Stick-A-Round started as an attempt to domesticate the wild ​Daft Brush font. During the process, though, it begun taking its own shape and personality, with friendly rounded terminals, dynamic interlock pairs and lots of alternates. There are at least 4 variations for each letter and 2 for the numbers and ​for ​some punctuation marks, plus a​n extra​ set of stylistic alternates. Besides showing up such a good humor​, this font brings a lovely mate loaded with handy ornaments to jazz up your designs. ​​Stick-A-Round, And ​Have ​Some ​Fun. I bet you will!

Duran is a strong, versatile geometric sans with industrial quality. Inspired by technical style letterforms with simple construction, the typeface is useful in both large format and body text. Its compact lateral shape helps save space across layouts and is good to go across a wide range of modern applications. Details include seven weights with matching italics and over 670 characters per style. Opentype features consist of eight variations of numerals, including inferiors, superiors, fractions, case figures and circled figures. Additional features include case-sensitive forms, stylistic alternates, ligatures, game symbols, arrows and language support covering Western, South and Central Europe.

Budare is a geometric font family that rebelled to find its own identity within an ocean of other typefaces of the same style. Its design is based on the shape of the wrought iron plate used in Venezuela and other countries to make arepas and other foods. Its appearance is strongly defined by basic geometric shapes such as the circle and its upright style is accompanied by rotated italics "rotalics" that complement its rebellious spirit. Because of its strong display characteristics, its best uses are focused on posters, branding, titles and anything that needs a strong graphic emphasis.

Meet our new modern signature font - Denise Beauty. This beautiful script is for those who are needing of elegance and stylish character for their designs and is particularly well suited for wedding invitations, save the date cards, and feminine branding. Denise Beauty Font multilingual support: Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Zulu, and many more. What’s Included : Standard & Multilingual glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, and even work on Microsoft Word. Hope you enjoy our font!

Bucintoro is a modern version of the rotunda blackletter, the Gothic book hand of Italy and Spain in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. As the name implies, it's more "rotund" than the tall, angular Textur blackletter used in Germany that Gutenberg imitated. While the use of blackletter continued far into the 20th century in Germany and Scandinavia, the rotunda gave way to roman (and later also italic) letterforms in Italy, France, and Spain. It's less well known these days. Bucintoro has upper- and lowercase alphabets, numerals, punctuation, diacritics but lacks such modern characters as currency symbols. Has light, medium, and black weights.

View Night is this amazing typeface handmade script font we created in freestyle for those of you who do work and crafts. It's perfect for any type of work you're working various purposes such as logos, wedding invitations, headings, t-shirts, letterheads, signage, labels, news, posters, badges etc. OpenType features with alternative styles, ligatures, and multiple language support. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternative, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Indesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010 or later. How to access all alternative characters, using the Windows Character Map with Photoshop:

Morning News is the sister font of Evening News which I designed some years ago for use with my local newspaper Abendzeitung. Morning News is an adaption, a little bit rounder, which gives the font a much softer touch. The general design dates back to the pre-Hitler era, the time when Germany had already lost the first World War and was taking a short deadly breath to start the second big war. Lets hope there will be a day when there will never be another war in Europe (or elsewhere!). Another new peaceful font by your pacifistic designer, Gert Wiescher.

Peter Schoeffer was a printer who was apprenticed to Gutenburg and after leaving Gutenburg in 1455 he set up shop with Facob Fust. His son, Peter the Younger, moved to Mainz and carried on the trade. This particular font is based on a typeface of Peter the Younger that was cut circa 1509-1520. This font has over 900 characters. While there are only about 80 in the historical exemplar the rest have been developed for modern usage. This font is based on Typ.7:146/148G also known as Gesellschaft für Typenkunde plate no. 258.

The birth of the monospaced types dates back to the past. There was a need for the creation of typesets for typewriters. The difficulty was to align the different glyphs in the same width. This led to particular problems with letters like "M" and "l"; the former seemed to be squeezed into the same width of all letters and the second one appeared way too stretched. Despite - or perhaps because of - the impression of the typewriter it is still popular with Graphic Designers. The Ingrid Mono font family with a high range of glyphs and symbols has that special appearance.

