. Klingspor Type Foundry in Offenbach am Main. It is an impressive textura typeface, being sharp, elegant, spiky, sensitive and noble at the same time. Some of its most notable features have to do with the delicate decorations, the thin but subtly swelling lines that parallel or bridge strokes in the capitals, the hairline endings that terminate each stroke in both the capitals and the lowercase letters, the subtle joining of hairlines to thicker strokes, and the tension of some of the transitional curves. Koch’s original design included two sets of capitals (normal and condensed); alternates for a, d, e, r, s and z, plus long s; short and long flourished finial forms for f and t; thirty-five ligatures; and eighteen decorative pieces (Zierstücke). All of these features, plus several additional ones for modern use (including the usual standard characters for typesetting in modern Western languages, additional alternates and ligatures, plus carefully coded Opentype features), have been thoroughly implemented to the highest and most lively level of detail in the present font, in the hope that the past greatness of Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift will finally step into the modern OpenType realm. The main sources used during the font design process were several pages from a specimen book issued by the Gebr. Klingspor Type Foundry in 1927. Other sources were as follows: Bain, P., and Shaw, P. (Eds.) (1998), Blackletter: Type and National Identity, New York: Princeton Architectural Press (p. 43); Hendlmeier, W. (1994), Kunstwerke der Schrift, Hannover: Bund für Deutsche Schrift und Sprache (pp. 56-7); Kapr, A. (1983), Schriftkunst, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst (p. 453); Kapr, A. (1993), Fraktur - Form und Geschichte der gebrochenen Schriften, Mainz: Verlag Hermann Schmidt (pp. 124-5); and Klingspor, K. (1949), Über Schönheit von Schrift und Druck, Frankfurt am Main: Georg Kurt Schauer (pp. 136-7). Some public and private comments by renowned designer and design historian Paul Shaw have also influenced both the design and the description of the present font. Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift” Font Page.

Sildetas is an elegant high-contrast script face. Sildetas was conceived as non-connected, high-contrast and ultra heavy script, as best exemplified by the Black weight. However, it was too much of a temptation to design a hairline variant, and this exploration gave the family’s lighter weights an elegant, graceful feel. The script was modified further to use connected letterforms as the primary glyphs. With its unique swirled ball terminals, this versatile script draws immediate attention. The face glides and flows across the page and the swirling ball terminals provide an interesting diversion to the flow. The lighter weights have an almost spencerian look. Sildetas includes six weights and is a very unique script face. Lighter weights can be used for elegant invitiations. Sildetas can get the job done for many unique design tasks. Sildetas includes many useful OpenType features, including a set of non-connecting and titling alternates, ligatures, and two types of end swashes. Opentype features include simplified swashed stylistic alternates without ball terminals, swash endings, ending contextual alternates, discretionary ligatures, ligatures and five different stylistic sets filled with alternates. In total, there are over 60 alternate letterforms. OpenType-capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages.

Carter Sans: a wonderfully accomplished humanist sans serif with a beautiful twist Matthew Carter has been involved in designing typefaces since before many of us were in diapers. With dozens of great typefaces to his name, he has finally put his name to one. His newest typeface, Carter Sans™, brings together those decades of wisdom, experience, and technical expertise. The result is a humanist sans with flared strokes and terminals, a feature that has more in common with the chisel rather than the broad nib pen. Subtle detail, elegant curves, and graceful proportions make for an exceptional and distinctive sans serif typeface, that Carter himself describes as a 'humanist stressed sans.' This imbues the letterforms with a dynamism sometimes lacking in humanist sans serifs. Use it to striking effect in all-caps settings, or for extended texts. Carter Sans was recently used to great effect by Michael Bierut and Joe Marianek of Pentagram, in their work for the Art Directors Club.Carter Sans italics are unfussy, with the only remnants of cursiveness in letters like e and f. It sets beautifully with the roman. Award winning type designer Dan Reynolds (Malabar™ et al.) collaborated with Carter to produce a type that looks just magnificent in print; it would also make a fine choice for that letterpress project! Certainly a welcome addition to anyone's type library.

