Selected as one of “Our Favorite Typefaces of 2013” by Typographica.org, Dark Angel is the first completely new take in decades on the traditional “blackletter” font style. It began its journey towards the light years ago when this style was born as a sketch for a new logo for the California Angels baseball team (renamed shortly thereafter the Anaheim Angels). The Angels logo never happened, but that sketch has risen from the dead and become the basis for this brand new font design—and was also the source for the name. It’s kind of blackletter in feel, but as a display font it’s so much more. It is far more legible than most “Old English” or “Gothic Script” styles, and incorporates many features never before seen in them, such as swashes, tails and a plethora of ligatures. Dark Angel can be purchased in its regular solid form, or as Dark Angel Underlight—a handtooled font. If these two fonts are purchased together, the Family package will contain a third font—Dark Angel Highlight. With this font layered over the basic font, you can achieve two–color typesetting when the highlight and the base font are assigned two different colors. Dark Angel has enough language support to make the builders of Babel envious—its 1,163 glyphs can be used to set copy in 59 different languages. From A to Z: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bemba, Bosnian, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Ganda, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kalaallisut, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Lithuanian, Luo, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romansh, Sango, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Turkish, Welsh, and last (but not least) Zulu. PLEASE NOTE: Dark Angel is a cross-platform font which depends to some extent on certain advanced OpenType features, therefore it can be used to its full potential only with programs that support those features. ADDITIONALLY: When setting Dark Angel one should ALWAYS select the “Standard Ligatures" and “Contextual Alternates” buttons in your OpenType palette. Please see the “Read–Me–First!” file in the Gallery section.

A type designed in a grid, like on display panels Type is not only printed. There were always and still are a number of forms of type versions which function completely differently. Even very early in the history of script there were attempts to combine a few single elements into the diverse forms of individual characters and also efforts to construct the forms of letters within a geometric grid system. The “instructions” of Albrecht Dürer are probably most well-known. But although designers of past centuries assumed the ideal to basically be an artist’s handwritten script, the idea which developed in the course of mechanization was to “build” characters in a building block system only by stringing together one basic element — the so-called grid type was discovered, represented most commonly today by »pixel types.« But even before computers, there were display systems which presented types with the help of a mechanical grid display, like the display panels in public transportation (bus, train) or at airports and train stations. In a streetcar, I met up with a modern variation of this display which reveals the name of each tram stop as it is approached. This system was based on a customary coarse square grid, but the individual squares were also divided again diagonally in four triangles. In this way it is possible to display slants and to simulate round forms more accurately as with only squares. The displayed characters still aren’t comparable to a decent typeface — on the contrary, the lower case letters are surprisingly ugly — but they form a much more legible type than that of ordinary [quadrate] grid types. DeDisplay from ingoFonts is this kind of type, constructed from tiny triangles which are in turn grouped in small squares. The stem widths are formed by two squares; the height of upper case characters is 10, the x-height 7 squares. DeDisplay is available in three versions: DeDisplay 1 is the complex original with spaces between the triangles, DeDisplay 2 forgoes dividing the triangles and thus appears somewhat darker or “bold,” and DeDisplay 3 is to some extent the “black” and doesn’t even include spaces between the individual squares.

