What do you imagine the ideal casual invitation font would look like? It has to be cheerful, inviting, legible, creative, and loads of fun. But first and foremost, it has to look like real handwriting. Fonts seeming like real handwriting are always a major task, and although Canada Type already has plenty of fonts that solve the “looks like handwriting” issue in a variety of ways, we're once again raising the bar a little higher with this one. Birthday is a massive package that crosses the traditional font/handwriting solution of 2-letter ligatures and waltzes into the land of 3-letter combinations. Plenty of them, too! The complete Postscript and True Type versions of Birthday ship with no less than five separate fonts full of nothing but ligatures. And for even more realism, an alternates font is also included in the package, for a total of seven fonts of happy handwriting that can be used anywhere and everywhere personalization is of importance to a layout. For layout artists with advanced typography tools that take advantage of the power of OpenType, Birthday Pro is a wunderkind. All the individual letter alternates are accessible through the Stylistic Alternates feature, the 2-letter ligatures through the standard Ligatures feature, and the 3-letter ligatures via the Discretionary Ligatures feature (for the technically inclined: this includes a nice liga-to-dlig crossover, where the maximum number of possible ligated letters is automatically chosen at the push of a button). If you enjoy using OpenType, Birthday Pro is definitely for you. If on the other hand you like your fonts in Postsript or True Type, it is advisable to keep a character map handy while using Birthday. You will need it to take advantage of the many, many alternates and ligatures distributed over the fonts. The next time someone asks you for the perfect casual invitation font is, look no further. And as usually is with Canada Type, quality fonts are more affordable than ever.

Based on a specimen of an obscure and uncredited old face called Kitterland, Hamlet is one of those curiosities hardly ever noticed in the world of modern fonts, the kind that infuses a variety of historic Blackletter and calligraphy traits in an otherwise Roman alphabet. Such typefaces, what few of them exist, are almost always classified by typophiles as traditional decorative Roman alphabets. We beg to differ. We think such hybrids are fascinating enough to deserve a classification of their own. And we think today's aspiring letterers and type designers would benefit from paying special attention to this kind of hybrid alphabet, not only because it has much more hand than machine in it, but also because it is a prime example of how to succeed in mixing different lettering techniques into one self-contained and distinctly functional alphabet. As in any efficient mixture of lettering methods, Hamlet ended up with characters that are uniquely its own, such as the cupped A, M, V, W and Y, the very luscious and inviting curves on the arms of E, F, L and T, both single- and double-story forms of the a, and the humblest, friendliest g and y ever. A dozen alternate characters are sprinkled throughout the character set, so check out the map for a few pleasant surprises. We also made the Handtooled and Headstone styles because we thought these friendly forms were just crying out for such treatments. The Handtooled version turned out quite lovely, if we may say so ourselves, perhaps even better than the main font. The Headstone version is available as a free bonus to those who purchase the complete Hamlet package. All Hamlet styles come with lining figures as well as old style ones. Hamlet comes in all popular font formats. The OpenType fonts contain push-button swapping alternates and figures, which come in handy in software programs that support this kind of thing.

Basel Neue is the complete redesign of BaselSans ITD font, the first typeface of Isaco Type foundry, launched in 2009. As with the predecessor version, Basel Neue is a legible and discrete typeface, a sans serif with thickness variation and humanistic touch. The family consists of 8 styles, 4 weights plus their respective italic versions. Download the “OT Features” pdf to know and take advantage of all font features as best as possible (in OpenType-savvy applications)! You can also view all symbols in the glyph panel of your program, or in Character Map tool (Win) or Character Viewer/Palette (Mac). 1) Basel Neue has ligatures strategically chosen. Herbert S. Zim, in the book “Codes and secret writing”, elected the most common letter pairs of English, that in the Basel Neue became discretionary ligatures. And, of course, it also has standard ligatures. 2) It’s a fun typeface. Basel Neue has a set of emoticons and fun symbols that can be activated by discretionary ligatures. Type “:-)” and a smileface appears. Type “8-)” and a smiley with glasses appears. Type “ ”, “ ” and “ ” and a telephone, star and heart appears. Or “ ”... and a graceful corresponding symbol will appear. 3) Basel Neue contains lots of useful glyphs and features. All versions have 12 recycling symbols, 7 to different types of plastic, and over 30 currency symbols. It also has fractions, old style-, lining-, tabular numbers and other OpenType features. 4) It has an organized and large character set. The fonts have extended character set to support CE, Baltic, Turkish as well as Western European languages. If you work with languages ​​like Catalan, German, Croatian, Romanian, Dutch, Turkish, for example, the font will use the correct ligatures or characters used in these languages. 5) It’s rigorously tested. Basel Neue is available in OpenType PS e TT flavors and each version undergoes a battery of tests, with a systematic review of nodes, curves, spacing and internal data. This eliminates the possibility of errors in the font.