Worn Gothic, a typeface from the Grit History™ B family, creates rock solid text-- characters that are weathered, defined and strong, like the body of a gargoyle. Worn Gothic is rugged but legible, whose words stay firmly liquid, like dates stamped in concrete. Disjointed K legs create an unnerving look that makes you stare into the structure of the type. Oddities like this complement the integrity of its fluctuating strokes and consistent X-Height. It offers a few stylistic alternates to maintain readability at any size, in many languages. Worn Gothic offers full Greek character support as well as all punctuation.

Karol was designed in 2011 as a project in the MA in Advanced Typography from EINA/UAB, in Barcelona. It was born as text typeface inspired by the work of East European type designers. Two years later, Karol is ready for public release, in a collection of eight styles (four weights and matching italics) with high readability, strength and character. A few days before its publication, we received the news that Karol had been awarded the Certificate of Typographic Excellence (Judges’ Choice) of the Type Directors Club. Please check the ‘Read me’ file located in the gallery for more specifications.

‘Plaquette’ is a collection of retro typefaces ranging from victorian to bauhaus to the sixties. They are all equipped with a load of OpenType features such as alternates, catchwords, stylistics sets and others. Plaquette 3D A chromatic set of fonts including gradient and outline layers. Crisp and precise. Plaquette Lovecraft A vintage typeface with some sweet discretionary ligatures to make your typography exciting. Take a look at the many alternates. Plaquette Sittl A clean geometric style with many alternative letters, some inspired by Paul Renner’s original Futura. Plaquette Labels This set provides you with 220 different shapes ideal for logos, plates and… labels.

Meet the Letterpress! Jakob Erbar’s Phosphor was released by the Ludwig & Mayer Foundry before 1923. The origins of Aurora date back to 1912 (Johannes Wagner Foundry). Permanent Headline was designed by Karlgeorg Hoefer, also known simply as Headline. It was fun making a mix out of the three classics – with Letterpress Bastard you will quickly get astounding results. To complete the family we added a font containing random symbols we also found in the metal type boxes. Please note that we provided loads of ligatures for double-letters to make your design look as authentic as possible.

The Iberian scripts are the Paleohispanic scripts that were used to represent the extinct Iberian language. Most of them are typologically unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic.[1] The oldest Iberian inscriptions date to the 4th or possibly the 5th century BCE, and the latest from end of the 1st century BCE or possibly the beginning of the 1st century CE. The characters in this font do not contain all the characters of the Iberian script. If there are friends who need all the characters, contact me so that I can install the font on the system.

This time the font's name is meaningless. Maduki doesn't mean 'cool' in Swahili, nor does it mean 'cup cake' in Sranantongo. It is just a nice name. Maduki is a playful font, created with one of my 2 year old son's marker pens (the 'no stain, wash-out' variety), a couple of cups of coffee and a whole bunch of 'speculaas' cookies. Now you're wondering what speculaas is, right? I'll tell you later - in a couple of fonts... Anyway, there's not much meaningful to say about Maduki font. It is nice, it is cute and it comes with alternates!

Surpassing traditional Antiqua, our new collaborative font family Audela emerges after overcoming time, national borders, language differences, cultural gaps, and professional challenges. Starting off as an exercise project of our very first intern Léa Bruneau in 2018, Audela slowly shaped into a full-fledged elegant serif typeface of 14 styles under the watchful eye of Plamen Motev, Fontfabric’s Type Director. Three years later, Audela is internally regarded as a breaker of limits earning its name from the French “au-delà,” meaning “beyond.” This new rising star features sharp serifs, flowing letterforms, advanced OpenType features, Extended Latin and Cyrillic support, to name a few.

I designed Mirage using ink and a calligraphy brush to evoke the writing styles of ancient and exotic civilizations. After completing the project, it was filed and forgotten. About 15 years later, I was sifting through some of my old art files and found a "photostat" of the entire character set... a truly a magnificent archeological discovery. Then I thought, hey, maybe it's day has come. Why not share it with the world?... a completely digitized version for the new millennium. This unique font is a versatile, calligraphic option for travel, history, and greeting card themes. What other uses can you imagine?