Teo Tuominen’s Trevor took its first breath as a revival of an 18th century antiqua, but culminated in an entirely new and good-natured family. Trevor is an affable slab serif in nature: both heavy and kind. Known for their familiarity and their dark colour, the terminals of slab serifs put additional weight along the line to maintain an inky presence. Their clunky forms reveal slight immaturity and arouse the reader’s sympathy for the subject at hand. Trevor connects with others by consciously riding the line between being personal and commanding. One goal with Trevor was to pair the robust nature of a low contrast slab serif with more sophisticated elements, such as the ball terminals. So wherever one looks in Trevor, rounded corners rule the day, softening the overall appearance by mimicking ink spread made by old metal type. The easygoing look is tempered by very few inktraps and sharp corners, mostly to the inside of characters and in acute angles. Whatever Trevor is paired with, it has an altruistic outlook in that it sees the best in others. It’s the neighbourly type family
 — the neighbour you actually want. Trevor’s almost monolinear weight and high x-height give it a typewriter look in the extralight and light weights, but the whole family was made to work with many other font styles, design work, and information structures. It certainly finds its home in packaging and advertising, its sturdy verticality and narrowness fit the needs of headlines and intro text, and its seven weights are primed for plays and involved text needing many layers of distinction. The black weight is treated like a separate display style with altered ball terminals and serifs to capitalise on the added heft. Trevor’s seven roman weights cover the Latin A Extended glyph set to bring its kindly and commanding outlook to your projects. Along with alternate version of the ‘R’ in the black weight, its OpenType features include both tabular and proportional lining and oldstyle figures, ligatures, and fractions. The complete Trevor family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Fantini is the revival and elaborate update of a typeface called Fantan, made in-house and released in 1970 by a minor Chicago film type supplier called Custom Headings International. In the most excellent tradition of seriously-planned American film faces back then, CHI released a full complement of swashes and alternates to the curly art nouveau letters. Fantan didn't fare much among the type scene's big players back then, but it did spread like electricity among the smaller ones, the mom-and-pop type shops. But by the late 1980s, when film type was giving up the ghost, most smaller players in the industry were gone, in some cases along with little original libraries that existed nowhere else and became instant rarities on their way to be forgotten and almost impossible to resurrect for future technologies. Fantini is the fun and curly art nouveau font bridging the softness and psychedelia of the 1960s with the flirtatious flare of the 1970s like no other face does. Elements of psychedelia and funk flare out and intermix crazily to create cool, swirly letters packed with a lot of joy and energy. This is the kind of American art nouveau font that made its comeback in the late 20th century and is now a standard visual in the branding drive of almost every consumer product, from coffee labels to book and music covers to your favorite sugar or thirst-crunching fix. Alongside Fantini's enormous main font come small caps and three extra fonts loaded with swashy alternates and variations on plenty of letters. All available in all popular font formats. Fantini Pro, the OpenType version, packs the whole she-bang in a single font of high versatility for those who have applications that support advanced type technologies. In order to make Fantini a reality, Canada Type received original 2" film specimen from Robert Donona, a Clevelander whose enthusiasm about American film type has never faltered, even decades after the technology itself became obsolete. Keep an eye out for that name. Robert, who was computer-reluctant for the longest time, has now come a long way toward mastering digital type design.

For everyone wishing for a modern serif that’s as clear and readable as a sans in restrictive digital environments, meet Portada by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione. Sans serifs are commonly used on small screens to save space and carry a modern tone. Serifs may appear fickle and unsteady, pixel grids change from one product to another, and space is at a premium. Portada now provides a serif option for these restrictive digital environments, putting that old trope to rest. The screen has met its serif match. Portada was created from and for the digital world — from e-ink or harsh grids to Retina capability — making it one of the few serifs of its kind. Portada’s text and titling styles were engineered for superlative performance, making great use of sturdy serifs, wide proportions, ample x-height, clear interior negative space, and its subservient personality. After all, words always take priority in text. It’s not all business, though. Portada’s italics contain an artefact of calligraphy in which the directionality of the instrokes and the returning curves of the outstrokes give the family a little unexpected brio. Yet even the terminals are stopped short of flourished self-absorption to retain their digital clarity. When printed these details are downright comforting. Portada’s titling styles enact slight changes while reducing the individual width of each character and keeping the internal space clear. Titling italics have increased expressiveness across a few characters rather than maxing out the personality in each individual glyph. Digital magazines, newspapers, your favourite novel, and all forms of continuous screen reading benefit from Portada’s features. This family can also cover many of the needs developers have: user interface, showing data intensive apps on screen, even one-word directives and dialogs. And, as a free download, an exhaustive set of dark and light icons is included to maintain Portada’s consistent presence, whether as a word or an image. The complete Portada family (eight text styles, ten titling styles, and one icon set) is designed for extensive, clear screen use — a rare serif on equal footing with a sans.

Protipo helps information designers work smarter. Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s Protipo type family is an information designer’s toolbox: a low-contrast sans of three text widths with a separate headline family, accompanied by an impressive two-weight icon set, and working with the advanced variable (VAR) font format. From annual reports and wayfinding to front page infographics and poster use, designers consistently turn to the simplicity and starkness of grotesque sans fonts to get their point across. Protipo is made for such environments. When designing information you may start with the headline, which in the case of this family is called Protipo Compact and comes in eight weights. From Hairline to Black, set it large, overlap it, or let it run off the page. Protipo Compact was made to hit hard and attract attention with a different character set and different proportions than the three text fonts. It sets the stage for what’s to come. Great information designers are aces at melding form and function, so we’ve stacked the Protipo family with Narrow, Regular, and Wide versions as a way of organising your information and directing the reader. Each width has seven distinct weights (light to bold) and italics, while maintaining the round-rect shapes of its DNA. Subtle details amplify its place in the typographic universe, like an ‘a’ and ‘e’ that go from solid to supple when italicising, an ‘f’ that gains an italic descender, two versions of the lowercase ‘r’ and ‘l’, and clipped corners on diagonals to keep the tight fit inherent to this kind of design work. Protipo is not meant to be loudmouthed, but stakes its claim through refinement, breadth, and impact. Some changes at first don’t seem substantial, but the Protipo family doesn’t handle text like most in its category. Protipo helps readers find and process data in a clear and unequivocal way and accounts for the complexity involved in rendering large amounts of information while still appealing to aesthetics. Protipo is ideal in all informative situations: apps, infographics, UI, wayfinding, transport, posters, display, and even internet memes. Add to all this the icon sets and upcoming variable font capability, and you’re assured a level of creativity, productivity, and impact on a much greater scale.