It's been a while... more than three months we developed our brand new font. We call them "Meastro". Fun fact though, we want to call it "Maestro", but you know... we were afraid of the copyright thing. Meastro Script is a fun, bold, luscious, retro display script font. We crafted this font very carefully and make them very smoothly attach to each other. Especially, on the script version. You can see every character's tail beautifully connected one to another without using ligatures' help. This font takes full advantage of the Open Type format with several automatic ligatures that occur as you type for your preferred design. Moreover, the manual stylistic alternates allow you to choose the letters you prefer. Alternates occur automatically as you type in supported programs when you have "Ligatures" or "Stylistic Alternates" turned on. Meastro is Created with a ton of stylistic alternates, swashes, and ligatures, and also comes with layerable fonts to recreate the effect without uncomfortable overlaps of the extruded shadow effect. On this pro pack, you will also get the Meastro Display font! On this font you will meet the unique blocky and squared design, making your design feel classic and retro-like. Combine them and “boom”, you will be the “Maestro” of the vintage design! This retro typeface is perfect for logotypes, t-shirts, vintage badges, retro quotes, branding, packaging, posters, signboards, social media needs, etc. ——— Meastro features: A full set of uppercase and lowercase characters Layered Style Numbers and punctuation Multilingual language support PUA Encoded Characters OpenType Features +553 Total Glyphs (Script) +235 Total Glyphs (Display) +238 Stylistic Alternates +30 Ligatures +69 Swashes and more (Shiny and Graffiti Spray Effect Included!) ——— ⚠️To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe InDesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010, or later versions. There are additional ways to access alternates/swashes, using Character Map (Windows), Nexus Font (Windows), Font Book (Mac), or a software program such as Pop Char (for Windows and Mac).

As one of the most popular rock bands of the world, Foreigner has rocked the charts with 10 multi-platinum albums and sixteen top 30 hits in the last 40 years. But one might ask what a band this successful has been missing all these years? No head games here...a consistent typeface based on their logo is the answer. As fans of Foreigner, we've taken the essence of their iconic logotype and expanded it out into a full typeface in regular and bold weights to celebrate their 40th anniversary tour. The Jukebox Hero Family celebrates the typographic stylings of Foreigner, with the soft rounded terminals and an open geometric feel, including the unique stencil flavor of the original logo. It inherited the friendly stylings of the all Capitals logo that inspired it, and goes on to include a full standard character set with expansive international support of latin based languages, and two weights jumping from regular to a beefy bold. This family is ready to rock the charts for your designs towards that of a modern, comfortable appeal. Here's what's included with Jukebox Hero Family bundle: 413 glyphs - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 3rd graphic for a preview of the characters included) 2 weights: Regular & Bold. Fonts are provided in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here's why Jukebox Hero Family bundle is for you: You're a die-hard Foreigner fan, and have a case of "Double Vision" and need both font weights. You're looking for a stylish and sophisticated soft sans-serif stencil typeface family. You've been waiting for fonts like these. You're looking for a Sci-fi vibe typeface that has a look that feels familiar. You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