The Flintlock Font Family has a Bold personality. The 'Rough' version of the Flintlock Font has a hand-carved or hand-etched edge, carefully crafted for each of over 300 glyphs. Caps, lower case, all numbers, fractions, accents and European characters that work in over 70 languages. 'Classically Built with a Vintage Flair'. Vintage in the American West Tradition that might have been forged and implemented from the 1860s through the 1930s and consequently fresh again. Flintlock Rough can be envisioned on many things dated from 1860 to present day. The font is available in 3 basic weights as of this release date. There are other versions on the drawing board... Flintlock Rough works extremely well with Posters, Branding, Movie Titles, Invites, Stationary, Signage, Embroidery, Letterpress, Ads, Logos and anything that feels Industrial or Hand-Crafted, eg. Coffee, Breweries, Antiques, Woodcuts, Western Styles, Sports Styles, Holidays, Menus, and more. Flintlock Flat & Flintlock Flat Italic are the siblings to Flintlock Rough without the hand-carved edge but rather clean with slightly rounded corners and edges. Extremely Legible, Bold and best used in all the same application descriptions mentioned above and more, specifically contemporary uses and settings, eg. Sports, Titles, Branding, Headlines, Logos and more. Curiously the Flat & Italic versions of Flintlock work extremely well in 1960s and 1970s settings.

Etelka was designed for purposes of corporate identities, branding, product package design and outside lettering. It works anywhere an extremely legible typeface is needed. Package and label design often requires a wide choice of weights and widths: light and narrowed fonts to fit huge amount of mandatory informations onto a small box, or to squeeze text lines around a bottle, fat and wide styles to emphasize information on a poster or vehicle. The regular styles will serve well for business card, small texts and for your website. Etelka’s design idea is wide, open rounded square. Some details are extremely minimized: lower-case “a, n” or “u” lack their typical spur. The typeface has a distinctive industrial expression with all diagonals slightly softened, and her overall strict mono-linear principle is exceptionally broken only for fine optical adjustments in joints. Cyrillic and Greek scripts are present for international business, as well as rich latin diacritics. Etelka is actually very well suited for all kinds of visual communication, especially orientation systems in modern architecture. The first drawing of the font, which was later named “Etelka”, was submitted in 2004 for the Czech Television identity competition and was rejected by the jury. We later concluded that the design was worth extending to the current superfamily of 42 fonts. It is a reliable typeface for corporate identities and websites.

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Irrlicht is based on C. H. Kleukens’ 1923 typeface Judith Type . Whilst Dunkle Irrlicht is a fairly faithful rendition and extension of Kleukens’ typeface, the Licht style was initially added as a stand-alone stencil version; yet, the two styles work perfectly together – for different nuances, for emphasis or simply stacked/layered. Irrlicht is equipped with upper- and lowercase ligatures, contextual and stylistic alternates, fractions, superior and inferior figures, extended language support and a few extra goodies. Additional information – How Irrlicht came to life Christian Heinrich Kleukens cut his Judith Type in 1923, at the peak of German expressionism, exclusively for publications with the Ernst-Ludwig-Press, such as a limited series of biblical prints – the first being the Book of Judith , hence the original’s name. I stumbled upon this typeface a couple of years ago in a nice little 1930 booklet of the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and was struck by its forceful darkness on paper and its seemingly simple, crude letterforms. The lack of a long-ſ in the final version of Judith Type – quite unusual for a German typeface of that time – adds to this feel of crudeness and spontaneity*. Judith Type seemed to me like a semi-blackletter cousin of Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland (cast in the same year). Besides its apparent affinity with expressionism, it reflects a lot of that deeply spiritual craftsmanship of the era – much like Neuland. A few months later, when I was working on a stencil project and looking for a typeface that could be cut into thin wooden plates easily, I remembered those dark, sharp letters that seemed to be lacking any curves at all. After enlarging a few letters and tracing them by hand, the whole set was redrawn digitally, using only straight lines. As for spacing, the goal was to keep the letters tight but to avoid touching characters – without ironing out all the original’s tension and rhythm. Deliberate kerning, subtle contextual alternates and ligatures help to deal with critical glyph combinations. Two additional versions were developed: a stencil version with open counters and, in reference to a popular style of the 1920s and inspired by dry, cracked wood, an inline version. These two additional styles were later merged into one font – Lichte** Irrlicht was born. — AARHAUS * Consequently, the original typeface’s German eszett is simply a ligature of the “round s” and standard z . In some of his publications, Kleukens dispenses with using eszett altogether and sets double s instead. Irrlicht , however, does feature a more common eszett (ß); the original, among other more faithful letter forms, can be accessed via the stylistic sets feature ** licht – literally bright – being the German term for inline typefaces – not to be confused with leicht ( light )