A few bold caps drawn by Albert Du Bois for the 1906 Henderson Sign Painter book started me in the direction of looking at how sign painters approached slabs after the industrial revolution. The usual happened from there. My exercise in the early lettering roots of what eventually became the definition of geometric typography ended up having a life of its own. The majuscules led to minuscules, one idiosyncratic bold weight led to six more, and uprights led to italics. What was kind-of-interesting in the early twentieth century persuaded me to make it interesting enough a century later. This of course meant alternates, swashes, the standard baggage that keeps calling my name. Henderson Slab is a family of seven weights plus italics, all full of open features and extended Latin language support. Part of this family’s appeal is its coverage of nearly the entire of the slab serif through the last 100 years — the basis is the manual, humanist origins, the swashed forms come right out of the phototypesetting era, and the alternates and mostly modern constructs of contemporary ideas. The result is a set with the ability to function in modern spaces, from corporate to editorial, in text or display, while both winking and nodding at the roots of what is now considered a geometric endeavor. (Basic version do not include alternates, swashes, etc).

Linex Sweet was designed by Albert Boton in the late 1990s. It's a smallish family of three weights; the middle weight has an italic companion face. With its soft corners and slightly quirky head-serifs, Linex Sweet is a friendly design that sees much use. Several years later, Boton began sketching a new design, based on the original Linex Sweet but with a little more authority and grace. Linex Sans is the result. A mix of crisp angles and soft shapes, this new addition to the extended Linex family is both inviting and elegant. The subtle calligraphic overtones distinguish the design from more traditional sans serif designs. A three-weight family with a complementary italic for the Regular weight, Linex Sans is a versatile communications tool in both text and display sizes. It offers that mix of sophistication and joie de vivre that characterizes the designs of Albert Boton. Boton began his professional career as a carpenter. Fortunately for designers and typographers, he quickly turned from pounding nails to hammering out graphic design and constructing great letterforms as a profession. In his long career, he has created hundreds of distinctive, highly useful and award-winning designs. And even though he is now retired from active business, Boton continues to create fresh, new typeface designs. Add Linex Sans to the list.

Brinca is an intrepid ‘full spectrum’ typeface with emotional range and a dynamic heart. Morphing sharp tight pleats that relax into office ready neutral sans, then plump into joyful bouncy letters with mesmerizing fluency, Brinca is ready to adapt to a wide variety of expressive needs. Named after its jumping extremes of the type’s styles; from coiled spring to stuffed and bouncy, Brinca is also a leap into new possibilities for display type design. Because of its chameleon-like range of styles, Brinca is a versatile workhorse. It’s a great choice for brand identities ready to embrace expressive range, and it’s perfect for fine-tuned packaging, events promotions, merch, product lines, and much more. WIth its very wide spectrum of options, It’s a single typeface that can be used to design a library’s worth of book covers. (We put it to the test!) About Brinca was designed by Alexander Wright and Rodrigo Fuenzalida with Michu Benaim Steiner for In-House Int’l foundry, the type foundry of brand consultancy In-House International. It was developed by Rodrigo Fuenzalida at FragType, and available through YouWorkForThem. In-House foundry offers bold, fearless, and expressive, display typefaces that tell a story. Its previous releases have been featured on Design Milk, DesignBoom, Slanted, PAGE. They’ve also been used to create standout work by designers around the world, and even won some awards.