Tiresias was designed for subtitling by Dr. John Gill from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), in the United Kingdom. The Tiresias font is designed to have characters that are easy to distinguish from each other, especially important for the visually impaired. The following key factors were considered during the design process: character shapes, relative weight of character stokes, intercharacter spacing, and aspect ratios that affect the maximum size at which the type could be used. The benefits of the Tiresias font are greatest on lower resolution displays, such as televisions, train and airline information terminals, and low resolution displays on wireless communication and handheld devices. InfoFont is for printed instructions on public terminals where legibility is the primary consideration; these instructions are often read at a distance of 30 to 70 cm. Infofont is not designed for large quantities of text. The Tiresias LPfont is a large print typeface specifically designed for people with low vision. Large print publications should be designed to specifically help with reading problems, and should not just be an enlarged version of the ordinary print. The Tiresias LPfont family, made up of roman, italic, and bold weights, was designed to address and solve these issues. The RNIB developed PCfont for people with low vision to use on computer screens. It is designed for use at larger sizes only. PCfont includes delta hinting technology in the font to ensure pixel-perfect display at key sizes. Signfont is for fixed (not internally illuminated) signage. The recommended usage is white or yellow characters on a matt dark background. Note that the “Z” versions have slashed zeroes, and are identical in all other respects. These faces were developed together with Dr. John Gill of the National Institute of the Blind, Dr. Janet Silver; optometrist of Moorfields Eye Hospital, Chris Sharville of Laker Sharville Design Associates, and Peter O'Donnell; type consultant. Tiresias himself is a figure from Greek mythology, a blind prophet from Thebes.

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini with Francesco Canovaro as a development and reinvention of Tarif by Andrea Tartarelli, Ambra Sans is a humanist sans typeface family, drawn around a lively, expressive skeleton but developed with a contemporary, post-digital sensibility that implies low contrast and tall x-height. In designing Ambra Sans, the authors wanted to research the elusive natural signature of handmade humanist letter shapes, in the effort of preserving it while still developing all the capabilities of type as a technical tool in the digital age. Like a frail insect preserved in amber, humanist design is the "ghost in the machine" of this font, that aims at seducing the viewers with its soft, welcoming text flow, firmly opposing the rigid, formal tone of most sans serif fonts. Born to provide a useful tool to graphic designers with branding and editorial needs, Ambra Sans develops around two subfamilies with slight but fundamental differences. The display family offers a taller x-height, optimizing readability and spacing in headings and display use, while offering a single story lowercase g to provide more consistent branding usage. The text family, on the other side, goes for a smaller x-height to give more traditional proportion to the text and removes the slight tapering in the stems to provide better rendering on screen in small formats. Both subfamilies of Ambra Sans develop around a wide range of seven weights with corresponding true italics, with Ambra Display sporting an extra heavy weight for maximum versatility. In total the family counts 30 fonts, each with over 600 glyphs for a wide language coverage. Open type features and glyph alternates further enrich the usage possibility of this typeface that wants to offer contemporary designer an alternative, unexpectedly human approach to contemporary sans type, softly preserving the spirit of handmade calligraphy while encasing its frail nature in a transparent, strong and powerful design language.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. ITC Founder's Caslon® was created in 1998 by Justin Howes, an English designer who used the resources of the St. Bride Printing Library in London to thoroughly research William Caslon and his types. As was common in the eighteenth century, Caslon had punchcut several different sizes of his types, and each size had a slightly different design. Howes digitized every size of type that Caslon cast, keeping their peculiarities and irregularities and reproducing them as they appeared on the printed page. This family has the 12 point, 30 point, 42 point, and Poster styles, as well as a full set of bona fide ornaments. In keeping with the original Caslon types, none of the sizes have bold weights, the numerals are all old style figures, and a full set of ligatures (some with quaint forms) are included. ITC Founder's Caslon® is a remarkable revival in the true sense of the word, and works beautifully in graphic designs or texts that require an authentic English or historical flavor.