Initially commissioned in the summer of 2009 for a popular North American ice cream parlor chain we cannot name, Tuba started with a reconceptualization of a somewhat flawed '72 alphabet idea by Swiss graphic designer Erwin Poell. During the back-and-forth of the custom project, other ideas seeped into the design, mostly from other Canada Type fonts, like Fab, Jonah, Jojo and Teaspoon. The end result was what the client called a "sugar circuit trigger alphabet". This now is the retail version of that project. Tuba's main style is a straight-forward mix of 60s/70s art nouveau ideas and late-70s/early-80s tube aesthetic. The Highlight and Outline styles are almost necessary spinoffs for this kind of typeface. And the all-caps Black style is a nod to the fat font fad of the past couple of years. All styles contain many alternates – so many that each style is almost two fonts in one. Make sure to check out the character sets for a few nice and useful surprises. Life's too short. Seek sweetness. Get gooey.

Norberto, a CastleType original, is based on a Russian design from the late 19th century that in turn appears to be based on Bodoni. However, Norberto is a much warmer design than most Bodonis, with many soft touches such as very gentle curves from the serif at the top of B, D, P, and R; a jaunty cap on the ‘A’ (and Cyrillic ‘El’, ‘De’, etc); charmingly quaint numerals; hairline accents, and other subtleties that make it a wonderful addition to the Modern typefaces. In addition to several useful OpenType features, Norberto also offers extensive language support, including modern Greek and most languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet, as well as built-in keyboard support for Esperanto and Yoruba. Norberto now has a stencil version which combines the elegance of the original with the informality of a stencil cut. As one enthusiast says, "As a die-cut companion to his compact Norberto, Jason Castle's Norberto Stencil hits us right where we live with its svelte stature and sexy, Bodoni-esque bones." — Typedia

Inspired by late 19th century’s gothic typefaces from broadsides, Flexible uses the latest font technology to allow designers to play with each letter height and width easily. This versatile uppercase typeface is available in 8 widths and 8 heights, and as a variable font which gives you unlimited font possibilities! By using the variable version you only need to install one font file instead of the entire family and you take full advantage of the tremendous scope for design. Flexible was also developed with animation in mind to create amazing kinetic typography videos. Please have a look at this video to see animation examples. This family is a perfect choice for standout headlines, displays, packaging, flyers, logos, and works well in both print and digital environments like sophisticated web design or kinetic typography. The complete family pack includes the variable font. Language support : Afrikaans, Albanian, Azerbaijani, Basque, Bosnian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh, Zulu

Varietta is the result of my fascination with photographing the type designs of some marquees in Spanish markets. In them you can see many letter designs with reversed contrast and in different widths, probably based on the possibilities of photocomposition. At the same time I was working on the expansion of the Hastile typeface designed by Alessandro Butti for the Nebiolo foundry in Italy in the late 1930s, of which I had not seen any digitization. As I am not a fan of perfect revivals, I thought it could be interesting to connect Spain and Italy in a single typeface. The first step was to expand Butti's design to 27 styles, ranging from thin condensed to black expanded. To look for the Spanish connection and its characteristic inverse contrast I took advantage of the current technology that allows variable typefaces with many axes. From this, three scenarios of horizontal contrast were incorporated (top, bottom and mixed) which allows infinite possibilities of use. The final result is a collection of 108 static typefaces or a single variable file.

