Some time ago I bought my smallest book ever: Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet* 57 x 72 mm. I thought it was the sweetest little book I had ever seen. Not knowing about the fame of the designer Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), I put it in some dark drawer and looked at it from time to time. Kate’s books were all outstanding successes in English publishing history; she was an icon of the Victorian era. Some of those books are still being reprinted today. This little gem I had accidentally acquired has become very rare and I have not found any reprints yet. So I thought maybe I could adapt her drawings for use on today’s computers. I ventured to redraw her delicate illustrations, blowing them up 300 percent, being forced to simplify them without losing her touch. It took quite some time! While redrawing them, I discovered that she most certainly drew them in at least three different sessions as well. Then I scanned my drawings and put them in a font. To make the font more usable, I added the ten numerals in Kate’s style; the original does not have those. I hope she would have liked my adaptations. Yours in a very preserving mood, Gert Wiescher. * Kate Greenaway’s Alphabet, edited by George Rutledge & Sons, London and New York, ca. 1885.

AggressIan is the release of the first font I ever drew. It was done by hand with triangle and parallel rule back in the mid-1980s. I originally called it Aggressor, but I never liked it. My local type designer friend, Ian Roberts, really likes this type of drawing and told me I had to release it. So I named it after him. The small caps should work well if you need a bolder version. It has oldstyle and lining figures, plus the small cap figures. I hope you like it.

I am not really a creature of habit, but when I start working on a new font, I make myself a cup of coffee first. I guess you can call that a habit, so I decided to name this font Force Of Habit. Force Of Habit is a nice brush font - made with a cheap pencil that I borrowed from the kids’ colouring box and my trusted (and seemingly ever flowing) Chinese ink. Force Of Habit comes with extensive language support, some alternates and - quite possibly - a faint smell of freshly roasted coffee..

According to my own knowledge, and the info found around the internet, lemons are good for your health. Not only do I care about my health, I also care for a good dessert! :) And this is where the lemon enters the the arena! I love the sweet and sour taste of the lemon - I love it in drinks (hot or cold) in ice creams, cakes, sweets ... you name it! I just had to name this font something with the word "lemon" in it, because I find it mouth watering! :)

I used to be a frequent flyer; as a tour guide I often had 6 to 10 international flights per year. At the time I didn’t even think about the consequences of flying, as I loved my job and the job was all about travel. Now, with the planet in deplorable state, I try to keep flying to an utter minimum. I guess you call it ’shame of flying’… Frequent Flyer font is a nice, eroded, all caps font. It comes with multilingual support, so you may come across it during your travels.

I have had the name "Fruitcake Fanatics" in my mind for quite some time now...but I needed a font that suited the name...then one day...actually last Wednesday, I was playing around with some letters (which eventually would turn out to be this font!) and suddenly it struck me: I got the letters for my Fruitcake Fanatics font! Another story could be - what does the name mean?! Well, to tell you the truth, I don't know - but what I do know is that the font is playful and unpredictable and loads of fun!

NO! I don’t have a bearskin rug, nor a fur collar on my jacket. I believe fur should only be worn by its first owner. I have no idea why I called this font Bearskin: maybe I was influenced by one of the Viking novels I am reading - they’re full of Berserkers - but that name was already taken. Anyhoo, Bearskin font is a nice handmade all caps font. A little rough here and there, but with a lot of character as well. Bearskin comes with swashes, so you can have a ball!

I've always loved drawing faeries and I love using them in my scrapbooking pages. So after hunting around for a unique decorative fairy font for my crafts I couldn't quite find what I wanted to use, so I decided to create a whimiscal set of fairy drawings and characters that would suffice. I was influenced in the drawing of the fairies by my love of the 3D poser graphics art,several awesome comics, Alphonse Mucha and several Masters of Art. I couldn't really say what influenced me to draw the letter charaters as I did except I just sat down to draw and they appeared on my blank photoshop canvas. These decorative Fairy Uppercase letters would be great to use in fabric crafts,textiles, embroidery patterns, scrapbooking, greeting cards, Rubber stamps, name titles, Calligraphy, the possiblities I feel are endless when thinking of craft applications.