Hamptons BF is a beautiful, elegant sans serif with dramatic individuality. A font that steps out in Art Deco style. As a design movement Art Deco came into prominence during the 1920s and 30s when forms were typically sleek, symmetrical, geometric or highly stylized. Today the influence of this enduring style can be clearly seen in architecture, industrial design, fashion, art, graphic design, and yes, even type design. Art Deco style exemplifies luxury, glamour and modernity. I believe Hamptons BF captures something of that retro look in a nod to the past without ever looking dated, all the while retaining a contemporary flair. Named after the well-known New York resorts synonymous with style and elegance, this gothic or sans serif type is based upon University Roman, an early 1970s serif design which in turn was influenced by yet another serif design called Forum Flair (late 1960s); and that in turn owes its pedigree to the late 1930s’ Stunt Roman, which is the original source of inspiration for all of these. Quite a family tree! There’s dynamic interplay between certain wide, full-round letters such as C, D, G, O, P, Q, R, S and narrow ones like A, E, F, H, K, L, M, N, U, etc. This contrast repeats throughout certain lower case letters and serves to create a unique look of distinction. Light and Regular weights communicate a romantic, feminine appeal while the Bold offers a complementary emphasis. The font is somewhat versatile as in addition to its primary purpose for display, Hamptons BF also succeeds in settings containing short blocks of large text. It’s right at home in a variety of typographic environments: branding, packaging, signage logos, magazine headlines, invitations, menus, trendy cafes and more. Among the included OpenType features are Stylistic Alternates, Automatic Ligatures and Fractions. There is extended language support for Western, Central and Eastern Europe and Turkish.

Whatever the medium, Girard’s love for typography was the common thread that wove his work together. We are honored that the Girard family has entrusted us to celebrate and expand upon the legacy of this design icon with this collection of fonts. The Girard Slab family gracefully synthesizes illustrative sensibilities into a practical typographic framework. Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. From boutique chocolate packaging to the titling sequence for an indie vegan superhero cartoon, Girard Script deftly adds a contemporary sophistication to text and display settings. Inspired by a workhorse lettering style that helped Alexander Girard implement thousands of design elements in his overhaul of the Braniff identity system, Girard Sky pulls its weight in any contemporary application. In Girard Sansusie, each character stands alone as an illustrative element while coming together with its counterparts as a whimsical yet functional typeface. FEATURES: The ligatures feature substitutes specially-drawn letter combinations that combine two, three or even four characters to create smoother transitions and simulate lettering sensibilities. Girard Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. Copious alternate characters and “smart” OpenType programming allow Sansusie to escape the rigid confines of typography to come alive as if flowing from Girard’s sketchpad. This animation shows a sampling of the swash characters available in the font. GIRARD CREDITS: Typeface Design: Alexander Girard, Ben Kiel, Ken Barber, Laura Meseguer Typeface Production: Ben Kiel Typeface Direction: Christian Schwartz, Andy Cruz, Ken Barber 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.

Beauty Club is a modern font collection that includes four serif weights, a thin signature brush script and free marketing words. Beauty Club Brush is a hand-painted script that includes 7 ligatures and 26 alternates. The brush script works great paired with the serif fonts. Try the Beauty Club free font for beauty marketing and social media. It’s a great font for promoting your beauty brands. Fonts and posters designed by Cindy Kinash. See font details below. VERSIONS: American (US) and Extended Latin Pro (Standard) FREE WORDS FEATURES: 57 free words useful for beauty marketing and social media promoting. Keyword examples include beauty, makeup, free, love and sale. Intended use for: beauty, fashion, apparel, marketing, music, social media, websites, magazines, sales, film and packaging. BRUSH SCRIPT AMERICAN (US) Shorter version Thin hand-painted brush script 7 ligatures and 26 alternates OpenType Includes the common alphabet, numbers, American symbols and punctuation. BRUSH SCRIPT EXTENDED LATIN PRO (Standard) Extended version of the American (US) version. Thin hand-painted brush script 7 ligatures and 26 alternates OpenType Includes Latin Pro characters for Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Feroese, Finnish Scots, French, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek Transliterated, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Nynorsk Bokmal Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh. SERIF AMERICAN (US) Shorter version OpenType Includes the common alphabet, numbers, American symbols and punctuation. SERIF EXTENDED LATIN PRO (Standard) Extended version of the American (US) version. OpenType Includes Latin Pro characters for Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Feroese, Finnish Scots, French, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek Transliterated, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Nynorsk Bokmal Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh. TIPS: Try the OpenType brush script alternates/ligatures by turning on the feature in your preferred program that supports ligatures. DISPLAY- Pair the Beauty Club brush script with the serif fonts as large headline text for optimization. FONT USE- Use Beauty Club for beauty, fashion, apparel, marketing, music, social media, websites, magazines, sales, film and packaging."