Working on The Lab late one night, evil comic book genius Scott Christian Sava realized there was something missing from his graphic experiment! No, not slugs and snails or puppydogs' tails, nor sugar, spice, everything nice and formula 'X'....No, what his nefarious scheme was missing were the actual numbers and letters with which he could complete his equation! BRILLIANT! What he needed was something antiseptically clean and readable, even at small sizes for megalomanical rambling as well as the 5 point type under the Bio-Hazard logo that nobody really reads, and yet also bouncy and energetic enough for the inevitable sound effects that might follow exclamations such as: "IT'S ALIVE!" or "IT JUST-MIGHT-WORK!" Thanks to those awfully nice chaps at Comicraft, MadScientist is now available to evil geniuses everywhere, and guaranteed Laboratory tested.* *On reanimated human beings reconstituted from bones and organic body parts and organs from local charnal houses. No animals or small children were hurt during the creation and use of this font. Well, not yet, anyway. Artwork by Lew Stringer

Plantin is a Renaissance Roman as seen through a late–industrial-revolution paradigm. Its forms aim to celebrate fine sixteenth century book typography with the requirements of mechanized typesetting and mass production in mind. How did this anomalous design come about? In 1912 Frank Hinman Pierpont of English Monotype visited the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, returning home with “knowledge, hundreds of photographs, and a stack of antique typeset specimens including a few examples of Robert Granjon’s.” Together with Fritz Stelzer of the Monotype Drawing Office, Pierpont took one of these overinked proofs taken from worn type to use as the basis of a new text face for machine composition. Body text set in Plantin produces a dark, rich texture that’s suited to editorial and book work, though it also performs its tasks on screen with ease. Its historical roots lend the message it sets a sense of gravity and authenticity. The family covers four text weights complete with italics, with four condensed headline styles and a caps-only titling cut. Plantin font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Herschel ventures into the elaborate world of late 19th-century typography to bring its winsome charm and compelling aesthetics into modernity. Staying true to the spirit of its historical era of inspiration, Herschel was designed with extreme attention to detail. Although its aesthetic roots are firmly planted in the treasury of Gilded Age typography, it has been technically constructed to withstand all the rigorous demands that modern technology places on type today. Herschel’s nostalgic, flared, and gently bifurcated serifs shine brightest when employed as display type, but are suited well for any application where inimitable character is needed. Named after designer Brian Brubaker’s maternal grandfather, a retired dairy farmer of more than 60 years, Herschel is available in six delectable weights: Skim, One Percent, Two Percent, Whole, Creamline, and Butter. Features overview: • 800+ glyphs per weight • 120+ stylistic alternates • Upper and lower case • Titling/Drop capitals with multiple and contextual ligatures • Lining, oldstyle, proportional, and tabular figures • Standard and discretionary ligatures • Unique dingbats and special characters • International language support for 200+ latin-based languages, including Vietnamese

This typeface was inspired by the rough surroundings of a modern city and reflects the contradicting nature of an emerging global youth culture. Ever since its first release—back in late 1999— it is constantly on our ‘most wanted’ list and has been part of numerous product campaigns. Music, mobile telephony, food and beverages, politics, you name it. Coca-Cola used it, José Cuervo used it for about 3 years. The new ‘Pro’ version goes one step ahead. You may now capture the essence of the younger generation in every major European language. PF Fuel has been extended with the full array of Cyrillic characters as well as matching frames for this extra stamped look. Furthermore there more alternate characters than ever. Create a custom look, when same characters sit close, or one next to the other. You may find these useful—alternate characters either in the lowercase positions, or access them through the ‘stylistic alternates’ OpenType Pro feature. If you need some extra fuel, this is where to get it!

Sign Helpers JNL is a collection of silhouette images carefully redrawn from two distinct sources. Prior to their bankruptcy in 1984, the Holes-Webway Company of St. Cloud, MN produced thousands of their "Webway" sign kits that were utilized by merchants, libraries and schools throughout the country. At one point they included in their sales catalog a selection of die-cut images for embellishing sign work. In the late 50s and throughout the 60s, the Joseph Struhl Company (now known as Magic Master Industries) produced cling vinyl sign kits for business, and a home movie titling set for do-it-yourself film makers. This set also featured die-cut embellishments. A generous selection of designs from both kits have been faithfully re-drawn in digital form to pay tribute to two innovative companies. Other fonts based on products from these companies are Sign Kit JNL (Webway® Sign Kit), Cling Vinyl JNL, and Sign Maker JNL (Magic Master® Sign Kits). Trademarked names are used purely for reference purposes.