I've always loved drawing faeries and I love using them in my scrapbooking pages. So after hunting around for a unique decorative fairy font for my crafts I couldn't quite find what I wanted to use, so I decided to create a whimiscal set of fairy drawings and characters that would suffice. I was influenced in the drawing of the fairies by my love of the 3D poser graphics art,several awesome comics, Alphonse Mucha and several Masters of Art. I couldn't really say what influenced me to draw the letter charaters as I did except I just sat down to draw and they appeared on my blank photoshop canvas. These decorative Fairy Uppercase letters would be great to use in fabric crafts,textiles, embroidery patterns, scrapbooking, greeting cards, Rubber stamps, name titles, Calligraphy, the possiblities I feel are endless when thinking of craft applications.

Every time I bring my youngest son to his swimming lessons, I need to show my Covid Vaccination Pass; a QR code on my phone. I thought that I would be off the hook after I showed it the first time, but no, not at the swimming pool! It feels a bit like a bad comic book, so I decided to name this comic book style font Identity Check. Of course, I should have called it Covid Vaccination Check, but that is just too much and it probably won’t sell. Who wants a font called Covid?? ;-) Identity Check is a comic book style font. The glyphs are wider than I am used to (it seems I AM capable of learning new tricks), but the effect is rather nice. Identity Check comes with extensive language support, including Cyrillic and Vietnamese. Plus two sets of alternate glyphs, that cycle as you type.

Richfont Bold is the bold version of my handwriting. I always felt that I had unique handwriting. When I was learning how to design fonts, the first font I made was Richfont Medium, which Bitstream is selling. The Bold version is the perfect companion to the medium version, which is offered at Bitstream.

I was doodling away on a piece of paper, when I noticed that the weird letters I was producing were in fact a nice font. So, I decided to build it! Chillerz is a lovely, messy handmade script font. It comes with double letter ligatures, a healthy attitude and a relaxed fit.

I have no idea why I named this font Modern Fantasy: it just popped up in my head and it stuck. I don’t consider myself to be ‘modern’ (but I’m certainly not old fashioned!), nor do I have particularly modern fantasies… Modern Fantasy is an elegant all caps font: thin, tall and lovely.

In 1978 I went to work at Mergenthaler as a letter drawer. Being an inquisitive sort I decided that I should take a stab at this type design 'stuff'. I drew 25 or 30 glyphs before the work found its way to a high shelf in a dark corner of my apartment. Just 23 years later I found the drawings on a different shelf, in a different home, in a different city and decided to finish what I had started. I'm still trying to deal with my predisposition toward procrastination but I've finished the font. The name of the font is the last name of somebody I played softball with before I moved to Beantown. Ronnie Geis was one of the courageous firefighters we lost on September 11th when the WTC collapsed.

Tandpasta is danish for toothpaste. I was inspired by an old commercial for toothpaste, and since the only letters I had to work with was "Toothpaste" I had to use my imagination, to come up with the rest. I used a slightly blurry pen, leaving the lines of Tandpasta somewhat uneven, but still legibe.

Spinat is spinach in danish. I like all kinds of things with spinach: salads, lasagne, fish, burgers and even with spinach! Yes, I love spinach so much I can eat it without anything else! :) I hope you too like spinach or even Spinat - it has 5 different versions of each letter and multilingual support.

Upperclass was a font I created back in 1995. I had a brainstorm about the uppercase letter “A”. I noticed that the cross bar for the letter A is always toward the bottom, what if I moved it toward the top. The result is a unique font, a great addition to your font collection.