Five years into the 21st century and the promise of nanotechnology, high-end popular culture design seems to thrive on combining opposites and drawing a fine line between traditionally contradictory ideas. This is seen in modern society's usual cultural frontrunners - like consumer electronics, fashion items, music packaging and publications, where it is evident that traditionally complex marketing statements of fashionability and lifestyle are attempted with simple minimalism. But at the typographic end of this realm, the creative majority still uses old faces that help the modern statement only in passing. Some of the more adventurous creative professionals actively seek new elements to emphasize contemporary impact in their modern design. To those adventurous types (pun intended), Canada Type presents this new face called Go. It is very much a child of the new millennium, inspired by the unmistakable minimalist style of modern 21st century corporate logos, recent design shifts in electronic music and club-marketing collateral, and disc jockeys who have enthusiasm, energy, precision and total control of each and every vibration traveling from mixer to speakers. Go is an original modern techno-lounge face that offers the eyes pleasing collages of friendly minimal forms that give the words an impression of simplicity and depth at once. This is a font that prides itself on its precise grouping of elements and just enough original creativity in combining those elements. The precision builds the sharp edge sought for modern statements, while the creativity keeps the message rejuvenated, clear and interesting. Go's character set consists of a versatile and unexpected, yet mild mix of the uppercase and lowercase forms, with multiple variations on the majority of the letters. The e being a vertical mirror of G is only the first of the pleasant surprises. More than 30 alternates are inside the font. All the accented characters in Go have been meticulously (perhaps obsessively) drawn to be unusual for logos and short statements. Take a look at the character map and be ready for a space-age surprise. To borrow a Star Trek cliché, this font can Go where no font has gone before.

Rabenau (formerly Lucinde), the distinctly warm and legible type family For 30 years the graphic designer Axel Bertram worked at creating his typefaces: He developed complete new alphabets for magazines and typewriters as well as for the constant demand for typefaces for use by commercial artists. He has developed wall charts the size of advertising posters as teaching aids for training commercial and graphic artists to write in a clean, classic cursive script. In the eighties he used the American Chyron computer to design a screen font for television. In the mid-nineties he discovered for himself the fabulous possibilities offered by the Fontographer font software program and explored them playfully. From the results of these experiments, Axel Bertram selected a design for further development. From 2003 onwards the calligrapher and type designer Andreas Frohloff collaborated with him on the further development and production of the 16 fonts of the Rabenau™ typeface family.The Rabenau font was inspired by many factors: From the fonts used as book covers to typewriter fonts and even printed material from England dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century (e.g. those used by the skilled printer William Bulmer), Rabenau's relatively high contrast is offset by some organic tapers, subtley rounded bracketed serifs, and a fairly generous x-height. This makes for a typeface that looks especially good in print. Its broad repertoire of weights and styles - Condensed, Poster, and Shadow - give it added versatility, and make it ideal for setting both display and text in the same typeface. Throughout the heavier weights, the contrast is maintained. The Poster Italic sparkles, and will make a fine display type for dynamic headlines, or logotypes. This family of sixteen fonts works beautifully together. All Rabenau font styles have a large set of ligatures and thus cover typical letter combinations in many European languages. Besides the standard ligatures for ff, fi and fl, letter connections are also available for tt, th and fj or ffi, ffl and ffk. The range is completed with lovely arched transitions for the characters st, ck or ct. The latter gives the font that certain something, both in continuous text and above all in headlines.