Inspired by early grotesque typefaces such as Akzidenz Grotesk and Venus, Werksatz is our contemporary interpretation of this beloved genre. Some things are timeless. These are the things that only get better with use. The aforementioned typefaces certainly belong into this category. Rediscovered by designers from every generation again and again, they are here to stay. However, as tools evolve and technology moves on, even a well-tried design has to adapt to this evolution continuously in order to stand the test of time. Werksatz is such an adaptation, taking the best from the invincible classics and infusing them with the warm blood of today’s tech. With 10 weights from Thin to Black, each with painstakingly fine-tuned obliques, and more than 940 characters per style, this font family is ready for the future. Its Extended Latin support ensures you won’t miss a letter in any of hundreds of languages. Special glyphs like three variations of arrows and additional shapes will make your design work so much easier—for well-structured forms as well as radical editorial layouts. Among a treasure trove of OpenType features, you’ll find essentials such as Capital Spacing, Case-Sensitive Forms, and Ligatures, but also advanced functions like Small Caps, Subscript and Inferior figures and letters, plenty figure sets (Lining Figures, Tabular Figures, Old-Style Figures, circled and squared figures, figures for small caps … you get the idea), Slashed Zero, and more. You’ll discover that Werksatz is less formalistic and rigid than your average neogrotesk typeface. Sure, you can use it for serious business—whether in corporate design, branding, editorial design, publication design, or web design for industries and topics ranging from politics, government, management, or law to technology, entrepreneurship, commerce, or finance. However, Werksatz is much more versatile than that. Its more human appearance also allows for effective use in culture, fashion, art, entertainment, sports, exhibitions, leisure, and luxury. It’s an excellent choice for wayfinding applications, apps, packaging, and all kinds of nonfiction books. Other Grotesks with big names are left behind outdated by their proprietors, but Werksatz is here to stay. The classic industrial warmth of these letterforms will age like fine wine.

When Dupla was designed, its DNA shown the best of the typographic heritage from the XIX century types, the oldest san serif known, also named as “Grotesk”, a soft synonym for bizarre, unnatural weird. XIX century Germans' eyes were surprised, astonished by the formal strangeness that provoked the mutilation of the well known serifed types. But the skeleton and DNA are barely perceptible, an invisible part of the nature of objects. We are interested in the epidermis, the outer, the visible, which directly speak to the eyes, and Dupla tells us with overwhelming presence, that is a formal, traditional type, covered with a childlike sweetness, with slight curves, epidermic, sweetening even ink’s traps up. Frutiger said that Latin alphabet letter’s minimum skeleton is like a lock where you should fit all the letters you see, but that skeleton allows many skins. We use a different skin for every specific use. And Dupla’s skin points to how generous, how friendly it is; the sweetness of the big and good-natured. They do not feel very comfortable in low-cost airplanes company’s seats, but in the proper location with enough room, they'll fill the atmosphere with kindness. Do not ask for narrow columns, or terse captions in squalid sizes; do not ask for ridiculous “small print” in dark contracts where «The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part …» That’s not for Dupla. Large headlines, generous width columns to cover, rude pullquotes half-breaking columns, loud exclamations, great sizes, with black weights. It’s in the insultingly generous, almost obscene use where Dupla is felt. And if you consider this a obscene, gargantuan, typographical feast, Dupla brings you everything to demonstrate that quantity does not mean less quality. Multi-language support, Latin plus full coverage, complete sets of small caps, fractions, old numerals, modern, tabular, bonds and all the “gourmet” paraphernalia that Patau has accustomed us, after many years of work. If you want to be obscene and pass the censorship, use Dupla. Hedonism is just a venial sin.