Ever sit up late at night and dream in letters—big, expressive, swash letters. Dream Big carries those grandiose thoughts and captures them as natural brush lettering on paper. Nothing manufactured here… each letter is derived from Summerour’s own hand and translated to this typeface—lofty, expressive, and joyful. Each typeface comes with an additional set of stylistic alternates (upper AND lowercase) that harmonize wonderfully when you have the Opentype Ligature feature active. Additionally, special double-letter ligatures have been produced for specific combinations in need of more expressive flair, as well as a few swashes that work with the economical strokes originally produced from the sumi brush. Rather than limit the personality of this script, various styles have been produced to complement the original Regular—a Wide and Narrow cut are included in hopes of helping you find the perfect variation needed for your composition. Dream Big is the fourth release of the Positype Relaxed Script Collection of typefaces—all focused on fluid, effortless script fonts for simple use.

OMG! I never thought I'd finish this font! Actually, the idea came to me in the late 1990-ies, but the sketches lied at the bottom of the "fonts I will complete one day In the future" pile ... also called "fonts I most likely won't complete...EVER" pile! :) Anyway, I started up with letters for both upper and lowercase, no numbers or punctuation. I figured if people ever purchased this font, all they would need were upper- or lowercase letters. But the rest of the glyphs seemed to miss out, so I made the numbers and some punctuation. But I still found the font incomplete...therefore I redid all the punctuation (from "standard" punctuation to "picturish" punctuation) and added two additional sets of letters. Meaning that there is 4 different versions of letters to choose from: 2 different lowercase, and 2 different lowercase. I had a lot of fun drawing this font, and some fun doing the detective work finding out how the MANY lettershapes should look! I hop you too have fun using this font! :)

Fifteen hundred years from now, a man will be selected to go back in time to prevent a catastrophic event which turned his world into a dystopia. Sent back in time, he was enveloped in empyrean fire, the strands of energy that make up time itself. Crash-landing near Astro City in late 1985, he learned how to master and channel the empyrean forces that had suffused his body -- finally learning to control his powers in time to prevent the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger, the event he had been sent to avert. He described himself to journalists as nothing more than "a Good Samaritan", and has continued to help his fellow man in Astro City ever since. John JG Roshell has also been struggling with the empyrean challenge of fitting all of Kurt Busiek's Astro City dialogue into balloons with the regular Samaritan font, so he created the Samaritan Tall font to help his fellow comic book letterers! It's kinda the same thing really. See the families related to Samaritan Tall: Samaritan &

In most cities during the 1950s and 1960s the corner pharmacy or soda shop was a mainstay of teenage life. It was a place to hang out with friends, hear the latest hits on the jukebox and indulge in everything sugary from malted milkshakes to banana splits. During this time, a popular form of window advertising was supplied by the Coca-Cola Company to promote its product being served by these locations. Specialty window decals designed to emulate drawn (raised) Venetian blinds "bookmarked" by the soda's logo were adhered to the shop's windows, with a space provided to add in customized lettering. The store's name or its specialties were applied to each window pane, and this formed a consistent border at the top of all of the shop's windows. Although few visual images exist of this specific bit of advertising nostalgia, an old record album by a late-1950s singer named Chip Fisher called "Chipper at the Sugar Bowl" provided a somewhat usable sample for what is now Soda Fountain JNL.

The Dalecarlian runes, or dalrunes, was a late version of the runic script that was in use in the Swedish province of Dalarna until the 20th century.The province has consequently been called the "last stronghold of the Germanic script. When Carl Linnaeus visited Älvdalen in Dalarna in 1734, he made the following note in his diary: The peasants in the community here, apart from using rune staves, still today write their names and ownership marks with runic letters, as is seen on walls, corner stones, bowls, etc. Which one does not know to be still continued anywhere else in Sweden. The Dalecarlian runes were derived from the medieval runes, but the runic letters were combined with Latin ones, and Latin letters would progressively replace the runes. At the end of the 16th century, the Dalecarlian runic inventory was almost exclusively runic, but during the following centuries more and more individual runes were replaced with Latin characters. In its last stage almost every rune had been replaced with a Latin letter, or with special versions that were influenced by Latin characters.