LTC Italian Old Style is not to be confused with the English Monotype font also called Italian Old Style, which is an earlier design from 1911 based on William Morris’s Golden Type that is based on Nicholas Jenson’s Roman face. Goudy went back to Jenson’s original Roman and other Renaissance Roman faces for his inspiration and the result is what many consider to be the best Renaissance face adapted for modern use. Bruce Rogers was one of the biggest admirers of Italian Old Style and designed the original specimen book for Italian Old Style in 1924 using his trademark ornament arrangement. These ornaments are now contained in the pro versions of the Roman styles—Regular Pro and Light Pro. With most digitizations of old metal typefaces, one source size is often used as reference (as was Goudy’s method for his own cuttings of his Village foundry types) so that all sizes refer to one set of original artwork. The original hot metal fonts made by Lanston Monotype (from Goudy’s drawings) and other manufacturers used two or three masters for different size ranges to have optimal relative weights—smaller type sizes would need proportionally thicker lines to not appear thin and larger sizes would require thinner lines to not appear to bulky. The variations in size ranges can also be affected by the size of the cutter head in making the master patterns. The light weights of LTC Italian Old Style were digitized from larger display sizes (14, 18, 24, 30, 36 pt) and the regular weights were digitized from smaller composition sizes (8,10,12 pt). The fitting for the regular weights is noticeably looser to allow for better setting at small sizes. Very few font revivals take this approach. Italian Old Style, originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1924, was digitized by Paul Hunt in 2007. In 2013, it has been updated by James Grieshaber and is now offered as a Pro font. The newly expanded Pro font includes all of the original ligatures, plus small caps and expanded language coverage in all 4 Pro styles.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is also ideal for any application that requires quick and easy assimilation of text. According to Nicholas, “The idea for the design started when I was asked to develop a custom version of Century Schoolbook. I wanted to give the design a more contemporary feel, although the client ultimately decided to keep their typeface closer to the original. The project nevertheless gave me ideas for a new design. Since designing Nimrod, some 30 years ago, I had wanted to make a more modern typeface family for newspapers and magazines – this seemed the ideal candidate.” Ysobel (pronounced “Isabel”) has the soft, inviting letter shapes of Century Schoolbook but contrasts these with more incised serifs and terminals. Its capitals are also narrower than those of Century Schoolbook, and care was taken to ensure that they harmonize perfectly with the lowercase. Ysobel’s x-height is full-bodied without disrupting lowercase proportions. In addition, curved terminals, such as those in the “C,” “c” and “e,” were drawn more open as an aid to legibility and readability in text copy. Weight stress is near vertical, and hairlines are robust to ensure character fidelity in small point sizes. Development began with the text version of the family, which has four weights, each with an italic companion. All weights feature lining and old style numerals, fractions, superiors and extended Latin language coverage. Small caps are also available in the Roman Regular design. Ysobel Display is a completely redrawn version of the typeface; it is narrower, and has a slightly smaller x-height, thinner hairlines and subtle design changes to improve its appearance when set at large sizes. The Display Italic received particular attention to make it ideal for setting headlines, subheads and short blocks of copy. Changes include a slightly greater italic angle and more cursive treatment of some letter shapes. Alternative styles of capital “J” and “Q,” to provide variation, are available in all weights.

Some words from the designer, Frantisek Storm... Designed by Josef Tyfa in 1959, digitalized by F. Storm in 1996. This Roman and Italic are well-known perhaps to all Czech graphic artists and typographers ever since their release. Although this type face in some details is under the sway of the period of its rise, its importance is timeless, in contradistinction to other famous types dating from the turn of the sixties which were found, after some time, to be trite. The italics live their own life, only their upper-case letters have the same expression as the basic design. Thin and fragile, they work excellently, emphasizing certain parts in the text by their perfect contrast of expression. When seen from a distance they are a little bit darker than the Roman face. Tyfa Roman was released in 1960 by Grafotechna in Prague for hot setting. Later on, Berthold produced letter matrices - "rulers" for Staromat devices, used for manual photosetting of display alphabets. In the eighties it was available on dry transfers of Transotype and today it is offered also by ITC. The meticulously executed designs of the individual letters in the 288 point size are arranged into a set of signs on a cardboard of about B2 in size. The yellowed paper reveals retouches by white paint on the ink. Blue lines mark the baseline, the capital line, the ascender and descender lines and the central verticals of the letters. With regard to the format of the flat scanner, the designs had to be reduced, with the use of a camera, to the format A4, i.e. to the upper-case letter height of about 30 mm. These were then scanned in 600 dpi resolution and read as a bitmap template to the FontStudio programme. The newly created bold type faces derive from Tyfa's designs of the letters "a", "n", "p", the darkness of which was increased further, approximately by 3%, to enhance their emphasizing function. The text designs have hairstrokes thickened by one third; the contrast between thin and thick strokes has been modified, in order to improve legibility, in sizes under 12 points. We have used electronic interpolation to produce the semi-bold designs. Josef Tyfa himself recommends to choose a somewhat darker design than the basic one for printing of books.