I discovered GrocersScript on the market Cours Saleya in Nice. I always buy my foodstuff there when I am in the area. I developed the whole font from some fragments. If you ever come to Nice, you must absolutely visit that market as well as the one in Cannes. Yours very hungry Gert Wiescher

I realized I didn't have that many serif fonts, so I started sketching and came up with John Brown. John Brown is named after the sheriff in the Bob Marley song 'I Shot The Sheriff'. It is an all caps font, but upper and lower case can be freely interchanged for that great 'natural' look.

One day my kids asked me: ‘would you rather be healthy and poor or super rich and sick?’ Without a doubt I answered: ‘healthy and poor’. Having money is nice, but it is not what life is about. At least, that is what I believe. Radical Fortune is a font I made after a period in my life that could have ended with a really nice sum of money in my hands - but which I didn’t take. I had to give up too much of myself and that just didn’t feel right. I made Radical Fortune to keep me from thinking too much - and, symbolically, I used a really old and cheap marker pen to draw out the glyphs!

A few nights ago, I was dreaming about making a cute font that the children in the city would love. I only remember some characters of the font but I thought that it was a sign to make a new font. So, here it is, Birly. A new font and I think its cute yet playful for your fun projects. Birly was made with all my heart, I love it, and I hope you like it too. Birly has 2 styles, the regular and solid. You can choose, these all in the package! Please take a look and enjoy the preview pictures of Birly. I made it seriously, so you can see how is Birly looks on some projects.

Do you suffer from OCD? Then this font is perfect for you. Or maybe not. Sometimes I like confusion, chaos, imperfect things, because I can often see beauty in them. In this font I drew the letters with a pen and or with just the index finger on a tablet, completely free, without improvement. The chaos ensuing. As if I was rushing notes just for me. Then, without changing the design any further, but to make the chaos minimally legible, I decided - look at this madness! - to organize the chaos. In other words, I aligned metrics and kerning, and the end result was this. I hope you like it and that it is very useful for you. Cheers.

I had a really weird dream the other night, but when I woke up, I had forgotten it. I had the feeling it was about something important, but I cannot, for the life of me, recall what I dreamt about! Forgotten Dream is a horror brush font, which I made with a brushy brush and Chinese ink. It looks like something right out of a nightmare, but you can also use it for something important. Like a ‘keep your distance’ poster, or a sign about the importance of washing ones hands. But then again, if you play in a death metal band, then Forgotten Dream font could be exactly what you need for your album cover!

Abagail Jackson is a wild-looking face that was one of my early designs. I had no particular use in mind when I designed it and I no longer remember what inspired this whimsical font.

Ever since I first designed Ellida in 2005, that elaborate script in the tradition of the 18th-century English calligrapher George Bickham and the 19th-century American calligrapher Platt Rogers Spencer, I wanted to add a very high contrast cut to the family. I finally did so. But the result looks so much different to Ellida that I had to give it another name, hence "Eloise". Eloise should actually be written with a 'i' that has double dots, but that would be difficult for international use. Eloise is a beautiful first name not only for French girls. Pronounce: Ay-low-eese. If I would have had a daughter, I would have called her "Eloise" (with double dots!). But instead I have two phantastic sons, so I never got the chance to use it. Actually one of my sons discovered it on his little boys sand shovel, it was called Eloise. Your decorative designer with a heart for sand shovels Gert Wiescher

This all started with a love for Jenson. I know there're hundreds of variations on that theme. But, that is where I began, several years ago. How far it came, as usual as I wandered through the vagaries of font design, is not unusual. If you've read any of my font design books, you know my design processes are quite loose and spontaneous. I wanted the general feel of a favorite old font, but softer, easier, and more comfortable. I built these on the same vertical metrics as my Librum Publishing Group. However, this family is not part of that group. I used the metrics because that shows my current taste in fonts. This family does work with the Librum group—but to be honest, I haven't experimented enough to come up with a good companion. I suspect I'll need to make another companion family. I may need make a non-modulated bold version also. But, that remains to be seen. I'm pleased with this.