Sailor is the digital rendition of a film type that was popular in the early- to late-1970s. The type was called West Futura Casual at Photo-Lettering by David West. Some of the letter shapes of the original were replaced with more contemporary versions, but the originals remain accessible as alternates from different cells within the font, along with some other alternates and letter combinations. Just as the name implied, this sort of lettering is what happens when someone tries to apply Futura’s geometrical principles with a casual hand brush. This style has been popular for over three decades now, and is still going on strong. Posters with casual attempts at geometry are seen everywhere these days. Sailor’s brush style is now the standard visual expression of fun, cool, and happy atmosphere. It has the kind of versatility that can excite the eyes of children in cinemas, brand a product as happy and hip, turn a sign or banner into a cheerful invitation, or just make a poster or book cover that much more appealing to the eye.

Zierde is a take on early advertising, small-copy grotesks of the late 19th/early 20th century, and is largely inspired by Miller & Richard’s own range of Grotesques. More importantly, Zierde is accompanied by a large set of ornaments (+200) which hark back to the look-and-feel of the early-modernist arts and crafts movement. The ornaments in, and presentation of, Zierde owe much credit to J.G Schelter & Giesecke’s 1913 type specimen book ‘Die Zierde’. The strong functional uppercase sans-serifs alongside luscious, beautiful patterns in ‘Die Zierde’ make for beautiful combinations. This early-modernist use of grotesk alongside ornament looks bizarre in the eyes of us used to seeing sans-serifs in more formal, sterile settings. The face itself retains some historical flourishes such as the eccentric leaning angle of the italics, the long cross-bar on the ‘G’, the gammy-leg of the ‘R’, a strange ampersand and some irregular terminals across the weights. Zierde is display face meant for headlines, titles, short-copy, labels and logos. It comes in caps and small caps, Latin and Cyrillic.

Bernhardt Standard, which was designed in 2003 by Julius de Goede, is a flowing Bastarde script. Bastarde is one of the sub-categories of Blackletter typefaces. The term Blackletter refers to typefaces that have evolved out of Northern Europe’s medieval manuscript tradition. Often called gothic, or Old English, these letters are identifiable by the traces of the wide-nibbed pen stroke within their forms. Of all of the various sorts of Blackletter styles, Bastarde scripts are the most flowing, or Italic. The first Bastarde typefaces, cut in the late 1400s, were based on French handwriting styles, especially those styles popular in Burgundy. The flowing nature of Bernhardt Standard makes it similar to some other sorts of Blackletter typefaces as well. Bernhardt Standard, because of its handwritten roots, is also similar to Kurrent, a style of handwriting that was popular in Germany prior the 20th Century. Bernhardt Standard is a very calligraphic face, suitable for formal applications. This typeface would be an excellent choice for certificates or awards. The old style figures in the font allow for nice short settings of text as well.

Some years ago, a good friend and typophile, Gonzalo García Barcha, approached me with the idea of designing a typeface for his editorial project Blacamán Ediciones. He had just came across an hitherto unknown manuscript by Luis Lagarto, a colonial illuminator and scribe, working in Mexico City and Puebla in the late 1500s. The manuscript calligraphy was incredible and stunningly original. It featured three different hands by the scribe, intermingled in the text: a kind of baroque «Roman» roundhand; a very ornate, lively «Italic»; and some sort of irregular, playful, even funny «small caps». All imbued with an eccentric, convoluted zest and vivacious rhythm. Lagarto is the final result of translating these extraordinary hands into a digital type family. Since the manuscript had no numerals, math signs and many other characters now in use, part of the fun of the job was to infer them from the stylistic peculiarities of Luis Lagarto's calligraphy. Lagarto received an Award of Excellence at the Type Directors Club of New York annual competition.