The Metro Office family is designed after the model of the original sans serif family – Metro No.1 – produced by W.A. Dwiggins and Mergenthaler Linotype’s design studio during the late 1920s and 1930s. A distinctly new interpretation of the sans serif idea, Metro was a thoroughly “American” sans serif when it was released. However, over the ensuing decades, it became a favorite the world over. Moreover, it is one of the first “humanist” sans serif typefaces designed. While redesigning Metro in 2006, Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi drew from his own knowledge of humanistic letterforms. The result is a redefined Metro; a typeface that is finally ready for heavy text setting. The original Linotype Metro No.1 never had italic variants. Kobayashi has created oblique variants, extending its use in document setting. A double-storey a and g, as well as a wider w were features of Dwiggins’ original Metro design that were filtered out by Mergenthaler Linotype in the 1930s. Kobayashi remedied this historical slight, retooling Dwiggins’ original forms and optimizing their legibility. Kobayashi has additionally retooled some of Metro’s more troublesome letters, which has black elements that became too dense. By opening up the troublesome joins (like that on the Q), Kobayashi has given his new Metro a more even color in text, improving its legibility while retaining its original spirit.

For several years I have been thinking about the design of a type family that explores, on the one hand, the modernist aesthetic that we know, from the Alphabet "a.r." designed by Władysław Strzemiński, and on the other, to the multiscript pre-war Warsaw. This is how the idea of creating the Polin Sans typeface was born. After researching on geometric variants of the Cyrillic alphabet, I was inspired by the text "Towards an open layout: A letter to Volodya Yefimov". I was intrigued by the fact that circular forms, which we are mostly familiar with in the Bulgarian Cyrillic, can be implemented in the classical version, without disrupting the reading process. At the same time, while working on typoteka.pl, I was fascinated by the Hebrew typeface jaffa, published by the Idźkowski & Sk-a foundry, which at some points looks like the Hebrew equivalent of the Alphabet "a.r.". Ben Nathan from Israel joined the project and was responsible for creating his native script. The idea of creating a multiscript family expanded to include Greek and Vietnamese. As a result, Polin Sans is a historical journey through the nooks and crannies of Polish modernism, which was created by people with diverse cultural backgrounds. The Polin Sans family was designed by Mateusz Machalski and Ben Nathan with the support of Michał Gorczyca and Małgorzata Bartosik.

Oxford Street is a signage font that began as a redrawing of the capital letters used for street nameplates in the borough of Westminster in Central London. The nameplates were designed in 1967 by the Design Research Unit using custom lettering based on Adrian Frutiger’s Univers typeface, a curious combination of Univers 69 Bold Ultra Condensed, a weight that doesn’t seem to exist but which would flatten the long curves of glyphs such as O, C and D, and Universe 67 Bold Condensed with its more rounded lobes on glyphs like B, P and R. Letters were then remodelled to improve their use on street signs. Thin strokes like the inner diagonals of M and N were thickened to create a more monolinear alphabet; the high interior apexes were lowered and the wide joins thinned. The crossbar of the A was lowered, the K was made double junction, and the tail of the Q was given a baseline curve. K-Type Oxford Street continues the process of impertinent improvement and includes myriad minor adjustments and several more conspicuous amendments. The stroke junctions of M and N are further narrowed and their interior apexes modified. The middle apex of the W is narrowed and the glyph is a little more condensed. The C and S are drawn more open, terminals slightly shortened. The K-Type font adds a new lowercase which is also made more monolinear so better suited to signage, loosely based on Univers but also taking inspiration from the Transport typeface both in a taller x-height and character formation. The lowercase L has a curled foot, the k is double junctioned to match the uppercase, and terminals of a, c, e, g and s are drawn shorter for openness and clarity. A full repertoire of Latin Extended-A characters features low-rise diacritics that keep congestion to a minimum in multiple lines of text. The font tips the hat to signage history by including stylistic alternates for M, W and w that have the pointed middles of the earlier MOT street sign typeface. Incidentally, Alistair Hall (‘London Street Signs’, Batsford, 2020) notes that when the manufacturer of signs was changed in 2007, Helvetica Bold Condensed was substituted in place of the custom design, “an unfortunate case of an off-the-peg suit replacing a tailored one” and a blunder that has happily since been rectified, though offending nameplates can still be spotted by discerning font fans.