I really wanted to make my own condensed typeface for memes and such. I think i have succeeded. This typeface is so average looking that no one would suspect that it is in fact very radical.

This all started with a love for Minister. This is a font designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt in 1929. In the specimen booklet there’s a scan from Linotype’s page many years ago. They no longer carry the font. I’ve gone quite a ways from the original. It was dark and a bit heavy. But I loved the look and the readability. This came to a head when I started my first book on all-digital printing written from 1994-1995, and published early in 1996. I needed fonts to show the typography I was talking about. At that point oldstyle figures, true small caps, and discretionary ligatures were rare. More than that text fonts for book design had lining OR oldstyle figures, lowercase OR small caps—never both. So, I designed the Diaconia family (using the Greek word for minister). It was fairly rough. I knew very little. I later redesigned and updated Diaconia into Bergsland Pro —released in 2004. It was still rough (though I impressed myself). In 2006, I found myself needing a readable sans serif. So I went to Bergsland Pro, and eliminated the serifs. I named the font Brinar. I kept a flare in place for the serifs and cupped the ends. I was stunned. People loved it. It’s remained my bestseller until very recently. So, at the end of 2016 I decided that Brinar really needed some help. The flares were basically random. The stem width and modulation variances all needed to be fixed. My old OpenType feature code was quite limited and clumsy. So, I created the 6-font Biblia family. I cleaned up or redesigned all the glyphs. I updated the fonts to the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads.

I really like peanuts! My family and I often eat an Indonesian snack called Rempeyek, which is a deep fried, battered peanut cracker and I was probably craving one when I made this font. Peanut Crunch is a hand painted display font. It comes with some alternates and a bunch of ligatures for you to play around with.

The concept of this letter is calmness. I created a variety of sans-serif fonts, and when I listed the fonts I had created, I was surprised that their shapes were not very different from each other. Among them, this font calmly caught my eye. The power of quiet progress is felt in this unremarkable form.

Bold Bavarian is a heavy version of my Royal Bavarian that was commissioned by King Ludwig 1st of Bavaria about 1834. I always thought, that I should design a really bold version and now finally I did. But I think it should not be mixed together with the normal version. Your lover of Blackletter typefaces, Gert Wiescher

I was doing the laundry the other day and, as usual, I was going through the pockets of my jeans. After I had emptied my party pockets, I figured it was a great name for a new font! So, without further ado: here’s Party Pocket: a handwritten all caps font - great for product packaging, greeting cards and posters!

I like fonts that look like scribbled notes… so I made one! Delivery note was made with a sharpie pen on paper. I didn’t ‘clean’ the glyphs too much, as I wanted it to look like a genuine note script. It comes with double letter ligatures for the lower case glyphs and a fun doodle pack!

The other day I discovered that, regrettably, I no longer am a Spring Chicken. Time flies when you’re making fonts… So, after I recovered from that shock, I created this font and called it Spring Chicken! Spring Chicken is a handmade cartoon-ish, script-ish, dunno-how-to-label-it-ish font. Use it and be rad.

I’ve never been one for zombies and all that. I did watch a couple of seasons of The Walking Dead, but after the 2.000.000th zombie got whacked, I had enough. When I made this font, it gave me a zombie feeling. One thing I learned from watching TWD was that zombies are always hungry. There you have it!

I must admit that I am not a big fan of the Art Nouveau style. However, I found this particularly beautiful alphabet and decided to use it as the basis for this new font. Very graceful, elegant, and dare I say, organic. Includes some intertwined ligatures. Complete uppercase, numerals, basic punctuation. Supports most Western European languages.

Scriptissimo-Forte is the bold version of Scriptissimo. When using the normal cut of Scriptissimo I sometimes had the feeling that I could well use a bolder cut to make a bigger impression, so I simply made that cut for myself. I think you can use it too; try it out. Yours very bold scriptissimo, Gert Wiescher