It's a very happy day when we stumble upon beautiful alphabets that were never digitized. It is even a happier day when the beautiful alphabet finds its way to us through friends and people who like our work. Some two months ago, the forms of this gorgeous font were pointed to us by a friend who saw it in an old Dover Publications specimen book showcasing historical alphabets. It was there under the name Vanessa, with nothing else to go by. We looked and researched for further information but found nothing else. So this gem comes to you like a coal that winked its way out of the ashes because it wanted to shine again. Flirt is very authentic art deco with a noticeable element of artistic pride, swashy delicate majuscules and very aristocratic, fashionable and flirty minuscules. The majuscules can be used as every other capitals usually are, or as initial caps. The minuscules can very nicely stand on their own quite independently from the caps whenever desired. These letters are quite similar to the hand lettering used on of the kind of theater posters, specifically burlesque and opera entertainment, which are now considered very retro-chic and fashionable to see hanging on walls in home or office. The initial specimen we worked from showed a single basic art deco alphabet with numerals which seemed as they belonged to another font. That alphabet became the base Flirt font, the numerals were redrawn to fit much better with the minuscules, and the character set was greatly expanded to include punctuation, accented characters, and many many alternates, especially for the majuscules. Majuscules with a descending right vertical stroke were a common artistic touch in the high days of theater posters, so we thought they would be great additions to the character set. These alternates can be found all over the font. So to maximize the design fun, have a character map or glyphs palette handy when you use Flirt. After the base font was finished, we thought it would be a good idea to give it a bold treatment unlike anything seen out there, and the farthest thing from the mechanical bolds seen everywhere now. This bolding treatment consisted of thickening the lowercase's vertical strokes inwards, but leaving the horizontal stroke weight as is, and thickening only the thicker vertical strokes of the uppercase. The result is quite the visual feat. We encourage you to test both the regular and bold weights and see for yourself.

Milan-based Leftloft studio developed LFT Iro Sans, an expansive family that solves the significant, wide-ranging challenges of branding, wayfinding, pictographic language, and complex editorial use. LFT Iro Sans began as the clear and welcoming wayfinding project of San Siro stadium in Milan. Over time many other styles and weights have been added. LFT Iro Sans never finds itself outmatched by the task at hand. The primary aim was to design a technical typeface that was readable in any low visibility condition, for instance in a poorly lit area with awkward wall shapes and overhangs. This worked well for stadium and large lettering use, but other problems also needed to be addressed, such as complementary iconography. A location developer was left mixing — clashing, really — one type family with a different family of icons, resulting in a cobbled-together look which diluted the brand and the experience. They set out to radically simplify and clarify each shape and its meaning, accepting uniqueness as part of the final visual language. LFT Iro Sans pictograms answers the need for having a consistent and large group of icons, perfectly suited to the text typeface. As it concerns public spaces, this didn’t exist before. LFT Iro Sans incorporated a branding project too, so they decided to let LFT Iro Sans go out on a limb and created a unicase style that demands attention. Each unicase letter is a combination of the lowercase and capital form, quite noticeable in the ‘i’, ‘m’, ‘t’, and unique ‘d’ and ‘b’, balanced by more restrained forms of ‘a’, ‘s’, ‘c’, and ‘e’. LFT Iro Sans is not only a technical typeface, but, thanks to letters’ proportions, can also be used for editorial purposes. Assertive and economical in stature, the text weights are clear and assured. And a display version for headlines in Ultralight and Heavy (with italics) was developed for stunning headlines. For enthusiasts of every stripe, LFT Iro Sans can be a brand’s rallying cry with its arresting unicase, be a developer’s go-to pictogram choice, or set the most demanding editorial text in digital or print. With its many OpenType features, simplified pictogram commands (even available in Apple’s Pages and Microsoft Word), and a total of 30 targeted family members, LFT Iro Sans is a brilliant, easy choice. As with the rest of the TypeTogether catalogue, the complete LFT Iro Sans family, designed by Lefloft and developed by Octavio Pardo, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.